Waiting for Christopher (9 page)

Sure, she’d be in big trouble if she took him to the police now. But she’d be in bigger trouble if she waited. When she watched him from a distance, when he wasn’t pressed up against her, the small engine of his body generating that heat, she could think straight. She would spend one more night with him, she decided, give him one more special day, then she’d take him back. She’d tell the police about his mother. She’d make them believe her.

“That dress is going to be stained for life,” someone said behind her.

“Huh?” Feena turned, off-guard.

“That bunny dress,” Raylene Watson told her. “You’ll never get that dirt out. Specially not after she’s ground it in with sand.” The older girl walked around the bench, pushed the picture books toward Feena, and sat down. She was wearing her CVS smock over a lemon-colored crop top and a long lavender skirt with a ruffled hem. Feena, of course, had on her standard uniform—T-shirt and shorts. “It’s bound to shrink. Just about guaranteed.”

“Bunny dress?” Feena repeated dumbly.

“Yeah.” Raylene nodded toward Christy, who looked at them briefly, then stood up from the sand. “Course, she
does
look a whole lot better in it than Flopsy Jo.”

“Flopsy Jo?” asked Feena. It wasn’t even two o’clock. What was Raylene doing out of school at this hour?

“Hmm-hmmm.” Raylene smiled like she meant it this time, like she was really tickled. “That’s the rabbit’s name, you know. Says so right on the tag. ‘Flopsy Jo, one-hundred-percent new materials. Made in Taiwan.’”

A
stolen baby in a stuffed-rabbit’s dress. No money, no plan, and now someone from school to witness the whole mess. Feena felt her brain melt, then shut down. She couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Christopher toddled up to them and put his hand on Raylene Watson’s knee. “Mik?” he asked her. “Mu mik?”

“Sure, I can give you milk,” Raylene told him, interpreting his baby talk effortlessly, hoisting him up to her lap. “But you have to come in the store and get it.” She turned to Feena, who stared at her, speechless. “I’m taking over somebody’s shift, so I had to cut bio. What’s your excuse?”

Feena continued to stare, as though if she watched long enough, she could make either Raylene or the baby disappear.

“How come you’re not in school?”

“I, uh…” It was a good question. “I…”

“You look tight in old Flopsy’s dress.” Raylene shifted her attention to Christy without waiting for Feena’s answer. She’d lapsed into the language she used with her friends, even though she could talk like a textbook when she wanted to. Last week, they’d both been in the school office, Feena to fill out more new student forms, Raylene to see the principal. “Mr. Cantrell, sir,” Raylene had told him, “my mother has made a doctor’s appointment for me this afternoon. It was obviously an oversight, and she should have scheduled it later, but I wonder if I might leave early today?” Afterward, Feena had heard her cackling like a banshee all the way down the hall, as she and her crew ducked out on afternoon classes.

“Course,” she told the baby now, “you won’t be truly bad, less we get all that sand off. Come on with me.” She stood up, held out a hand to Christy, and headed for the CVS. Wordless, hopeless, Feena stood, too, and followed after them.

Their first stop was the employees’ restroom. Raylene was endlessly patient, showing Christy how to pump a thin stream of shocking-pink soap from the dispenser and how to blow-dry his hands; Feena, though, was in an agony of suspense, praying Raylene wouldn’t insist on a change of diapers, ready to feign sickness, fall down in a faint, anything to prevent the discovery of Christy’s gender.

She needn’t have worried. Standing by the dryer, flipping the baby’s hands like pancakes under the hot air, Raylene spotted the oversize clock on the wall. “I got to punch in,” she announced suddenly. “You finish up with her.”

But she met them outside the door a few minutes later, led them to the glass beverage case. “There’s three kinds of milk—chocolate, strawberry, and just plain white. Course,” she added, “I wouldn’t take the white. That’s older, on account of no one much chooses it.”

Christy wanted chocolate, and Raylene opened a straw for him and stuck it into the carton. “I really got to get to work now,” she told them. “Later.” She handed the baby back to Feena, waved as she headed toward the registers.

“Say bye,” Feena instructed, suddenly finding her voice. “Say bye, Raylene.”

Christy, bundled again in Feena’s arms, stretched from her to Raylene. “Bye, Ween,” he said, waving like a trouper.

On the way out of the store, Feena checked the headlines in the pile of newspapers by the door. Nothing. It was only the second day, she reminded herself, hurrying outside. Off balance from Raylene’s goodwill, she tried to figure out why on earth the Dis Queen Herself had taken such an interest in them. She also tried to figure out their next move. School would be over soon, so they couldn’t hang around the library. Maybe the restaurant?

But Christopher decided for her, lunging back toward the playground as soon as she set him down. And the minute she saw the slim, braided woman, Feena understood why. Angel, then Dale, looked up when they got closer. “Hey, Candace,” Dale said, friendly, warm. “You’re back.”

“Not for long,” Feena assured her, standing rather than joining Dale on the bench. She pictured kids pouring out of school, heading to the library. “We … we have to get home.”

Dale nodded toward the sandbox. “Better tell that little sister of yours.” Feena rushed after Christy, who was already halfway to Angel, who, in turn, was striding toward the sandbox.

As they got to the box and Angel stepped in and hunkered down, Feena took Christy’s hand and tried to steer him away. But he pulled against her, like a dog on a leash, pointing toward Angel. “Want pay,” he told her. “Want pay.”

“We’ll have to play later, Christy,” she said, trying to make it sound like an announcement, not a suggestion. “You’ve got to get your nap.” She looked at her watch; it was almost time for the eighth-period bell. They had to get out of there. “We can have a story, if you like.” She took out one of the big books and waved it like a truce flag. “Come on. Say goodbye to Angel.”

Angel glanced up at the sound of his name, only mildly interested, as Christopher tugged them closer. “She can’t have it,” the older boy told Feena matter-of-factly. He shifted in the sand, his chunky legs uncovering a small sand pail. “It’s mine, and it’s still new.” He picked up the pail, ran it along the sand like a plow, leaving fat wavy tracks behind.

“Want,” Christy said, yearning toward the pail, wiggling his fingers like an acquisitive spider. “Want pay.”

Feena stared at the pail, which had a circus seal painted on it. Her hand tightened on Christy’s, but he only tried more furiously to escape. In her mind, Feena saw another pail, a metal one, with the same seal balancing a ball on its nose. And another baby, with less hair than Christy had. A baby who looked at her with eyes lit from behind, a sun in each, shining just for her.

She glanced up toward the benches, noticed that a second woman was sitting next to Dale, talking. In the instant she turned back to the sandbox, before her brain recognized what was wrong, her body knew. Suddenly, she couldn’t get enough air and her pulse was beating in her ears. When she looked up again, she understood why. The woman beside Dale, the woman smiling and smoking, was Christopher’s mother.

Without explanation, before he could see the woman, Feena picked the baby up, turned, and raced toward the woods. She remembered the other baby, the one she’d given the pail to. She remembered how he’d vanished, just like that.

She ran out of breath quickly, stumbling along the dirt path that led through the woods. But it wasn’t until the trees had closed around them, until the sun winked on and off behind the branches overhead, that she slowed down. It was the day she’d found the three pinecones. That was the day the baby had disappeared. She could still hear the grown-up voices, telling her how babies die in their cribs, how they stop breathing and no one knows why.

It was too late to tell whether Christopher’s mother and Dale had watched them leave. All she could do was stand, sweating, and try to catch the sound of footsteps over her sharp, painful panting.

Feena held him tight, this new baby. Even when she was sure they weren’t being followed, she started running again. Leaving behind all those quiet, reasonable voices. The ones who told her babies disappear and there’s nothing you can do.

Christy?
She was shaking when she collapsed onto the booth. The shadowy carcass of the restaurant seemed damper, more threatening than it ever had. She noticed a crumpled soda can on the steeply angled table. Was this a hangout? Did people come here all the time? Her arms and legs were stiff, as if her veins had filled with water—heavy, sloshing.
Where’s Christy?

“Don’t worry,” she told him, though he didn’t seem to be in the least upset. Now that she’d set him down, in fact, Christopher brightened. He reached across her for a book, opening it onto her lap. He moved his hands over the painted keys of the piano in the picture. “Ma.”

Feena couldn’t bear the thought of Christy’s mother, of her arms, her voice, her small, pretty features lost in the center of that wide face. “No,” she said, too sternly. “Not now.” She pushed the book away, and his eyes clouded. “Ma,” he repeated. “Weed Ma.”

“I don’t want to read,” she said, harsh and breathless as if she’d walked for miles. That was when she saw the shine gathering on the lower lids of his eyes, like rainwater spilling over, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who was tired, who wanted to stop running. “How about we get changed,” she said in a quieter, even voice. “And I’ll tell you a story instead?” She eased him into a lying position, got the package of diapers from her backpack. “A special story with lots and lots of blue things in it?”

“Bwu,”
said Christopher, somewhat mollified.

“Uh-huh. Blue water and blue starfish and a great big blue octopus.”

“Bwu.”
Christopher picked up the skirt of Flopsy Jo’s jumper, studying it where he lay, looking, she realized, for the blue square she’d shown him that morning. She changed his diaper, again wrestling with the tapes that seemed to have been put in the wrong places, then pulled his rabbit from the pack and scooped him into her lap.

“Now, this octopus,” she went on, snuggling down with him and Lady Macbeth along the length of the booth, “was friends with a beautiful mermaid. Who, by the way,” she added, “had a splendid blue tail.

“Each morning, the two of them would go jogging along the ocean floor. The mermaid wore a Nike sweatshirt, and the octopus had sneakers on all nine of his feet.”

“Bwu?”
inquired Christopher. He ignored the rabbit, found his thumb instead, something she hadn’t seen him do before. At the same time, he reached for a strand of her hair, using it like the soft ribbon edge of a blanket, rubbing it against his nose, staring at her through his half-closed eyes.

“Of course,” Feena told him. “Blue sneakers with blue laces and blue bells that rang whenever the octopus jogged.” He continued staring, though he lost focus, lids drooping until his eyes were nothing but moist slivers of azure. “They ran for miles, those two, over mountains of sand and squashy fields of seaweed.”

Lying beside him, Feena knew she couldn’t give him up, couldn’t risk taking him to the police. What if they didn’t believe her? She listened to his even breathing and felt an old tenderness, a secret, buried joy. She remembered that other baby, remembered dropping into his crib, batting his mobile and setting the puffy clowns spinning, whirling above their heads. As her own eyes closed, she remembered, too, throaty baby laughs, like singing bubbles, like the language of birds you could almost understand.

The voice was soft and moany, but Feena couldn’t make out the words. Shaking off sleep, she heard it even after she’d opened her eyes. There was someone singing, someone coming toward them, getting closer and closer. By the time she’d sat up, put a finger over Christy’s mouth, it was too late. They were face-to-face.

Raylene Watson was alone, unusual enough in itself. But she was singing, too. An almost sweet song that came to a sudden end when she saw Feena and the baby. She threw her head back, then grew visibly stiffer, taller. She hid something she’d been carrying behind her back, and without disguising her disappointment, fixed Feena with her cinnamon stare. “What?” she asked. “You decide to ditch school and home both?”

Christy wriggled down from the booth, and Lady Macbeth tumbled to the ground. He didn’t stop to pick her up, but rushed, like the worst kind of traitor, straight to Raylene. Feena was suddenly aware of shame, physical and heavy, swamping her. She was ashamed her lips were chapped, while Raylene’s shone like mother-of-pearl. Ashamed the baby’s ponytails were again hopelessly cockeyed, one nearly slipped from its band. “No,” she began to ad-lib. “No, I didn’t ditch anything.” Ashamed that she’d been asleep, that she felt tears still in her eyes, she said, “I just need to watch my … little sister, that’s all.”