off. Her bare feet were so tenderâ
puffy
wedges of flesh no bigger than butter cookies, the flat bottoms netted with tiny wrinkles. I made a great show of being haggard and overworked for the baby's benefit, brushing the bangs out of my eyes with the back of a hand, tossing the little socks into the agitator and punching the buttons on the washer with theatrical irritation. Mare played father to my mother with perfect aplomb. She came home from work, parting the willow leaves to enter the house with her arms akimbo, and demanded dinner.
"You cook it!" I shouted, my hip cocked out to hold the baby. "I've been here all day cleaning and taking care of Pippy." The baby watched this drama in silence, her sweaty hand clutching my T-shirt, her sturdy legs wrapped around my side. The cooking scene quickly lost interest, and since we had no pots and pans to rattle, we would lean against the washer and dryer and roll cigarettes out of binder paper, smoking while Pippy crawled in the dust.
Where did we get this information? That cigarettes make grownups lazy and inattentive, their heads tipped back, their wrists cocked deftly to flick the ash. Neither of my parents smoked; I almost never watched TV. My mother had never spoken the kind of wooden lines I passed off on Mare. I was playing at a kind of iron-ruled family quite apart from my own. And under our hackneyed dialogue, the same dialogue used in back yards across the continent, we were carrying out a delicate test of loyalty and humiliation, of how much we would allow ourselves of the cruelty that lived in our small veiled hearts.
I don't know how the game changed; it was slowly, over a period of weeks, that we turned on the baby.
"She has been bad," I would tell Mare when she came home from work. "I can't get anything done with her around."
We conferred calmly about her punishment. Sometimes we would carry her outside the shelter of the tree. We called this "grounding," and pretended to go on about our chores. The baby didn't seem to understand this business. She wandered out by the fence, stuffing acorns in her mouth, until we let her back in.
One day when Pippy tried to eat one of our cigarette butts, I scooped her up and carried her out into the blazing sun. "Don't put anything in your mouth that isn't food," I said, and plopped her down in the dust, her sandaled feet jutting out in front of her. She was naked, except for her diaper, and I remember her hands splayed out beside her watermelon stomach in a gesture of surprise, and then the long inbreath she took in preparation for a wail. That warm-up was a fearsome thing. Her mouth gaped and her eyes welled up, and for whole seconds there was no sound. I cast a worried glance at the curtained side windows of the real house, where Pippy's mother might soon appear. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Please don't cry." I lifted the baby up by her armpits, leaning back to counter her weight. Her body was as heavy and limp as a sack of lead shot. She draped herself over me and made fierce little gasps. I might have given up then on the whole punishment routine, but as soon as she was calmed, I put her down in the same spot.
"You're still grounded, Pippy," I told her solemnly. Then I swished back through the branches and told Mare that we couldn't get soft on her or Pippy would get spoiled and we'd have only ourselves to blame.
Pippy didn't understand what was the matter. She crawled over to the cascading greenery of the tree and pulled herself up on its flimsy branches. I stood in her path, with my hands on my hips. She moved left, then right, as if chance had put me in her way, then pushed through with her fat hands, leaning into my body with the leaves tangled between us.
"No," she said firmly, not quite mad yet.
"That's it," I remember saying. (I had heard that somewhere, the thing parents said when they'd hit their limit.) I parted the branches, whirled the baby around, and swatted her on her bottom. I got grim
puffy
wedges of flesh no bigger than butter cookies, the flat bottoms netted with tiny wrinkles. I made a great show of being haggard and overworked for the baby's benefit, brushing the bangs out of my eyes with the back of a hand, tossing the little socks into the agitator and punching the buttons on the washer with theatrical irritation. Mare played father to my mother with perfect aplomb. She came home from work, parting the willow leaves to enter the house with her arms akimbo, and demanded dinner.
"You cook it!" I shouted, my hip cocked out to hold the baby. "I've been here all day cleaning and taking care of Pippy." The baby watched this drama in silence, her sweaty hand clutching my T-shirt, her sturdy legs wrapped around my side. The cooking scene quickly lost interest, and since we had no pots and pans to rattle, we would lean against the washer and dryer and roll cigarettes out of binder paper, smoking while Pippy crawled in the dust.
Where did we get this information? That cigarettes make grownups lazy and inattentive, their heads tipped back, their wrists cocked deftly to flick the ash. Neither of my parents smoked; I almost never watched TV. My mother had never spoken the kind of wooden lines I passed off on Mare. I was playing at a kind of iron-ruled family quite apart from my own. And under our hackneyed dialogue, the same dialogue used in back yards across the continent, we were carrying out a delicate test of loyalty and humiliation, of how much we would allow ourselves of the cruelty that lived in our small veiled hearts.
I don't know how the game changed; it was slowly, over a period of weeks, that we turned on the baby.
"She has been bad," I would tell Mare when she came home from work. "I can't get anything done with her around."
We conferred calmly about her punishment. Sometimes we would carry her outside the shelter of the tree. We called this "grounding," and pretended to go on about our chores. The baby didn't seem to understand this business. She wandered out by the fence, stuffing acorns in her mouth, until we let her back in.
One day when Pippy tried to eat one of our cigarette butts, I scooped her up and carried her out into the blazing sun. "Don't put anything in your mouth that isn't food," I said, and plopped her down in the dust, her sandaled feet jutting out in front of her. She was naked, except for her diaper, and I remember her hands splayed out beside her watermelon stomach in a gesture of surprise, and then the long inbreath she took in preparation for a wail. That warm-up was a fearsome thing. Her mouth gaped and her eyes welled up, and for whole seconds there was no sound. I cast a worried glance at the curtained side windows of the real house, where Pippy's mother might soon appear. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Please don't cry." I lifted the baby up by her armpits, leaning back to counter her weight. Her body was as heavy and limp as a sack of lead shot. She draped herself over me and made fierce little gasps. I might have given up then on the whole punishment routine, but as soon as she was calmed, I put her down in the same spot.
"You're still grounded, Pippy," I told her solemnly. Then I swished back through the branches and told Mare that we couldn't get soft on her or Pippy would get spoiled and we'd have only ourselves to blame.
Pippy didn't understand what was the matter. She crawled over to the cascading greenery of the tree and pulled herself up on its flimsy branches. I stood in her path, with my hands on my hips. She moved left, then right, as if chance had put me in her way, then pushed through with her fat hands, leaning into my body with the leaves tangled between us.
"No," she said firmly, not quite mad yet.
"That's it," I remember saying. (I had heard that somewhere, the thing parents said when they'd hit their limit.) I parted the branches, whirled the baby around, and swatted her on her bottom. I got grim
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