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Having a baby changed everything. She was living in two time zones, her own and the baby’s. It was exhilarating, watching something multiply in age before her own eyes. Her plump, pearly pink baby. A week old today, then twice that next week, and so on, a little ever-expanding chiasmus with the present at the center. This is one shape of time but there were several at play.
*
After the baby, time meant something different.
*
They lived in a cottage in New England. The mother spoke to no one apart from her baby and God. That was her world. Sometimes she would dial up her town selectman, anxious with some petty grievance, but she always hung up after the first ring.
*
The mother and baby would have long conversations while nobody else was present. One night when the mother could not sleep, she crept down the hall and into the nursery. “Baby,” she whispered, “tell Mommy the story of your recent past life!” The baby laughed. “This again?”
*
The baby’s most recent past life had been of one Jorge Aragon, son of motorcycle man Ricardo “Rick the Prick” Aragon down in Gallup, New Mexico. Jorge spent his early days zipped up inside Rick’s backpack, cruising the open road. When he turned eighteen he snatched an ounce of yayo and an old bike off his old man and took off for Las Vegas in search of a quick bride. He thought a drunk tourist might marry any chump with enough
yayo, and Jorge was desperate for consummation. So off he went. But the bike must’ve been so old it needed repair because the thing started popping like corn in the middle of the freeway. Jorge knew he was cooked. The bike blew up, and Jorge died in the explosion. He died a virgin.
*
After the baby, life meant something different.
*
She couldn’t explain how fascinating it was to hear her newborn using words like yayo. Sometimes she wondered if the baby embellished details. But then again, she felt an imperative to trust her child, who had just completed a lap of life after all. The story of Jorge tickled her with awe.
*
It was the witching hour. The baby lay in the cradle. The mother loomed in the dark doorway to the nursery. She was barefoot in her nightgown, restless once again. Fear and nightmares often troubled the mother. She scared easily, worrying that passing airplanes were alien spacecraft, worrying she hadn’t washed the produce well enough that day. These thoughts made her sleepless, though the baby was always a source of comfort.
“Baby?” she whispered. “Baby, are you asleep?”
“No, Mommy, I’m awake.” The baby’s voice was mirthy and sentimental. “Won’t you tell Mommy another of Jorge’s tales,” she asked shyly.
*
When Jorge was two, old man Ricardo ran off with a woman whose final words to Jorge were “Not my son, not my problem.” Little Jorge was left alone in the house, toddling from kitchen to bathroom, unable to keep himself dignified or clean, crying from his hunger and general helplessness. This lasted days or weeks. But eventually, Rick did return. The period of abandonment was never discussed after the fact and only existed in the memory fragments that Jorge carried through his short life. Even as the baby recalled these events, they seemed to dissipate from words into pixels like a dream upon waking…
*
The mother was no stranger to sadness. Before the baby she had been pensive, drifting, not knowing what to make with her life. There was a void inside her, through which she prayed God may enter. Then, in a pregnancy that was unlikely, she found her vocation. The baby was more than just a chance at family life. To her, the baby was a raindrop, fallen from the heavens and landing in her lap. Something precious to cherish. Yes, she had salvation in mind.
*
The mother and baby were playing with blocks on the floor of the playpen. It was a sunny afternoon and the baby, six months old now, had stacked several blocks into a multicolored tower. The mother stared out the window and into the clear sky, bouncing her leg and gripping a red block with pale knuckles.
“Did you…” she started and trailed off.
“Yes, Mommy?” The baby was amused.
“Well…” she put the red block down.“Did you meet the maker?”
The baby smirked. “As if! The maker is no stop along the way.”
“Ahh,” the mother nodded. “Well…Did Jorge think much about God?” *
Jorge’s personal prophet was Jim Beam, and he paid his tributes on the daily. Ever since his first taste of Tennessee bourbon at age ten, he was spiritually indebted to the stuff. At first, he found the taste repulsive, but he wanted the valor so he pretended to like it until he was no longer pretending. By thirteen he was a quick-sipper who liked it neat and by fifteen, a quick-sipper who loved it neat.
*
The mother’s affection for Jorge’s lore was in no way lessened by Jorge’s lack of piety. After all, his soul had wound up under her roof.
*
Each morning they prayed together. Life was a gift, she reminded the baby, and God must be thanked for gifts. They sat on the floor of the kitchen, holding hands. The mother led, whispering furiously. The baby tried to keep up.
*
One Sunday after morning prayer, the mother asked,
“Baby, how well did Jorge know suffering?”
*
Jorge Aragon was relatively unblighted. He had never given death much thought. It struck him down out of nowhere. At age eighteen, he was riding an old motorbike west toward Las Vegas where he hoped to score a wife. But then, as he was biking down the freeway,
*
“No, no, no. I know this one,” the mother interrupted.
“Oh, um. Let me see,” the baby paused, thinking.
“Are you tired?” the mother frowned. It was early.
“I’m alright, not tired. Let me tell you a different story.”
*
As a teenager, Jorge had lusted over a middle-aged woman named Tina who sold ceramic goods out of the trunk of her Ford Bronco. He would pop on his aviators and visit her parked out in the hot afternoons, pretending to admire her thick mugs and bowls of speckled teal. Really he was admiring her warm skin, her terrific smile, and her rocking body. Jorge enjoyed the thrill of desire. Only once did he make a pass at her. The details were faded, maybe he had reached out for her face, or remarked on her beauty, something like this. The woman laughed at him. He couldn’t quite remember what was said or done, but he never forgot her laugh.
*
She was a single mother; the baby’s father was irrelevant. Romantic love did not interest her. Her loves were threefold: God, family, and country, just like they say. Her natural baby constituted the family in question. From the get-go, she felt her pregnancy was a fated blessing. So there was God, making descents all around her.
*
Country was slightly more complicated. The mother held tepid convictions that the United States government was withholding secrets, and her response was quiet suspicion. But ultimately this was undercut by a genuine tenderness for her country. The land of the free– she was very fond of that.
The mother thought long and hard about freedom. “Baby,” she asked. “Was Jorge free?”
Jorge had perhaps been the last living son of Americana. Old man Ricardo raised him to respect the land, although not the law. Rick had been locked up a handful of times. Soft drugs and light violence. He broke laws like Jesus broke bread. Even behind bars, his spirit was free. Jorge grew up in this image.
*
Some time later:
“You speak of Jorge’s father…” the mother started nervously.
The baby waved like go on.
“Was there… a mother?” she whispered. Her baby with another mother… It was a terrible thought.
“Yeaaah!”
“Who was she?” she asked, hurt.
*
Who was she? Hm. We all come from somewhere… Mommy! Jorge’s mother. The words stirred up a blank etch-a-sketch, no dings, no bingo. He could not remember.
*
“Mommy!” the baby called for seemingly no reason, arms reaching out toward the mother. The sudden outcry made her nervous. She scooped up and plunked the baby over her shoulder like a two-by-four.
“Mommy loves you,” she murmured against the baby’s cheek, swaying urgently.
The baby was a year old now. It was incredible how rich with meaning one year could be. But motherhood was only getting more complicated, and as the baby grew, the spirit realm shrunk like a tail light.
*
“My baby, are you hungry?” the mother poked her head into the nursery, carrying a small plastic bowl of soft blueberries. It was pouring outside, the rain slapping loud against the hard earth.
“Boofberry!” the baby cried, swinging limbs around. “Boobooboof!”
The mother kissed the baby on the forehead. “That’s right, darling.” She plopped the blueberries into the baby’s mouth one by one. The baby noshed away in quiet focus. Suddenly a loud whip of thunder cracked and the rain intensified. The baby began to cry. “Please, dear,” the mother muttered. She held and rocked the baby, who just kept crying as if out into the wilderness. It was an unbearable pitch. Her heart was crushed by the terror of the sound, and she too began to cry, gently at first, and then inconsolably. She held her child close. The two bounced up and down, crying crying crying together against the sound of the pouring rain.
”Would it help,” the mother blubbered, “to talk about Jorge?”
“Waaaaaaaaah!” the baby wailed without recognition. “Waaaaaaahhh!” The mother looked into her child’s wet eyes. What had slipped away would not return, not between them, not in this life.
By Jane Dabate
