Thirty-One Days of May

Day 4: The Child

Today was the day. The first time she would see her child. It was going to be her child.

The decision to take on her brother's children was not one she had taken on lightly. For the last three years since leaving the home of her parents, she had lived her life for exactly one person. Herself. Every decision was made based on her own desires and needs. Did she want to go out today? Did she want to find a new job? Did she want to pick up that ringing phone?

Well, all of that would change now. You could not be selfish when responsible for an entire human being, especially a defenceless, weak baby.

The boy was six months old now. She would have preferred to have received the baby as close to a newborn as possible. Perhaps then she would have felt as though she had more of a connection. This was going to be more difficult. The child had bonded closely to her grandmother, and she would only be yet another unfamiliar face. That was her fault, of course. She'd had the option of coming home months ago, and she had held off. After all, what did she know about babies? But eventually, she could not ignore the simple fact. The child was her family. A child of her brother's was inevitably her responsibility in some way too, and it was time to step up.

Her brother. What a sad story. He had not wanted to be a part of his girlfriend's self-destructive lifestyle. He'd had every intention of breaking free, of taking his daughter out of her clutches. He'd refused to allow the drunk pregnant woman to drive, but she had jumped into the drivers seat anyway, and as the car had taken off he'd leaped into the passenger seat. They'd made it two blocks, apparently arguing the whole time, before she ran straight through a red light as a semi-trailer barrelled through the intersection.

Now it was over. The boy's father, her brother was dead. The mother was in prison awaiting trial for his manslaughter, which had been postponed for months. Sheila's own mother had tried to take on the responsibility, but she was simply too old to cope with a young baby who was now rolling over the floor.

Could I love a baby not mine, she wondered. She had never even seen her young niece before. Could she love an infant enough if it hadn't come from her?

When she entered her mother's home, she heard the cooing noise and instantly she smiled. Cute! Stepping through into the living room, she saw the young child balanced on her mother's knee, his chubby little arms floundering about as though he was reaching to bat at invisible balloons.

The baby continued to chatter away, and Sheila felt something inside her squeeze. Babies were cute, she'd always known that, but knowing that the child in front of her shared her blood did something that she had not anticipated.

She loved the baby already. How was it possible? She didn't know this child, she didn't know what made him laugh or what made him cry. She didn't know what his skin felt like, or what he smelled like, and yet just knowing he was, in a way, a part of her made all the difference.

"Can I?"

She reached her arms out towards the baby who continued to babble away. Her mother happily held the baby out to her and Sheila took the weight in her arms, adjusting, allowing the boy's chest to rest against her own. Any second he would look at her, smiled and laughed the same way he did to her mother, she knew she would be utterly lost.

The baby stared at her for a few minutes with eyes that were practically black. She waited. The smile, the laugh was coming. She could tell. She bounced him once, twice, three times. With that the baby opened its mouth, vomited a white, viscous substance on her shoulder, then scrunched up his face and screamed.

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