“OMG, is that a… It is!There’s a donkey outside on the street.”The makeup artist, Margo, half shrieked with delight.“I’ve never actually seen a donkey in real life.”
That was the exact right thing to make us instant friends.For the next hour, I talked about Waffles.By the time Mom was finally satisfied with the pictures, I’d expanded the conversation from my boy to many of the other babies back at the farm.
Changing my clothes, I tossed all the items I’d modeled into a WomanLand tote.That was the unspoken agreement I had with Mom.I wore it; it was mine.Not that she could have sold it to anyone else with how sweaty I’d been when I first arrived.
Except to the pervs who wanted to buy my worn underwear.Which my mother would never allow, but that hadn’t stopped creeps from asking.
Bag in hand, I hugged Mom, Aunt Vi, Mila, and River, who had also been at the shoot.That hadn’t taken as long as I’d expected.And bonus points for having made a new friend.
The photographer had left first.He was the silent type, only speaking when necessary.Which was exactly why Mom hired him more often than any other photographer.Greg was a genius behind a camera lens, though.
“Everly will have these on the website by Monday,” Mila told Mom.“All items will be on preorder from then through Friday.I’ll let you know what the numbers look like each night.But those were some killer shots.I’m kind of glad the original model backed out at the last minute.”
“My girl knows how to pose,” Mom said with that hint of pride and teeny-tiny bit of melancholy.She respected my choice not to follow in her footsteps, as she’d done with her mom, my Mama D.But her voice always held a note of something similar to longing that she couldn’t quite mask.
She’d introduced me to the modeling world when I was eight weeks old.While she’d been pregnant with me, Mom had become a brand ambassador for a maternity clothing line that also included postpartum wear.During one of the fashion shows, Mom had walked in their nursing bra and a pair of high-waisted panties that were meant to better support a post-birth belly.
When she’d walked out, she’d been breastfeeding me.It hadn’t been planned, but Mom hadn’t traveled without me those first six months after I was born.I’d gotten fussy from hunger, and Mom had decided not to wait.It was a good call, because it showed the audience exactly how well the bra supported and offered access while mothers were nursing.
A picture of the moment was framed in my parents’ living room.My first catwalk, the first public picture of me after birth, our first Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
I hugged my mom.“Only because I learned from the best.”
She squeezed me back, not too tight, not too soft.I heard her slow inhale, the way she always did when Fallon or I hugged her first.How she held on until I was the one to pull back because I wasn’t sure she could let go first.
“Go, before Waffles starts committing crimes,” she said when I released her.
“Bye.Love you.Mean it!”I called, letting it encompass all the other women in the room.
Margo followed me out, wheeling her travel makeup case behind her.“What are my chances of getting to pet that donkey?”
Grier
Laughing,I glanced around for Waffles.“He loves attention.Waffles!”
He wasn’t anywhere that I could see him.Whistling, I expected to hear his hooves on the sidewalk immediately.When I didn’t, I waited for a few moments and then whistled again, louder.
Nothing.
A small ball of anxiety began to bounce around in my stomach.Pushing it aside, I whistled for a third time, fingers to my lips, the level so intense Margo flinched and placed her free hand on her ear.
“Waffles!”I called.“Waffles, come on, baby boy.Time to go home.”
More nothing.
The door to the Ink Shoppe opened, Uncle Lyric stepping out of his tattoo parlor.“Hey, Baby Shaw.I saw your boy walking toward Main Street about ten minutes ago.Fifteen, tops.Figured he was going to the rec center.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lyric.”
That ball of anxiety didn’t loosen for some reason.Waffles must have thought I went out the back exit and walked to the rec center, which had happened a few times.I taught yoga on Saturdays, but not always.We had other instructors who covered when I was busy on the farm.
“Want to walk with me?”I asked Margo.“It’s not too far from here.”
“Absolutely.Let me drop this in my trunk really fast.”
It took less than sixty seconds for her to stow her case and shut the door to her car.Once she had rejoined me, I started to speed walk.Each block that I didn’t see Waffles only made my unease deepen.Dread slithered beneath my skin, that unsettling sensation of approaching doom gripping at my throat until I was gasping for air and all-out running.
That was when I heard it, that high-pitched bray that I could pick out in a barn full of other animals.It had a note to it that caused my heart to clench and my hands to sweat.
