Poor Splinter must be pulling out his whiskers. Little detour from my now non-existent outline for some random subway cuteness. Mikey is almost unbearably cute. I don't know how his brothers didn't murder him out of jealousy.
The baby had fallen asleep on her lap during the long subway ride. His little head fell forward and Elaine had to hold a hand out to catch him from tumbling off her lap. She turned him around and rearranged him, leaning him against her chest so she could hold him more easily with one arm.
An older man on her left side smiled down at him and said, "Your little grandbaby's tired."
Elaine shifted him slightly so that the small bit of green face was hidden. "Yeah, he's a little sleepyhead. Teaches me to take him out so late. But it has to be done sometimes. It's funny how babies never change. My grandkids are pretty much the same as my kids were at their age. This one is so much like my Dennis. And my Michelle's girl is a lot like her, only more of a snot."
The man shifted on his cane as the subway slowed. "I hear ya. My kids all bring their own kids over and they act like a bunch of damn brats. Running around breaking Donna's ceramic owls. Especially Hunter. What the hell kind of a name is Hunter?"
Little Mikey stirred, but didn't open his eyes. He said, "That's a bad word," and fell asleep instantly.
"Well, he's a gentleman, huh?" the old man said. He reached out and patted Mikey on the back before Elaine could stop him.
He felt the shell. What should she say? He's a little talking animal with a shell? People were cruel to little children with deformities. Dennis' short life had taught her that. She shifted the sleeping toddler away from him and said, "He has curvature of the spine. Wears a brace."
He pulled his hand back and said, "Poor little tyke. My cousin had something like that. Think it was polio. Remember back then when everybody had polio and everybody was scared of getting it?"
She certainly did remember. The leg braces in Dennis' closet made sure that she didn't forget.
The subway train slowed again and Mikey woke up, looking around drowsily. She worried that he wouldn't recognize his surroundings and cry. But instead he pointed at a large seeing-eye dog, wearing a blue jacket. The golden retriever stood by its master, still and proud. He pointed at the dog and said, "What's that?"
"That's a doggy. You haven't seen one before?"
He shook his head no.
The old man raised his eyebrows. "He's about three, right? He hasn't seen a dog before?"
"Well, he's only seen little dogs. Not great big ones."
Mikey jumped out of her lap and teetered stiffly towards the dog. It watched him with professional curiosity.
The old man laughed and said, "Looks like he's getting away from you."
He looked like a fluffy blue penguin with his wobbly walk and arms stuck out at his sides at funny angles. He pulled on the owner's pant leg and said, "Excuse me, lady. Could I pet your doggy?"
"Sure." The blind woman looked down at him and Elaine thought it was a shame that she couldn't see his cuteness as well as hear it in his squeaky voice. He stood on his tiptoes to see in its eyes and said, "Good doggy."
Elaine finally made her way through the crowd. It was much easier for a tiny three year old to force its way through the crowd than a squat seventy year old. She held out her hand and said, "That's enough of that, little Mikey. Come with me."
He pouted out his lip over the bottom of his hood, his arms held out a few inches from his sides. He leaned backwards to aim his cute expression in her direction. So he was a little manipulator, was he?
A few teenage boys were sitting nearby and one of them leered down at him and said, "You should be careful. That dog's so big it could eat you."
Mikey rotated slowly to face the mouthy teen and said, "Wow, you have real ugly hair."
His friends laughed at him and then high fived each other behind his back.
Elaine said, "Now pet the doggy, Mikey."
He reached out and patted the dog on the neck in prim and conservative strokes. Then he threw his arms around its neck. The dog was as still as a guard at Buckingham Palace. "You's a good doggy."
The teenage boys mocked him with affected "Aww"s. The boy with the ugly hair said, "What's wrong with his back? It's all thick and round. What, is he retarded?"
Elaine slapped the kid across the face. The blind woman exclaimed, "What was that?"
"How dare you talk about a sweet little child that way! Can he help it?" She scooped Mikey into her arms and sat at the other end of the train with the old man, ignoring the vulgar outbursts from the teen and his friends.
Mikey leaned back to look in her face and said, "You hit that ugly kid. That was bad. But he was mean. Am I retarded? What's that?"
"I kept an eye on your groceries. Got to watch your stuff better on the subway," the old man said. "And your temper. Might get in trouble."
She'd been riding the New York subway system her whole life and didn't need any advice from him. But it was still good of him to watch her things, rather than taking them. "Thank you."
"What's retarded?" Mikey asked, tapping her on the arm to get her attention.
The old man said, "Retarded is when somebody has something wrong with them. Like they're slow or they ain't made like normal."
"I'm retarded then. I ain't like normal." He said it with a happy little smile and then said, "I want to kiss you." And he leaned forward and gave her a few baby kisses and giggled.
Elaine pushed the cart slowly down the slick sidewalk. All she needed was a broken hip. Her friend Gladys had a hip replacement. They cut out the whole joint and she'd rather be an invalid the rest of her life than let a doctor saw her leg in half.
Baby Mikey was sitting up in the cart, holding on to the front of the basket and singing to himself. The song wasn't English and it didn't sound like French. She learned French in high school back in the Stone Age.
"What's that you're singing?" she asked.
"That's the song about the sick tiger," he said. "He dies at the end. It's real sad. It makes Leo cry. He don't like stuff about dying. He says he's scared of dying. I don't know what dying is. He says our pet rat died and went away. But he was right there in the morning. He was just asleep. Is that your house?" His mittened hand pointed towards her little row house. "Why's the houses stuck together?"
"Takes up less space, I suppose," she said as she lugged the cart up the front steps and tried to maneuver the baby and the cart and groceries through the door.
He stood in the entry, looking up at the ceiling and pointing, gasping dramatically. "That's a lamp in the roof! Do bad people die like getting spanked?"
She couldn't answer that question, mostly because didn't understand it. Well, she could say, "Yes, that's a lamp in the roof. It makes it lighter high up towards the top of the stairs. And everybody dies. We'll both die someday."
"Is it like going away on a trip?" He held her hand and took the stairs in great strides due to his short legs.
"Not exactly. Let's not talk about it. It makes me sad."
"Don't be sad, nice lady. Sensei says dying ain't nothing to be scared of and Leo cries. Then Raphie cries 'cause he always cries. He says he don't know what dying is either, but if Leo's scared it makes him scared. Donnie said it means your body goes bad like a old tomato. Bad tomatoes are stinky."
She opened the front door and ushered the little guy into the room. He looked around as she hauled the cart over the threshold and said, "You got lots of stuffs."
Mikey held his arms up to her and said, "I gotta go potty again. Can we have the pizzas? Kitty!" His bladder was forgotten as he spotted a grey tabby cat lounging on a chair. He waddled over and patted the kitty on the head a few times. "Good kitty," he said. "I'm Mikey." Then he picked her up around the middle. Sadie was a lazy cat and wouldn't have cared if he had dangled her upside down by her tail. She hung limp in his arms, but he was so short that her back legs dragged on the ground as he wandered down the hallway. "We's going to the bathroom."
Elaine hurried after him and peeled off the snowsuit. He said, "I'm hot. Can we have ice cream? Good kitty. Can he have a bath in the toilet?" She'd forgotten how much work small children were, especially when they were talkative little imps like this child.
"Kiss me goodnight, Mikey and then its bedtime," Elaine said. She bundled him up next to her in her bed. Dennis' room was still full of toys and clothes and his furniture, but the hospital bed had been returned many decades ago. Mikey hopped up and down on the bed, clutching a stuffed rabbit, giggling. Sadie watched him, annoyed that he had disturbed her precious slumber.
He stopped jumping and crawled up the bed to her, kissing her goodnight and then snuggled under the blanket, holding the bunny. "Night night." That was much easier than she remembered.
Of course, it was too good to be true. Elaine awoke to snuffing and high-pitched crying. "What's wrong, little one?" she asked with her eyes still closed.
"I want my Donny!" Mikey wailed. "I wants to go home! I'm scared. I want my Sensei!"
She held him and dried his wet face. She said, "We'll look tomorrow, but I'm not sure we'll find him."
"I want to go home," he said, in the most pathetic little voice she'd ever heard. "I… I… wants Mr. Bear. Donny always reads me a story before bedtime and Raphie pretends to read me a story and Leo kisses me goodnight and I kiss Raphie and he cries and Donny kisses Leo and…" He fell asleep midsentence, his warm body hiccupping under her arm.
Within a few hours she discovered that precious little Mikey, kitty lover and kisser, was also a prolific bed wetter. She was covered in urine and couldn't remember a child that size producing so much at one time. She moved him onto a living room chair and covered him in a few blankets. She changed the sheets on the bed, hobbling back and forth across the apartment.
Raising children was hard.
She was too old. That was the problem. This was easy stuff when she was twenty-five. Now waking up soaked in urine and listening to Mikey crying for his daddy and brothers every few hours was exhausting.
Maybe Michelle could help. She had a little girl his age. Maybe Michelle could look after him while she looked for his family.
His family, who lived underground, had no running water and listened to stories about death at three years old. She had half a mind to tell Michelle to keep him and raise him as her own baby. She gathered Mikey in her arms and carried him back to the bedroom, his arms hanging down at a funny angle. He stirred, looked up at her and muttered, "Go home now?"
She said, "Not yet, baby."
He sniffed and closed his eyes again, holding on to the bunny like it would run away.