Pinching Babies (Janie 2)

Sometimes, on days like this, when the fragility gets too much, Janie has bad thoughts. She sees a fat contented baby in his mother’s arms, and she wants to pinch him, or make a face - a glaring horrifying face, the kind of freak show, teeth baring freakazoid face that will make the baby scream. And then she wants to walk away all dainty on her heels while the mother carries on a preposterous monologue for several blocks consisting of “What? What? Did something bother you? Are you hurt? While the baby, helpless to explain, pierces his mother’s ear drums with a wail of discontent, fear and frustration born of the maddening inability to communicate what he has witnessed: chiefly, that nothing is as it appears to his keeper, and the world is a very very scary place.

She never follows through with her devilish thoughts, just as her mother never actually bit the postman. She just thinks about it, and wonders how this entirely preposterous set-up continues to trundle along in which perfectly helpless infants are born to pain-ridden sleep deprived women who feel like refrigerators whose doors have been opened on the wrong side.

Janie believes that this tidy distinction - that she only silently considers that which her mother whispered into her 5 year old ears - makes a world of difference. It is, she reasons, the difference between sanity (hers) and tyranny (her mother’s).  “I just want to knock her down!” her mother used to whisper at the top of the escalator in the Mall - think about it, Janie - the packages would go everywhere - it would be mayhem. The smallest nudge....”

No, Janie is not her mother. She has filled her heart with gratitude and battled her demons into exhaustion. She understands why her father drank and why her mother spiraled. These things happen. Forgiveness is a suture on the wound of growing up.  The smug-faced child and his skinny mother are not yet out the hotel door. There’s still time. He’s looking at her from under his expensive French tuque. He's cocked his head to examine her, already haughty at what? Four months? She wipes her top teeth dry with her index finger and curls her lip up high - where it sticks, bulbous on the teeth - she forces her top teeth out over her bottom lip and widens her eyes, as a clown might, if it was doing a bitter imitation of a drunk - or a child cocking his head. Just as the glass doors shimmy to a close, Janie hears a wail.  “What?” the mother says, “What?”

Janie turns back toward the elevator. All better.