A sharp cry of the baby pierces the still air.
‘Do something Mary!’ The grandmother rocks the writhing mass in her lap. Mary is pale, looking at her child stealthily for want of courage.
‘The ambulance will be on its way,’ she mutters, biting her lip. The baby� s nostrils are flying; her lips are purple, growing black.
‘The drip Mary,’ says the grandmother. ‘Take heart! You’re a doctor.’
‘I can’t,’ she denies. The baby’s breath makes a whistle. Mary is shaken from within. She rushes inside, takes the drip, and comes to the infant.
‘Hold her,’ she instructs in a desperate confidence and inserts the needle in the little head, now dangling as if near its death. The fluid flows in it. She steps back and starts dithering about in her unease. The baby’s face is darkening. Mary goes to the house door and pears outside. There is no trace of the ambulance. She returns and resumes her anxious ramble, glancing every few moments at the dying thing.
‘Will she live?’ asks the grandmother, in disbelief.
‘I pray she does but…’ Mary cannot speak further. Then there is the emergency siren of the ambulance. They take the baby and rush outside. The empty house looks their way.
The ambulance returns before long. With a mourning cry, the elderly woman enters the house. Mary is pale with eyes strained and tearless. She walks in trance, not looking at the swaddled and dead baby, carried by the wailing woman.
‘Cover her,’ Mary utters with effort. ‘Don’t show her to me.’ The woman’s cries get louder. Neighbours start coming to share the grief. Mary is silent, lost somewhere in unbound darkness. Time passes without her having any sense of it. The baby’s father comes in, sees her little face, kisses her cheek, and sits beside his wife. She does not look at him. She knows she will not see anyone or anything. Her eyes are blindly open. Caretakers are now serving the guests with coffee. A priest enters with some neighbor men and relatives. The baby is to be taken for burial. Mary looks away. They are bringing her for a last look. She closes her eyes and touches the still soft cheeks.
‘Won’t you look at her?’ asks her husband. She shakes her head, with lips sewn and eyes shut. They have taken the baby out but her eyes are still closed and she keeps on shaking her head. Someone is hugging her.
‘She’s gone Mary,’ she hears. ‘Pray for her. She’s gone to heaven.’
***
The evenings are now sorrowful, and nights still more grieving. Mary speaks little, eats little, and hardly responds to her husband. She hears Jenny’s infant son, when he cries, in the adjacent house. His cries are so very like her own Bette. When Mary is half asleep in the easy chair, basking in the yard, his cries shake her up. She starts to rush to her Bette. The next moment she remembers it is Jason. It dejects the mother in her. Her Bette is gone. She cannot rush to someone’s child. People will think her crazy. Sometimes she wishes all the children were dead. There would be a take over of grief but no more afterwards. There would be no child, and no mother to mourn again. Bette’s belongings are all locked up in a closet; its key kept by the grandmother. Mary thinks of giving them all to Jason. Envy checks her. These were all Bette’s. No one deserves them. No one can have them. Jason’s cries still rend her heart.
‘Is Jenny’s baby ill?’ Mary asks her mother in law. She says he is. Mary has a bad feeling and then a wicked one: illness is taking others’ children too; her Bette wasn’t the only victim.
Another day passes and Jason’s cries do not cease. Mary listens anxiously, strolling near the wall that joins the houses. The cries get louder and nearer. Mary’s heart is sinking. What is happening to the baby? She thinks. The cries come to their house door. She rushes there and opens it. Jenny is standing there, pale with fear and apprehension, holding her baby in its woolen blanket.
‘Daniel has dropped the telephone,’ Jenny prompts to say. ‘We need to call the emergency. Jason is not well.’
‘Give him to me,’ Mary takes the child and examines him. High fever! Her mother in law is not home.
‘Hold him.’ She gives Jenny the baby and rushes to the closet. It is locked. Getting the hammer, she strikes it hard and breaks the lock in three desperate blows. From inside the closet, she gets everything out: injections, drip, syringes, toys, everything. Jenny is crying in worry and helplessness. Mary flashes out of the room.
‘Hold him thus,’ she orders the mother and enters the needle into the baby’s hip. He shrieks. Jenny sobs. Mary throws away the syringe and takes the baby in her lap.
‘There, there,’ she says, rocking the child in her lap.
‘Go and call the hospital, quick!’ she asks Jenny while rubbing Jason’s wee face with a wet towel. Jenny returns in seconds.
‘They’ll be here,’ she says, looking at the child.
‘Will he live?’ Jenny looks at Mary with questioning eyes.
‘Yes, he will.’ Mary is rocking him gently, feeling the heat of his little body on her fingers. The baby is nearly pacified. Jenny’s sobs are fading. The ambulance arrives. Mary carries the baby. The house looks their way.
Within an hour, they are back. Jason is better. He is asleep. Mary rambles about in the yard. She remembers Bette’s toys, things she never had a chance to play with. She takes them to Jenny in the evening.
‘You saved him,’ says Jenny in obligation.
‘I told you he’ll live,’ Mary smiles and kisses the little sleeping soul.
Mary sleeps well that night. Jason’s cries are over and Mary has a sweet dream. Bette is smiling at her, stretching her wee, tender arms towards her, loving her from heaven.