I twisted the knob but hesitated to open the door. His cries were strong, desperate. They weren’t the high-pitched squeals like a baby’s cry for milk or to have his diaper changed, but deep in his gut, a low, steady moan, like a dying man, as if he already knew, already sensed that his mother was gone and that sudden awareness was slowly killing him.
The front door slammed shut, startling me, and I quickly snatched my hand off the knob.
“Oh, Stephan’s crying,” he said and brushed past me into his room.
Stephan. His name was Stephan.
I lingered at the threshold and watched as he took the boy from the small Hot Wheels bed and rocked him.
He was much bigger than I had imagined. His feet dangled just past his father’s belt buckle. I couldn’t remember if he’d ever told me the boy’s age. There were only the pictures in his phone from when he and his ex were still together and living in Philadelphia. Stephan was only five or six months old then. Old enough to sit up, utter single syllables, and possibly even stand—if he held onto someone’s leg or a flattened cushion on the couch or the dulled corner of an end table—but not quite able to walk. He was still too top-heavy. His body needed time to grow into his head—time lost when his mother took him in the middle of the night and disappeared.
I wasn’t allowed to see Stephan when they moved in—the consequence of dating a man with a child and a selfish baby momma who could vanish without a trace. However, his baby pictures stayed with me. Even when I knew how fast children grew in a year, I still dreamt of him as a red-faced newborn wrapped in a blue blanket, wearing a blue cap on his head, and lying on my chest. I pictured the tiny little body that could fit snuggly in my arm—his head resting on my shoulder, his bottom in the crease of my elbow, his pudgy feet in the palm of my hand, where I could curl my fingers in and tickle the bottoms of his toes until he laughed so hard he passed gas.
Watching how he bounced Stephan up and down on his hip, I realized that the round, cherry bundle of joy was what he had hoped to reunite with when he received the email from his ex promising to give him his son back. He was expecting to hold his baby boy again when he left me to meet them at the Greyhound station. Instead, he found his ex standing alone and a toddler, taller than his knees and walking without the assistance of inanimate furniture, who looked up into the eyes of his father and failed to recognize them.
“I didn’t know he was here,” I said.
“Where else would he be?” he said over his shoulder as he tucked Stephan back under the covers.
“Maybe a neighbor’s house. A friend’s.” I could’ve taken care of him, I wanted to say. It would’ve come naturally to me. Like sex. Even without the experience, you still knew exactly what to do once it was in your hands, right? How to position your bodies so that you were both comfortable.
I could’ve kept Stephan for however long he needed. Fed him sweets and taught him nursery rhymes so that he would feel comfortable with me. Tell him stories of an important trip his mother was about to embark on so that neither of us grew suspicious of her sudden disappearance. All the while, unbeknownst to Stephan or me, his father would solicit the help of someone else—maybe a co-worker or drinking buddy—with a similar baby momma issue, who could sympathize with his actions and help him get rid of the body. And then, once all evidence of her was erased, we could get back together, I’d move in, and the three of us could be a family, pretending there was never a fourth person in the equation.
That way was less messy for me.
“I mean, what if he found her?” I asked.
“Watch him until I get back,” he said, dodging my question. He left to retrieve the box spring and drag it down to the dumpster.
Stephan’s eyes were still open, though not enough to signify that he was fully conscious. His heavy eyelids hinted at being on the brink of sleep, but the furrow in his brow suggested he was questioning who I was and why I stood in the doorway staring at him. Did he think he was dreaming or had he heard what I’d said about his mother and wanted to understand? Could two-year-olds comprehend the meaning of death? Did they know it was final? That death meant someone was never coming back?
Before I could talk myself out of it, I let myself in and sat at the foot of his bed. The mattress was thin and sunk down to the floor under my weight, bringing my knees level with my chest.
“Hi.” I reached out and touched his leg. He didn’t flinch or draw back, but the room still felt cold. Maybe it was the ice-blue coat of paint on the walls or the fact that his eyes still looked open, although I was sure he’d fallen asleep by then.
“I’m a friend of your—” The permanent frown on his face stopped me from saying “dad’s.” It was the same frown, I imagined, he’d given his father when they met again for the first time—a look of disbelief that he or I could be anything but strangers.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” I said, and a sudden draft sent a surge of electricity through my body and raised all the hairs on my arms. I scanned the room, expecting to find his mother’s angry ghost. Instead, his father leaned against the door, having returned from outside.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
“Are we taking him?”
He shook his head.
“We can’t leave him here alone. Who knows how long we’ll be gone? What if he wakes up again?” What if he woke the neighbors? What if they called the cops? What if the cops came and found Stephan home alone? No parents, no babysitter, but an ever-present stench of something recently dead.
“We’re just dumping the suitcase.” He rolled his eyes. I could tell he was getting annoyed with me. I was being too worrisome. “You’re such a nag,” he used to joke back when our relationship was less complicated. Naggy, an unwelcomed nickname he’d given me when I complained too much about his hot apartment and the fact that he never wore more than a robe and boxers whenever I visited.
Sometimes I wondered if my constant whining was the reason he never made us official. Now that I knew his secret and held the power to send him to death row and take his son from him permanently, did he regret inviting me back into his life? Did he regret introducing me to his mess now that I was making it too difficult to clean it up?
“We can’t just dump it anywhere,” I tried to rationalize. “Doesn’t she have family?”
“She doesn’t have anybody. Nobody knows she’s here. She said she was renting some guy’s basement before she moved down.” He shrugged and sighed. “But she lies, so I don’t even know.”
I looked down at Stephan, still asleep, or at least pretending to be. “Well, regardless, your neighbors have seen her. If we just dump the suitcase anywhere, the police will eventually find it, and if they show her picture on the news, it could lead back to you.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“We go far. Virginia, maybe. Or at least the state line. That’s about an hour’s drive.”
“This late?” he asked.
“No traffic.”
He turned toward the hallway, swinging his arms back and forth and pacing in a small circle. “Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll get the suitcase. You take him. We’ll drive my car.” I wanted to protest taking his car, but he raised his hand to silence me and left before I could say anything else.
Stephan was breathing heavily, but I feared that if I lifted his chin, I’d find his eyes still partially open, staring down at me with distrust. I tucked the comforter around him like a cocoon and scooped him into my arms. It felt too natural to lay him on my chest and position his head in the crook of my neck as if I’d done it many times before. His steady breathing paused for a moment as if he noticed a change and needed to investigate the new environment to be sure it was safe. Eventually, his body relaxed, and his soft snore returned. Looking at his face—his smooth skin, his rose-colored chubby cheeks, his flat nose slightly bigger than my middle knuckle—I wondered if he was still young enough to forget his mother. If I stayed around long enough, held him more, kissed him the way she did, and sang sweet lullabies until he fell asleep, would he start to believe that I was her, that I had always been a part of his life?
© 2016-2023 Nortina Simmons
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Screaming
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Accessory
Drive
To Live
Murderer
Odor
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