She Held Me in Her Eyes

I tossed and turned all night:

The baby is sleeping on his back in the garage, the garage door full open. The floor is concrete, fresh white and so clean you could spread out a Sunday lunchtime tablecloth on it. "Janice," I say, "call me if he cries, will you?" He is sleeping after all.


He flips over like a leaf, summer to autumn to winter to spring, never lingering on one season. I tuck the edges of the blue blanket under the carriage mattress, so the blanket lies smooth and tight, and with my tip of my saddle shoe, I slip up the brake. The carriage is driving on its own─one two three down the driveway. Four five─ a head as small as a doll’s takes wing toward Van Horne Avenue, soft white shoes disappear under black rubber wheels, fingers flattened like Thursday’s dough under my mother’s wood rolling pin. I open my mouth to scream, but my heart freezes over like the deepest lake in the coldest winter. I walk to where the head lies, to the hands lying flat and still on the pavement, the feet sitting side by side, and I turn the baby onto his back as he had been before the carriage decided to make a break for it─away from that house and the sad lady in it. I fix the head so it sits like a pumpkin on his body, fix the feet so the toes point out ever so slightly, and set the hands just beyond the line of the his wrists, curving each finger just a little. Then I take a deep breath of air as crisp as fresh sheets flying on the line, and I walk, one double-bowed shoe in front of the other, into the house.



His head lies tilted like a mournful question. I reset it neat and square. I smooth out each finger and tie the bows of the little shoes. Then I scream and scream and scream.

I can't recognize him when they carry him out. He looks like a boy doll with a proper boy's haircut and little boy bangs. "Where's the neck?" I ask because all I see is a pocket of extra skin where a neck should be, but I hold him close anyway.



I set the bowl on my head and cut my hair right up to the rim. I used to sit on the living room stool while my mother turned each strand of hair round and round, a bobby pin like Cupid's arrow through each curl. “Why, why?” she says, but the ice around my heart is so slippery, the answers can't stay upright; they just fall and slip away. I watch lines grow like weeds between her eyebrows, her hair lying all limp and helpless like cut grass, and I sit down right close beside her. “I will never cut my hair again or push a baby carriage into the street,” I say. After supper I walk straight into my room. I pick up the doll with the red striped dress that snaps and ties in the back, and I cut her hair short short. “Smokey, Smokey," I call in my morning corn syrup voice and dress my cat in Julian’s baby t-shirt, laying him all safe and harassed up on his back in the shiny carriage my grandfather gave me and parade him down Wilder Avenue to Rockland Park. One day I whisper “tch tch tch” as I lift up my bedskirt, peer on tiptoes behind closet shelves, behind books, under my dresses, inside my mother’s hatboxes. I don't cry when I can't find him. On my maple bureau, there's a picture of me on my grandfather’s lap and Smokey on mine.


The phone is ringing. I pick up the receiver even though I know I'm in the middle of a dream and it’s not polite to walk out on company. Abie is calling from Russia. “I’m in Russia,” he says on his voice mail. Actually he’s in Moscow, staying at his Russian girfriend’s three-room apartment. Her daughter and ex-mother-in- law also live there. The apartment has no living room. Abie figures he’s completing a deal, so he’s gone over to Russia. Ninety days ago the manager of his apartment building gave him notice. But he kept thinking his deal was going to close and of course it didn’t, so now he’s in Moscow at Anya’s. “I don’t want movers touching my suits,” he says, “or my menorah or my photos.” I tell him, “I only wish I’d had that choice.”


When Abie talks, I shut my eyes. He gives my heart arthritis, I’m sure. It must be damp in there from so much sadness and crying. It aches; it really does─the left side at the top. Even when he stops talking my chest is still shuddering. Is it possible he’s damaged my heart? “Breathe in,” I tell myself, “nice and deep, breathe.” There was a car I once had that refused to start when the wheel was turned too far to the right; the key would not turn in the ignition. The only way to get that car going was to gently shake the wheel left, right, left, and bring the handle all the down. All the wrangling and cajoling, and the car might start. Might. I need someone to rock my heart. I close my eyes. It’s not that I want to get back to the dream, but I think maybe there’s something significant tucked away in a drawer and if I can sift through dressers and cupboard . . . A butterfly comes to rest on my eyelids and I close my eyes.



There’s no one in the house, no friend to call “hey, would you come over.” No one pops by and I like it that way. It’s only the second day after washing my hair and already it’s oily. I have to wait four days until I can wash it again. And then there are things to organize. I have a list in my pocket. The baby is in his carriage and I think, if I go inside to make one call, leave a message─one minute, maybe less, so I call “Janice, will you watch Julian for five minutes?”


One thing. There’s a man, big, huge actually. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t trap me with vile words neither. I watch him cradling my baby in one of his big arms and how Janice tags beside him, her arm raised so she could slip her small hand is his immense warm one. I peek through the hospital venetians. He stands in the middle of the parking lot, looks up and waves which is kind of funny coming from such a large man─the wave of a visiting dignitary. Later when a doctor in white walks in to talk to me, I stand sideways in front of the window. The large man is gone. There is no car in front of the yellow barrier, nor do I see the retreating back of a tall, wide man in a navy blue raincoat.


I was everything to her. Not my sister who was born without a heart. Something kept her alive, but it wasn’t her heart. I think she was just plain mean and staying alive for spite. My mother held me in her eyes until my brother was born. His soft blue blanket with shining borders lay folded in my lap. I held the soft wool to my face and breathed in its sweet country air. And then there it was, all round and full on my mother’s lap while I sat still and quiet in the back.

Ladies bustle from the boy baby’s room to the kitchen. The water pops before the bottles are lowered into the silver pot. I love the bottles and the round flat caps and the way the rubber nipples hide underneath, their tips just kissing the milk.

She rolls down the window and waves. She just slides into her brown velevt coat and goes and when she comes back, she lies in bed in her nightdress. I tiptoe into the room. “Janice,” she says. She’s so quiet, she almost whispers. She never twirls my hair again. She gets tired when she talks to me. Sometimes I’m mean and she gets sadder and sadder. I think she’s like one of the flowers outside, wilted and falling before winter. But when she opens her eyes wide, I hear rich full music streaming from them - voices and instuments twirling. Her eyes are clear and sweet as heaven. I hold my breath to keep the air from rustling. "Ma," I say, "Ma." And her eyes skim the room like bees in a desert.

Copyright Janice Colman 2008