Baby Talk: The Womb has Ears

Chapter 1

It all started one sunny April morning, when Neal was standing in the microscopic kitchen of his and Annie's apartment, waiting for his coffee water to boil. Only a few minutes earlier, he had picked up baby Natasha from her crib and carried her into the kitchen. If it had been up to Neal, he would have been just as happy to let the infant stay where she was and continue to sleep. Annie had an obsessive fear of crib death and insisted that Natasha be watched at all times. She had gone across the street to buy some formula at the supermarket, but she did not leave until she personally witnessed Neal picking up the baby.

He was standing near the stove, the baby cradled in his left arm, staring absently at the little bubbles that start to swirl and dance when water is close to its boiling point.

Natasha made some small movement that caught his attention.

Neal glanced down at her face. Her dark brown, reptilian-looking eyes opened suddenly. In fact, they almost snapped open—this was the only way Neal could describe it later.

The baby stared at Neal with an eerie, almost angry expression, one that he had not witnessed before.

Then, without any hesitation whatsoever, she spoke.

It was as if she had been formulating the short but shocking sentence for some time and had merely been waiting for exactly the right moment to deliver it—a moment in which her young, inexperienced father was still half-asleep.

"I looooove youuuuuuu," the infant said.

Neal was so taken aback that he almost lost his balance, as well as his grip on his daughter. Staring at her little face with a combination of fear and disbelief, his first impulse was to get the hell away from her. He half-set and half-dropped the child on the counter, then backed up against the kitchen wall, shivering.

"My god," he muttered in a tremulous whisper, Natasha's words still whirling in his mind. This wasn't normal, it couldn't be. She was only five months old...that was impossible. Neal wondered if he could have imagined the entire incident.

I love you.

Neal shuddered again, the words still reverberating in his mind. Her voice had been so strange and creaky-sounding, almost sarcastic. And the image! He could still see Natasha's inexperienced, infantile mouth crudely twisting out the words. Something about it made his skin crawl.

He gawked unblinkingly at the baby, unable to get a grip on himself. The hair on his arms was standing on end.

But Natasha didn't say anything more. The angry expression on her little face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

She lay on her back on the countertop where Neal had hastily deposited her, staring up into space, kicking and wiggling the way babies do. It was as if the entire episode never happened.

When Neal heard Annie coming in the front door, he finally snapped out of his paralysis. He glanced in the direction of the living room, then quickly stepped over to the stove and turned off the burner. He wanted to pick up Natasha before Annie came into the kitchen, but he could hardly bring himself to look at the child, let alone touch her.

As soon as Annie entered the room and saw Natasha, she gasped.

"Don't put the baby on the counter!" she snapped, scooping Natasha up into her arms. "What's wong, sweetie?" she cooed in baby-talk. "Did Daddy leave ooo on the counter while Mommy went bye-bye?"

Annie turned towards Neal, her black eyebrows furrowed together.

"What's the matter with you? She could have fallen on the floor!"

"I...she..." was all Neal could manage to say. He ran his hand uncertainly through his sleep-corkscrewed hair, debating whether or not to tell Annie what had happened. But he decided against it—he was sure she wouldn't believe him.

He pulled a mug from the cupboard and prepared his instant coffee, then sat down in one of their flimsy, vinyl-covered dinette chairs. It squeaked as he did so.

"Well, Neal?" Annie said. "I'm waiting for an explanation. Why did you leave her on the counter?"

Neal did not answer.

Annie made a growl in her throat. "You know better than that. She could fall on the floor and break her neck, or some other bones. Babies have extremely delicate bones, and even the smallest fall can result in a fracture—my books say so. If you're not careful, she could easily break..."

Neal gazed down at his cup, no longer listening to his 19 year old wife. Some of the instant coffee hadn't dissolved. He watched the brown grains swirl around and around, like Annie's lecture.

"She talked," Neal interrupted, at no point in particular.

Annie's mouth was still open, mid-sentence. She closed it and stared blankly at Neal. "She what?"

"She talked, Annie."

Annie glanced down at Natasha, then back at her young husband.

"I know it sounds strange," he said, "but it's true."

Even though such a notion was crazy, Neal could tell she at least wanted to believe him. He knew that some part of Annie was convinced she had given birth to the next Messiah, or, at the very least, a child prodigy who would grow up and change the world. He supposed all mothers held such hopes.

"You mean, 'ga-ga, goo-goo'?" Annie asked.

"No. I mean words. Real words, Annie."

She laughed. "I hate to tell you this, Neal, but five month old babies can't talk."

"I know." Neal took another sip of the lousy instant coffee, wishing he had spiked it with a shot or two of whiskey.

Annie watched him for a moment, then apparently decided maybe it wasn't such a far-fetched notion after all.

"What did she say?" Annie said, with hushed excitement. "What words, exactly?"

Neal let out a laugh, but it sputtered to an uncertain halt. "I love you."

Annie's face went slack. "'I love you?'"

"Yeah."

Annie let out a cackle that sent chills up Neal's spine. She looked down at Natasha. "Did ooo tell Daddy that ooo wuv him?"

The baby looked back up at her mother with a vacant expression.

Neal took another sip of his coffee and stared at the floor. He felt like a fool. Over the past few months, he had grown quite accustomed to the feeling.

Cradling Natasha in one arm, Annie open the formula she had bought and began to heat it on the stove. "You need to stop daydreaming, Neal, and get your mind back on your work." There was a nasty undertone in her voice, one he had not known before they had gotten married. Or had been forced to get married. Neal certainly would not have married Annie under his own free will.

Neal got up and dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink, glancing one last time at Natasha's little face.

For an instant, their eyes locked. Then, the baby gazed past Neal and flailed her arms around.

"Guhhh," she gurgled at the ceiling.

As Neal walked out of the kitchen, he vowed to forget what had happened that morning, or what he thought had happened. And he might have, had he not taken that one last glance at Natasha.

When he saw the look on her face during that fleeting instant, his heart had jumped into his throat.

It seemed to be a look of hate.