wildscape. literary journal

Baby Talk
by Diana Fenves

            The baby was born speaking. Not just “no,” “mine,” “yours,” but also, “post-industrial decay,” and “carbon footprint, traces of which are present in the changing azaleas.” He talks with his little baby fist in his mouth. He talks even with my nipple clamped between his gums. “Gulp, gulp, gulp, why do you disappear in my closed-eye darkness?” And, “when will color arrive?” “Tired, tired, tired, rage of never being held again;” “Are you worried about my pain?”
            He is cutest when he’s sound asleep. His nose is full of heavy, mucusy breaths. Little soft coos. I like it when he is sweet like other babies.
            He screams obscenities when I place him on his belly. I don’t know where he learned these words. He must have picked them up in the womb. He has eavesdropped on all my worst days.
            “I miss your heartbeat, gulp, gulp, scream.” he tells me. “Why is daddy afraid of being kind?” he asks. He rambles. He’s very concerned about his body. “My legs are cold jelly. My ear fur shivers. Please, take me flying.” He is full of nonsense. I swaddle him, but nothing quiets him. He grabs my hair with his hands. He thinks the dog will eat him.
            When I can’t take it anymore, I pick the baby up in my arms and stick a boob in his mouth. It’s the only trick I have. I imagine our heartbeats are syncing up; he’s afraid, but so am I. He cries, but so do I. He’s picking up words, and I’m losing them. Everyday my vocabulary shrinks. My mouth hangs open as I try to think of it, the word I’m missing. I drool puddles in my short sleeps. I feed him tiny bits of my secret self. I am reminded of all the animals who nurse their young right before they die. Are they also this tired? He wakes me up in the small hours. “Don't forget me in the night; there is only you,” the baby says.
            Everyone says babies who talk like this at birth need therapy. Intervene early, they say. He’s at risk of living too fast. He might become an adolescent toddler, a middle-aged high schooler, a jaded ancient at only twenty-three. He could turn out like one of those ferals— radicalized and bearded, out there living with the monkeys. Would the baby be happy, in the woods? Should we start a college fund for him or spend everything we have now on better schools, schools that specialize in babies who talk?
            “Not to worry,” says the pediatrician when I break down crying at his check-up. Everything worries me. I cry even harder. The baby doesn’t care that I’m crying. He glares at his doctor; the baby doesn’t like anyone but me. 
            “There there, ma’am,” says the pediatrician, “it’s going to be fine. Growing up is forgetting. Many of these things: reflux, gas, teething, fear of reef deterioration…he’ll grow out of it. He won’t remember any of it.”
            “But I will, doctor, I will.”
             The baby asks the pediatrician how come all the dinosaurs in the waiting room are dead. The doctor finds it so easy to ignore him. I think he must see too many patients. All the doctor ever does is weigh him. “At this stage,” the pediatrician says, “they are like house plants. Keep watering him and take him outside. They like outside. But don’t let the sun touch him. And keep giving him vitamin D drops.”
             The baby looks up at me with my dark eyes and says, “Outside, yes, take me. Why is no one helping my tall trees? Who gives pacifiers to the oaks?” He’s right, I have failed the oaks in some unnameable way. Motherhood, the mommy blogs tell me, involves a great deal of failure.  
             Outside the pediatrician’s office are landslides, wild fires and mass shootings. I try to keep the smoke out of the baby’s lungs as I carry him to the car. All the other adults in the parking lot are screaming. I want to throw things and yell, too, but I can’t do that in front of the baby. Me, I have to model emotional regulation and democracy, no matter how I really feel. Everything is burning; the asphalt in the parking lot is melting under my feet. It's lucky that I parked so close. I strain my back, strapping the baby into the carseat. The baby has so many questions. I can’t answer his questions. He wants—he needs—he cries. I can’t even speak any more. All I can do is give him kisses.

about the author // Diana Fenves