What Was Mine (6 page)

“What the heck did your mother feed you?” I wondered. Saying “your mother” made me flinch, but she didn't notice. She seemed intent on grabbing a cloth star from the mobile I'd hung above the table. It played “It's a Small World.” The song made her smile. I rewound it and she pumped her tiny fists to the music as a colorful galaxy twirled above her head.

I was afraid the wipes had gone dry, but when I broke the seal on the plastic, I was glad to feel that the cloths, though years old, were still soft and wet. She smiled as I cleaned her, gurgling a little, kicking
free, glad to feel the fresh air. I checked the old diaper, expecting it to be marked with a size, but all that was on it were decorative animal prints. Not even the name of the company that made it! I rolled it up and slid it and its contents into a step-on metal can and reached to a shelf where I'd stacked some cloth diapers. Once, in a focus group for Pampers, I'd heard that cloth diapers were the better, more comfortable option. But how to turn a cloth rectangle into a diaper? I reached for a book. The answer was on—I'll never forget—
page 137
of
Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care
, the trusted bible by which my mother had raised Cheryl and me. Well, not her edition. That had gone to my sister when she'd had her first baby.

Folding a diaper looked easy in the simple line drawings explaining the process. But I had to lay the baby down on the braided rug while I practiced folding and folding the cloth into shapes that seemed as complicated as origami. No wonder disposable diapers had taken over the market. Lying on her back, she gurgled with happiness at her half nakedness—or perhaps it was amusement at my dilemma. I turned her onto her tummy so I could arrange the cloth over her, according to drawings. She extended her arms and legs and arched her back and I stopped folding and watched her, her perfect, plump, splendid body, seemingly preparing for flight. Even then, I thought her a magnificent creature, capable of anything.

In the end, I couldn't stick pins near her. I opened the plastic duck ends of the diaper pins, but was alarmed by how big the needle exposed was. How could I be sure it wouldn't break free and lacerate her? I resorted to wrapping the diaper with packing tape. Heavy-duty, clear, dependable tape with no sharp edges or potential to maim. The baby looked like a precious package prepared for shipment by a sender who'd never shipped a package before. Which, in a way, she was. It was the devil to get the diaper off a few hours later. I used a sewing scissors, the one from my grandmother, the sharpest scissors I owned. I warmed the blades first in hot water from the
bathroom faucet so the steel wouldn't feel cold against her skin, then pushed the blades forward, millimeter by slow millimeter, until the diaper fell open and the baby kicked happily free again.

To know what to feed her, I had to find out how old she was. According to Spock, age could be determined by a baby's weight and whether or not she had teeth. I took her to a scale to weigh her. I didn't have a baby scale, so, holding her, I stood on my bath scale and subtracted my weight. She was just under fifteen pounds. Holding her on my hip, I washed my hand in the sink, then gently probed her gums for protrusions. There was a tiny bump in her upper gum and my forefinger slid smoothly, up and down, as I felt for others. There weren't any others. She drooled and sucked at my finger until I removed it from her mouth. I studied the chart. She was four or five months old, I discovered. No wonder the wicker-pushing woman in the store had been so surprised! There were Similac cans that I'd long kept stacked behind boxes of pasta in the pantry. I checked the expiration dates. The cans were still good. I opened one, grateful for modern preservatives.

The baby was happy in my care, and I began to wonder. If she'd come from a good home, wouldn't she be crying to get back there? If she had a good mother, would she be blithely cooing in a strange room, gurgling at a new rattle? Perhaps the mother who dressed her in fine clothes also neglected her. After all, she'd abandoned her in a store!

By six o'clock, I couldn't resist tuning in to the news any longer. I settled with the baby in the den, in Warren's big leather recliner—now I was glad his girlfriend hadn't wanted it. My heart pounded as I pressed the remote to turn on the set. I turned so the baby couldn't see the screen from her place in my lap. I didn't want her to see her mother.

As the picture came on, I worried. Were they on the lookout for me?

There was the first President Bush guessing the week-old war in Iraq would be over in a few days. Then, news from the Central Park jogger trial. Then, what I'd been bracing myself for: a reporter stood outside IKEA, holding a microphone:
A search is on for missing infant Natalie Featherstone abducted today . . .

Her name was Natalie. She didn't look like a Natalie. She was four months old. Four months and six days.

They had no lead on who'd taken her! Relief ballooned in my brain.

The screen filled with the glistening, tear-streaked face of her mother. Marilyn. She was a striking woman, beautiful even in her distress. Her hair was long and blond and fell in gentle waves in front of her face as she leaned toward the camera, which made her seem so close I drew back, afraid for a moment she could actually see us. I was fearful for myself and sorry for her. Very sorry. Her baby had been taken. I had taken her baby, who was on my lap, sucking peacefully on a bottle. I was glad she didn't seem to recognize Marilyn's voice. What can a four-month-old baby know of her mother? What can she remember? A fragrance? A gesture? The feel of her hands?

“I turned away from the shopping cart for only a second,” Marilyn was saying. But this was a lie! She was a liar! She'd left the baby for much longer than that. She'd abandoned a small, helpless baby in a shopping cart in the middle of a store in a bad area. What if someone had come along besides me? Someone who meant to harm her, lock her up, raise her in a basement? There are so many crazy people out there, I thought, protectively stroking the baby's arm.

The camera pulled back to reveal Marilyn's husband, pink-faced and square-jawed, in expensive-looking jacket and tie.

The distraught parents . . .

He held up a photo of himself and his wife holding the baby. The
camera went in for a close-up. It was a photo not of the baby, but of their car! A red BMW took up most of the picture. The camera pulled back and I could see, in the splay of their legs against the green lawn, they'd gotten everything they'd wanted so far in life.

The infant in the picture looked nothing like the baby I held in my lap and I realized they hadn't bothered to take recent photos. The camera was on them again and she put her hand to her throat as if checking for the persistence of vocal cords there. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and he put his arm around her in a comforting hug. They still had each other. My longing for a baby was at least the equal of theirs.

The FBI has launched a tristate search for the kidnapper . . .

Kidnapper. Until then, that word hadn't occurred to me.

Suddenly everything in me started to rise. I managed to get the baby safely to her crib in the next room before kneeling on the floor and retching into the plastic wastebasket decorated with characters from
Pinocchio
. I knelt for a long while, cushioning my knees on the rug, while everything in me, everything I'd ever consumed, it seemed, came up into the basket and now the room reeked with the smell of my vomit.

I took the basket to the bathroom and emptied it and washed it and brought it back to the baby's room. The baby was crying and I picked her up and took her to the rocker and rocked her to sleep.

I
didn't want to go to sleep that night, or nights for weeks after. I didn't want to lie down in the dark knowing I'd wake to a house without Natalie. I'd pace the house, walking in figure eights, needing to go somewhere, to feel as if I were doing something. The doctor gave me meds to knock me out, but I didn't want to take them at first. I'd never taken anything stronger than aspirin. What if Natalie turned up in the night and I was unconscious and couldn't go to her right away?

After about a week, I gave in. Tom warned me I couldn't function anymore without sleep. But sleep wasn't restful. It was full of nightmares. Nightmares about Natalie in which she was screaming, reaching for me and I couldn't help her, her hands were always just out of my grasp. Or, I dreamed that I'd find her, she'd been in her swing all along, and my body would flood with gratitude and relief and I'd pick her up but she'd slip out of my grasp and fall through a hole in the floorboards and I'd be wakened by a strange sound and Tom taking me in his arms, telling me the strange sound was coming from me.

Even worse than the nights were the mornings, climbing out of a deep well of sleep, slowly encountering the light, hearing the waking song of my baby, getting ready to get out of bed and tend to her, when I'd have to remember all over again—she was gone.

I
returned her again and again, in my mind. All that night, and throughout the next day, I saw scenes in which I was handing the baby back to her mother. I imagined walking boldly through the doors of IKEA, saying that someone had given her to me, or that I had found her somewhere, in a playground, crying, left alone on the grass, in need of a diaper change. But what playground? And what had I, a childless woman, been doing in a playground? And where had I been when the baby was taken? I had no alibi. I knew from TV, I needed an alibi.

I couldn't keep her, much as I wanted to, much as I felt an inexplicable connection between us. But how would I give her back? I imagined returning her, under cloak of night, to her doorstep. I knew where the parents lived. It was all over the news. I imagined swaddling her in soft blankets, leaving her in a basket on their welcome mat, ringing the doorbell and hurrying away. But how could I hurry away fast enough to not be seen by vigilant neighbors or police who I assumed were watching the house? After a sleepless night, I woke with a plan.

That morning, holding her on my lap as she took a bottle, I told her how much I loved her, how sorry I was we couldn't stay together. Baby, I said, (I called her Baby) I'll never, ever forget you. I gave her little terry-clothed arm a squeeze, and at this, she pulled her mouth away from the bottle and gazed at me, as if taking in what I was telling her.

I washed and ironed the sunsuit and bib she'd worn to IKEA, dressed her in it, and brought out a sweater my sister had knitted for the baby I was never able to have. I wanted to leave the baby with something to show that the person who'd taken her was a kind person who had cared for her well.

I drove a few towns away, to a Babies To Go. How reluctantly I unstrapped the crisscrossings for the last time, picked her up, and settled her on my shoulder. Once in the store, I followed signs for cribs, which were in the rear. I dithered for some time deciding which one would be best to leave her in, glad to be spared the attention of salespeople huddled in a far corner over boxes of takeout.

I chose an old-fashioned rocking cradle, plump with white pillows and bolstered in frilled fabric dotted with bumblebees. White ribbon weaved prettily through its wooden slats. Slowly, I lifted her from my shoulder, resting her head on the ruffled pillow, prodded the cradle into gentle motion, rocking her gently until she was asleep. I kissed my fingertip and touched it to her soft forehead, then stood and hurried toward the front of the store, tears gathering so that I could barely see my way to the pay phone by the front door. I put in a quarter and listened to several mechanized messages thanking me for calling IKEA.

I'd meant to say where the baby was, then hang up. But before a human answered, I was distracted by a cry from the back of the store. That cry changed my mind. The sound of her sadness pulled at my core. I couldn't bear for her to be abandoned again. I replaced the receiver and hurried back to rescue her from the cradle.

“Mommy's here,” I crooned. It was the first time I'd ever called myself that. The word flooded me, filling crevices I didn't know I had. I held the baby tight, reveling in the pleasure of her small, warm body against me, a pleasure I'd resigned myself to never feeling again. I swayed with her back and forth, murmuring “there, there”
and other small mantras that mothers do, until she quieted, head on my shoulder.

I knew what I was doing was wrong according to law. But what I was doing felt right, according to the laws of nature.

I carried her to the aisle of car seats. It took a few minutes to divert the attention of a salesclerk from his carton of Chinese food, to help me pick out the best one.

Driving home with my baby in the seat behind me, I kept checking the rearview mirror to make sure she was safe, begging the universe to give Marilyn more babies, knowing that none could replace the one in my care.

I
had to give her another name, of course. She'd been Natalie for four months. She'd no doubt come to recognize the sound (na-talee) and associate it, according to
Dr. Spock
, with fulfillment of needs or pleasure. I didn't want to wrest that accomplishment from her. I didn't want to damage her development. And yet, I needed to call her something else. A name different but not too distant from the one she was used to. I didn't want her to feel as if her identity had been robbed. I didn't want to subject her to psychological vertigo.

After we came home from Babies To Go, I sat on the floor in her room, pulling baby-name books from the shelf. I had plenty of baby-name books. Warren and I had perused them at leisure in the heady days of what we thought was impending parenthood. None of the names we'd chosen seemed right to me now.

The baby lay beside me on the braided rug, playing with paper which she was crinkling and putting into her mouth. She liked sucking on paper. It was clean paper. Engraved Tiffany stationery, fresh from the box. I imagined the baby would have her own engraved stationery someday. What name would be on it?