What Was Mine Read online

  As I was talking to Charu, Natalie woke up. I could hear her on the monitor, the little song she used to sing to herself upon waking. I knew exactly how long that song would last—three minutes. Three minutes would give me just enough time to call the office and say I wasn’t coming in. I dreaded making that call. The report was important. If I delivered it well, it could mean I’d get the new account I’d been angling for. But of course, by the end of the day, my career wouldn’t matter to me anymore.

  I hung up with Charu. I wasn’t angry with her, as some news reports said I was. How could I be angry? It wasn’t her fault that her son was sick and she couldn’t come in. I was frustrated with myself for having no backup to call. I supposed I could call in a sitting service, but I worried about leaving a four-month-old baby in the care of someone I hadn’t met. Of course, later, I wished with all of my heart that I’d called in that service.

  I left a message with the group secretary saying I wouldn’t be in. My boss wouldn’t be happy, but what could I do? Bring a four-month-old in and hope she wouldn’t roll off the table when I made the presentation? Now I hear the company has day care on-site, but that was a distant dream in 1990.

  I still ache to remember how distracted I was with Natalie that morning which turned out to be the last I’d spend with her for twenty-one years. I look back at my old, unseeing self lifting my baby out of the crib, thinking not of her, but of the consequences of having to take care of her, and wish I could reach back and shake myself into consciousness.

  If I could grab back a minute of my life, it would be when I laid her on the vinyl mat of the changing table, raining talcum on her as she gurgled and kicked in the moment before I put on her last diaper. I’d look at her, really look at her as I buttoned the straps of her new sunsuit, inhaling her sweet scalp as I took my daughter into my arms for what would be the last time in her babyhood. I’d give her my full attention, instead of what I was thinking of instead: of the report due at work, the visit from Tom’s parents the next day. No. If I could take back any minute, of course, it would be when I turned my back on her in the store. That’s the minute I’d go back to, and change.

  I worked at home that morning at the dining room table, Natalie happy in her swing beside me. She loved to go back and forth in that swing. Battery-operated swings had just come out. Tom and I called it our time machine, because putting her in it gave us at least twenty minutes to do whatever we had to do. We assumed we had all the time in the world with her. She’d sit in that swing with a beatific expression, listening to an electronic version of “It’s a Small World.” Her eyes fixed on some odd object of fascination: a knob on a cabinet, a water stain on the baseboard. She’d assume a half smile, then list to one side, a position that looked uncomfortable but didn’t seem to bother her. She’d frown when I’d right her and soon she’d be happily listing again, her lids drooping lower and lower until she passed out, as if drunk.

  While she swung in this seemingly trancelike state, I sat at the table beside her, trying to tune out the Muzak, working up final numbers for the presentation, before I faxed them. It was bad enough I wasn’t going to be there. I didn’t want the numbers to be wrong, which would make me look even worse.

  Natalie went down for a nap around ten, but when she woke up she was fussy and I did what I always could count on to soothe her: strap her into the car seat and go for a drive. I needed to go out anyway, to shop for the hall bath before Tom’s parents arrived the next day.

  IKEA had just opened and I’d wanted to go for their inaugural sale, but I hadn’t been able to figure out how to get there. This was before they made a special exit off the highway for it. The area wasn’t developed yet, the store was hidden away on some hard-to-find back road. When I found myself driving past it, I thought: This is my lucky day.

  7

  charu

  If I came to work that day, the terrible thing wouldn’t happen. Always, I feel sorry for this. But my son was just six and sick with a fever too easily passed to a four-month-old baby. I could not bring him with me. My sister usually took care of Ranni when he had to stay home, but Vina was back in my country to stay by our mum. Our father was ill and our mum needed a daughter to help her with him.

  My husband was on day shift at the factory, but even if he had been home, he couldn’t take care of a sick child. He is a man who can’t even take care of his sick self.

  Marilyn called me at lunchtime, as I was trying to get Ranni to take some soup, and I could not hear what she was saying. Her crying was strong and her words came in and out so that I knew she was somewhere not home, calling on the cell phone that was a new kind of phone in those days. At first, I thought she wanted to talk about if I can come in the next day, but instead she was asking if Natalie was with me. These words made me feel afraid right away. Because if Marilyn’s baby is not with Marilyn, where did she go?

  Next, a police lady is on the phone asking me questions: who I am, where do I live, how many children do I have? She wanted to know can she come over to where I was right away. I didn’t want her to come over because it is Friday and Saturday is cleanup day, so the house isn’t looking too good, but I know I cannot say no to this question. I was glad I got my special visa already.

  I took out this visa and left it on the table so when the police came, they could know without asking, that I was legal, nothing to bother about once they see the baby I don’t have.

  I believe this thing would never happen when I take care of Natalie. Because taking care of a baby is my job and my job was important to me, to my family. But Marilyn’s job is not taking care of a baby. Her job was an office job. That day she was trying to do a good job, like me.

  Sometimes a baby is better off with someone who is paid to take care.

  8

  marilyn

  I took Natalie from the car seat and snapped her into the Snugli and hurried across the parking lot to get us both out of the blistering heat. August in New Jersey can feel like a furnace, hotter even than summer here in San Mateo, where the heat is broken by breezes from the bay.

  I’d heard that IKEA had child care on-site, and as soon as I went through the entrance doors, I saw the Ball Room. But Natalie was too small to leave there. She was just four months old, she couldn’t even sit up yet. Beyond the Ball Room were rows of bright red shopping carts fitted together. I found one with an infant seat in it, and took her out of the Snugli, and I ache to remember how happy I was to unburden myself of my baby’s weight.

  I knew I didn’t have much time for shopping. I could depend on Natalie to remain quiet for only so long. I checked my watch: 12:30. I remember thinking the presentation would start in an hour without me.

  I rolled Natalie through the wide aisles and she looked around with great interest, taken by the colorful displays: bright aluminum cookware, animal-shaped oven mitts, pastel-colored dishware. We passed a tower of toasters and her little legs pumped and I stopped to let her look at herself, to see if she was recognizing herself in their reflection; recognizing herself in a mirror would be a milestone in her development. She seemed to see herself in one of them, but I couldn’t be sure. As I started moving the cart, Natalie’s face in the reflection began to crumple and I knew she was about to cry. I reached for a rubber duck from a lineup of them on a shelf and gave it to her. She promptly sucked on its head. Is it clean? I wondered and decided it was. Every item around us glistened, looked newly emerged from shrink-wrap.

  Then, I saw what I’d come for—shower curtains. They hung, colorful drops of cloth rippling in gusts of air from the ceiling vents. As I reached up to feel one, the bag on my shoulder rang. My cell phone! It was big as a brick, easy to retrieve even in the jumble of the big bag full of things I packed whenever I went out with the baby.

  There was no readout screen, but I knew the call was from the office. Only my office called this number. I pulled up the antenna to answer the call. The voice of my boss was hard to hear through the static, but his impatience came thro
ugh loud and clear. Something in the presentation was wrong. There was a number missing in one of the slides. And suddenly I was back in the office, where I should have been. Did I know . . . ? What? I couldn’t hear his question, only his irritation.

  “Hello?” I said again and again, inching forward to close the distance between us, trying to mollify him, to reassure that I’d always be there, able to supply him with what was needed.

  9

  marilyn

  Nothing seemed wrong at first. I pressed the button to disconnect the call, but my mind didn’t return right away, I was still at the office, focused on what I had said, what I should have said instead. An alarm went off in a distant part of the store, which jolted me back into consciousness—only later did I realize what that alarm meant.

  I saw I had walked away from my baby.

  I’d walked away from my baby! My scalp went cold. I hurried to where I had left her. The cart was gone. The cartless aisle, its vast emptiness, registered like a body blow. I stared and stared at where the cart should be, where I had left Natalie, looking away, then back again, thinking my eyes were playing a trick, that she was actually there.

  Maybe I’d misremembered the aisle. I rounded the corner to the next aisle, the next. She wasn’t there, or there, or there. My hands went to my throat. I felt a stinging behind my eyes.

  Could the cart have rolled? Could someone in a hurry, not paying attention, have taken my cart and Natalie by mistake? My stomach lurched higher and higher. I pictured my baby being spirited away in the arms of a stranger.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, I told myself. Someone, seeing the cart unattended, had probably wheeled her up to the front. Any moment I’d hear the PA system saying, Would the parent of an infant please report to security? And just then, the intercom system did click on: Attention, shoppers. But the announcement was about a sale on countertops.

  My mind sped up and this is what I recall happening next, though of course it couldn’t have happened this way: I see myself running up and down aisles which stretch into eternity. There is literally no one else in the store; though, of course, that wasn’t so. There is just me, the clip, clip, clip of my heels, faster and faster as realization sets in. My hand keeps returning to the empty Snugli flapping against my breast. Each time I touch it, I hope the baby will somehow be there. I hurry toward cash registers, and suddenly there are the people, lines of them. Faces turn toward me and I look to see if anyone is carrying a baby. No one is. I become aware of faces looking at me in disapproval and several mouths are saying things but the only sound I can hear is someone screaming something unintelligible. Then, I realize that person is me.

  I stop and try to gather myself, for Natalie’s sake. I try to assume the look of the nice, normal woman I’d been a few minutes ago when I walked into the store. I didn’t yet know I’d never be that woman again.

  I speak loudly, but slowly, enunciating carefully, so there will be no mistaking the words I must say:

  Somebody. Help me. My baby. Is. Gone.

  10

  lucy

  If she had cried, I would have taken her back into the store. But she didn’t cry, not at first.

  Pressing her to my shoulder, I shimmied between parked cars, trying to find my Nissan. Blood pumped in my ears. The parking lot seemed to have tripled in size as I searched, weaving in and out between great hunks of metal, holding the baby tight to me as if shielding her from danger, as if a parked car, unattended, might suddenly rear up and roll into us.

  I didn’t yet think I was taking the baby. To the extent that I was thinking, I had in my mind I was only borrowing her. I meant to keep her for just a little while, then bring her back, return her as if nothing had happened. Of course that now sounds ridiculous, even to me.

  When I reached my car, I shifted the baby to my hip to free a hand to retrieve my keys from my purse. This required effort of balance and a painful pull of my midsection and I marveled that motherhood was physically demanding, like an athletic event I hadn’t been trained for. I opened the back door and gently unfolded the baby onto the seat. I stood staring down at her. How perfect she was: her heart-shaped face, her long lashes. The lovely pink nails of her plump little toes. She lay on her back, staring at me, her eyes glowing with wisdom and recognition, as if we shared a secret from the rest of the world.

  A siren wailed in the distance. My knees trembled. Then her hands started working as if she were wringing them, as if she, too, were thinking: What to do? What to do?

  “That’s illegal, you know.” My heart flung itself against my ribs. I turned and looked up to see an older woman peering over half-rims chained to her neck. “A baby that small should be in a car seat.” She didn’t wait for a response and my insides went liquid as her straight back receded out of my sight. What if she meant to report me?

  I couldn’t just stand there. I had to do something. There were beach towels folded on the backseat. I gently dried the baby’s neck and chest with a towel, and dabbed at the bib to dry the wet cotton against her skin. Then I picked her up, along with the towels, closed the back door with my hip, and opened the door on the front passenger side. I made a nest of the towels on the seat, and carefully laid her down, like an egg.

  I faced her so her head was farthest away from the door. I thought that was safest, in case of an accident. But I wouldn’t have an accident. I’d drive very slowly. I’d drive with more caution than I’d ever driven with before.

  I secured her small body with seat belts, reinforcing those restraints with bungees I’d kept in the trunk. While I was doing this, the baby smiled and kicked her plump arms and legs, as if forgiving the restraints, knowing they were for her own good, showing me they weren’t too restrictive.

  I shut the door gently twice, to make sure it secured, then slipped around to the other side, into the driver’s seat. It took forever to buckle my seat belt. My hands were shaking. The siren wailed louder. I couldn’t feel my fingers, as if they’d stopped being attached to my hands, but I managed to exert enough control over them to turn the key and start up the engine. I eased the sedan cautiously forward, my foot resting lightly on the pedal, my right arm extended to keep the baby from falling onto the floor, although there was no way she could have fallen given the web I’d constructed, all those crossings and recrossings.

  I didn’t turn on the air-conditioning, not wanting chilled air to blow on her. I opened the windows instead. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck, but my insides were ice. Slowly, I backed the car out of the parking spot. I had never been so conscious of the presence of another being—her soft weight next to me on the seat, her head on a pillow of terry cloth, her wide eyes considering her new surrounds.

  As I pulled onto the highway, the siren grew louder and my throat constricted. Perhaps the siren scared her, too, or she sensed my terror. She started to cry, whimpering at first, then erupting in wails, kicking the armrest to emphasize her displeasure.

  “We’ll be there soon, baby,” I assured her, stroking her cheek with my guarding right hand, although I had no idea where we were going. My only thought was to get us out of the vicinity. I pressed my foot a little harder on the pedal. I was driving toward home, but didn’t mean to take her there. Taking her home would have been stealing her and stealing a baby wasn’t what I meant to do. I’d never stolen anything in my life. I’d never broken the law. I never even pulled warning tags off mattresses!

  As cars passed on both sides (I was the only car on the road not exceeding the speed limit) it felt as if time had stopped for everyone on the planet except for the baby and me, and as in a fairy tale, we’d been granted the chance to temporarily live outside the continuum of it.

  I had an odd sensation of being behind the wheel, and not. I alternated between points of view—looking out at traffic in front of me, through the windshield, and alternately, seeing the traffic from high above, my little blue car headed for—some disaster, a sudden drop-off, some unavoidable cliff. My ears hummed as I took
us farther and farther away, into the unknowable.

  Then, something strange happened. I heard the calming voice of my Scottish grandmother, singing. It was a song in Gaelic she’d sung to me as a child and I realized the voice I heard was my own. I hadn’t sung the song in decades but it was as if it had been at the tip of my tongue all along, waiting for a baby to receive it. The words came easily, though I didn’t know I remembered them:

  Fhuair mi lorg and eich’s a phairc

  Fhuair mi lorg na h-eal’ air an t-snàmh

  The song quieted her. I took my eyes from the road to see how the baby was faring. She was admiring her tiny fists, opening and closing them as if trying to catch the words in the air.

  Then, I was looking for someplace to pull over. I wanted time to think. Also, I wanted to talk to her. At that point, I thought our time together would be temporary and I wanted to make the most of the moments we had left. But where could we go? The Garden State was a busy artery. I couldn’t veer off the road, onto a shoulder, without a police car or Good Samaritan stopping to investigate. I wished the car could lift into the hills that rose from the highway, taking us into secluded swells of green where we could enjoy the time allotted to us, in private.

  It is hard to find solitude in the suburbs. This surprises city dwellers, who imagine counterparts in the suburbs lead a solitary, sylvan existence, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Suburbs are built on a bedrock of belief in the bettering aspects of community: community parks, community pools, community beaches and halls and grounds. Almost no provision is made for private withdrawal, even behind the doors of your home. Neighbors think nothing of ringing a bell without notice, as do purveyors of everything, and hawkers of religion or political candidates.