Next to Love by Ellen Feldman

Author:Ellen Feldman [Feldman, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9780812992717
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Grace

SEPTEMBER 1946

AMY SITS ON THE SWING IN THE CORNER OF THE YARD AND WATCHES the grown-ups. You’d think they never saw a baby before.

She hates the baby. She hates the frilly pink dress, and the pink sunbonnet, and the tiny pink Mary Janes. Why does she need Mary Janes? She can’t even walk. Everyone carries her around. You’d think she’s some prize they’re fighting over, like the ones in the Cracker Jacks boxes. Her mommy can’t get enough of the thing.

Now Uncle Al is holding the stupid baby to his chest, walking around the yard singing “Ain’t She Sweet.” Her mommy says her daddy used to sing to her the same way. A song called “You’re Not the Only Oyster in the Stew.” She even knows the words but she doesn’t remember her daddy singing them to her. She’s not even sure she remembers her daddy. She knows what he looks like, but that’s just the pictures on the wall.

She walks her sandals around in a circle on the grass until the chains of the swing are twisted, then closes her eyes, picks up her feet, and lets the swing twirl her around. It makes her dizzy. She opens her eyes.

Her mommy is holding the baby again. Drop it, she shouts in her head. Drop the stupid baby on her stupid head. Babies are supposed to have a place in their head that isn’t finished, and if you touch them there you can kill them.

Now Aunt Millie has the baby. She puts it in Uncle Claude’s lap. He holds it with one arm—drop it, drop it, drop it—and lets the other, the one without the fingers, hang down at the side of his chair. She used to be afraid of Uncle Claude’s hand, until he told her he got tired of trying to keep all those fingernails clean so he decided to get rid of some of them. She knew he was teasing her, but now she isn’t afraid anymore.

Aunt Babe takes the baby from Uncle Claude, and Amy jumps off the swing and goes over to where he is sitting. She puts her hands over his eyes. Guess who, she says, and after he makes silly guesses, he reaches around and pulls her onto his lap. She rests her head against him in the space under his chin. She loves the way he smells. It’s from the soap he puts on his face to shave. Once when she went to stay overnight with him and Aunt Babe, he let her watch him shave in the morning. He took a wooden bowl with white soap from the cabinet, mixed it up with water and a brush, and spread it on his cheeks and chin. Then he took the brush and spread some on her cheeks and chin and even a dab on her nose. He held her up to the mirror. I always thought we looked alike, he said. And for the rest of the day, even after he wiped off the soap, she smelled like him.

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