Pretty Baby. Mary Kubica
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racing. The baby’s wail—piercing and miserable and utterly inconsolable—rattles my nerves. I watch the girl, watch the frenzied rocking, hear the tired words fall from her exhausted mouth as she holds out her cup. “Please, help.”
She’s asking, I tell myself. She’s asking for help.
And yet the do-nothings continue on their way home, rationalizing their lack of concern with the change they drop in her cup, change that would have otherwise found its way to the washing machine or some countertop or bookshelf, where it would sit purposelessly in a ceramic pink pig.
I feel myself tremble as I approach the girl. She lifts her chin as I draw near, and for a split second our eyes lock before she thrusts out her cup and looks away. Her eyes are worse for wear, jaded and pessimistic. I nearly balk for a moment because of the eyes. Icy and blue, a cornflower blue, with much too much eyeliner staining the surface of her bloated eyelids. I think about fleeing. I consider pulling a twenty dollar bill from my purse and setting it in her cup and being on my way. Twenty dollars is much more substantial than a handful of change. Twenty dollars can buy dinner for an entire week, if she’s thrifty. That’s what I tell myself in my moment of hesitation. But then, I realize, she’d likely spend it on Enfamil formula, placing the baby’s needs before her own. She’s rail thin, skinnier than Zoe, who is a string bean.
“Let me buy you dinner,” I declare, my voice much less bold than the spoken words. My voice is quiet, quivering, nearly suffocated by the sounds of the city: taxis passing by and blasting their horns at commuters who jaywalk across Fullerton; the automated message Attention customers. An outbound train, from the Loop, will be arriving shortly, followed by the imminent arrival of the brown line on the platform above us; the sound of the baby’s cry. People pass by, chatting and laughing loudly into cell phones; a forgotten rumble of thunder rolls through the darkening sky.
“No thanks,” she says. There’s a bitterness to her words. It would be easier for her if I dropped in my twenty and continued on my way. Easier now, in this moment maybe, but not when the hunger begins to eat away at her insides, when the baby’s inconsolable crying makes her snap. She stands and reaches for the leather suitcase, shuffling the baby in her arms.
“It helps,” I say, quickly, knowing she’s about to make a run for it, “to lay them on their stomachs sometimes. Like this.” I motion with my hands. “It helps with the colic.” She watches my hands go from upright to horizontal and she nods—to some extent—and I say, “I’m a mother, too,” and she sizes me up and down, wondering why I don’t just go. Like everyone else, drop in my change and go.
“There’s a shelter—” I begin.
“I don’t do shelters,” she interjects. I envision the interior of a homeless shelter: dozens upon dozens of cots lined in a row.
She’s incredibly tough on the exterior. Hardened and rebellious. I wonder if inside she feels the same. She wears the same torn jeans, the same army-green coat, the same lace-up boots. Her clothing is grungy, wet. Her crooked hair carries a slick look, greasy, having not been washed in some time. I wonder about the last time she enjoyed a warm shower, a good night’s sleep. The baby, too, from what I can see is far from clean.
I consider Zoe on her own, on the streets. Homeless. The vision, purely hypothetical, makes me want to cry. Zoe, with her saucy exterior and sensitive, defensive interior, begging for spare change beside the “L.” Prepubescent Zoe with a baby of her own in three or four inconsequential years.
“Please let me buy you dinner,” I say again. But the girl is turning and walking away, the baby slung over her shoulder awkwardly, fussing and thrusting her teensy body about. I’m consumed with desperation, with this need to do something. But the girl is moving away from me, swallowed up by rush hour traffic on Fullerton. “Wait,” I hear my voice say. “Please stop. Wait.” But she does not.
I drop my bag to the moistened sidewalk and do the only thing I can think to do: I shimmy out of my raincoat, fully waterproof and lined, and at the corner of Fullerton and Halstead—where she waits anxiously for a green light to cross the plugged street—I drape the coat over the baby. She delivers me a dirty look.
“What are you—” she starts, accusatorily, but I retreat a step or two so she can’t undo the one thing I can think of to do. The cold air rushes my bare arms where I stand in a short-sleeve tunic and useless, lightweight leggings.
“I’ll be at Stella’s,” I say as the light turns green, “in case you change your mind,” and I watch as she joins the mass exodus of people crossing Fullerton. Stella’s, with its All-American cuisine and pancakes twenty-four hours a day. Completely unimposing and modest. “On Halstead,” I call after her, and she pauses, in the middle of the street, and peers over her shoulder at me, her visage hazy in the glow of oncoming traffic. “On Halstead,” I say again, in case she didn’t hear.
I stand there at the corner, watching until I can no longer see the army-green coat for all the people, until I can no longer hear the baby’s cries. A woman bumps into me and at the same time we say, “Excuse me.” I cross my arms, feeling naked in the brisk air—more fall-like than spring-like—and, turning onto Halstead, hurry to Stella’s. I’m wondering if the girl will show, wondering whether or not she knows where Stella’s is, whether or not she even heard me.
I scurry into the familiar diner and the hostess who greets me says, “No coat tonight? You’ll freeze to death,” as her russet eyes look me up and down—my hair in a frenzy, my clothing insufficient for the weather. I clutch an overpriced quilted handbag, paisley and plum, as confirmation, perhaps, that I am not a vagrant. I have a home. As if the burden of being homeless isn’t enough—the lack of food and shelter, of clean clothing—there’s the horrible stigma attached to homelessness, the disgrace of being thought of as lazy, dirty, a junkie.
“Table for one?” the hostess—a striking woman with snow-white skin and almond-shaped eyes—asks, and I say, “Table for two,” forever hopeful, and she escorts me to a round, corner booth that faces out onto Halstead. I order a coffee with cream and sugar and keep watch out the window, as people trek past, city slickers on their commutes home from work, twenty-year-olds en route to a cluster of college bars on Lincoln, their laughter penetrating the drafty windows of the diner. I watch the eclectic city life meander past the window. I love to people watch. Sleek men in charcoal suits and thousand-dollar shoes beside grunge band wannabes in thrift-store clothing beside mothers with posh jogging strollers and old men hailing cabs. But I hardly notice any of them tonight. All I am looking for is the girl. I think that I see her time and again. I’m sure I catch smidgens of her colorless hair, darker when it’s soiled and wet; of the nylon of her ineffectual coat; an untied shoelace. I mistake briefcases for her leather suitcase; imagine that the squeal of tires on wet pavement is the baby crying.
I receive a text from Jennifer that she’s arrived home from work and the girls are doing just fine. I scan my emails to waste time: most are work related, some junk mail. I check the weather: when will the rain end? No end in sight. The waitress, a fortysomething woman with the most luscious red hair and waxen, winter skin, offers to take my order but I say, “No thanks. I’ll wait until my group arrives,” and she smiles gently and says, “Of course.” And yet, for lack of anything better to do, I skim through the menu and decide on the French toast, but also decide that if my group never shows, I’ll settle for coffee. If the girl and her baby don’t arrive by—I check my watch—seven o’clock, I will pay for the coffee with an ample tip for the waitress’s time and retreat home to my chick flick and popcorn, and my overwhelming concern for the girl and her baby.
I people watch. I watch patrons come and go. I watch them eat, drooling over generous portions of German pancakes and hamburgers with waffle fries. I absolutely hate to dine alone. The waitress returns and refills my coffee and asks if I’d like to continue waiting and I say that I would.
And so I wait. I must check my watch every two and a half minutes. Six thirty-eight. Six-forty. Six forty-three.
And then she appears. The girl and her baby.