Left holding the baby

Press, 21 January 1984, Page 10

Left holding the baby

The day my mother stole the baby was deceptively like any other. White fingers of cloud streaked the sky. Women with haunted expressions darted in and out of shops. I hardly noticed the babies when we walked past. There were two of them in the back of a large, beat-up Ford outside the supermarket. They were at that early stage when they look like giant, terry-towelling worms. One squirmed on its back in a carry cot. The other was curled up, red from howling, on a bewildered teenage boy’s knees.

It was the sort of situation to avoid. My mother and I walked into the supermarket past a pair of homely women in checkout smocks.

“D’you think he’s the father?” one said to the other. “They start young these days.” We seldom go shopping together. But when we do, we revert to roles played 20 years ago when I was a child. She issues instructions to look out for a cabbage, a dozen eggs, or a certain type of biscuit packet and I scamper round like a halftrained pup. I was never good at being told what to do. My attention gets diverted by tins of fruit I’ve never heard of, or French cheese that winks from the delicatessen corner.

In the early days, she used to scribble lists in loose, generous swirls on the backs of envelopes. From them I had my first lessons in the interpretation of creative writing. For instance, “pot scraper” meant either she needed something to scrape pots with, or “pot” was short for “potato” and she wanted a plastic peeler.

Like Jack and the Beanstalk, I nearly always came home with stuff she did not want.

Ultimately, she* found a more successful method — telling me what to get. Which is why two grown women were acting out the

ancient rite of tell-and-fetch in a supermarket. “Find me a sympathy card,” she said in a casual way. Every now and then, it strikes home my parents are approaching the age where death columns are as interesting as births and marriages. And sympathy cards are almost as common as birthdays.

It took a while to find the card display along from vegetables and frozen meats.

“Sympathy” was at the opposite end of “Wow! You’re One!” It came after “Birthdays — general,” “Engagement” and “Wedding.” The cards ran on to “Baby,” “Anniversary,” “Sorry You’re Leaving,” “New Home,” “Retirement,” and (this was getting warm) “Get Well.” After “Get Well,” I found a startling recent addition to the card stand, “NonRecovery.” Following life’s natural course, the cards flowed straight from there to “Sympathy.” Card manufacturers really pull out the stops for “Sympathy.” They go out of their way to be tasteless with lots of silver paint and trite rhymes about gates to heaven. It is as if death is so embarrassing, they want to dress it up to look like a Christmas fairy. By the time I had sifted out a reasonably innocuous sympathy, my mother had vanished. I searched the aisles for her. No luck. So I

paid for the card and headed outside.

That was when I caught her holding the baby out in the car park. She had a dreamy expression as if the baby, its head resting like a weary pumpkin against her neck, had made her somehow complete. “My God!” I thought for an instant. “She’s stolen it!”

A kaleidoscope of complications swam in front of me. How to get the baby back to its mother; how to explain my mother’s behaviour. Would she be trusted in public ever again? The baby dozed goodnaturedly against her skin. They formed a picture of deep human contentment against the asphalt and metal car park. As I walked towards them, I realised she was not the one who had been banking insanity. At worst, she had simply borrowed the baby to relieve it from the stuffy heat of the Ford. The teenage boy had vanished, but the other baby was still wriggling in its cot.

“Their big brother was having an awful time,” she said.

“Neither of them would suck their dummies, so I asked if I could help. He said to hold this one while he got their mother from the shop.” A small, dark woman, almost transparent with exhaustion, emerged from the supermarket. She heaved herself into the back seat, lifted the wriggly twin from its cot and put it to her right breast. My mother parted with the other twin somewhat reluctantly. She lowered it reverently into the woman’s arms, as if it was a casket of emeralds. The transparent woman scooped it up the way she would a bag of shopping. “I’ve got five more at home,” she said, with a weary smile. Just before the baby settled to its mother’s other breast, it turned its head toward my mother, rolled its bleary eyes, and poked out its tongue absentmindedly. I got the feeling it had quite enjoyed its part in the robbery.