"Sorry, Mama." He said it fervently enough that it might cover for what he said before.
"Before you ask, no, you can't keep it."
"It's real little, Mama."
"They get bigger."
"I don't want to keep it, Mama, I just don't want it to die."
"I know that," said Mama. "I'm thinking. Okay, I've thought. Take it over to Miz Smitcher. She's a nurse."
"Don't you want to take it?" said Ceese.
"No, I don't," said Mama. "That baby was conceived in sin and left to die in shame. Don't want no sin or shame in my house."
Ceese wanted to yell at her that the baby didn't commit any sins and the baby had nothing to be ashamed of, and what about "Even as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren" and "suffer little children to come unto me"? But he wasn't so stupid as to throw Bible verses into Mama's face.
She'd have ten more to answer him with, and no supper as punishment for blasphemy or whatever religious felony she convicted him of. The most common one was failing to honor his father and mother, even though he was the politest kid he knew of. Or maybe just the most beat-down.
Not wishing any further argument with Mama, Ceese walked to the gap in the fence they always used to get between Miz Smitcher's house and their own. It wasn't a gate—it was just a gap where two separate fences had sagged apart. And now that he was there, he realized that holding a baby made it a lot harder to squeeze through. He ended up holding the baby ahead of him in one hand, and he near dropped it.
He got through just in time. Miz Smitcher was a night-shift nurse, and she was heading out the front door to her car when Ceese started banging on the back.
"What is it?" she said. "I got no time right now for—"
Seeing the baby changed her whole attitude. "Please God, let that not be yours."
"Found it," said Ceese. "Covered with ants up in that little valley on Cloverdale. Mama said take it to you."
"Why? Does she think it's mine?" said Miz Smitcher.
Miz Smitcher sighed. "Let's get that baby to the hospital."
Ceese made as if to hand the baby to her.
She recoiled. "I got to drive, boy! You got a baby seat in your pocket? No? Then you coming along to hold that child."
Ceese didn't argue. Seemed like once he picked that baby up, he couldn't get nobody else to take it no matter what he said or did.
Chapter 4
COPROCEPHALIC It irritated Ura Lee, the way folks just assumed that because she was a nurse, she'd take care of their problems, no matter what. Found a baby in a field? Why, give it to the nurse lady! Never mind that she's never had a baby in her life and never worked with newborns on the job.
Only people I ever diapered were Alzheimer's patients and stroke victims. Madeline Tucker, now, she's taken care of four sons, she's got diapering down to a science, not to mention bathing and feeding babies. She's got a car at home, no job that she's already running late for, and it's her boy found the baby. But it never crosses her mind to take the baby to the hospital herself, does it?
Because Ura Lee Smitcher is a nurse, so it's her job.
"Fasten your seat belt," she told Ceese.
When he didn't obey, she glared at him. He was moving his head and shoulders in a weird way.
It finally dawned on her that he was trying to snake his head through the shoulder strap.
"Use your hands, child, or do you think God stuck them on the ends of your arms so you could count to ten without getting lost?"
"I'm holding the baby!" Ceese protested.
"Your lap is holding the baby," said Ura Lee. "Use your head."
"I was," Ceese murmured as he let go of the baby and pulled the seatbelt across his middle.
Of course, the baby's head flopped down and hung like fruit from a tree. Ura Lee reached over and supported the head. "You don't just let go of the head, you want to break its neck?"
"You said to... I was just..."
"What were you doing with Raymo? Smoking something made you stupid?"
At first she thought he was being smart-mouthed and she was about to smack him when she saw that his eyes were glistening. It occurred to her that maybe this boy had been called stupid a few times too often.
His seatbelt fastened, he got his hand back under the baby's head, and she was free to shift into gear. She backed the car out of the carport and onto Burnside, then headed for Coliseum and then La Cienega. She drove gently, because she wasn't sure this boy could hold on to the baby. It looked like he was being so gentle that he couldn't get a decent grip on it.
"You sure you got no idea where that baby comes from?" she asked.
"I know exactly where it came from," said Ceese coldly.
"All right then," she said. "Who's the mother?"
"How should I know?"
"You said—"
"They showed us a movie in P.E.," said Ceese scornfully. "But it didn't tell us how to figure out who's the mother of a naked ant-covered baby you find in the grass by a rusty old drainpipe. I guess they only teach that to nurses."
Well, that was an interesting reaction. Seemed like young Ceese Tucker didn't take crap from anybody. Maybe there was more to the boy than tagging along after Raymo Vine.
At a light, she reached into her purse, pulled out her cellphone, and called work to tell them she was late because she had to bring a baby to the emergency room. She was explaining it for the second time to her supervisor, who seemed to think Ura Lee was so stupid that this is the kind of excuse she'd invent for being late to work, when she realized that the car in front of her was stopping suddenly. She jammed on the brakes and saw the baby fly forward out of Ceese's arms. It hit the dashboard—with its naked butt, fortunately, instead of its head—and dropped like a rock onto the floor.
The baby lay there, silent. Not crying, not whimpering, not even squeaking.
"God have mercy on you boy, if you killed that baby!"
"Why'd you stop so fast?" Ceese shouted back at her.
"What did you want me to do, you smart-mouthed little coprocephalic? Run into the car in front of me?"
"He's breathing," said Ceese. "You got so many McDonald's wrappers on the floor it probably saved his life."
"You criticizing how I keep my car, now?" brakes without warning!"
"I couldn't make the car in front of me disappear!"
"And I couldn't repeal the law of inertia that made this baby fly out of my arms," said Ceese.
"What you yelling at me for?"
It was a question to which Ura Lee had no rational answer. "Because you're here and I'm mad," said Ura Lee. "Are you going to pick the baby up or use it as a footrest?"
He bent over and scooped it up. Clumsily, but then it's not the kind of thing people got to practice much, picking up babies off the floors of cars. The baby still didn't make a sound. Hadn't made a sound the whole time, before or after falling on the floor.
Ceese was stroking the baby. Murmuring to it. "You all right? You okay?"
He wasn't careless with this baby. She'd judged him wrong.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you," she said.
He didn't look at her.
"I was just upset and I took it out on you," she said.
"That's okay," he murmured, so soft she could hardly hear him.
"That how you accept an apology?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. "Nobody ever apologize to me before."
"Oh, now, that's just silly," she said.
"Sorry," he said.
Then again, he was the youngest, with nothing but brothers, and she didn't see Madeline or Winston doing much apologizing to their baby.
"Was that true?" she asked. "Nobody ever told you sorry?"
"Sure," he said. "My brothers. All the time. One of them hits me upside the head, he says,
'Sorry.' One of them walks by and knocks me against the wall, he says, 'Sorry.' "
"I get the idea," said Ura Lee.
"One of them comes up to me when I'm playing with a friend and pulls my pants down, undershorts and all, and flips me there where it really hurts and when I'm crying and my friend's run off home, he says, 'Sorry, Cecil.' "