#year14

candaceparker

“What are you going to do?” “Me? What I am going to do? He’s yours!” “You’re a woman! You’re supposed to know things like that!” “Fuck! I’m 13! I’m barely a teenager.”

I’m looking down at this little, screaming human being. He’s four months old and he’s crying like his world just exploded. Maybe because it did. His mother just left. For good.

“Have you changed his diapers?”

You stare at me in awe.

“He hasn’t complained about a full diaper yet.” “Jeez! He was born like yesterday. He doesn’t know how to talk yet to complain.”

You’re so disgusted be the smell and the look of the content of his diaper that you leave the room. Leaving me with a baby and no clue how to change diapers. I clean him with wet tissues. Here some baby powder, there some more. Just to make sure, even though I don’t know what that stuff does. But knowing it’s supposed to be used after cleaning that baby’s butt. At least that’s what it says at the back of the tiny bottle.

I cram a new diaper out of the bag. Baby has stopped screaming and is looking rather content now. Diapers are pretty self explanatory. Good for me. Good for him.

As I’m returning to the living room, you’re already sleeping. It might took me a littler longer than I thought.

Baby’s now coughing. Baby has started crying again, forcing you to wake up.

“I think he has a fever.” “Shit. I think I have some meds in the bathroom.” “Stupid much? You can’t give a baby meds for adults.” “Oh! Really? We could give him like half of a pill.”

I roll my eyes. You never had much of a common sense. I tell you to turn on the hot water in the bathroom, to close the door and all the windows. If steam helps adults to get better, it might work for a kid as well.

While you’re off to find a pharmacy that’s open in the middle of the night, I’m standing in your bathroom, your son in my arms, padding his back, humming melodies of long forgotten lullabies.

Hush little baby don’t say a word, papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird and if that mockingbird won’t sing, papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

I find diamond rings rather inappropriate for little boy toddlers, but the only other ring that comes to my mind is even more inappropriate for little boys.

His coughing gets better. I’m getting sweatier. Drops of salty liquid find their way down my back. But that little thing in my hands is now breathing lighter and that’s the only thing that matters.

A little later I’m sitting on your couch, you put a blanket over my legs to make sure I’m not freezing in the heat of a summer night in late July.

Your son’s asleep in my arms.

“You should buy a bed for him, you know?” “You should totally move in! I’ll make money! You quit school and replace his mom!”

I roll my eyes.