Just Prompts: Angry Baby Picture
[1993]
"Momma."
She didn't answer, lost as she was in the cramped handwriting of the text before her. One hand stirred the soup on the stove in absent rhythm as the other turned pages with delicate reverence for the book's age and fragility. Ben went for the sleeve of the stirring arm.
"Momma, momma."
"Vos?" she muttered, pulling her sleeve back out of his small grip. "What, Ben?"
"Rachel's crying, momma."
Zippy exhaled shortly and tore her eyes from the tiny script of the old book to her five-year-old son's earnest face. "Yup, she's five months old, she tends to do that. Especially at two a.m. to wake up Mom and Dad," she said with big eyes for Ben's sake. He didn't so much as smile back at her, and Zippy sighed and set the book down on the counter.
It was only a few steps to the center of the living room floor, where the blanket was spread and where Rachel was sitting and, yes, crying her tiny little head off. A few steps: long enough to feel a stab of guilt. She hadn't even heard her daughter's thin little wails; that was automatic Bad Mother points, yeah? Oy. But then that was why she'd told Ben to play with her, so she could be free to make supper...
Irritation mingled with the guilt-- she'd fed and changed Rachel before putting her down, no more than ten minutes gone, what now? Always something with this one. Ben had not been such a worry in five years as this one was in five months.
Zippy grunted as she bent down and caught her daughter up in her arms, hefting her up onto her chest. One hand checked Rachel's diaper in a practiced motion. Gornisht, nothing. "So stop making trouble already," she murmured to the baby. In answer Rachel cried louder.
"Oy. Come on, shhh, hsttt, sha, shat, shvaygn, Rachel. As a favor to your mother's heart. Sha, shat, shvaygn, shalom..."
She remembered her mother murmuring that, in a sing-song tone of voice, to her brothers. Sha, shat, shvaygn, be still now, be quiet, peace, hush, hush, hush. Had worked like magic for her mother. Rachel was a tougher sell.
Zippy paced the small free space of the living room, patting Rachel's back, continuing the litany. She glanced at the clock as she walked, judging how long before Finn would be home. At least a half hour, which prompted a groan from her. Finn would take Rachel, make a few stupid faces at her, and she'd be all smiles in three seconds. Dammit, if Finn was home Rachel probably wouldn't be crying to begin with.
"You do it to spite me," she muttered in between sha, shat, shvaygn, shalom.
Rachel quieted for a few seconds, and Zippy started to relax, but then the baby let loose again right in her ear. The pause had only been to regain her breath, apparently. Zipporah groaned again and sank down onto the couch, shifting the child from her shoulder to her arms to cradle and rock her.
Ben had returned to a tower of blocks he was building on the floor and was wholly absorbed in his engineering efforts. She watched him for a few seconds as she tried to quiet Rachel, seeing in his small serious face the same rapt concentration she knew she often wore. Zippy smiled slightly. There was her boy, all right.
Ben was hers, and Rachel was Finn's.
Her eyes... well, they were squinted up right now in an angry little red-faced grimace, but the rest of the time, they were clear blue-gray, same as her father's. The already-abundant dark curls of her hair were Zippy's, true, but she thought it was probably the only bit of her. Early yet to tell, of course, whether Rachel would be tall and lean or short and... not-so-lean; whether she'd have her father's skill with his hands or her mother's love of knowledge... but all that was incidental. The heart, that was what mattered, and Finn had staked first claim on the tiny one beating in this little chest.
But then, she hadn't been intending for another child at all. Neither of them had. A broken condom as the sign of bashert, the will of G-d. G-d pulled some pretty dirty tricks at times. And for something fated to be, it was sure turning out to be an uphill fight all the damn way.
Forty-two was too damned old to have a newborn to deal with. Too old to be giving birth, for one thing, and just too old to be dealing with all this nonsense again. Shoot, by rights she'd already been on the edge of too old with Ben, four years ago, but at least they'd planned that one.
Rachel was G-d reminding her that all things went by His plan, and not hers.
Or so Zippy told herself in her better moments. Right now she was getting near telling the Almighty where He could put his baby-shaped little blessing.
"Come on, Rachel, shut up already." Zippy abandoned the useless sha, shat and leaned back against the couch, closing her eyes. Library had been a zoo today, a group of kids in to research something and every last one of them wanting help from the reference desk. (Her kids were damn well gonna know how to use a card catalog.) Home, and Finn had reminded her he had a gallery showing and therefore the kids were hers for the evening. So much for a quiet evening translating the German of her finally-acquired Die Geheimnisse...
Rachel was still crying, crying, crying. Zippy raised one hand to rub at her forehead and the bridge of her nose, where a headache was starting to make itself known. Rachel couldn't be hungry, not with how she'd nursed earlier... Zippy looked around until she found Rachel's pacifier. In it went into that wailing maw; a few seconds of silence and then it was out again, Rachel shaking her head like a terrier.
"Breathe, why don'tcha. Feh, you wouldn't do this for my mother, would you? No. No, you wouldn't. Bubby comes over and you are all smiles, you little terror. For your father, the same. It's only me you do this to. What, what is this? Far vos? You hold this much grudge against me for being born? Let me tell you, kid, it wasn't a party on my end either. Nine months of you kicking, and then they cut me open to get you out..."
She contemplated calling her mother. Miriam would know what to do. She'd suggest burping her, or something else self-evident, and say it in one or two words but in the tone that carried with it a world: why didn't you think of this? What am I telling you this for? You should know this! What sort of mother are you, you don't know this? What are you doing to your daughter, nu?
Jacob was the multi-linguist; Miriam the one who spoke fluent and eloquent silence. And Rachel the one whose every cry seemed to be designed to screw her over.
She could heat some formula, Zippy thought wearily. Fill a bottle. See if that would do it. She hefted Rachel onto her shoulder again and stood, headed back towards the kitchen.
The soup was bubbling over. She cursed; and then cursed again, more savagely, when she realized that the soup was spattering over the three-centuries-old leather binding of Die Geheimnisse.
She moved fast for the soup, shifting Rachel onto a hip; her knee banged against the tricky sticking-out edge of that one cupboard door in her haste. And it would be the bad knee. Pain stabbed up from her knee to her thigh, white-hot along the sciatic nerve, and she stumbled, no curse this time as the air escaped her. Her foot hit the ground and there went the leg, refusing to hold her, buckling, don't land on Rachel don't land on Rachel don't land on--
Zippy staggered ribs-first into the opposite counter, barely missing colliding with the pot full of boiling chicken noodle soup. Her arm gripped Rachel's tiny, vulnerable body even as she twisted to protect her from the impact. Still no balance; she flailed with her free arm, hand slipping on the soup-slick counter top. Somehow she ended up on her knees, breath knocked out of her, eyes watering from the pain, but Rachel uncrushed, yasher koyekh Gott.
She set her head against the oven's glass window and breathed in and out and in and out until the pain dulled, until she could set Rachel down on the kitchen floor. Then she reached up and gingerly moved the bubbling pot off the burner. Then standing up: using the stovetop for support, gritting her teeth at her knee's protests.
Zippy leaned her head back and took deep breaths, willing her heartbeat back to normal from the moment of panic that had hit as she'd realized she was falling towards a hot oven and a boiling pot with her five-month old daughter in her arms.
"Gevalt," she croaked, on reflex more than anything else. G-d forbid. Mechanically, Zippy turned off the hot burner, then ripped off one, two, three paper towels from the roll and wiped up the spattered soup from the old book, the countertop, the stove top. The book's cover was ruined. At least she'd closed it before putting it down on the counter.
Only when this was done did she feel she could look at Rachel again. Zippy swallowed and looked down at her baby, lying on the linoleum floor. Looking up at her, calmly, with Finn's eyes. She'd stopped crying entirely. As she watched, Rachel's cheeks started to dimple with a toothless grin.
Zippy hiccupped a shaky laugh and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you probably thought that was pretty funny. Well, screw you too, daughter mine."
(For the cranky baby prompt)
"Momma."
She didn't answer, lost as she was in the cramped handwriting of the text before her. One hand stirred the soup on the stove in absent rhythm as the other turned pages with delicate reverence for the book's age and fragility. Ben went for the sleeve of the stirring arm.
"Momma, momma."
"Vos?" she muttered, pulling her sleeve back out of his small grip. "What, Ben?"
"Rachel's crying, momma."
Zippy exhaled shortly and tore her eyes from the tiny script of the old book to her five-year-old son's earnest face. "Yup, she's five months old, she tends to do that. Especially at two a.m. to wake up Mom and Dad," she said with big eyes for Ben's sake. He didn't so much as smile back at her, and Zippy sighed and set the book down on the counter.
It was only a few steps to the center of the living room floor, where the blanket was spread and where Rachel was sitting and, yes, crying her tiny little head off. A few steps: long enough to feel a stab of guilt. She hadn't even heard her daughter's thin little wails; that was automatic Bad Mother points, yeah? Oy. But then that was why she'd told Ben to play with her, so she could be free to make supper...
Irritation mingled with the guilt-- she'd fed and changed Rachel before putting her down, no more than ten minutes gone, what now? Always something with this one. Ben had not been such a worry in five years as this one was in five months.
Zippy grunted as she bent down and caught her daughter up in her arms, hefting her up onto her chest. One hand checked Rachel's diaper in a practiced motion. Gornisht, nothing. "So stop making trouble already," she murmured to the baby. In answer Rachel cried louder.
"Oy. Come on, shhh, hsttt, sha, shat, shvaygn, Rachel. As a favor to your mother's heart. Sha, shat, shvaygn, shalom..."
She remembered her mother murmuring that, in a sing-song tone of voice, to her brothers. Sha, shat, shvaygn, be still now, be quiet, peace, hush, hush, hush. Had worked like magic for her mother. Rachel was a tougher sell.
Zippy paced the small free space of the living room, patting Rachel's back, continuing the litany. She glanced at the clock as she walked, judging how long before Finn would be home. At least a half hour, which prompted a groan from her. Finn would take Rachel, make a few stupid faces at her, and she'd be all smiles in three seconds. Dammit, if Finn was home Rachel probably wouldn't be crying to begin with.
"You do it to spite me," she muttered in between sha, shat, shvaygn, shalom.
Rachel quieted for a few seconds, and Zippy started to relax, but then the baby let loose again right in her ear. The pause had only been to regain her breath, apparently. Zipporah groaned again and sank down onto the couch, shifting the child from her shoulder to her arms to cradle and rock her.
Ben had returned to a tower of blocks he was building on the floor and was wholly absorbed in his engineering efforts. She watched him for a few seconds as she tried to quiet Rachel, seeing in his small serious face the same rapt concentration she knew she often wore. Zippy smiled slightly. There was her boy, all right.
Ben was hers, and Rachel was Finn's.
Her eyes... well, they were squinted up right now in an angry little red-faced grimace, but the rest of the time, they were clear blue-gray, same as her father's. The already-abundant dark curls of her hair were Zippy's, true, but she thought it was probably the only bit of her. Early yet to tell, of course, whether Rachel would be tall and lean or short and... not-so-lean; whether she'd have her father's skill with his hands or her mother's love of knowledge... but all that was incidental. The heart, that was what mattered, and Finn had staked first claim on the tiny one beating in this little chest.
But then, she hadn't been intending for another child at all. Neither of them had. A broken condom as the sign of bashert, the will of G-d. G-d pulled some pretty dirty tricks at times. And for something fated to be, it was sure turning out to be an uphill fight all the damn way.
Forty-two was too damned old to have a newborn to deal with. Too old to be giving birth, for one thing, and just too old to be dealing with all this nonsense again. Shoot, by rights she'd already been on the edge of too old with Ben, four years ago, but at least they'd planned that one.
Rachel was G-d reminding her that all things went by His plan, and not hers.
Or so Zippy told herself in her better moments. Right now she was getting near telling the Almighty where He could put his baby-shaped little blessing.
"Come on, Rachel, shut up already." Zippy abandoned the useless sha, shat and leaned back against the couch, closing her eyes. Library had been a zoo today, a group of kids in to research something and every last one of them wanting help from the reference desk. (Her kids were damn well gonna know how to use a card catalog.) Home, and Finn had reminded her he had a gallery showing and therefore the kids were hers for the evening. So much for a quiet evening translating the German of her finally-acquired Die Geheimnisse...
Rachel was still crying, crying, crying. Zippy raised one hand to rub at her forehead and the bridge of her nose, where a headache was starting to make itself known. Rachel couldn't be hungry, not with how she'd nursed earlier... Zippy looked around until she found Rachel's pacifier. In it went into that wailing maw; a few seconds of silence and then it was out again, Rachel shaking her head like a terrier.
"Breathe, why don'tcha. Feh, you wouldn't do this for my mother, would you? No. No, you wouldn't. Bubby comes over and you are all smiles, you little terror. For your father, the same. It's only me you do this to. What, what is this? Far vos? You hold this much grudge against me for being born? Let me tell you, kid, it wasn't a party on my end either. Nine months of you kicking, and then they cut me open to get you out..."
She contemplated calling her mother. Miriam would know what to do. She'd suggest burping her, or something else self-evident, and say it in one or two words but in the tone that carried with it a world: why didn't you think of this? What am I telling you this for? You should know this! What sort of mother are you, you don't know this? What are you doing to your daughter, nu?
Jacob was the multi-linguist; Miriam the one who spoke fluent and eloquent silence. And Rachel the one whose every cry seemed to be designed to screw her over.
She could heat some formula, Zippy thought wearily. Fill a bottle. See if that would do it. She hefted Rachel onto her shoulder again and stood, headed back towards the kitchen.
The soup was bubbling over. She cursed; and then cursed again, more savagely, when she realized that the soup was spattering over the three-centuries-old leather binding of Die Geheimnisse.
She moved fast for the soup, shifting Rachel onto a hip; her knee banged against the tricky sticking-out edge of that one cupboard door in her haste. And it would be the bad knee. Pain stabbed up from her knee to her thigh, white-hot along the sciatic nerve, and she stumbled, no curse this time as the air escaped her. Her foot hit the ground and there went the leg, refusing to hold her, buckling, don't land on Rachel don't land on Rachel don't land on--
Zippy staggered ribs-first into the opposite counter, barely missing colliding with the pot full of boiling chicken noodle soup. Her arm gripped Rachel's tiny, vulnerable body even as she twisted to protect her from the impact. Still no balance; she flailed with her free arm, hand slipping on the soup-slick counter top. Somehow she ended up on her knees, breath knocked out of her, eyes watering from the pain, but Rachel uncrushed, yasher koyekh Gott.
She set her head against the oven's glass window and breathed in and out and in and out until the pain dulled, until she could set Rachel down on the kitchen floor. Then she reached up and gingerly moved the bubbling pot off the burner. Then standing up: using the stovetop for support, gritting her teeth at her knee's protests.
Zippy leaned her head back and took deep breaths, willing her heartbeat back to normal from the moment of panic that had hit as she'd realized she was falling towards a hot oven and a boiling pot with her five-month old daughter in her arms.
"Gevalt," she croaked, on reflex more than anything else. G-d forbid. Mechanically, Zippy turned off the hot burner, then ripped off one, two, three paper towels from the roll and wiped up the spattered soup from the old book, the countertop, the stove top. The book's cover was ruined. At least she'd closed it before putting it down on the counter.
Only when this was done did she feel she could look at Rachel again. Zippy swallowed and looked down at her baby, lying on the linoleum floor. Looking up at her, calmly, with Finn's eyes. She'd stopped crying entirely. As she watched, Rachel's cheeks started to dimple with a toothless grin.
Zippy hiccupped a shaky laugh and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you probably thought that was pretty funny. Well, screw you too, daughter mine."
(For the cranky baby prompt)
