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I am watching television…..
Seeing the young mother of a new baby girl
Hold her daughter, lying on the bed with her
Trying to condense what would be a lifetime
Of precious Mother-Daughter advice
Into a few well-thought out high points.
She whispers softly to her daughter,
Her eyes glittering with pooled tears
So ready to burst and flow.
The messages are important, and have a higher priority than
The grief she feels
At leaving her baby…..
Its' imperative to implant those little seeds, now;
Taking full advantage of the tabla rosa the new child is.
She believes her baby will remember all her mother has said
Employing it to implement a happy life, as she grows up.
Without a Mother.
The young mother can't handle the responsibility, you see…
And so she has stockpiled all the baby needs she can think of…
Literally hundreds of diapers, baby food, children's books……..
Even purchased the baby a 20 yr savings bond,
Thinking it will be a gift later in life
To convince her child she was abandoned with love.
Across town, another mother prepares to abandon her infant daughter,
As well.
She didn't hold her baby, cooing softly, telling her the mysteries of life
Mothers and daughters are bound with.
She didn't buy her any diapers…
No baby clothes,
And there was certainly no savings bond for later on.
This mother gets all fancied up,
In one of her most successful hunting dresses
Applying the last spray of perfume,
Carefully arranging the last curl.
Her 6 month old baby daughter barks out a high-pitched, raspy weak cry
Whose feeble wails stab her mothers' consciousness.
Got to shut the kid up.
Fills her bottle with paregoric and Similac,
Baby's Cocktail.
She props the infant with a towel, and
Pokes the bottle in her little mouth,
Achieving not nutrition
But silence…..
Soon……….heavy drugged sleep
That the small child cannot combat.
And as soon as the little lids get heavy
And the little rosebud mouth slackens
Mother lights up a cigarette
Turns out the lights and leaves her little girl.
Six months old, alone in a crib, sitting in the same diaper
For ten or twelve hours
While her Mama honky-tonks and carouses.
"….No kid is gonna screw up MY life…"
She thinks, as she sails out the door,
Practically skipping down the stairs.
Total darkness is so terrifying
To such a little one whose sobbing cries
Go unanswered.
She tries sitting up, to see if perhaps her Mommy has returned;
But her tiny bones are bowed with rickets
Soft……..curved too far inward
From malnutrition and deprivation
(Mommy never takes her outdoors….doesn't want her male friends to know she has a baby.)
So, Baby Girl cannot sit but a few seconds, and topples over
Beginning another pitiful crescendo of desperate crying
Thinking this will surely summon Mama.
Close to daylight,
Exhausted from intermittent druggy-weeping
Fully in the grips of an abandonment terror
During the times she is able to stay awake,
She cries her self to sleep, finally
With her tiny fuzz-covered head
Leaning against the crib bars.
She appears, at first glance
To be one of those third world nation poster babies
That get you to feel guilty and sorry enough
To ante up some cash
"for charity".
Her little head seems too large for her thin stick-limbed body
With its' large malnourished pot-belly.
Baby hardly ever feels hungry anymore.
Starving slowly does that for you,
After some time.
There are no rounded, fat chipmunk baby cheeks…
Just shockingly sunken little hollows.
Her face is wedge-shaped, skin taut on her softened bones
And the eyes…………the eyes.
Sky-blue, limpid…sinking too far into their sockets…
……..ever-searching, perpetually hopeful
That Mama will pick her up,
Hold her, coo, talk baby talk
Maybe even bathe her
And take away the raw oozing sores on her tiny scarlet
Fiery bottom.
She could do without the food…..
(She's done it for so long, now…)
But it sure would be a joyous thing
If Mama would just pick her up.
Baby drifts off into a hazy, heavy sleep
Awakened suddenly
By the door slowly opening,
The dim light in the hall
Silhouetting her Mothers' staggering form.
Baby leans her head against the rails…….
Thinking on a baby level
" Maybe she'll pick me up this time…".
The mother begins the drunken contortions
Getting undressed requires,
And falls across her bed
Limbs and mind besotted with whiskey stupor.
Baby places one tiny hand on the crib rails
(Understands that she should not cry…)
Hoping her Mama will see the signal
And respond.
"Well"….thinks Baby……
"…at least I am not alone……….
Mama is home……….."
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