Baby Help

by Marilyn Reynolds

The cake is chocolate. My favorite. Daphne is smiling a big,

  happy smile.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Patricia helped,” Daphne says.

  “Thanks, everybody,” I say, cutting the cake and passing pieces around.

  Daphne comes around with vanilla ice cream and puts a scoop on each dish. I try to help Cheyenne eat her ice cream and cake, but she reaches for the spoon.

  “Baby help!” she says.

  “Baby help,” I laugh, handing her the spoon and watching her get ice cream not only in her mouth, but in her hair, on her hands, and all over the high chair tray.

  When Cheyenne’s finished, I thank everyone for making my birthday a special day, then take my sticky daughter directly to the bathtub. I wash her hair with baby shampoo, and play hide the ducky with her, then sit and watch her play. She likes to spend about an hour in the bathtub, which is fine with me, as long as no one else is waiting for their turn. She washes the ducky’s face and back while I think of how different this birth­day was supposed to be.

  For a moment, I imagine being in Las Vegas with Rudy, get­ting married in a little chapel with wedding bells, like I’ve seen on TV. We would have been happy today.

  But . . . I turn my thoughts to a different day. “I’ll tell you what to do, bitch! And you better do it!” And then, I hear the slap, remember the pain, hear “Stop with that goddamned baby help crap,” hear Cheyenne’s cry, and know what would have come after my Las Vegas birthday. Not that day, maybe, or the next, but it would have come.

  Wouldn’t it?

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Can we come in?” Daphne says.

  “Sure.” I pull the plug so the water will drain from the tub.

  “No, Mommy!” Cheyenne says.

  “Yes,” I tell her. “It’s Kevin’s turn now.”

  Daphne comes in with Kevin wrapped in a towel.

  “My turn,” he says, looking down at Cheyenne who is trying to float the ducky in about half an inch of water.

  “C’mon, kiddo,” I say, wrapping the towel around her and lifting her from the tub.

  Daphne refills it, places Kevin in it, and sits on the edge. I sit on the closed toilet, drying Cheyenne.

  “It was really nice of you to do the cake for me.”

  “It was fun. You should have seen your face! You were so surprised.”

  Cheyenne spreads her towel down on the floor and hands me a diaper from the stack I keep in the bathroom. After I fasten her diaper, she stands up and reaches into the tub for the ducky. Kevin grabs it and swishes it around, making quacking noises. Cheyenne joins in and she and Kevin get us laughing so hard tears roll down our faces. Daphne doubles over with laughter—not that funny little laugh she usually has but a big, loud stream of laughter. I don’t know what’s so funny about two little kids making quacking noises, but it sure got us laughing.

  When we calm down Daphne tells me, “I wish we could leave here at the same time and go to a halfway house together.”

  “Couldn’t you just stay a few extra weeks, until it’s time for me to leave?” I ask.

  “They’re strict about that,” she says, shaking her head sadly. “I feel like we’re already good friends, just in this short time. I don’t want to lose touch with you.”

  “I know. Usually I’m afraid to make friends, because I know I’ll be moving on anyway. But with you it was like we just started out being friends. We didn’t even have to try.”

  Suddenly I feel lonely, realizing how much I like Daphne and Kevin, and how they’ll soon be leaving.

  “Maybe Cheyenne and I could leave when you do,” I say.

  “You have to be here six weeks or you won’t qualify for a halfway house.”

  Neither of us says anything for a few minutes, then Daphne says, “We just have to be careful to write and call each other.”

  I nod, thinking how when I was younger I would have a pact with a friend to always keep in touch, and then something would happen, an address lost, a phone disconnected, something. I’ll try to make things be different with Daphne, and I know she’ll try, too, but my strongest feeling is that I’ll soon be losing a friend.

  That night I lay awake for a long time thinking, hearing the occasional sound of a car in the distance, aware of Cheyenne’s peaceful breathing. Then, not long after I finally drop off to sleep, sometime early in the morning, Cheyenne wakes crying. I rush to her.

  “Shhh, Baby, it’s okay, Mommy’s here.”

  “Mommy! Mommy!” she cries.

  Her diaper’s okay. She’s not feverish. A bad dream?

  “Mommy!” she shrieks.

  “Shhh, shhh,” I say, picking her up and holding her close to me.

  I rock back and forth with her, trying to soothe her, but she keeps crying. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I carry her from the bedroom, down the hall, and out to the play yard. We sit on the swing and sway gently. Slowly, her sobbing stops.

  “Look at the moon, Baby.”

  “Wow!” she says.

  “I see the moon, the moon sees me. God bless the moon, and God bless me,” I sing, not knowing where I learned the song.

  “Wow” is right. One thing about this sandy old desert I could get used to is the night sky. The moon and stars are bright and shining out here, not filtered by smog, or dulled by city lights.

  Tonight, the moon is nearly full, dazzling.

  “Put your head down on my shoulder,” I tell Cheyenne.

  She is asleep in an instant, but I still glide back and forth on the swing drinking in the moon and stars. I remember when I first learned that men had walked on the moon. When I told my mom I wanted to walk on the moon, too, she said, “Yeah, and I wanna be Queen of England.” Well, that’s my mom. She never hit me though, that’s one thing I’ll say for her.

  My mom might be looking up at the sky right now. It’s pos­sible. She always stays up late. Maybe right now she’s looking at the sky and remembering how I wanted to walk on the moon. Or maybe she’s remembering how she once read Goodnight, Moon to Cheyenne.

  Who else is looking up at this amazing sky? Maybe Rudy is looking at the moon and wondering how it looks in Las Vegas. Or Sean. Maybe he’s in the mountains somewhere, in the Con­servation Corps, looking up through pine trees and remember­ing the full moon over the ocean the night we sat in the sand and talked until the sun came up. Or even, maybe Bergie couldn’t sleep tonight, and she’s looking up at the moon and thinking about all the kids and the moms at the Infant Care Center. And maybe, for just a minute, she misses us.

  Is it possible that someone, somewhere, is looking up at this bright, shining moon and thinking of me? Of us? We are so alone. I want so much for us to belong somewhere, with some­one, but where? Who?

  CHAPTER

  7

  The kids at Desert Dunes are friendly, teachers are nice, but I keep my distance. I’ll be leaving again in a few weeks.

  Cheyenne doesn’t know yet how that works. Until now, she’s known the same people all her life—me, Rudy, Irma, the same kids at the Hamilton High Infant Center. She goes to the new Infant Center as eager to play with Eric and Tyler and Nora as if they’ll be her lifelong friends.

  I’m not sure if she misses Ethan and Brittany or not. I didn’t know she missed Rudy until that day at the park. That’s the thing with two-year-olds. It’s hard to know what they’re feeling inside.

  At school, after my last class and before I’m scheduled to work in the Infant Center, I stop at the pay phone. I try to reach my mom, but the number I got from her a few weeks ago has been disconnected.

  I don’t know what makes me do it, but I call Rudy’s house. Like maybe I’ll just hear someone’s voice and hang up, but when Irma answers, I answer back.

  “Melissa! Where are you? Is Cheyenne okay? We’ve been worried to death!”

  I can feel the intensity in her voice.

  “We’re fine.”

  “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you!”


  “I’m in a safe place. I just wanted to tell you we’re okay,” I say.

  “Please. Come home. Rudy’s crazy without you—doesn’t eat, can’t sleep. Please, come home. Please.”

  She is crying, pleading, when suddenly all of her sadness turns to anger.

  “We have a right to see Cheyenne! She’s ours too, you know!”

  I can’t talk. I only listen.

  “At least give me your phone number,” she demands.

  “I’ll call again,” I say, and hang up.

  The metal side of the phone enclosure is cool against my forehead. I keep asking myself, why did I do it? What did I expect?

  I stand straight and take five deep, cleansing breaths, the way we do at the beginning and end of each group meeting at the shelter.

  “Hey, how ’bout letting someone else use the phone?”

  It’s a guy from my English class.

  I take one more deep breath, then walk over to the Infant Center, where I wash my hands thoroughly, put on a clean apron, and check to see what needs to be done. Cheyenne is napping, her wrist resting lightly on her mouth. Some babies suck their thumbs, but mine sucks her wrist. Just looking at her makes my heart smile.

  Two boys are fighting over a fire truck.

  “Anthony’s been cross all day,” Mrs. Seales tells me. “Why don’t you read to him for a while?”

  I find Anthony’s favorite book, Machines at Work, and sit down beside him. He immediately lets go of the fire truck and turns his attention to the picture of a big bulldozer.

  It’s good to be with little kids because they need so much attention. That way I can’t pay attention to my own problems. Time out from problems. I get that from being with little kids, and from reading books. Maybe that’s the answer to a journal question I left blank last week—what steps can you take to minimize the feelings of stress and anxiety which may some­times seem overwhelming?

  A few mornings before Daphne and Kevin are scheduled to leave, I see her in the rec room, with her pictures, crying. I sit down beside her. She has the happy family, christening day pic­ture in one hand, and the picture of her nude, brutally battered and bruised, in the other hand.

  “Daphne?”

  She looks up at me, wiping her eyes.

  “I don’t know which is real,” she says.

  “They’re both real,” I say.

  “Sometimes I miss this one so much.”

  She holds up the happy family picture.

  “But this . . .”

  “We need more pictures,” I tell her.

  On the way back from school Cheyenne and I stop at a drug­store to get diapers and I buy one of those box camera things—disposable, like the diapers.

  Daphne and I take the kids to the park for pictures.

  “Photo opportunities,” Daphne laughs, aiming the camera at me, Cheyenne, and Kevin lined up on the ladder to the slide. Daphne and I trade places and I take her picture with the kids. We pretend to be professional photographers, posing each other, talking with fake accents.

  “Zee light ees not right,” Daphne says, and then we crack up.

  “Zee nose casts a shadow,” I tell her, turning her head slightly and snapping a picture.

  We fall back on the grass, laughing, and Cheyenne and Kevin throw themselves on top of us. We roll around on the grass, like I’ve seen wild animals do on those TV nature programs.

  Later, when the kids are on the climbing structure, Daphne and I sit on a bench, watching them.

  An older woman sits on a bench nearby. Her hair is tied back in a red bandanna. I wonder if she knows she’s wearing gang colors. She’s throwing scraps of bread from a plastic bag onto the grass around her. Pigeons gather, pecking quickly at the crumbs.

  “Gone!” she says, emptying the last of the bread onto the ground and shaking out the bag.

  “See you tomorrow!” she says, waving her arms at the pigeons.

  She seems like such a nice person, it’s easy for me to walk over to her and ask if she’d be willing to take a picture of me and Daphne together.

  “I’ll do my best,” she says.

  I hand her the camera and call Cheyenne and Kevin down to sit on the bench with us.

  “What pretty children you all are,” the woman says, then snaps the picture. “Children of the creator, just like my pigeons, and all my kitty cats at home.”

  She hands the camera back to me, shakes hands with Chey­enne and Kevin, and walks away. The kids go back to the climb­ing structure and Daphne and I sit with our faces turned toward the gentle late afternoon sun, our eyes on our cubs.

  “This is a freedom time,” Daphne says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, I feel free. Like today. Nothing will hurt me today, and I can say whatever I want, and be silly if I want, and no one will hit me, or be mean. I want all my times to be freedom times.”

  By the time I get the pictures developed, Daphne and Kevin have already gone on to a halfway house somewhere in Upland. The pictures make me laugh, but I’m left feeling lonely for my friend. It’s not that I don’t like anyone else here. I do, but there’s no one I feel close to, the way I felt close to Daphne.

  I divide the pictures, being careful to put two of the best ones in the pile for Daphne. When I come to the one of the four of us, I can’t decide who should get that picture. I wish we’d had the bird lady take two pictures of us that day. Why didn’t I think of that?

  Finally, the picture of the four of us goes into Daphne’s pile. She needs the best pictures possible to balance out the awful pictures she already has in her collection.

  I put the pictures in an envelope with her name on it and a note that says, “Remember the freedom time? I miss you, and Cheyenne asks about Kevin every morning as soon as she wakes up.”

  Vickie will take the pictures over to the halfway house next week. I wish I could call Daphne, but it’s still all confidential where she’s staying. I hope she’ll send me a note back by way of Vickie.

  In group we talk of our past, and how to get strong. Alice tells a whole stream of brutal stories.

  “One night he came in from the garage where he’d been work­ing on his car. I hadn’t finished washing the dishes. Kamille was sitting at the kitchen table with me, doing her homework. You know, one of those first grade things where you circle the right answer in red.

  “Anyway, he came in and went crazy because the dishes weren’t done. He grabbed me up from the table and slammed me against the wall. He kept banging my head against the wall, calling me every rotten name he could think of. Kamille came running to stand between us, pushing at him, crying. He smacked her, too, the bastard.”

  Alice’s face is shimmering wet with tears. Trish pulls a chair up right next to her and rubs her back. One after another of the women tell stories of being beaten, raped, humiliated in every imaginable way. I start thinking of all the things Rudy didn’t do. He didn’t rape me. He didn’t choke me. He didn’t kick me. He didn’t call me the “C” word. He didn’t hit Cheyenne. He was a little rough with her, but he didn’t hit her.

  “Melissa?”

  It is Carla. Everyone’s looking at me.

  “Are you with us?”

  “I was just thinking,” I say.

  “About?”

  “About how I maybe don’t belong here.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Carla asks.

  “Well . . . nothing so bad ever happened to me.”

  “So are you saying you weren’t abused?”

  “Well . . .”

  Trish turns to me. “Didn’t you say your boyfriend hit you?”

  “Yes, but not like Alice is talking about,” I say, looking at Alice slumped down in her chair, tears still running down her cheeks.

  “And called you names,” Carla says.

  “Yes, but not very often.”

  “And kept you from seeing friends, or going places.”

  “Yes, but . . .”<
br />
  Alice sits straight upright.

  “You stupid bi . . . witch,” she says. “Don’t you know noth­ing? Abuse is abuse. Maybe my ol’ man hit me harder, or yelled louder, but your guy’d catch up eventually. Don’t sit there makin’ excuses for him.”

  Carla hands me a pamphlet, “It Shouldn’t Hurt to Go Home.”

  “I know you’ve got one of these in the packet of things I gave you when you first got here, but do me a favor and take a look again. Check off the things that apply to your Rudy.”

  There’s a whole list of categories, with explanations. The first is “Physical Abuse” and it talks about hitting, slapping, kicking, choking, pushing, punching, beating. I guess I can put a check mark beside that one.

  “Verbal abuse.” Constant criticism, humiliating remarks, not responding to what the victim is saying, mocking, name-calling, yelling, swearing, interrupting, changing the subject. Check.

  “Sexual violence.” Forcing sex, demanding sexual acts that the victim does not want to perform, degrading treatment. No check on this one.

  “Isolation.” Making it hard to see friends, monitoring phone calls, controlling where the victim goes. Check, I guess, if I think about Sean, and how I always had to stay home in case Rudy would call from work.

  There’s more to the list, but that’s already enough to make me face the fact that yes, Rudy was abusing me.

  “Just because others have been more badly beaten doesn’t excuse what Rudy’s done, does it?”

  I shake my head. “It’s just that sometimes, when I remember the good things, I get all confused.”

  There is a kind of cynical laughter from the group.

  “Here’s the thing,” Trish says. “When you remember the good times, keep remembering. Pretty soon you’ll get to a bad time and you won’t be confused anymore. You belong here just as much as any of the rest of us.”

  I nod, but inside I’m not sure I believe it. Belong. Belong. I don’t even know for sure what that means. It’s weird, how that girl in the book I’ve been reading belonged to a totally loving family, grandparents and all, and she still messed up big time. I think if I had a family like hers, life would be so much better for me. Really, I don’t think that book is going to end up being one of my best friends. It makes me mad, the way that girl uses drugs and hurts her family. I feel sorry for her and all, especially because she dies so young, but I don’t respect her the way I do Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird, or Margaret, in that Judy Blume book.