Fit the Mold

Renee was fine with most of it. The app that tracked her period and shaded the days she might get pregnant in yellow. The texts to her husband, reminding him to be ready after work. The negative tests, even when they came month after month after month. 

What she couldn’t stand, where she’d made an unbearable error, was the nursery.

When they first decided to try for a baby, in her premature enthusiasm she’d staplegunned board-and-batten to the walls, then pasted neutral wallpaper above the straight wooden lines. She’d scoured upscale boutiques and thrift stores alike to find the perfect furniture. A fashionable emerald rocker, better-looking than it was comfortable. A circular crib with a neutral woodsy mobile. A plush rug in faded geometric patterns.

After her husband gave up, Renee would sit in the nursery and feel like a great weight had been wrenched from her arms. There would be no late night cradling, no patting and shushing, no toys and pacifiers scattered across the floor. It would just be Renee and her husband and an empty room full of naive hope. 

Later, Renee and the room were left behind. Solitude was mostly a blessing. The departure of her husband roused Renee past self-pity. There were other, more reliable ways to have a baby than as a devoted husband and wife.

“So I went for it,” Renee said, months later, to a ring of women at one of her parenting classes. 

“I’m not sure that’s healthy,” one of them said. Her belly expanded into the hard edge of the wooden table but she didn’t seem to feel it, or at least she didn’t mind. “Maybe you should accept you weren’t meant to have a child.”

Renee did not flip the table in response, though she considered it.

The next week, there was another parenting class. She didn’t tell anyone her story.

When the time came, she threw herself a baby shower. It was part choice, part necessity. She had no family to host it, with her sister a plane ride away and her mother dead longer than Renee could remember. Besides, she’d defied enough etiquette; what was one more broken rule? 

She invited her coworkers, women she’d worked alongside for a decade but with whom she never managed more than vague pleasantries. She attended to preparations carefully as she always did—arranging petit fours on delicate plates, hanging balloons along window frames, pouring mimosas for everyone but herself.

The women came did not necessarily like Renee, but they loved the idea of a baby. A return to their own motherhood or a symbol of innocence or a blank slate. They brought pink clothes and noisy toys tucked into glittery bags. Each one looked unpleasantly upon Renee’s flat stomach as she greeted them.

She pretended not to notice. She graciously accepted gifts, waved guests towards the snacks, passed out pens and sheets of printed paper for a game. A few women mumbled their way into departing early. The ones that stayed looked at Renee in a way that nearly, though not quite, made her regret the whole event.

That night she washed the new clothes and took them to the nursery. She pulled each item out one by one, pressing its softness to her cheek. There was a onesie with a pink giraffe embroidered across the belly, a set of pajamas scattered with pastel hearts, a pink pair of suede boots. They were all the tiniest things she’d ever held. She could cradle both shoes in one palm. It was hard to imagine something so small finally in her life, in her house, in the room that had sat quiet and empty for so long.

It didn’t matter if all the guests judged her. She was going to be a mother. A few dashes of disapproval wouldn’t change that. 

She was going to be a mother.

Renee thought it often. As she showered, as she worked, as she rolled around in bed and attempted to sleep. She was going to be a mother and then everything would be perfect. If not perfect, then at least better. A baby would make everything mean something.

She was a to-be mother until the morning her cell phone rang. She made sure to look at the time as soon as she hung up. 9:54. It was sunny outside. Her sweater was blue. She knew she’d want these details memorized, in lieu of all the normal bits of information a typical birth produced. 

The drive to the woman’s house was long on a normal day. When Renee knew her baby was at the end, it was a journey to the center of the earth. Miles bled into each other. Time melted and burned. 

Her hands shook when she knocked on the door. When it opened, there stood the woman who would make Renee’s dreams come true. She was dressed in slacks and a professional blouse. This could be a visit to a notary instead of the miracle worker Renee knew her to be.

The woman brought her through the house and to a small shed in the backyard. A wooden worktop, piled high with unfamiliar materials and tools, lined one wall. Renee could only focus on the crib tucked beneath a window—or, more importantly, what the crib held.

Renee stepped up to the wooden slats and peered down at the baby nestled among soft blankets. Her eyes were closed in peaceful sleep, her cheeks round and blushed. She looked so like all cherished newborns Renee had ever scrolled by, except better. This one was hers.

“Can I touch her?” Renee asked, nearly whispering.

“You can do what you want,” the woman said. “As long as you don’t damage her.”

Renee carefully, slowly, eased her hands beneath the doll and lifted her out of the crib. She curved her arms around it—no, around her, around her daughter. Renee drank in that fabled newborn smell. She stroked the tiny peach fuzz on the top of the daughter’s head and ran two fingers down the narrow side of one arm.

“How do you do it?” Renee asked. “She looks so—”

“Don’t say it,” the woman interrupted. “They don’t like to be confronted with reality. You need to believe as much as she does.”

Renee nodded, half-listening, entranced by the sleepy twitch of her daughter’s fingers.

“Have you decided on a name?” the woman asked, reaching for a clipboard that hung off the wall. 

“Amelia,” Renee said, and she was sure there had never been a more perfect name nor such a perfect little girl.

The woman jotted it down and returned the clipboard to its hook.

“So,” the woman said, glancing at her watch, “that’s that for now. Good luck.”

“Yes,” Renee said, because that was all she could think to say. She wanted something profound, or at least something kind to murmur at Amelia. She knew from all the books and classes how important it was to talk and sing and read books, even from the very beginning. Instead she drove home in silence, foregoing music because she hadn’t yet cleared everything explicit from her phone.

Amelia was still asleep in her car seat when she entered the nursery for the first time. Renee set her down carefully on the carpet and took a greedy moment to stare. Amelia’s cheeks were so round, her little nose so precious, her tiny fingers curled adorably against her chest. Maybe it would be better to let her sleep but Renee couldn’t wait any longer. She unbuckled Amelia and brought her to her chest. As she settled them both into the rocker, Amelia opened her eyes for the first time.

It was a slow, fluttering reveal, and Renee thought it unfair that a baby should have such long, beautiful eyelashes. There was little time for any other thought before Amelia’s round, crystal-blue eyes landed directly on Renee, and Renee began to cry.

She’d cried so many times in this room. Kneeling on the floor. Clinging to the crib railing. Evading her husband. This was the first time the tears came happily, light and silent. She nuzzled her forehead against Amelia’s and Amelia made a tiny little sound. A coo, Renee thought it was called. Most of the things she’d read slipped from her brain. It was only Amelia, Amelia, Amelia for those minutes that they cuddled.

The next sound Amelia made was not so happy, and it was the only warning Renee received before there was a loud, shrill cry right next to her ear. She startled and only just managed to keep a steady grip. Amelia's head flopped unpleasantly, drawing forth horror stories of shaken baby syndrome.

“You’re fine!” Renee said, hopping to her feet, holding Amelia tighter. “You’re okay, it’s okay.”

Renee spoke to Amelia, and also to herself. She kept this mantra up as she carried Amelia downstairs to make a bottle. It took her a few minutes of blank staring at the closed pantry to realize she had no good place to set the baby down. She’d forgotten to buy any kind of chair. 

It took a few minutes to decide but in the end, the floor would have to do. She needed both hands and time on the floor was good for a baby's development anyway. She’d read that so many times.

Renee prepared the bottle with shaky hands and an increasingly elevated heart rate. Amelia’s crying made it very hard to think. The woman should’ve given her some kind of manual, or a checklist, or anything but tossing Amelia at her and waving her out. The bottle took forever to warm and in the meantime Amelia cried louder and louder and louder, or was it only Renee’s panic that made it seem that way?

“Here,” Renee said when the bottle was done. She scooped Amelia up and pressed the bottle to her mouth. Milk dribbled against her tongue as she kept on crying, and it was only with a few taps along her bottom lip that she finally closed her mouth and began to drink.

It was a warning, Renee realized later, that neither of them had any idea what they were doing.

Amelia cried, hard and often, and Renee never knew what she was trying to say. She always sounded hungry even when she’d just eaten, and she always sounded like she had gas, and she always sounded like she hated Renee. 

Renee tried to read books, but she needed both hands and Amelia cried if either one left her.

Renee tried to settle her down for a nap in the crib, but she could never figure out when Amelia was tired. She cried either way.

By the end of their first week together, Renee was immune to the smell of spit up and poop. She was running on a cumulative total of eight hours of sleep and she hadn’t showered since she’d brought Amelia home. She didn’t see how she would ever wash herself again. A bouncer and a swing had been ordered and delivered but Amelia hated both. Her cries were so loud and persistent that Renee preferred being filthy to listening to even an extra minute of screaming.

On the eighth day, Renee changed into clean clothes, wiped down her armpits, and doused herself in perfume, all while Amelia cried in her car seat. 

“I’m sorry,” Renee told her once they were in the car and Renee didn’t have to look at her. As she drove, the cries finally, at last, stopped. Something about the car must’ve been soothing. Amelia was asleep when Renee unhooked her seat and carried it to the front door of the woman’s house.

When the woman answered, she kept the door mostly-shut and peered out from the small opening.

“Yes?”

“I don’t want her,” Renee said, holding out the car seat. “Take it back.”

The woman’s smile, half-shadowed, was unkind.

“That’s not how this works.”

“Make it work,” Renee said, but the words didn't come out properly before she was on her knees, curled over the top of Amelia’s car seat and sobbing.

“Call your mother,” the woman said and shut the door.

When Renee cried all her tears out, she knocked on the door again. This time, the woman didn’t answer.

“My mother’s dead,” Renee told the door and marched back to the car.

Renee threw her body into the driver’s seat, turned her keys, buckled herself up, and took the wheel with both hands. When the time came to turn around and reverse, her eyes instead found the car seat she’d left outside the woman’s house. She’d made it, she could deal with it. She didn’t have to craft such a miserable doll. She could’ve made a sweet baby that hardly cried. She could’ve done better.

Renee was crying again when she returned to the car seat.

“Please,” she told Amelia, who had somehow slept through the entire thing. “Please help me keep you.”

Renee took Amelia home. She set Amelia down, yet again in the car seat, and plunged straight into the shower. With the water nearly to scalding, she scrubbed her skin with more force than necessary and lathered her hair. When she was, ostensibly, clean, she did it again, delaying getting out of the shower until the water ran cold.

When Renee emerged, Amelia was awake. Her wide eyes followed Renee as she toweled off and then stepped up to the sink.

“You can cry,” Renee told her, slathering on the facial moisturizer she hadn’t used in eight days. “I’ll get to you when I can.”

Amelia didn’t cry. She yawned.

Amelia didn’t cry then. She cried fifteen minutes later. Renee fed her a bottle, changed her diaper, and plunked her right back in her car seat. Then she went for an aimless drive, and Amelia didn’t cry during that car ride either.

It might’ve been the world’s smallest victory, especially with Renee probably too sleep-deprived to drive properly, but it was also a turning point.

At home, Renee fell into her phone. She searched baby cries too much and baby only likes car seat and baby adoption. She read forums and articles and eBooks. She’d done all this before but it felt different, now, with Amelia sleeping against her chest, or Amelia crying in her bouncer, or Amelia crying on the floor.

On the tenth day, Renee put a fussy Amelia in her crib and fell asleep on the floor.

On the eleventh day, Renee took Amelia for a walk in the stroller.

On the fourteenth day, Renee read Amelia a book while she sat in her bouncer.

All the things Renee wanted to do with Amelia slowly became possible, and, better, so did the things she wanted to do for herself. She stocked up on snacks and learned to eat with one hand. She broke her no-television rule, though she still tried to keep Amelia turned away from it. She stroked Amelia’s back while Amelia slept on her chest.

She looked down at Amelia's face, at the pink patches over her cheeks, at her lips suckling on air. Watching, drinking it in, better rested than she had been in two weeks. Someone could be reaching into her chest and squeezing.

On the thirtieth day, someone knocked on the front door.

Renee answered with spit-up drenching her shirt, Amelia in one arm and a mostly-finished bottle in the other. She would’ve ignored the knock but the woman called through the door, too.

“What?” Renee asked, pretending her heart hadn’t suddenly launched an attack against her sternum. “I’m busy.”

“Your month is up,” the woman said. She put both hands out. “You were meant to come to my house, but you’re not the first to forget.”

Renee stared at the woman’s open palms, at her fingers threaded with wrinkles.

Before, a month sounded better than nothing. Now, Renee couldn’t understand why.

“I’m not giving her back,” Renee said, pressing Amelia tightly against her.

“You never had her,” the woman said. “Look.”

Despite herself, she did.

The warm, pink-cheeked baby in her arms was gone. There were no eyelashes, no fuzzy hair, no blue in her eyes. She was a gray lump of shaped clay. The little nose Renee had kissed was only a bit of carved polymer.

“Bring her back,” Renee said, holding Amelia out, but the words disappeared beneath a keen of grief and loss. Her own cry, worse than any Amelia had ever loosed. The woman bore it better than Renee ever did. Her face remained stoic as she took Amelia from Renee's hands.

“I can,” she said. “For my usual fee.”

She tucked Amelia under one arm, carelessly, as if Amelia wasn’t precious.

“I’ve been on leave,” Renee said. Each word cost her precious breath, breath which she could not begin to recover as long as she was unable to look away from her baby. The notched fingers were gray but still so dear and tiny. “I won’t get paid for a while.”

“Come back when you have the money.” The woman patted Amelia’s head where it stuck out against her side. “She’s not going anywhere.”