Dear Reader,
Here is Part 2 of Baby, a short story I’ve been working on. (Part 1 is here.)
Baby, a short story (Part 2)
They were still together then, him and his flight attendant girlfriend. I saw them once, her in a large overcoat over a uniform, and him in an old pair of jeans, a black leather jacket, and a scarf knotted casually around his neck. They were so wrapped in each other they didn’t notice I was behind them on the stairs. I remember she laughed, a low deep laugh, and said b-a-b-y. Baby. B-a-b-y. I froze. I wanted to reach out and grab that word for myself. He responded by pulling her into his arms and kissing her.
She stopped coming around after Christmas.
My phone rang again, interrupting the delicious rising hope of hearing him run down the stairs. Would he? Was today the day? I let the call go to voicemail again. There were more thuds from upstairs. The noise of water running. An indistinct murmur of voices. And then, I heard a woman laugh, a low, deep laugh. I felt my heart rate pick up speed and my breathing grow shallow. I closed my eyes. Were they back together then, him and her? Even as a trickle of tears ran down one side of my face, I couldn’t help straining, head pushed into the pillow, ears aligned upwards to catch for myself any stray sounds of love that escaped through the floorboards above me.
Baby, someone, a woman, drawled distinctly, stretching the word out in such a way that anyone lucky enough to hear it would feel bathed in the feeling of being Baby. One time, soon after I’d moved to the States, I waited at the library for my aunt to pick me up after school. She was already getting on in years by then and often forgot I’d moved in with her after my mother ran away. Anyway, I was at the library and I saw a middle-aged man rub an open magazine all over his beard. Even from a distance, I could hear the rasp of the paper against his face. I didn’t want to be caught staring, but I also couldn’t look away. It was only when he lifted up the perfume insert between the pages and showed it to the man sitting next to him that I realized what he was doing. Baby, the disembodied female voice declared again, and I rubbed it all over my face.
The voice sounded too close to have come from the couple in the upstairs apartment. I pushed back my covers and looked around the room. Baby, I heard again.
I knew that voice. Many years ago, while I still lived with my mother, my grandmother received a talking myna as a parting gift from an American expat friend who was going back home. The myna, whose name was Mynah, became my grandmother’s treasured companion because for a small, cubed piece of a ripe fruit, the bird would offer one sweet endearment in return. Honey. Sweetie. Sugar. But my favorite was always baby and for that, Mynah demanded a piece of the golden Alphonso mango, available only in season, and expensive. I made Mynah sick because I was too greedy and fed her pieces of the green mango that fell from the tree in front of my grandmother’s house and she never called me baby again.
Baby
I got out of bed and peered out of the window to check if a myna sat on one of the low branches of the crooked magnolia tree that leans against this side of the building. But it was dark outside and I couldn’t see clearly. I paused next to the window, startled to find myself upright. Every day I tell myself I’ll get up tomorrow. The money isn’t going to last beyond the next month, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.
I’m still working on the last part and will have it up sometime after the New Year.
Looking forward to reading more!