Little Deaths

by John F. D. Taff

  Our baby, he thought. Our baby.

  “Here, here,” she said, hands fluttering over her expanded stomach. “He’s kicking. Give me your hand… your hand!”

  He felt the hard, gourd-like arc of her belly through her maternity top, felt the rise and fall of her breathing, could even feel her heartbeat, faint and tremulous. But no flutter, no twitch, no greeting from whatever floated within.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well,” she huffed. “He was doing the mambo a minute ago.” Grabbing his hand and hiking her blouse up, she placed it onto her taut, bare skin. His hand splayed across it, as if palming a basketball, one finger resting on the nub of her belly button.

  “Talk to him. Let him hear your voice.”

  Feeling ridiculous, he lowered his head until his lips grazed her skin. “Ummm, hi, baby. It’s daddy…”

  He barely got that word out when the tight skin of her belly stretched like a drumhead, something moving across it like the wake of a boat on water. It stretched and rippled, took on a shape…

  … the shape of a small face.

  It strained against the skin of her abdomen, lunged at him like a snapping dog. Her skin draped over its blunt, blindly searching features like a wet sheet, filled the tilted hollows of its eyes, stretched across the small open ‘O’ of its mouth.

  “Jesus Christ!” he screamed, sprawling off the couch, banging his head on the corner of the coffee table.

  “Teeth,” was all he could say before he passed out.

  * * *

  Three months, fifteen days later.

  They race to the hospital, he driving, she in the passenger seat, huffing and puffing. He lets her hold his hand, but doesn’t allow her to place it on her belly. Too caught up in the throes of her labor, she doesn’t notice.

  She is on a bed, mostly nude, with sheets draped over her. Her thick, columnar legs are splayed, raised slightly, and she is screaming—screaming and sweating, sweating and cursing.

  The thing slips from her, slides out of her curtained womb on a gush of amniotic fluids, screaming, screaming.

  And then the thing he thought was his son, the empty, shriveled thing attached to the cord, comes out like a deflated balloon.

  The doctors say it is the placenta, must be the placenta.

  But he sees their faces, those of the nurses, sees the horror there, the confusion.

  It isn’t the placenta.

  It is his son, his real son.

  This thing, this hideous thing is the son of another…

  He is confused.

  Why don’t they see this?

  The doctor holds the thing aloft, and he sees, thinks he sees a look of vague concern cross the man’s face, a little frisson of discomfort.

  “Would you like to cut the cord, dad?”

  As if entranced, he steps closer, numbly takes the clunky pair of hospital scissors a nurse gives him, reaches out to place the rubbery, braided thing between its two blades.

  But its cries increase in volume, rise in pitch as he approaches. Its dark eyes fix on him, and it sees him, he knows it sees him and doesn’t want him anywhere near.

  Its mouth stretches open, open wide enough for him to see those teeth, those teeth he’d seen months earlier pressed against the skin of his wife’s belly.

  His hand shaking uncontrollably, he drops the scissors.

  They clatter to the floor, barely before of him.

  * * *

  Home.

  He cannot be brought to touch it, and when he even comes near, it cries, wails as if his very presence is an affront.

  She gives him moist, sorrowful glances, but can offer no explanation, no comfort.

  He can’t get back to work quickly enough, and she knows this. At the front door, he barely pauses to peck at her upturned cheek.

  It is pressed to her, wrapped in blankets. He glances at it, sees that its eyes are tracking him as he leans in to her, as if measuring the distance to his throat.

  He pulls away, turns, and leaves the house.

  * * *

  Crying in the night.

  She doesn’t stir, doesn’t act as if she hears it at all. Perhaps this is a test, he thinks, propped on one elbow and watching her. She is testing him to see if he will be a father and go see what is wrong.

  Then, it strikes him that he is crazy, insane to think the things that he does.

  How can he hold himself separate from her… from him… any longer?

  And how can he possibly think that the child is anything other than what he appears to be?

  His child.

  The crying, the teeth… all in his head… in his head, made up by him to avoid the responsibility, the love, the tie to him, to her.

  Sometime during the course of his thoughts, the crying has stopped, and the house is silent.

  He stands in the hall and listens, hears only his own heartbeat, his own breathing.

  The nursery door is ajar and he sees the yellow glow of the Winnie-the-Pooh nightlight she’d installed so that he wouldn’t be there alone, in the dark. The light throws lengthy shadows of the mobile that hangs above the bed: strange, spidery shapes that creep up the walls, straddle the ceiling.

  And he hears him in there, in his crib, cooing, cooing like a real baby.

  He pauses in the partially open doorway, listening to that sound, and it reaches into him and finds a soft, unguarded place that brings tears to his eyes.

  My son, my boy!

  He pushes the door open, and the baby’s cooing stops as if cut off by a knife.

  And that awful certainty comes back.

  How could it know it was him?

  He tiptoes to the crib’s side, peers in.

  The baby, in a plain white onesie, lays on its back, glares at him with malice and hatred so fervid that the air around the crib seems hot, infected.

  But that could not be.

  And then it moves; shockingly, unexpectedly, moves, rolls over and pulls itself upright, its chubby little hands grasping the crib’s slats, hoisting it up until it stands, stands on its two wobbling little legs.

  Eyes, laval and hot with rage, steam at him, and the little mouth works: open and shut, open and shut, snapping impossible teeth at him, impossible and sharp.

  He takes a step away, falters, his heart freezing like a cowed animal in the den of his chest.

  It shrieks then, shrieks with a terrible, maddened, high-pitched tone that echoes in the small nursery.

  Instantly she is there.

  She reaches into the crib and picks it up, gently cradles it to her.

  “Shhh,” she coos, the shrieks still hanging in the room. “Mama’s here, mama’s here.”

  Though quiet, it glares at him, its eyes still roiling with rage.

  And he looks away, lowers his eyes to the carpet in front of the crib.

  There he sees something that makes his bladder feel loose.

  A patch of dirt at the side of the crib, as if… as if someone, something had stood there, had come there in response to the child’s cries, to comfort it.

  Numbly, he turns, sees that the dirt is connected to a rough, wavering line that leads across the carpet, from the side of the crib back to the door behind him.

  Distantly, as if in a dream, he hears—thinks he hears—the whisper of the sliding glass door downstairs closing.

  He does not, not even once, entertain the thought of going downstairs to see what it is.

  * * *

  Nothing left but to leave.

  He moves out the next morning.

  There are tears, lots of them, some of them even his.

  But he is determined and will not be swayed.

  “I’ve done everything for you,” she says, and he agrees, knowing that this is true. “I’ve given you a son… a beautiful son!”

  “No,” he says, simply shaking his head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not mine. That is not mine.” And he points at it… yes, it again… and shudders when it
turns to him, follows him with eyes that shouldn’t know what they know.

  “Not yours?” Her mouth moves silently around these words.

  “It hates me. How can you not see that?”

  “He’s just a baby. It’s just a phase. He’s yours; of course he’s yours. Who else’s would he be?”

  He takes the handles of the two suitcases he’s packed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  “This is crazy,” she wails at him as he opens the front door. “He’s our baby… your baby.”

  “It may be a baby. It may be your baby. But it isn’t mine. I know it… and it does, too.”

  * * *

  It’s not crazy if you think it is.

  That’s what he tells himself, what he repeats in his mind as he drives out to pick it up, to take it with him for the day.

  She smiles, not nervous, not concerned, but gratefully, lovingly, as she hands it over strapped in its pumpkin seat, a bag stuffed with diapers and ointments, with bottles and powders and wipes and toys.

  It, though, does not smile.

  It, in fact, looks worried, begins shrieking as soon as the handle is passed from her to him.

  But he coos down at it… at him… coos and shushes it gently, but does not reach to touch it, to comfort it.

  He knows that she watches from the window as he straps the pumpkin seat into the car, closes the door.

  She blows him a kiss.

  And he returns it because he loves her, and for the first time he is sure, absolutely sure of that single emotion, that emotion which had been so unfaithful to him in the past, so apathetic.

  He waves to her again, a smile spread across his face, sees his face reflected in the rearview mirror, ghastly, stretched taut.

  He remembers its face pressing through the skin of her abdomen, stretching.

  * * *

  Down the hill, not too steep.

  It has grown silent, its screaming has ceased. It watches him with careful, intense eyes as he undoes the buckle, lifts the seat from the car.

  He is two blocks behind his own house, which he sees at the top of the hill, behind the birches and forsythias where the land falls off. He manages the descent while carefully holding the pumpkin seat at his side.

  Reaching the bottom of the little valley, he looks around. A thin stream snakes from the mouth of a storm drain. There is a wedge-shaped concrete apron that juts from the bottom lip of the storm drain as it emerges from the side of the hill. Dirty, scummy water trickles from it, choked with weeds and debris.

  He sets the pumpkin seat onto the concrete apron, peers into the dark recesses of the storm drain.

  Six, ten feet in, it swallows the light, and he sees no farther. Nothing but the circular concrete walls of the pipe and the thin ribbon of dirty water that trickles down its center.

  It contemplates his every move, sitting there in the pumpkin seat, wearing its little Oshkosh bib overalls and its little fake tennis shoes. Its eyes follow him, wondering what he is going to do next.

  He reaches out; it starts, its eyes widening, and it hisses, catlike, venomous.

  But he grasps the harness that holds it, releases it, removes the straps.

  It remains motionless for a time, then shrugs off the harness, lifts itself from the seat…

  … stands.

  Stands on two tiny legs that neither shake nor falter as they bear its weight.

  It moves with a speed, a fierceness that takes him by surprise. He feels those tiny, sharp teeth close on his arm, and there is a hot, needlelike pain, the warmth of blood spilling. He feels its tiny tongue lapping, lapping at the blood.

  He grabs it with all his strength, pulls it from him, hurls it away.

  The tiny body flies through the air, strikes the edge of the concrete apron, flops to the wet ground, lying there stunned.

  Dear God, what have I done? What have I done?

  Unafraid now, he takes it… him… in his arms, lifts him from the muck, clasps him.

  What was I thinking? What have I done? I can’t have… can’t have…

  He stumbles, his back to the storm drain, still holding him tightly clasped, smelling the downy hair on his head, feeling the sticky wetness on his face and hoping, praying that it is mostly mud.

  After a moment, when his anxiety subsides, he lifts him to get a good look at the boy, at his son. There is some blood, not a lot, a bump on his forehead that is turning black and purple.

  But that isn’t it, isn’t it at all.

  The boy smiles at him, at his father, smiles like a baby boy, like a child is supposed to. Color suffuses his cheeks and his eyes twinkle merrily. Then he laughs, and it is like clean water, the laughter of a baby, innocent and full of pure delight.

  And his heart leaps to see it, to hear it, to know that it isn’t too late, that he hasn’t done anything yet that he can’t take back.

  Of course this is his child.

  But then he notices that he… it… isn’t looking at him, isn’t laughing for him, smiling at him.

  It is looking behind him, into the darkness of the storm drain.

  He doesn’t turn, doesn’t want to know.

  But he hears it behind him, slithering behind him in the mud and brackish water of the drainpipe.

  Hears it hiss gently, not at him, but at the child… its child.

  Feels its breath, cold and spoiled on the back of his neck.

  Last of all, he hears the child say its first word as it throws its arms wide for an embrace.

  “Da-da.”

  ORIFICE

  She told me on the way home, “When you make a hole in something—anything—something else will want to get in through it… or out.”

  She had flounced away after that—flounced, with her sparkling brown hair bouncing and shimmering in the sunlight, dancing across the freckles on her bare shoulders. I remember how her hair had smelled then, sunny and clean and vitally alive. I can inhale even now and draw in the ghost of its presence, haunting in its intoxication.

  And she had smiled. I saw a glance of it before she turned to walk away, bright and sharp enough to cut and cauterize in one swipe.

  Or out, she had said.

  Christ…

  As she turned, her midriff top hiked up a bit—just a bit—to expose her taut, early summer belly, the smooth curve of her abdomen as it swept up to her breasts.

  And her tattoo.

  It was supposed to be a rose, red and black with touches of green here and there. Its stem began at her diaphragm, with the petals of the flower unfolding within the valley of her breasts.

  A flower. That’s what she had wanted.

  To me, it never looked like a flower.

  But this is now, and that was…

  … before…

  “You want a what?” I asked as we sat shoulder to shoulder at a coffee bar in one of the more Bohemian parts of town she preferred.

  “A tattoo,” she said, as if it were the most natural of desires. “Don’t tell me that you, of all people, have a problem with that?”

  She giggled over her double latte, and that sound irritated something deep inside me, something whose existence, up to that point, I had been unaware of.

  Jesse moved in a strange circle, filled with slackers and hackers, New Agers and Xers, post-hippies and post-yuppies, headbangers and rappers, white supremacists and black Muslims, and I moved with her—albeit mostly in her wake.

  Her friends were into wild music, strong liquor, stronger drugs, wilder sex, everything. As Jesse succumbed to the varying gravitational influences of these friends, I tried all of it with her, without prejudging the experiences, without carrying away a lot of baggage afterwards.

  Most of the things we did with her friends I had never even considered before meeting her—and frankly, some of the things I’d never do again. But Jesse seemed to enjoy our relationship like that, and I happened to, also, so what the hell, you know?

  In fact, I think that’s what angered me most—my ow
n response to her wanting a tattoo.

  I tried not to screw my face up too much as I formulated my answer.

  “A tattoo,” I repeated, giving myself time to think of something more meaningful to say. “That’s… umm… interesting.”

  I hid my face behind the steaming mug of herbal tea that sat mainly untouched before me. I hated the stuff, but Jesse thought I looked pale and said it would help.

  “You’re serious. You really don’t want me to get a tattoo,” she said, setting her own cup down and peering intently at me.

  “It’s not that…” I stammered, trying desperately to think of what it was. “It’s just that… I don’t… Okay, I don’t want you to get a tattoo.”

  “Why not?” she pressed, her look turning to one of baffled wonderment.

  “I don’t know. It’s just that… I think they look… cheap.” I whispered the last word, turned my eyes away. “Besides, why now? I mean, I guess I’m kind of surprised you don’t already have a few.”

  “Mikey! You’re so sweet. Dopey, but sweet.”

  She kissed me, and it was strawberries and cherry licorice, sweet and sticky, and I remember it so vividly that it hurts me even now.

  “Of course they’re cheap. That’s why I want one,” she said, flashing me a wicked leer and raising her eyebrows. “And I want one now because… well… because I’m ready for one.”

  “Uh-huh… where?”

  “You’re not jealous, are you? Of Mutt?” And her voice rose an octave, as it did whenever she thought some miraculous insight had been visited upon her.

  Mutt.

  I hadn’t even thought of him. He worked in a tattoo shop down on 72nd. He was one of the crazy satellites Jesse still held in an erratic orbit; a past lover of hers who came to more of our parties than I might have preferred, and who still, I thought then and know now, had some sort of hold on her.