And here it is...the conclusion of the short story, Baby Doll Magic. I hope you all enjoyed reading it!
Part Two
“Michael, I’d like you to meet Julie. My mom.”Two months later, the stranger in the shoe store had become my best friend, my confidante. The man I had waited so long for. He encased my mother’s finely-boned hand in his, lingering only a moment in the formal greeting. I watched in surprise as he abandoned the gesture and swept her into an embrace, his easy affection making the movement fluid and almost dance-like. It seemed to come without hesitation, as though he was greeting a friend.
My mother’s brown eyes widened in surprise, creeping back down to size as she relaxed into Michael’s arms and returned his embrace. When they separated, my mother’s face was flushed and smiling shyly.
“Ms. Harper,” Michael said, his deep voice edged with eagerness. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you.” He paused, a look of concern crossing his face. Lines etched his forehead as his eyebrows rose, creeping toward his hairline. “Hopefully I didn’t catch you too off-guard. I don’t usually hug people the first time I meet them, but,” Michael’s smile returned as he looked at my mother, “I just feel like I know you.”
“Please, call me Julie,” my mother replied, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ears. At forty-four, my mother’s dewy youth had matured into a refined glow––like a gemstone smoothed and shined by the slow, abrasive processes of a tumbler. Lessons of life had made her wiser, though she had never allowed them to make her bitter or harsh. To me, she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
“And please, don’t apologize. I think it’s delightful,” my mother continued, studying Michael as she spoke. I could see something in her eyes, something searching and contemplative. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Michael laughed, sending a whisper of delight that drifted past my ears and tickled the skin at the nape of my neck. I loved the sound of Michael’s laughter; it was full, rich, and warm. It seemed to come from his soul. “My mother says she used to worry about me when I was little, because I would walk right up to strangers like I knew them. She was afraid I’d go up to the wrong person someday.” He paused, staring off into the middle distance at some unexpected memory. “Once, we were at the doctor’s office when she was pregnant with my sister, and she says I went right up to this teenaged girl in the waiting room and shoved a baby doll in her lap.” Michael shook his head. “Don’t really know why, but the girl started crying, and then I crawled up into her lap with the baby doll and gave her a hug.”
Beside me, my mother had grown still––so motionless that I couldn’t even detect her breathing. The only movement came from a tear that had escaped, slowly tracing the curve of her cheek as she stared in silent recognition of the man who stood in front of her.
**********
The tiny boy in the waiting room could have never known the gravity of that one word.
Baby.
For him, it was a newly-learned sound associated with the shape and form of the toy he had just given to Julie. He had no concept of the battle raging in Julie’s heart as she sat alone in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, no inkling of the newly-formed life growing in her belly.
No one knew.
And no one was supposed to ever have known. At least, that was what Julie had decided when she’d taken the bus downtown that morning, walking the last few blocks to the doctor’s office. The doctor’s office where she waited to discuss an abortion, to figure out how to get rid of the complication she was now facing.
She was seventeen. How on Earth could she ever consider having a baby? Her parents would never understand, and she would end up sitting right here, anyway. This was simply taking control of the inevitable. This was the responsible thing to do.
Right?
Julie’s decision had been made. The baby would be taken care of, and no one would ever have to know. Her parents would have no reason to be shamed, the boyfriend she no longer saw would never have to become a father. Julie would be able to go on with her life as planned, and no one would ever find out her secret.
But the bright blue eyes of the tiny boy could see something no one else did, and what he saw ripped at her soul.
The fissure started small, a slow creep down the tenuous defenses she had built around her heart. Inching down, down, gaining speed and strength until the crack had become undeniable and irreparable. The defenses were broken, the damage was done.
Julie heard sobs escape her lips before she could capture them, tears burning her throat and eyes. She was betrayed, and now the heartache she had been so carefully denying had been exposed by a child’s whisper of one little word.
Baby.
The little boy’s bright eyes searched hers, growing wide as his grin wavered. Those eyes, though, never left her face as he reached up and crawled into her lap. A small giggle slipped past his lips as he buried his face in her chest, his chubby arms wrapped around her. Julie could smell the sweet smell of his skin, could feel his entire body move with each breath he took.
In, out. In, out.
“Michael, what are you doing? You know better than to run off like that.” A voice scolded.
Julie blinked through her tears to see the bewildered face of a young woman, reaching out for the boy sitting on her lap. Blonde hair was swept back in a ponytail, the blue of her son’s eyes was mirrored in her own. Julie noticed that the woman’s belly had the telltale swell of early pregnancy.
“Is he yours?” Julie asked, swiping at the moisture on her cheeks.
“Yes, he is. I’m so sorry,” the woman said, her voice a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. There was worry there, too––the worry of a mother who loved her child and feared for his safety.
“He likes to run off. I swear, he’ll just run up to to anybody and start jabbering.” She shook her head, a frown darkening her lovely face. “Michael, come on now and leave this poor girl alone,” she instructed, taking her son’s little body in her arms. “I’m sorry he bothered you,” she said again.
Julie watched as the woman turned away, wondering if she knew what a special child she held. Wondering if the little boy would ever know that he had been a gift and that he had saved the life of another child.
**********
My mother had never given me the details of her pregnancy, and though I often had questions, I never pressed the issue. I sensed something there that made her uncomfortable, something she never seemed quite ready to tell me. I wanted to know, but I also wanted my mother to be able to give me all of the answers to all of those unasked questions in her own time.
Michael’s story had pierced little holes in the wall she’d built around that part of herself, and after we left his house the night of that first meeting, she told me everything. It certainly wasn’t easy for her to tell me, just as it wasn’t easy for me to hear.
Who, after all, would want to hear that their teenaged mother had, at first, planned to abort them?
Who would want to have to tell their daughter that the grandparents who now so openly doted on her were once in denial of her existence?
The life my mother had to carve out for us had seemed doomed from the start. After she left the doctor’s office that day, still pregnant and holding a fistful of prenatal care pamphlets, she had gone home to tell her parents everything. Despite their fierce insistence for tolerance, their avoidance of controversy at all costs proved to outweigh their open-mindedness. The pregnancy of an unwed teenager was, by very definition, controversial, and something they felt unprepared to handle. They were unsupportive of my mother’s decision to keep me, intent on convincing her that a baby would only ruin her life.
And theirs.
My grandparents so greatly feared being judged by their peers that they rejected their daughter when she needed them most. The baby she carried was the embodiment of a challenge, forcing them to address their own lack of true direction. It took nearly a decade of distance and silence for my grandparents to finally realize what a mistake they’d made.
The wheels of that yellow plastic dump truck had collided with the bright red shoes of a troubled young girl to break through invisible barriers. The simplicity of youth collided with the complexity of adult-sized responsibilities. The bright blue eyes of a little blonde boy looked into her heart and saw the possibilities she couldn’t, while the voice of that tiny stranger spoke for me when I was voiceless. The weight of the baby doll in my mother’s arms gave shape to the realization that the beginning of my life would not end hers, but truly begin it.
The life that was saved that day in the doctor’s office was, by turns, the destruction as well as the redemption of a family. That family––my family––had so long lived under the fragile shelter of its own disfunction that the feather-light weight of a plastic pregnancy test proved to be a burden too demanding. The broken pieces that scattered were slowly collected, slowly repaired––set in motion by the gentle touch and whispered words of a tiny stranger.
Baby.
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