Chapter 2 #3
But something even worse happened. There was an initial squeal and then the infant started to scream.
Blue had no idea what would happen next.
Would she puke? Fall out of the basket? Start to bleed from somewhere?
He really didn’t know what to expect. Hell, if she exploded he wouldn’t be surprised.
Sitting there listening to her scream, he poked through his memory.
He’d had to sit through dozens of commercials of people with babies.
What were they doing in the commercials?
The screaming kept him from being able to think clearly.
He remembered smiling mommies, babies with baby food on their faces, some of them crawling about with saggy diapers.
On one commercial a baby put a stuffed toy in the toilet and flushed it.
Well, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while.
Should he check to see if it was coming out the legs of her diaper? And if it was, what should he do?
Worse yet, what if Anne didn’t come back?
It was no secret there was no love lost between the two of them.
Maybe she was just fucking with him―maybe she wasn’t coming back.
As he sat there, his brain screaming right along with the baby, there was a tiny tapping at the front door.
Blue shot to his feet and cleared the space in half a second.
Throwing open the door, he expected to find Anne standing there, but instead, there was a mini-Anne staring up at him, her eyes as big as saucers.
All Blue could manage was a croaked-out, “Yeah?”
“Uh, mister, um, Mom called and told me to come over to help you. Is everything okay?”
Blue could feel himself reaching the breaking point. “No! Oh, uh, she’s screaming and I don’t know how to make her stop!”
The girl made her way around him and into the room, then stopped and wrinkled up her nose. “Oh, she’s poopy!”
“I was thinking the word was ‘shitty,’ but yeah, that’s pretty much what’s happened here. And I really don’t know what to do,” Blue gasped out. “Sorry for the smell.”
“That’s what babies do. Do you have some paper towels? And a garbage bag? And maybe some bath towels?”
“Yeah! Oh, yeah, I’ve got all that stuff,” Blue offered and started running around, collecting things. When he’d brought it all back, he gave the girl a wide-eyed stare. “Now what?”
“Let’s see what we can do.” With that, the girl took a bath towel and folded it in half.
She picked up the baby and placed her on the towel, then started unwrapping the duct tape from around the kitchen towel.
When she got it opened, Blue made a face.
“Oh, yeah, it’s bad,” the girl said with a smile as Blue tried hard not to throw up.
“Now take three of those paper towels. Stack them on top of each other, fold the whole thing in quarters, and wet it with hot water.”
Blue couldn’t wait to go to the kitchen and do that. It took him out of the stench he’d been under for at least twenty minutes. How did something that small make that much stink? It was kind of amazing, really, when he thought about it. Horrible but amazing.
By the time he came back to the scene of the crime, the girl had managed to wipe most of the mess from the baby with the clean end of the towel, and the little thing was no longer screaming like the devil.
Taking the wet paper towels from Blue’s hand, she took the baby’s ankles in one hand and lifted her butt up, sliding the towel out from under her, then began wiping the pink, rosy flesh with the paper towels until everything was wiped away. Blue was impressed. “Now what?”
The girl just smiled and lifted the baby onto another bath towel, then cuddled her close. “We just wait for Mom to come. If she pees, the towel will soak it up and we’ll just wipe her down and get another one.”
“Good plan.” Blue watched her handling the baby with ease. “By the way, I’m Blue. I don’t even know your name.”
“Polly. It’s actually Paulina, but everyone calls me Polly. Why is your name Blue?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose it’s because of my eyes. That’s what everyone’s always called me, so I don’t know. Hey, you’re pretty smart with that baby.”
“I babysit sometimes for my friend’s cousins. They’re little.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m thirteen.”
“Ah.” What did one talk to a teenage girl about? Blue tried to come up with conversation starters, but he was having trouble. “Um, school. So you go to school, right?”
“Yeah. Adolph Hillerman Middle School. But we call it AdolfHitler.” That made Blue chuckle. “I hate it. The teachers are really mean,” she added, frowning down at the baby.
“That’s too bad. And you have a little brother, huh?”
“Yeah. Toby. He’s eight. But when he was little he couldn’t say B , so when people asked him his name, he said Toady. It stuck. That’s what we all call him.”
That made Blue laugh. “Toady! That’s funny. Bet he hates it.”
“Nah. He’s been Toady for so long that he doesn’t really think about it.” She leaned into the baby’s face and rubbed her nose against the tiny one’s. With that, the baby swung its arms up and wiggled. “She’s so cute. What’s her name?”
“Name? Um, Indigo, her birth certificate says,” Blue offered.
“Your name is Blue and hers is Indigo? I like it!” the girl said with a cheerful spark in her voice.
“Oh, if you want, you can wipe the poop off in the toilet and then soak the towel in some detergent water. By the time you get ready to do laundry, it’ll be better and you can wash it and use it again. ”
Blue shook his head. “No. That towel’s NEVER coming back into this house,” he declared. “It’s going in the garbage.”
“Don’t blame you there. Here, hold her while I find something,” Polly ordered and held the baby out toward Blue, but he shrank back. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know how. I mean, what if I break her?” The girl laughed out loud. “I’m serious here!” Blue snapped, and she reined in the laughter to a mild chuckle. “Seriously, I don’t know anything about babies.”
The girl’s eyelids narrowed and Blue watched her laughter turn to scorn. “You’re not kidding. You really don’t know anything about babies. You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“Pretty fucking terrified, I’ll admit,” Blue blurted out, then added, “Sorry. Bad words. Shouldn’t say those around a baby, I suppose.”
“Shouldn’t say those around anybody ,” Polly corrected.
“Yeah, well, you’re not me. You don’t go to the places I go, work at the place I work, do the things I have to do. My life’s a lot different from yours,” he pointed out.
“I guess it is. But seriously, take the, um, Indigo. I’ll be right back.
” Polly held the baby out toward him, but Blue recoiled, horrified at the idea of taking the tiny human from the one person in the room who didn’t seem to be afraid of her.
“You’ve got to hold her sometime. Just hold out your arms and take her!
” Polly barked. She might’ve been small, but he sat up and took notice, sticking both arms out and waiting.
When Polly laid the baby in his embrace, Blue stared at the little thing like she was going to spontaneously combust. Of course, it was a sure thing she’d start to scream. He just knew it.
But she didn’t. Instead, Indigo blinked up at Blue and made a weird little screwed-up face.
Oh, no. Is she doing that again? he had to wonder, but there was no smell.
She waved an arm toward his face, then snuggled against his chest. Blue sat motionless.
He was positive that one simple move on his part would set her off, shrieking like gale-force winds and writhing like a tornado.
How he’d deal with that, he wasn’t sure.
Watching her closely, he saw that she’d squirm a little, then make some kind of weird motion with her lips and tongue.
“Hey, what’s she doing?” he called out to Polly.
The girl jetted back into the room and watched for a few seconds. “It’s her sucking reflex. She needs something to suck on. I’ll be right back.” With that, she disappeared.
Blue didn’t have time to even scream out, “Don’t go!
” The door closed behind Polly and she was gone.
There wasn’t an instant to consider his predicament before he realized he was alone.
The sound of his heart pounding out of control took over his senses and he stared at the baby, wondering what would happen next.
Without even thinking, he said, “You’re being pretty quiet now. ”
That face puckered into the equivalent of an ugly fruit and she started to shriek again.
What could he do? Then Blue remembered what Anne had said, but he hadn’t washed his hands.
After considering a half dozen different ideas, he managed to get her back into the basket and run to the kitchen.
The bottle of dish detergent had “antibacterial” written across its front in green letters, so Blue turned on the hot water and washed his hands as best he could.
There was grease on them, especially under his nails, that he knew he’d never get out, but at least they were cleaner than before.
He ran back to find the infant cherry red and screaming so hard she was breathless.
Without another thought, he shoved a finger into her mouth.
Her lips clamped down instantly and he could feel her tongue working.
The moment was magical as her crying stopped and she sighed and sucked, her chin quivering with stress and frustration.
Blue’s eyes went wide with wonder. He knew it wouldn’t work forever, but at least for a few minutes, it was helping.