Her Baby Is a Stranger She Doesn’t Want to Know
Her Baby Is a Stranger She Doesn’t Want to Know
The Box Where Baby Slept by Mario Giannone
Mirna caught Piss Pants hanging around her car when she returned from the superstore. His pants were soaked as usual, but it was hard to tell if the stains were old or from a more recent incident. For as long as Mirna had been living out of her car in the parking lot of the abandoned Spring River Shopping Center, Piss Pants had been sneaking over to wave at Mirna’s baby. The baby wailed at the strange man. Mirna marched towards him, gripping the plastic bags filled with diapers, potato chips, and buy-two-get-one-free sodas. The purchase had eaten up most of whatever money she had left. Piss Pants made kissy faces through the window and put his lips against the glass. She hollered, and he ignored her. He mumbled some nonsense to the baby, who cried louder. Mirna shouted and ran at him, dropping some of her bags. Piss Pants scurried off to the abandoned shoe store he called home, and the baby continued to cry for hours after.
Several others had set up camp in the shopping center, living either out of their cars or one of the empty shops. They wandered the parking lot looking for change, food, and cigarette butts. Mirna had given them all nicknames based on their worst features. Piss Pants, Shit Pants, Toothless, Lazy Eye. She watched them amble between the stores as she ate chips and drank soda from the removable cup holder she used as a mug. The baby looked up at her from the old diaper box that Mirna had repurposed as a bassinet. He began to cry again. She jingled her keys for him and said “It’s okay” over and over in a baby voice until he piped down.
That night, Mirna woke to Shit Pants and Toothless knocking on the car roof. They pulled on the door handles and spit on the windows. Thick ropes of mucus ran down the glass. Mirna hit the lock button over and over, hoping the sound would scare them. “Let us in, baby,” they begged. Mirna told them to get fucked. “We’re cold and it’s raining,” Shit Pants said. It was neither cold nor raining. They banged their fists on the hood. Mirna continued to curse at them. The baby began to cry. “Wah, wah, wah,” the men said. Mirna waved her tire iron at them. Shit Pants exposed himself and, when he got tired of tugging on his limp penis, peed on her front bumper. Toothless pushed on the car, rocking it back and forth. She turned on the engine, and Shit Pants kicked her passenger-side headlight out. She put the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving both men on the ground.
She pulled over after a few miles and fed the baby while she ate potato chips. Crumbs rained down on the baby’s head. When he finished, he nestled against her chest. She did not want to name him yet because she felt that she didn’t really know him, and how could she give a little stranger a name he’d carry forever? He was much smaller than any baby she’d held before. His eyes drooped so low they were nearly parallel with his nostrils, and the space between his nose and mouth was completely smooth. When he cried, he felt like a vibrating cell phone. He’d gained some weight in the two weeks they’d lived at the shopping center but not much.
The baby lay in his box in the backseat as Mirna drove down the coast. She could not return home with the baby. They’d know just from his face that she had tried more than once to drink him away. All she could do was drive. She took caffeine pills instead of pulling over to sleep because there would be a new Shit Pants and Toothless waiting for her in every parking lot.
Mirna followed the parkway south and passed through several shore towns in the throes of late summer. In the distance was the purple and green glow cast by Ferris wheel lights. Every few miles, she turned on the light and cooed at the baby to make sure he was still alive. She had a quarter tank left, and twenty dollars on the pre-paid debit card in her purse. She had another ten in cash from pan handling the day before. She didn’t want to think about gas and money, so she didn’t. When tolls came up, she just drove through the express lanes, and the digital sign screamed TOLL UNPAID in red letters. The exit signs counted down. Exit 10, Exit 9. What happened after Exit 0? Would the car fall into the ocean? Would they have to doggy paddle all the way to Delaware?
The car ran out of gas somewhere near Atlantic City. She put a rag in the window and walked south, carrying the baby in his box and a duffel bag of their things. Cars rushed past them. The draft they threw off nearly knocked Mirna over. She made it two miles before a tractor trailer pulled over in front of her. The truck driver jogged towards her. He shouted something, but she couldn’t hear him.
“Jesus Christ, girl, you’re lucky I was paying attention,” he said. “You’re going to end up in someone’s windshield.” The baby, who’d slept through the entire walk, began to cry once the man came near. The driver peeked into the box. Mirna pulled the blanket over the baby’s face. “Is that a—just get in the truck.” Mirna’s shoes were starting to come apart and her ankles were on fire. The baby’s box grew heavier in her arms. She followed the driver.
She and the baby rode in the sleeper cab. He had so much hair already and still smelled a bit like blood. She needed to do a better job for him. She wanted him to remember the warmth of her body, her smile, the scent of her hair. Mirna remembered her own mother as screaming, crying, or breaking dishes, then apologizing the whole next day for her behavior. She hadn’t been feeling herself, she’d say. She’d had, had a long week.
The truck driver kept asking her questions. What was her name? Where was she from? Where was she going? She told him to keep heading where he was heading.
“I just dropped off a shipment of shellfish to one of the casinos,” he said. “You should’ve seen all the oysters. I had a damn ocean-load.”
The truck driver was a long man. The headrest of the driver’s seat came up to the base of his neck. It was hard to tell if he was trying to grow a beard or had just forgotten to shave. He must’ve been in his thirties. When he wasn’t talking, he squirmed in his seat or ground his teeth. The baby cried, and Mirna rocked him. She didn’t need to hide his face anymore. The truck driver wasn’t smart enough to figure out what it meant.
He talked on. “You know, you wouldn’t believe how far some food travels. When I long-haul, I take stuff that already rode a boat over from China and drive it from California to New York City. I’ve met heads of lettuce that’ve seen more of the world than me. I’m Mike, by the way.”
“Mirna.”
“And what about the little ‘un?”
“He doesn’t have a name yet.”
“No name,” Mike said. “Can’t go through life with no name. Why not just name him after his dad?”
Mirna cut him off before he could continue. “I don’t know the father.” Mirna did know the baby’s father. Explaining the whole thing felt like too much. No, he wasn’t actually her cousin. He was the son of a family friend, so she called him her cousin. Everyone at the bonfire was drunk, and she’d snuck off to the woods with him. Every girl back home had gone into the woods with a boy at some point, and that hadn’t been her first time either. She had read online that an abortion was seven hundred dollars, and there was no way in hell she or anyone she knew had that kind of money lying around. That’s why she’d tried to drink him away. That’s all there was to it.
“Hm, well he wouldn’t be the first kid to not know his dad,” Mike said. “My dad—”
“Can you take me up to Hamilton?” Mirna asked. “I got an aunt there. Might take the train to New York.”
Mike agreed to take her but continued his story about his father marrying Mike’s first-grade teacher. Mirna looked into the baby’s face and tried to think of a name. His face revealed nothing but her past misdoings. The baby could be left at an orphanage, and Mirna could just go home, but there were no orphanages anymore, no nuns bringing foundlings in off the front step. And if there were, when the baby grew up, he would only have to look in the mirror to know that even before he was born, he hadn’t been loved. If she held onto him, she could at least tell him that once she’d had him, she never gave him up.
Mike spoke of his father, how he only used to see him twice a year and would be made to sleep on the couch, where in the early morning he would awake to the sound of his father and stepmother having sex. After they hit 42 North, he burned himself out on memories of his father and stayed quiet. Mike changed lanes often, and when he shifted gears, the truck let out a deep sigh like an old man being turned over in bed.
“There’s no aunt, is there?” he asked finally.
“How’d you figure?” Mirna said.
“Just a hunch. If you need somewhere to stay, I have a finished basement with a pull-out couch. I can’t let a young mother wander the streets. Just ‘til you figure out what you’re doing.” He described the layout of the basement to her in excruciating detail. How they could move furniture around to make things more comfortable. How the basement was always cold no matter what, and his theories as to why. “I’ve got space heaters though. No crib, obviously. That box will have to do.”
The truck came to a stop, and Mirna woke up with her head against the window. The baby squirmed in his box. Across the street was a brick apartment complex. Two dozen doors decorated its face.
“I’ve gotta see a friend real quick,” Mike said.
“You’re just gonna leave me in here?” Mirna said.
“Well, I’d invite you in for a drink, but Dave’s place isn’t the best for babies.”
Mirna rocked the baby just so she’d have something to do while she waited. She’d had a friend, Ann, who got pregnant their sophomore year, and Mirna had helped plan the shower and buy the baby toys. But once the kid was born, Mirna stopped seeing Ann because it was always such a hassle. She would either bring the little noise machine along or complain about how he’d kept her up all night. Then she’d be stuck staring at tired, rundown Ann and thinking about how her whole life was over at sixteen.
Mirna made sure the baby was lying on his back in the box. He wriggled and flexed his hands. He still didn’t have the strength to grip her finger. She hopped out of the truck and went after Mike. In the apartment, the only light sources were a cloudy fish tank and TV with a laptop plugged into it. Next to the kitchen was a pool table and cues where a dining room table belonged. Mike sat on a couch with two other guys who looked much younger than him. They watched a pirated movie that played on both the TV and the laptop. The two men, one of whom must’ve been Dave, stared at her through glassy eyes.
“What about—” Mike said.
“I just fed him,” she said, “and he can’t go anywhere.”
Dave led Mirna to the fridge. They had to squeeze between the pool table and the wall to get there. She took two wine coolers from the fridge’s deli meat drawer. “One for the road,” she said, but Dave gave no response.
She sat next to Mike on the couch, and he started up again. His tongue flicked every idea in his head out into the world. “I’m still thinking about how that kid has no name,” he said. “I mean it ain’t right.”
“I’m going to name him Baby,” she said.
Mike laughed. “What about when he’s forty-five?”
“Well, when he’s like four, I’ll change his name to Boy. At eighteen, he can be Man.”
“My grandfather had a dog he just called Dog,” Mike said. “What if you named him Dog?” Only he thought this was funny.
They talked a little longer and drank a little more. Mike didn’t take over the conversation this time. Mirna felt like she’d been granted a great permission. She told him about her parents and how they drank all day, and how even when they split up, they still argued on the phone weekly.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry,” Mike said. “Drinks getting you down. You need a little pick-me-up.”
They did a couple of bumps off a bread knife, and Mirna felt like she was strapped to a towline being pulled by a pack of wild dogs. Dave had fallen asleep on the couch. The third man threw chips at Dave’s open mouth. Mike got Mirna another wine cooler and kept ranting about how he didn’t know what his next move was and that he couldn’t spend his whole life driving; at one point he referred to the highway as his mistress. When he grew upset talking about having to give away his dog because he was barely home, Mirna decided she’d play some music on the small wireless speaker she found atop the fridge, but Mike just shouted over it. Mirna grabbed a pool cue and demanded Mike teach her to play, and he said he didn’t feel like it, so she mocked him until he taught her how to shoot. He guided her from behind because he was incapable of being subtle. They played one game, and he let her win, but she didn’t care because she still won, which meant she must have learned something, right?
Baby was fussing in his box when they got back to the truck. They picked up formula from an all-night pharmacy and drove to Mike’s place. “I’m sorry I was gone,” Mirna said to her son, “but I have a name for you now, Baby.”
Mike lived in a row home a few blocks from the Delaware River. Down the river, on the opposite bank, there was evidence of the Philadelphia skyline. Mike’s town was made up of row homes and corner storefronts with current lottery jackpots hanging in the windows. In the kitchen, Mike fed Baby from one of the bottles in Mirna’s bag. He rocked the child as he ate. Baby fell asleep nestled against Mike’s chest. Mirna watched them from the living room.
“All my half-siblings are a lot younger than me,” he said. “I learned how to do this stuff pretty early on.”
He found a bigger box for Baby and more blankets. He went into his coat closet and retrieved a small teddy bear, which he placed in the box. Mirna snatched it from him. Her cousin had a baby that had rolled over in the night and suffocated on a plush frog. Once she got Baby to stop squirming, she joined Mike in the living room. They drank a six pack together and watched some late-night movie. Mike kept turning away from the TV to look her up and down.
“You should sleep in my room tonight,” he said. “I’ll take the couch. Wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t offer. Go ahead. Upstairs on the left.”
Mirna changed her clothes and threw out her blood-specked underwear. She wiped Baby clean with a damp piece of toilet paper. Little bits of it stuck to his face. Touching him was nerve-racking. He was like a fragile lamp that had already been broken once before. He sneezed and Mirna wiped the snot off him with a hand towel and then hung it back up.
He was like a fragile lamp that had already been broken once before.
Mike’s room was a hodge-podge of furniture he must’ve been given or had found in the trash. The dresser and one nightstand matched, but the other nightstand was a TV tray table covered in soda cans and cell phone chargers. Mirna slept on her side with Baby’s box on the floor next to her. She let her arm dangle from the mattress and stroked Baby’s chest. Beneath his sternum it felt as if something was dying to break out of him.
Mike woke her up when he climbed into bed next to her. “Can’t sleep on that couch after driving all day,” he said. “Don’t worry. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Mirna wiggled to the edge of the mattress. Throughout the night, Mike got up several times to spit in the bathroom sink and pee. Baby cried, and Mike mumbled for her to shut the kid up. Other than that, he and Baby slept through the whole night while Mirna lay awake listening to the dissonant music of their breathing.
Mike’s Wi-Fi password was a dozen numbers and letters stickered to the back of his router in the living room. It took Mirna several tries to type it into her phone. She searched her name and the word “missing.” A Mirna Rockford had been missing in Richmond, Virginia twelve years ago, but that was it. None of Mirna’s family or friends had posted anywhere that she hadn’t come home for over two weeks. Once you were eighteen, no one cared where you went. In her town, disappearing meant you had run off with a boy and would come back home in a year with a baby in your arms and your belongings in trash bags.
Mirna looked over at Baby, still lying in his box, and her duffel bag filled with the few things she owned. Mike snored away upstairs. In the daylight, it was hard to ignore the mess. Plastic bags and padded envelopes were thrown in the corners of every room. Dust and hair collected against the baseboards. There seemed to be crumbs everywhere, as if a farmer had come through and sown them all throughout the house.
There were two smaller bedrooms. One was filled with boxes of clothes and papers. The other just had a folding table against one wall and an old laptop charging on the floor. Mirna changed Baby’s diaper on the folding table. She did her best not to look at his face, and even considered getting a paper towel to cover it. Mike had yet to say anything about how Baby looked, but he’d only handled him in the dark.
Baby’s breathing was strange. It was shallow at times, and then he would fight to gulp down big breaths. Maybe he just hadn’t figured out how to do it yet. It was only his sixteenth day on Earth after all. Or maybe his inside was just as twisted up as his outside.
Mirna watched TV with Baby’s box next to her. She was uneasy about taking him out of it, as if all he needed to be safe from the world was a little cardboard. He cried; she held him, fed him, changed him again. She changed but didn’t use the shower. There was no telling when Mike would pop up.
He woke in the afternoon, left without saying a word, and returned with a half dozen grocery bags. He put the food away and sat next to her and Baby on the couch. Mirna hugged him. It had seemed like something she should do until she did it. He studied Baby.
“Is that normal?” Mike asked. “His face, should it be like that? It looks like he’s having a rough time breathing.”
“It’ll straighten out,” Mirna said. “Newborns have squishy faces. Sometimes they need to settle.”
“Like dough.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, never mind.”
In the nights that followed, Mirna and Baby moved to the couch. No matter what Mike had promised beforehand, he would appear at the foot of the bed every night, complaining of his back and slide in next to her. In the mornings Mike played some kind of football game on an ancient video game console that was caked in dust. It buzzed, whirred, and would eject the disc at random. Mirna fed and changed Baby while she watched Mike curse at the game. When Baby didn’t need to be fed or changed, she felt like she was just waiting for him to need her again.
At night, they ate frozen entrees that Mike put in the oven and often forgot about until he smelled them burning. No one called Mirna looking for her. Someone she used to work with at the dollar store texted her what’s Jameel’s brother’s name? followed by sorry, wrong number. Mirna let her phone die.
After almost a week, Mirna returned to Mike’s bed where Mike tried to spoon her. She told him to get the fuck off, and he rolled over, pretending he had been asleep when he’d grabbed her. The next morning, he took up a weeklong haul. He left her with a pack of diapers and several cans of formula. “You should start figuring out what your next move is,” Mike said before leaving. “When I get back, you’re gonna need money if you want to stay longer.”
Mirna gave him her ten dollars in cash, and he left with it in his pocket.
The first few days alone with Baby were fine. It was just like when Mike was there, minus the distorted, crackling soundtrack of his old video games. She couldn’t figure out how to use the oven, so she only ate pretzels and crackers. Baby’s breathing grew worse. A little wheeze would come from his box, followed by coughing, and then he’d start to cry. “Shhh, little boy,” Mirna would say. “You’re too handsome to cry.” If he died, she didn’t know what she would do with him, but she guessed it didn’t really matter. She and Mike were the only ones who knew Baby existed.
She used Mike’s laptop to check her card balance. She had sixteen dollars and forty-eight cents left. A bus ticket home was twenty-two. She looked around Mike’s house for spare change. She found a handful of ones and walked to a station two miles away, carrying Baby’s box in front of her. The prices on the website were outdated, and twenty dollars would only get her halfway home.
Instead, Mirna took a local line to a nearby fertility clinic she’d found online. They had to transfer twice and walk the last thirty minutes. It was Tuesday, and it was raining. Mike would be back on Monday. If she could get rid of Baby, maybe he’d let her stay for free a bit longer. She could get a job and save up money to move to New York City. She could live in Queens. She could get stuck in traffic in the tunnel, or Mike could take her with him to far-off places like Arizona. They could drop off okra, whatever that was, to restaurants all over America.
Mirna waited in the clinic parking lot for a couple to show. Every now and then a nurse came out to smoke or have an argument on the phone, and Mirna would duck behind a dumpster.
A couple didn’t arrive until noon. Mirna approached them, holding Baby. “Excuse me,” she said. The couple kept their heads down and went inside. So did the couple after them. An hour passed until another came.
“Excuse me,” she said. The husband was much older than his wife, who seemed to be pulling him through the parking lot like a child out on errands with his mother. The husband made eye contact with her.
“Gerald,” said his wife, pulling him along by the sleeve.
“Are you guys trying to have a kid?” she asked Gerald and not his wife.
“Well, we came to—”
“I have a boy here,” Mirna said holding out the box. “He’s got a breathing problem. I can’t afford to take care of him. I’m sure they’re charging you a lot in there. Just give me like two hundred dollars, and you can have him. You won’t ever see me again.”
“Do you need help?” the wife asked while Gerald pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill from his pocket.
“You seem like nice people,” Mirna said. “I think you’d all be very happy together. You don’t even have to pay me.”
“My friend volunteers at a shelter in Lawnside,” the wife said. “I can call someone. They can help you and your little boy.”
Mirna was paralyzed by the wife’s offer. To Mirna, a shelter meant an auditorium filled with beds of snoring, handsy men. It meant a social worker carrying Baby off to a foster home. It meant her and Baby being passed around from one underfunded program to another until there was nothing left of them but bones and hair.
The wife got in the car and made a phone call. She spoke, waited, then spoke some more while looking at Mirna.
“I’m sorry,” Mirna said. “It’s been a hard few days. I’m going to miss my bus.”
She ran. Baby cried as he bounced in his box. They hid in an empty retention pond and rested in the mud. Baby’s crying attacked Mirna’s ears. She covered his mouth with her hand and let him suckle her finger. “Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,” she sang until he fell back asleep. When she grew tired of hiding, she closed the flaps of Baby’s box to protect him from the rain and walked back to the bus stop. After all the bus fare, she had nine dollars and some change left.
Mike’s basement was just as cluttered as the upstairs. Power tools with frayed electric cords decorated the floor. In a corner sat a pile of potting soil and concrete mix bags. There was an attempt at a home gym shoved off to one corner. Mirna beat the dust and dead bugs from the cot’s mattress. She changed Baby on the tool bench before lying down with him. Mirna didn’t leave the basement for the next two days except to fetch crackers and soda. She doted over Baby, hoping to make up for nearly giving him away to strangers. She did not raise her voice when he kept her up all night. She let him lay on her chest and not a single minute went by without her kissing the top of his head. Against her lips, his faint hairs felt like dandelion puffs.
Producing mucus seemed to be Baby’s only activity. He didn’t react to Mirna’s singing or baby talk anymore. In one of the many boxes in the basement, she found a bulb syringe and used it to drain his nose. The next two days were spent keeping Baby’s sinuses clear and watching the ankles of passersby through the basement windows. She plugged her phone in, turned it on, and waited for texts, missed calls, or voicemails to come in. The only messages were coupon code texts from stores and robocall voicemails warning her that her car’s extended warranty had expired. Her thumb hovered over the contact for “Home.” If her mother answered, she would have to shout, “This is Mirna, your daughter” because otherwise her mother would say, “Mirna who?” She’d probably huff and ask, “Do I have to come get you?” Mirna’s older sisters had run away from home all the time as teenagers. She and her mother would go to the bus station to pick up either Sara or Masha; they would always be wearing some guy’s sweatshirt. If her mother did come get her, she would do nothing but scream at the child the second he became even a mild inconvenience. She’d spit vodka-soaked threats until Mirna and Baby would be forced to run off again.
Baby started to wheeze. Mirna burped him and rocked him. He spat up a glob of mucus on her shoulder, but the wheezing persisted. He could only breathe easily if he was held upright and bounced on Mirna’s knee.
The day before Mike returned, Mirna wandered the neighborhood in search of somewhere to work. She filled out an application for a pizza place that also sold loose cigarettes and phone cards. Afterwards, she filled out another application at an all-night pharmacy. By the register was a rack of small stuffed animals. Baby had nothing of his own. Even Mirna and her sisters had had toys. Somewhere in her mother’s rowhome, Mirna’s childhood companion, Poofy Pig, was still stashed away. She bought a stuffed cardinal for Baby for five dollars and tried not to think of the single digit balance on her card.
In Mike’s basement, Mirna dangled the stuffed cardinal over Baby’s box. “Say hi to Mr. Cuddly Bird,” she said over and over, shaking the toy. Baby mostly looked through the bird. Mirna made chirping noises and danced the toy along the rim of the box until Baby gave her a reaction. Eventually he stretched his mouth into a shape that she told herself was a smile.
Mike returned on Friday, and the floorboards groaned beneath his weight. Mirna listened to him move from room to room in search of her. To look busy, she started changing Baby’s diaper, even though it was empty.
“What are you, a vampire?” Mike said, flicking on the basement light.
Mirna focused on Baby’s empty diaper. She hoped he would not ask her if she had a job or a plan.
Mike stood close. “I thought about you a lot while I was driving,” he said. His breath smelled of chewing gum and cheeseburgers. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pawed at her hips and thighs. Baby winced, and Mirna hoped he would cry. He couldn’t seem to muster up the energy. Mike put his hand in Mirna’s pants pocket. She pried herself free.
“I have to put him down for a nap,” she said, and Mike retreated upstairs.
Every board and brick belonged to him, and she had spent enough time there that now she belonged to him too.
Even when he was gone, Mirna could feel Mike against her back. He had imprinted himself on the threads of her shirt. His scent was stuck in her nose. She changed and used the bulb syringe on herself. There was no getting rid of him. The entire house was covered in years of Mike particles. Every board and brick belonged to him, and she had spent enough time there that now she belonged to him too.
Mirna rocked Baby inside his box. She kept a dishrag on her shoulder for when he began to wheeze. It seemed like he’d never run out of mucus, like there was some oil drill in him, digging up endless yellow snot. At night, slants of moon light fell through the basement windows. Two men argued about money outside. Mirna dreamed of using Mike’s tools to tunnel into the neighbor’s basement; if she didn’t like that one, she’d dig to the next one, and the next one after that, until she dug into the side of the Delaware River and all of its murk cascaded over her and flooded every house in town.
Baby continued to wheeze and howl. Mike came back downstairs. She braced herself for his cheeseburger breath and wandering hands, but he just stood at the bottom of the stairs. “What the hell’s that sound?” He looked into Baby’s box. “There’s something wrong with him. You should take him to the ER. I think his face might be stuck like that.”
“He’s fine,” Mirna said.
“Listen, Tuesday I’m leaving on another long haul, then I’m picking up another shipment there and bringing that up to Canada, then I got another job lined up in Texas. Might pick up another shipment there. I don’t know yet.”
“Okay,” Mirna said.
“I don’t think you understand. I can’t be gone for almost two months and have a runaway and her baby in my house. You guys gotta get outta here, preferably tomorrow.”
“I just applied for a job at the pizza place.”
“Just go home. I’ll give you bus money. Shit, I’ll even drive you back myself. I was trying to do something nice, but this is too much.”
“I could work at the pizza place during the day and get a job somewhere else at night.”
“How old are you even?”
“I’ll be nineteen in two months.”
“Jesus Christ. You know if home’s bad, they got shelters and group homes and stuff like that. Look at this place. It ain’t in any shape for you two.”
“The road is my mistress,” Mirna said under her breath.
“His name is Baby. He lives in a box, for Christ sake,” Mike said. “Tomorrow, I’m taking you home.” He stomped upstairs.
Mirna rolled around on the bed for a bit. Baby began to wheeze and hack again. “Just shut up,” Mirna said. She found a spot on the basement floor to sit and cry, but she couldn’t throw a proper fit with Baby there. She remembered the month after the HVAC repairman had dumped Mirna’s mother, how she’d spent several nights crawling on the floor and wailing after drinking a bottle of peach schnapps. Sara and Masha would try to get her to go to bed or drink some coffee, while a ten-year-old Mirna called her mother a gross slut.
Mirna had spent so much of her life hanging out, drinking and watching her mother drink. She did not know where cities and states were, how money was made, why babies cried, or how you made them stop. Baby cooed, and Mirna played with his toes. “Is this a little piggy?” She wished she was smart. She wished she knew how to do things.
When Mirna came out of the basement, Mike was sprawled out on the couch playing a shooter game. Everything on the screen consisted of sharp polygons. The console struggled to keep the disc spinning, and the game froze for a moment. Mike ignored her.
“I want to give him away,” she said.
“You can’t stay,” he said without looking away from the TV. “Motherfucker!” he yelled at the game.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I named him Baby, and he lives in a box.”
Mike still refused to turn towards her. She thought about throwing her shoe at the TV. “I wanna leave him in a nice neighborhood. Something is really wrong with him. Something I don’t know how to fix. He’ll die in foster care.”
“Don’t do that for me,” Mike said.
“It ain’t for you, and it ain’t for me either.”
“We can go tomorrow night,” Mike said. “I’m too tired to do anything else today. You know, this is the first thing you’ve done since you got here that’s made any sense.” He patted the seat next to him, and she sat there, watching him play his game.
On their last day together, Mirna tried to find something to leave Baby in. If it was cold or raining, the box wouldn’t be enough. She thought about putting tin foil over the top, but there wasn’t much she could do about keeping the sides from turning soggy. Mike had refused to give her money for a car seat with a cover.
She found an old pet carrier in the basement. She soaked one of her shirts with soap and hot water and scrubbed out the carrier before lining the inside with bath towels. To test it, she put Baby inside with a blanket and checked on him every minute. With her face in the door of the carrier, she tried to tell him a story, but she couldn’t come up with names for the characters or made-up places, so she settled for humming “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
That night Mike took her to a neighborhood about an hour north. He said a lot of New York City commuters lived there: editors-at-large, Wall Street guys, startup bros. It was the first time she’d seen Mike’s actual car, a beat-up sedan with a trash bag and plastic wrap where the rear passenger window should’ve been. Mike wouldn’t let her sit in the passenger seat and made her sit in the back with Baby. “He’s gonna be alone all night,” Mike said. The floor of the car was filled with old fast food bags that had grown stiff with grease. Mirna stepped on a paper cup and felt soda seep into her shoes. The whole ride, Mike’s makeshift window billowed.
They pulled into a subdivision of large brick-front homes with long driveways. One had a fountain in the front yard lit up by landscaping lights. Mike stopped in front of one of the first houses they passed.
“Not here,” Mirna said. The house was nice, and the family probably was too, but she knew to always turn down the first boy to ask you to dance. She had Mike drive all through the development. Streets with French-sounding names branched off the main road every hundred feet or so. An assortment of luxury SUVs were parked in every driveway. Over the fences, Mirna could see inground pools and gazebos. She never thought this many people with that much money could exist in one place.
“Here,” she finally said.
The house wasn’t the biggest or the nicest on the block. The grass was higher than the other lawns, and the white siding was turning green. The owners seemed to have a little less—or maybe just cared a little less—than everyone else in the neighborhood. They didn’t need everything to be perfect. Mirna thought maybe they would be okay with Baby’s face. She put Baby in the pet carrier with his blankets.
“Be quick,” Mike said. “These neighborhoods, everyone is suspicious of a car like this.”
Mirna followed the sidewalk to the front door. She opened the ceiling hatch of the carrier to make sure Baby was okay, then set him down on the welcome mat. She stroked his face and chest as she cleaned his nose one last time with the bulb syringe. He grabbed onto her finger and gummed it. Soon he would have teeth. In some years’ time, those teeth would fall out and be replaced. The front bottom teeth would most likely come in crooked, just as Mirna’s and her sisters’ had. She left the stuffed cardinal in a freezer bag atop the pet carrier.
She took her time walking back to Mike’s car, despite his waving at her to hurry up. She waited to hear a cry from Baby, one last request to have his nose cleaned or see her face hovering above him. She waited and waited, but he didn’t make a sound.
Mike opened the passenger door for her. He looked her up and down before she got in. “You get a call from that pizza place you can pay half the electric bill,” he said. “There’s some furniture in the attic. We can dust it off and get the basement a bit spruced up.”
Mirna stopped listening to him and his plans. They passed the exit for Mirna’s hometown. Mike clicked his jaw and ground his teeth. “You know,” he kept saying but would lose his train of thought.
When they got home, Mike called Dave, who came over with a case of beer. Mirna started to head towards the basement, but Mike begged her to have just one beer with them. Take her mind off things. She sipped on a lukewarm can while Mike and Dave played the football video game. They hooted at one another and spilled beer all over the coffee table. Dave pulled out a wireless speaker and started playing music. The speaker was blown, and the song playing sounded less like music and more like mechanical malfunction. Mike took Mirna by her hands and pulled her from her seat.
“Dance,” Dave hollered, so she danced with Mike for just a moment.
Then Mike sat down and said, “Come on, show us your moves.”
Mirna wiggled a little for them.
“Turn around show us what you got,” Dave said.
She spun around for them once, hoping they would now leave her alone, but Mike put a ten-dollar bill in her pocket and smacked her butt. The two men laughed and pretended to throw invisible money at her. Mike pulled her onto his lap and kept trying to kiss her.
Mirna fought him off and retreated to the basement. Baby’s box was still in her bed. It was damp with pee and speckled with diaper powder. She slept next to it and traced her fingers from corner to corner. Out of habit, she woke up every now and then to clean Baby’s nose but went back to sleep when she remembered the box was empty.
In the morning, Mike broke down Baby’s box and tossed it in the recycling while Mirna was in the shower. On Friday he left as planned, and on Saturday the pizza place left her a message to schedule an interview.
She didn’t hear from Mike until he got to Michigan. He called to give her a list of chores. “I’ll talk to you when I get to Kansas City,” he said. “Bye, babe.”
That week, she took Mike’s recycling out four days early.
