Bebe (4 page)

Depositing the now empty package into the incinerator, Sir gave Bebe one last pat on the head before he followed. He switched off the light as he went, leaving her to finish her supper in the dark by herself. Only the flickering shadows cast by the crackling fire were left to keep her company.

Bebe poked listlessly at the berries in her bowl, separating them from the cereal, saving them for last, wishing one or both had stayed out here a while longer. Usually they all had supper together. She didn’t like eating alone.

But at least they had come home.

Heaving a soft sigh, she finished her food, then carried the dishes into the kitchen and laid them in the bottom of the sink. She briefly considered washing them. She’d already broke the rules once—many times tonight, in fact—but she really didn’t want to make Ma’am angry. So she left them as she was supposed to and went back to her cushion by the mantelpiece. Sinking down with her back to the fire, she listened to what few sounds filtered back out to her from the bedroom. Soft talking and laughing, the whisper of an occasional kiss, the grunting coos of the baby as he was buckled into his brand new sleepsack.

Now that the baby was here, maybe Ma’am would want her to help more. But then, she had already broken the rules so many times, she really didn’t want to do anything more. All things considering, they’d both been very tolerant of her misbehaviors. After a while, she got up again and went to her toy box in the corner. She dug through it until she found her own, well-worn blue sleepsack in the very bottom. She hadn’t had to wear this in a very long time. Back when she was new, she’d hated every second that she’d been forced into its claustrophobic confines, with her arms and legs trapped close to her body, sometimes too hot and unable to move well enough to do anything about it. Poor baby, she thought again, and put it on out of sympathy.

With her hands inside the sack, it was impossible to fasten the neck collar properly, but she lay down with it half on. Curling onto her side, she spread her blanket up over her as best as she could before cushioning her head on her arm to sleep. Today had been a strange day. Tomorrow would be better, she decided as she closed her eyes. Tomorrow things would go back to normal, and she would do her absolute best to teach the baby the rules of the house. Maybe he would like it here every bit as much as she did. And maybe, just maybe, things wouldn’t have to change too much or too badly.

But they did, because nothing was normal after the baby came. Day after day, he took up all of Ma’am’s and Sir’s time. Night after night, Bebe was awakened by reedy wails. Sometimes he quieted after only a few minutes. Sometimes, he cried for a very long time, and then either Sir or Ma’am would come out into the living room to walk around, gently rocking and patting at the squalling bundle in an effort to soothe him.

At first, Bebe crawled out of bed, sympathetically walking alongside them. She tried to pat the baby’s foot when she could reach it, but that ended abruptly the night she failed to pay attention to Sir’s movements and he accidentally stepped on her.

“Bed, Bebe!” he snapped, lashing out at her in unexpected irritation, shoving her back towards her cushion.

Hurt, Bebe slunk back to her bed and huddled there unhappily, her eyes burning because nobody was getting much sleep these days and her toes throbbing because he’d trod on them. Hugging her legs to her chest, she watched until the baby finally fell asleep and Sir carried him back down the hall to his and Ma’am’s room.

After that first week, the baby moved from Sir and Ma’am’s room to the room right next to theirs; the Forbidden Room, a place so off-limits to Bebe that she wasn’t even allowed in the hallway while the door was open. In all the years Bebe had lived here, she could count on one hand the number of times Sir or Ma’am had entered that room. Now, the door stood open all the time, and Bebe was spending more and more time relegated to her cushion. She tried not to feel bitter about it; after all, it wasn’t the baby’s fault. But it did seem just a little unfair that the baby, who was still so new and untrustworthy as to spend not only his nights trapped in that sleepsack but most of the daytime too, got to go in that room when she couldn’t. Even the sweeper went inside, and here she was forced to sit, unable to do anything more than watch.

Halfway through the second week, strangers began to arrive. Before the baby, while visitors weren’t unheard of, nowadays it was happening on a near daily basis. Mostly of them Bebe didn’t mind. Some wanted nothing to do with her, coming only to visit the baby. Others were actually quite nice. Almost all brought Sir and Ma’am presents, which they seemed to enjoy and which helped to soothe Bebe’s hurt feelings at how she was being treated. Many brought toys for the baby, and once, one man even brought a toy for her. It was a softly-plushed tentacled animal that matched the one he also gave the baby. Bebe wasn’t much for playing with toys, but she was happy to be thought of.

Unfortunately, along with all these visitors also came one who was not a stranger. It was the Old Woman. Even before the baby, she came over far more often than Bebe would have preferred. The Old Woman didn’t much care for Bebe. Over the years, that growing dislike had become as close to mutual as Bebe dared to let herself get. The Old Woman liked to yell at Bebe. Sometimes she even stamped her walking cane at her, just to intimidate her. At first, afraid she might extend that same intense dislike to the baby, Bebe tried to stay close to him, but that faint protectiveness lasted only until the Old Woman took a swing at her with the cane. After that, Ma’am sent Bebe to her cushion and there she knelt, sometimes for hours at a time whenever the Old Woman stopped by.

From her place by the fire, Bebe watched as the Old Woman eyed her suspiciously, bending her head towards Ma’am and whispering. Bebe couldn’t hear much, only the occasional ‘bad’, ‘steal’, ‘eat’, ‘hurt’ and of course ‘Bebe’ sprinkled liberally throughout those accusing snatches of conversation.

At first Ma’am laughed at her, but by the end of the third week, the Old Woman was coming every day and Bebe began to notice Ma’am wasn’t laughing anymore. When the whispering started, she tipped her ear to the Old Woman and studied Bebe while she listened, and she frowned.

Then Ma’am began to whisper to Sir. He laughed, too. At first. But by the time the baby had been with them for one full turn of the moon, the bad changes that Bebe had initially feared began to happen.

She wasn’t allowed to eat her dinner at the table anymore. “No,” Ma’am would say whenever Bebe tried to get close to the baby, and nobody was getting any sleep at night. The baby kept crying. During the day, during the night, all the time. He just kept crying.

At a loss for how to fix what used to be a very happy home, Bebe tried to make herself useful. Not so much when it was Ma’am trying to coax the baby to be quiet, but Sir sometimes still let her close enough to steal soft pets at the baby’s kicking foot on those seemingly endless nights of walking, rocking and singing. Whenever Sir let her, she brought him toys for the baby to play with, or carried away the soiled diapers to be burned in the incinerator, and sometimes when Ma’am fell into an exhausted sleep on the couch, the baby tucked up into the crook of her arm, Bebe did her best to help him stay quiet.

“No,” she whispered to him. He simply stared back at her, greedily sucking at her old pacifier which she slipped it into his mouth, his eyes so large and dark and intently focused on her that she could see her own image reflected in their inky depths. Like First Ma’am, he never said a word. Not to her or anyone else. He just grunted and suckled and waved his fists until, afraid he might jostle Ma’am awake, Bebe took his hands in hers and gently tried to hold them still. Using First Ma’am’s way of talking, she signed to him,
Sleep now
.

But the baby began to fuss instead, screwing his face into a grimace that she knew meant another bout of crying was about to begin.

Bebe barely got back to her cushion before the first lusty wail startled Ma’am awake. She took one look at the pacifier, which had spilled from the baby’s mouth and now lay neglected on his chest, and erupted from the couch. She whisked the baby away, yelling at Bebe all the way down the hall. When she returned, it was with the Bad Bebe hairbrush Sir had discovered under the sink clenched tightly in her hand.

It was the worst spanking she had ever received from the usually so gentle and forgiving Ma’am, and when it was over, Bebe fled sobbing to her cushion. When Sir returned home from work, Bebe was crying at one end of the house and Ma’am and the baby were wailing in disjointed harmony at the other.

The next day, Sir did not go to work. Instead, he stayed home to take care of the baby while the Old Woman took Ma’am out of the house. Bebe stayed on her cushion, still hurt, her bottom a mottle of purpling bruises, depressed and not wanting much to do with anyone, much less the baby. At least not until Sir lay him across the seam of two couch cushions while he went into the kitchen. The baby lay there, seemingly content for only a few seconds before, stretching out both arms and extending its leg, in a single jerky motion, he rolled over and nearly fell off the couch. Bebe’s mad-dash scramble to catch him saved him just in time.

The baby cooed at her.

Bebe rolled him carefully back onto his back. What were the chances he might actually stay like that? She darted a hasty glance towards the kitchen where she could still hear Sir moving around. Then, slipping her hands around the baby’s chest, she tried to lift him just enough to push him all the way to the back of the couch.

Behind her, the front door opened and Ma’am and the cranky Old Woman returned. Bebe let go of the baby and jumped away, but it was too late.

“No!” Ma’am dropped her bags, yelling, “No, bad Bebe!”

Bebe dashed for her cushion but the Old Woman shoved past Ma’am, swinging wildly with her walking cane. With a low ‘whup!’ of rent air, it caught Bebe across the small of her back, knocking her sprawling to the floor. The blow knocked the air right out of her. Pain exploded up her spine and down her legs, and then across her shoulders as the Old Woman hit her again, screaming, “Get, get!”

Bebe scrambled for her cushion, pain blazing across her back, and burst into tears once she reached it. Everyone was yelling now, including Sir who came charging from the kitchen. Even the baby, who screamed and screamed even after Ma’am scooped him up and ran with him to the bedroom.

Sir yelled at the Old Woman who yelled back, and then snapped around and left in a huff. He slammed the door after her, then glared at Bebe. She snapped into a tight ball, the throbbing welts growing on her back and the bruises on her buttocks flaring in fresh agony, when he suddenly descended on her. Though his expression suggested he might, he didn’t strike her. Instead, he scooped her up under one arm, a clumsy, burdensome flailing baggage of wind-milling arms and legs, and lugged her through the house to the rear door. Without a word, he dumped her into the backyard and slammed that door, as well.

Bebe sprawled half on the ground and half on the steps, in too much pain and shock to move any more than what effort it took to raise her head. She began to shake. Pushing up on her arms, she dragged her legs down off the stairs and sat on the ground. Her knee was scuffed and bleeding. There was dirt on her belly, arms and, she suspected, probably on her face. The tip of her chin was stinging. With trembling fingers, she gingerly touched the spot and then looked at them. At least she wasn’t bleeding there.

The breath she hadn’t realized she was holding escaped in a single, shuddering gasp. She sucked in another to replace it, and then simply sat where she’d been dumped, shaking and gasping and struggling to get her roiling emotions back under firm control. Never,
never
had she been hit like that before! Never had anyone deliberately struck her anywhere except for her bottom. Never had Sir or Ma’am banished her—unsupervised!—to the yard like...like...that poor male from down the street! Bebe huddled at the bottom of the steps, without her leash or her jacket. Without even her shoes!

Inside the house, the baby continued to cry, and so finally did Bebe. She cried hard, racking sobs that made the pain in her shoulders shoot out through her back like agonized lightning bolts. But Sir and Ma’am left her out there, until long after the sun went down. The temperature dropped along with it, dipping so low that her breaths began to fog the air and she kept having to get up and move around just so the feeling would come back into her toes. It wasn’t a nice feeling, either. Her toes ached, a low pitiless throbbing that didn’t end even after she squatted back down to grip them in the slightly warmer palms of her hands.

Just when she thought she might actually be banished out here for the night, Sir finally opened the door and let her back inside. Bebe limped shakily all the way to her cushion. Shivering, she curled into a tight ball facing the fire and pulled her blanket up over her head.

Ma’am tried to call her into the kitchen for supper, but her voice was heavy with lingering anger. Bebe didn’t think she could make herself eat anything anyway. She went to sleep hungry and didn’t move from that spot until she felt Sir’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake just before dawn.

“Up,” he said, and went to collect her leash from her toy box.

Was he still angry with her? It was hard to tell, but she didn’t think so. Bebe sat up slowly, stiffly. She rubbed at the lingering soreness between her shoulders, glancing cautiously up into his face when he returned to clip the end to her collar. He put a piece of bread into her hand and then spying that silly stuffed animal lying next to her cushion, almost as an afterthought, he picked it up and slipped it into the crook of her arm. Then he led her out to the car.

Once she was buckled into the passenger seat, he sat back on his heels to look at her. A corner of his mouth ticced before he stood up again. Reaching in, he ruffled her hair once, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like he meant it.

And so, Bebe sat where he left her, holding onto that piece of bread and a toy she had no interest in playing with, waiting for him to get in the transport and start the engine. He programmed their destination into the computer without looking at her again, and never once said a word. Not the whole time they drove, not even to shush her when she lost her composure to an involuntary yelp the instant the transport connected with the commuter rail and shot forward, climbing frighteningly fast into traffic high above the ground.