Graceful Burdens (Out of Line collection) by Roxane Gay

Author:Roxane Gay [Gay, Roxane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

Hadley was the kind of patron who did not pretend why she was in the library. She didn’t go in teary-eyed or desperate with longing. She went straight to the nursery and slowly walked along the row of cribs, looking at each baby, placid in her demeanor. Her chest tightened, and she reminded herself that she was only there to borrow. She enjoyed the relief of that reminder though she knew she could never admit she felt it. The quietest, saddest-looking baby was the one she wanted. It was a girl, of course, sitting in her crib, maybe seven months old. The baby, Gemma, had big brown eyes and strong features. She would grow into a handsome woman, the kind who resented being told she was handsome because she understood that to be handsome was to be not pretty and to be not pretty was to be invisible. Hadley reached into the crib, and Gemma locked eyes with her. The baby didn’t blink or squirm as Hadley pulled Gemma into her arms. Hadley pressed her cheek against the baby’s, marveled at the softness of it. She wanted to press her lips against Gemma’s skin but restrained herself. “I’ll take this one,” she said to Sidra. Sidra nodded curtly and started to make the necessary preparations. An hour later, Hadley had a car seat, a diaper bag, and a baby. Her blood rushed hotly beneath her skin, and she wanted to run with the baby, but she did not know where she could run and not be found.

If she thought about it too hard, she would wonder why library babies were available, where they came from, and she did not want to consider such questions. As she drove home, she stared at the baby in the rearview mirror and the baby stared back, sucking on three of her fingers. “Where is your mother?” Hadley asked, and Gemma gurgled, making nonsense sounds, and then she quieted again.

Later that evening in her efficiency, Hadley sat cross-legged on her bed, tickling Gemma’s feet, which sent the baby into fits of tiny laughter. The sound was so bright and clean, a perfect sound if ever there were one. When the baby eventually fell asleep, Hadley lay on her side next to the child, watching Gemma’s chest rise and fall faster than seemed possible. The urge to run away rushed through her once more, and she realized that she did not want to run with the child because she needed to mother. She wanted to run with the child so the child’s future would not be dictated by whether or not she could mother.

Hadley never thought borrowing a baby would ease the persistent ache, the loneliness that clung to her since she turned her back on her family or, she supposed, they turned their backs on her, but she had assumed it would provide some measure of temporary solace. It did not. Her bitterness sharpened. She thought of her seven sisters, four of whom were still under the age of sixteen, who still did not know what kind of life they would yet live.

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