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Fuck.
Me.
As though the little one had heard my thoughts, she started to stir. I instantly froze, having no idea what the fuck to do.
Shit.
Is she going to cry?
Is she hungry?
Does she need to be changed?
“Waaah!” the baby wailed.
I didn’t know how to make her stop or figure out the reason she was crying—I’d never been around a baby before—but she was getting louder.
Much, much louder.
“Rebecca!” I yelled, trying to look through the hedges for a flash of headlights. “Rebecca, come back!”
While I waited for her to return, I rocked my arms, hoping the movement would help, establishing a pattern of swinging forward and back.
She didn’t calm.
She only cried harder, each sway filling my ears with more, “Waaah!”
My eyes shifted between the entrance of the driveway to the baby. But the longer I stood here, expecting Rebecca to round the corner at any second, the more I realized she wasn’t coming back.
“What am I going to do?”
I gazed at the baby as she screamed in my arms. Her lips, so miniscule, were curled, showing her bare gums, her cheeks scrunched and red from all the crying.
“I don’t know what to do,” I told her. “I don’t know how to make you feel better. Until I can figure out what time it is and wake your grandma up and have her come over here, I need to somehow care for you.” I continued to look at her, hoping the answer would come to me. “Are you cold?” I closed the blanket, bunching it up to her neck. “Hungry?”
I waited for the answer to hit me.
For the realization of what I was actually holding and what my eyes were staring at.
For a picture to form in my head of what my life was now going to look like versus the direction I'd believed it was going in.
I didn’t know how long I stood there.
Frozen.
My feet should have been taking us inside, where it was warm, where I could go through the bag and see if there was something in there that could soothe her, see if Rebecca’s notes told me how to stop the baby’s crying.
But they weren’t moving.
For some reason … I was locked.
My knees didn’t want to hold us anymore, and they started to bend until they hit the pavement, the sharp slap of hardness jolting something inside me.
I held the baby up to my chest, patting her back. As I rubbed small circles, my body shifting, swinging, a feeling entered. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what it was, but it made me hold her tighter.
It made my arms build a wall where nothing could get in.
“Hey, hey,” I whispered into her face. The heat from her crying thick like steam. “I know you don’t know my voice or the feel of my arms, but I’m going to tell you something.” I pressed my lips against her forehead, breathing her in, her scent so clean and powdery. “I’m never going to let anything happen to you.” I held my lips there, my eyes closing, my heart pounding away. “I promise.”
