The Cry

For Dad

I was sitting with you when I typed The End,
and then you died.
I know what you’d say: ‘Nellie Bly, it wasn’t all your fault’.

Brian Desmond FitzGerald
27.01.1925 – 06.10.2012

It was the fault of airport security.

At airport security, Joanna’s nine-week-old baby boy was screaming. Her partner was busy taking off his trainers. A stocky uniformed woman was saying: ‘Can’t take these.’

‘What?’ Joanna asked, her newborn gnawing at her T-shirt through his howls.

‘These liquids. The bottles are more than a hundred millilitres. If you need more for the flight, you’ve got to have proof. Do you have something in writing?’

‘No.’

‘In that case, I’ll have to dispose of them.’

‘But you can’t. It’s Calpol – paracetamol – for the baby, and antibiotics. I’ve got an ear infection. And, look, they’re not full.’

‘Can I help?’ a freshly scanned and shoeless Alistair offered.

‘We’ll have to throw these out,’ the security woman repeated.

‘I told you about the hundred-millilitre rule, Joanna.’

‘Did you?’ Probably. She couldn’t remember.

Alistair turned from Joanna to security woman, from problem to solution. ‘Can one of us nip over to Boots and get some smaller bottles?’

‘Well, yes, you can do that. But you’d need to go to the back of the queue and come through again.’

‘You go on with Noah,’ Joanna suggested. ‘I’ll go back and sort this.’

She handed over her baby and zig-zagged back the way she had come.

It was the fault of airport security.

If Joanna hadn’t gone back, if she hadn’t bought two small, clear hundred-millilitre bottles from Boots, if she hadn’t poured liquids into each while kneeling on the floor in front of WH Smith, if she hadn’t waited in the queue for another hour while her breasts ached: if she hadn’t done any of these things, then she would still have her baby.

The flight to Melbourne took twenty-one hours. The first seven – Glasgow to Dubai – were the worst. Noah cried the entire time. She couldn’t recall one minute when he didn’t. For five of these hours, Joanna tried doing the things she was supposed to do, in the order she was supposed to do them.

Round One. One hour from Glasgow. Plane flying over the North Sea. Alistair watching a movie which made him laugh very loudly which made Joanna want to kick him.

Food? She pressed his head towards her breast – too hard perhaps? Was he biting and pinching at her deliberately? Was that a punch?

Nappy? She felt inside it with her finger. It was clean, thankfully, because if it hadn’t been, her finger would now have poo on it.

Bored? The rattle and the Bananas in Pyjamas teddy bear made his eyes turn evil.

Tired? Are you kidding? At nine weeks, his determined angriness gave him so much energy that he almost wriggled himself out of the airline cot attached to the bulkhead in front of her. She caught him just in time.

Round Two. Three hours from Glasgow.

Plane flying over Germany. Alistair asleep.

Food? Wah.

Nappy? Wah.

Bored? WAH.

Tired? What sort of a mother are you?

She went through this routine, over and over. Round Three. Four. Five. And so on. Just as the mothers at the breastfeeding group had taught her.

‘He’s trying to communicate with his beautiful little voice,’ one of them said. ‘You just need to listen.’

‘It’s really not rocket science,’ said another. ‘Isn’t he cute! Little petal.’

She hated the mothers at the breastfeeding group.

Did she hate Noah?

Is that why he’s gone?

Alistair had walked Noah up and down the aisle twice in the second hour. He was glorious. People smiled at him, said: ‘Oh, the wee soul, he’s tired.’ Offered to hold him for a while. Poor guy. New man. What a hero. Why had he chosen an unworthy and useless woman to be the mother of his child? He walked forty feet in the second hour, and then he handed Noah over, sat down, and ate his meal. Loved his meal. Enjoyed it. With red wine. He was so content that he fell asleep before the air hostess had cleared his plate.

Joanna hadn’t managed any food or wine. Given the choice, she’d have opted for the wine, even though breastfeeding mothers get stared at with chisel eyes if they dare to drink.

Alistair was asleep. His very large head, which Noah had inherited (thanks for that, Alistair) was resting comfortably on a luminous green inflatable pillow. He looked pretty. He always looked pretty. When she first saw him at the polling booth, she was taken aback by his boy-band prettiness. You don’t get men like that in Glasgow. His carefully messed dark brown hair never budged, and was perfectly in place as he slept. His hair helped him look younger than his forty-one years, standing erect to camouflage the thinning patch at the middle-back of his massive head.

How could he sleep through this? Noah’s crying had drowned out the engine noise and the air conditioning. People were pressing earphones to their heads, turning the entertainment system’s volume to maximum. They looked at Joanna occasionally, saying so much with their eyes.
What is wrong with your kid? Why, WHY, did they seat me near you?
These people would complain when they arrived at their destinations.
Some women should not be allowed to conceive.

She gathered these looks and added them to her pool of bubbling rage. Her ear infection had taken hold of the back of her head and neck – a heavy, shuddering, all-consuming pain that made it almost impossible to think clearly. Noah would probably scream more loudly and the passengers judge her more harshly if she put him down to get two caplets of Anadin Extra and a dose of antibiotics from her hand luggage, so she wouldn’t risk it, not yet.

‘Emirates is child friendly,’ she had read online. They weren’t friendly at all. They were judgemental child-hating bitches, especially the one with the bright red bob. She was over forty, her hair dyed and groomed to perfection bar a few millimetres of grey roots; her size fourteen body bridled by magic knickers and padded bra. She’d plastered on so much foundation you could trace a wee set of boobs on her chin with a lengthy fingernail if you had the inclination and the fingernail. She was on the way out, Joanna assumed, clinging on to a young-girl’s job for dear life, but not to the extent that she thought it necessary to be kind. This woman had cleared Joanna’s uneaten meal away while she was walking Noah up and down the aisle, rocking him back and forth in a pointless attempt to subdue him. This woman had said ‘Yes, of course’ when Joanna asked for an extra warm towel to wipe the puke from her shoulder, but hadn’t delivered it. This woman hated Joanna, and Noah.

Everyone on this jumbo jet hated them. Probably even the pilots, who must have been able to hear him from the cockpit. They probably couldn’t hear the radio because of him. They may well have considered crashing the plane to escape this noise.

Not like a cat on heat, the noise. Not as many pauses.

Not like a horror film scream. They’re quite satisfying, those. Joanna did them sometimes, locked in the bathroom. It was her
time out
, as the mothers at the breastfeeding group had suggested. They probably didn’t mean
time out
should be spent screaming horror-movie screams in a locked bathroom, but this is what she had taken to doing, since Noah.

Not pigs being slaughtered at the abattoir either. Joanna had heard this on a documentary on the Discovery Channel once. They sounded more content, the pigs.

She could not describe his cry. All she knew was that it never stopped and it had to stop.

Other people’s babies didn’t cry like Noah. There were two infants in her section of the plane. They hardly made a sound. Their mothers looked happy. Their mothers looked as if they were in love with them. Their mothers looked as if they were in love with their fathers. Perhaps because their fathers were not sleeping.

Yep, Alistair was still sleeping.

STOP CRYING, NOAH!

She didn’t want to wake Alistair. She would be a martyr instead.

Alistair had always managed to sleep. Every night, he went to bed around midnight, put his head on the pillow, and was dreaming happily within ten minutes. It surprised her that he had never once, ONCE, woken to deal with Noah’s cry. Maybe he wasn’t even asleep, clever fucker.

Right now, four hours into the seven-hour flight to Dubai, she looked at Alistair with his mouth half open, and wondered about smothering his pretty face with the pillow.

Oh, she wasn’t really imagining that at all. No, no. She was just tired. She hadn’t slept for more than three hours in a row for nine weeks. Plus, her neck was going to explode. She desperately needed her Anadin caplets and antibiotics. She stood up, with Noah over her right shoulder, and opened the luggage compartment above her. One of her bags fell out onto the lap of the elderly woman in the seat behind her.

‘Oo!’ The woman rubbed her thin leg, in pain.

‘Oh shit; sorry,’ Joanna said.

‘I’m fine, really.’ She stopped rubbing her leg and smiled.

Joanna felt terrible. And she should not have said ‘shit’. ‘Excuse the language. Here, let me put it back.’

‘No, no, you have enough on your plate.’ The elderly woman stood and lifted the bag. It wobbled precariously as she attempted to get it back in the compartment. The passenger next to the old lady eyeballed Joanna as if to say
On top of everything, now you are letting a little old lady lift your bag!

‘Have you checked his nappy?’ the injured woman asked.

‘Erm. I did a while ago. I was just going to get—’

‘Maybe you should try the nappy?’ The woman made a sniffing noise.

Oh Lordy, she had forgotten the routine. She hadn’t gone through the steps for a while now. Silly Joanna. She lifted Noah up and sniffed at his bum. The elderly woman and the passenger beside her winced. Oops, she shouldn’t have sniffed at his bum like that, in full view of everyone. Joanna had forgotten how to behave in public.

He smelt. He was dirty. There was a reason for his cry!

‘You’re right!’ Joanna grinned a crazy grin at the woman. Hallelujah!

Joanna put Noah in the cot and returned hand luggage Number One to the overhead compartment (black suitcase containing medicines, emergency toiletries, toothbrushes, and books for Alistair to read because Alistair would probably be able to read
three
books on this long-haul flight from Glasgow to Melbourne). She retrieved hand luggage Number Two (blue sausage bag containing nappies for Noah, wipes for Noah, Sudocrem for Noah, spare clothes for Noah, blankets for Noah, toys that Noah hated for Noah) and raced off to the toilet.

It was at the front of her section of the plane. The door proudly advertised baby changing facilities. It was occupied.

Her child stank.

And screamed.

People were tired now. They’d been flying for five hours. The cabin lights were off. It was nearly midnight in the UK. The four people in the queue in front of her had obviously decided to avoid eye contact altogether. If they looked her in the eye, they would have found it impossible not to throttle her.

At last, the toilet door was open. In a minute, she would have changed the nappy, and the world. The reason for the cry would be gone. Noah would fall asleep. Joanna would order a glass of wine without caring what the red-bobbed bitch thought, drink it in the dark, no eyes looking at her breastfeeding crime, and then fall asleep herself.

She had forgotten to put on her shoes. She forgot everything nowadays, Joanna. She forgot what she had just done and what she should do next. The toilet floor was covered in piss. As she stood over the smeared toilet, putting the lid down with her pinky and pulling down the tiny baby changing board, she could feel urine on the floor seeping through the thin airline socks from her disappointing Emirates goody bag.

She held his wriggling body still with her left forearm and fumbled to pull a wipe from the packet in the filthy sink. Nappy undone, she grimaced at his effort – four hard balls. The petal was constipated. A breastfed baby should not be constipated. Maybe it was the cheese she had scoffed before driving to the airport. One third of a packet of strong Cheddar. On its own. She had no time to flourish it with bread or biscuits. Her greed and poor planning had made his tummy sore.

She couldn’t wrap the nappy with one hand. As she was trying, the plane dipped suddenly and the seatbelt signs beeped on – turbulence. Noah wriggled. The four hard pieces of baby poo rolled onto the floor. Forearm still on his chest, she tugged a few sheets of toilet paper from the dispenser, reached down, and scrambled to grab the moving excrement. No big deal. Shit was part of the shit job. It was no more bothersome to her than picking up four Maltesers. She put the wrapped poo in the used nappy, managed to stick the bundle together with the Velcro, and shoved it into the overflowing bin.

Wipe, Sudocrem, nappy on.
This was one of the many chants Joanna had taken to repeating. If she didn’t say them to herself, she would forget. She would forget to put his nappy on.

When she walked out of the toilet door, the queue had grown, and she realised she was desperate for a pee. She had forgotten to go. Too late. She’d go some other time.

Joanna’s ears were hurting. She hadn’t managed to take her medication. Best laid plans. She’d probably missed two doses already. She walked past the steely queue and made her way to her seat.

Alistair was still asleep.

Despite the nappy change, Noah was still crying.

Just as she sat down, the air hostess with the red bob approached her with a kind smile.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

Joanna looked up hopefully. She was going to help. At last.

The air hostess leant down and whispered, ‘Some of the passengers are complaining.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The crying is upsetting the passengers.’

A film of angry blood travelled to her eyes. ‘Oh really? Which ones?’ She stood up, almost hitting the air hostess’ leant-down head with her screaming infant.

‘Just take your seat, madam,’ the air hostess said.

‘Hi everyone!’ Joanna said, loudly enough for ten rows of five seats to hear, but not loudly enough to wake Alistair. ‘This helpful lady has just informed me that some of you have been complaining about Noah.’