Mrs Covet

The next thing that happened was a sign, one I didn’t read correctly. I was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of singing. At first I blended it into my dream. Then I opened my eyes. Adam’s crib was empty. I got up and went into the hallway. The singing was coming from Nat’s room. I opened the door. She was lying in her bed, Adam beside her sucking on her pinky. She blushed and muttered something about wanting to give me a few more minutes of sleep. I was furious. I took the baby back into my room, locked the door and nursed him. The next morning, Craig thought I had overreacted. ‘She wanted to give you a little sleep.’

‘He needs a feed in the night,’ I said. ‘I am his mother. I don’t mind doing it. It’s normal.’

‘Daphne — ’ he looked at me, his head cocked, a pleading expression on his face.

I kept the baby with me all the next day. Nat pretended nothing had happened and she didn’t try to take Adam from me. She busied herself with the other kids, cooked dinner, and then she put her coat on. We all looked at her, confused. She explained that she had to look in on her husband and tidy up her house. She would be back Monday. It was Thursday. I knew she was punishing me for what had happened the night before. Mrs Covet was letting me know that she could live without my children. The question was: Could we live without her? The long weekend was tough, as it turned out, but we made it. It was nice just being the family again. We ordered in pizza, watched a movie, went out to breakfast. We were sloppy. The kids got into our bed on Sunday morning and we had all three of them with us. It felt good. But when Nat appeared on Monday morning, I was glad to see her, happy to hand over the baby so I could bring the boys to school, come home and take a nap. When I got home, though, Nat’s truck was gone. I walked into the house, calling her name. I went into every single room. I went to the basement, where the washing machine was. I went into the yard. My heart was racing; tears stung my eyes. The first thing I thought of was, she had to drive him to the hospital. He stopped breathing. That was what happened with Virginia.

This is how it happened: my mother brought her home in a striped blanket, a tiny woollen hat on her head, eyes shut tight, mouth pursed, fists clenched. I was five. I wanted to hold her all the time. Sometimes my mother let me give her a bottle. I loved the way she looked up at me so earnestly, her lips tugging at the rubber teet, tiny pools of milk gathering at the corners of her mouth. One afternoon, my mother had put the baby down for her nap. I had my friend Tammy over. We were pretending to be witches. We danced down the hall outside my mother’s room, muttering incantations, casting spells. We spied the baby’s crib and saw her little form huddled there under her striped blanket. I think I started it. I'm not sure, but I think I did. I said, ‘We’re going to take her away! Take her away! Take her away!’ We were whispering diabolically, giggling, falling over ourselves, two witches stealing the soul of an infant. Eventually we got bored and went into the kitchen for peanut butter sandwiches and milk.

The next morning, when I woke up, the sky was still dark outside my window. I sat up and felt the cold air, took my sweater from the end of the bed and pulled it over my head. I tiptoed down the hall to my parents’ room and peeked in the door. They were asleep. Virginia was in her crib; I could see her body under the blanket. I couldn’t make out her face, though. It felt strange to be up before the baby; it was always her cry that woke me. It felt lonesome. I walked into the kitchen. The linoleum was frigid beneath my bare feet. I thought how proud my mother would be if I made my own breakfast. I tried to pour myself a bowl of cereal, ended up scattering cornflakes all over the table. As I was opening the refrigerator, on my toes, stretching my hand up to reach the milk, I heard my mother screaming. I ran down the hall, but my father blocked the door. ‘Go to your room,’ he said. I heard my mother crying out, ‘I want my baby! I want my baby! I want my baby!’ I went into my room and sat on my bed, held my pillow to my chest and prayed. Eventually, the ambulance came.

During the funeral, I stared at my sister’s tiny, white casket, willing it to open, trying with all my might to force the lid to move even an inch. If I could kill her, perhaps I could make her live, as well. But there was no magic in me that day. I never told anyone what I had done. The guilt settled into me like a leaf falling to the ground, to be covered by other leaves and snow and earth. It melted into my being.

Nat had taken Adam to the hospital. That had to be it. I called Craig. He called the hospital. She hadn’t come in. We called Nat’s cell phone. It was off. Craig picked up the kids and brought them home. I called the police. Night fell. My mind turned one thought over and over, like a tumble dryer: Mrs Covet stole my baby.

I was up all night, though I must have drifted off at some point, because I remember dreaming about ladybugs; they were crawling all over me. I woke up thinking about bad luck. On the TV, a documentary was showing: in close-up, an Iraqi woman was tearing her hair. She was screaming, staring into the camera, her eyes almost white with fury. A blindfolded baby lay in a glass box. I didn’t understand. I tuned in late. The British commentator spoke so fast. There was no medicine for her baby? Something terrible had happened to its eyes. Oh, Jesus Christ. In the desert, men in gas masks jumped off a truck. They carried machine guns. They were on their way here. All these years, without knowing, we have reached our arms around the world, dug our thumbs into that baby’s eyes. We have made him blind. And now that baby’s mother wanted to blind my children. She wanted to slide into their beds while they slept and breathe poison into their little pink mouths. They would wake incoherent, flailing, blind. It was my fault. I remember how smug I felt years ago when I heard the word ‘sanctions’ against Iraq. Such a comforting, peaceful word — like a mother’s hand holding back a flailing toddler. Craig turned the TV off. I couldn’t look him in the eye. It was his mother who had brought Mrs Covet into our house. His mother who hated me. Craig knew what I was thinking.

At dawn, the phone rang. They found her in Florida, picked her up in a convenience store buying pretzels. She was carrying the baby. Adam was all right. She didn’t want to harm him. She just wanted him, that was all. We got on a plane with the kids and flew to Fort Lauderdale. They had the baby in the hospital there. We stayed in a hotel that night, me and Craig and the three boys. We watched the news. And there on the screen was Mrs Covet, with a serial number under her massive chin. She looked like a hardened criminal in that picture. ‘Woman Kidnaps Month-Old Baby.’ She had no record. That’s what the police said. She had been a nurse for twenty years. A married woman with three grown children, and one day she just snapped. Fell in love with our family, like she said. All that time with us, she had yearnings, she was in pain. None of us noticed. We treated her like a joke. We didn’t care what was going on inside her, as long as she took care of us. Now she was in prison for kidnapping, all because she loved our baby too much. I felt bad in a way. Too much love had wrecked her life.

It’s nearly light. The older children will be up soon. I cling to these moments before the day begins. I hear the baby’s breathing changing; he will wake up soon. I feel the tingling pang of milk filling my breasts; a drip of it trickles down my abdomen. My third boy. He is still so new. His soft pink mouth opens, reaches out for my nipple. Eyes still shut, he roots around like a piglet. When he latches on and tastes the milk, his eyelids flutter, his eyes roll back in his head. Desire. Satiation. Desire. That’s the story of his day. I am the warmth, the smell, the anchor. He is still nearly blind, innocent to meaning; he is like a pebble, a shell, a rabbit. He is no one, he is ancient, he has a face like a very old man, toothless mouth agape, staring both into and out of the void. I stay with him always. I am afraid.