When the Cradle Falls
Chapter Fifty: The Perfect Child
The 1970s
Broken Bow, Nebraska
The scene was perfect. The bedroom was painted a robin's egg blue with sweet, fluffy sheep floating across the walls. A lacy, white curtain framed a tiny, square window. In the middle of a room was a white bassinet with blankets carefully folded inside, waiting.
The young woman brushed a hand through her braid and then ran a hand over her protruding stomach, smiling softly to herself. "Everything is all done, baby" she hummed, rubbing her stomach. "We're ready whenever you get here."
She continued to hum to herself, putting both hands on her stomach, imagining the future, coming to sweep her baby up from their bassinet in the bright morning light, yellow bathing the two of them in glory.
While the rosy images continued to swirl in her head, from behind, hands snaked around her stomach, a head coming to rest on the spot between her neck and shoulder. "What are you doing?" the new occupant of the room asked.
Smiling, the woman turned her head towards the man. "Just thinking about our new baby. Can't wait for them to be here."
The man squeezed his arms around the woman. "Neither can I. You're going to make an amazing mother."
She turned and placed her hands on either side of her husband's face, tears in her eyes. She had been uncharacteristically weepy all the time, and suspected she might have been pregnant.
After taking a test, it had been confirmed with happy tears, tight hugs, and a bright future that Sherry Mercer was pregnant.
A Few Weeks Later
"Remind me why there are this many people here," Sherry asked, sweat beading on her forehead as she moved a heavy sheet cake from one counter to the other.
Her mother, Julia, with her hair voluminous beehive wrapped up in a silk scarf, and smoky eyeliner, snatched the cake away from her, sending it nearly toppling over. "Because-I told you I would move that-everyone here is so excited for you!" Julia shoved the cake back, seemingly carelessly, but it stopped at the perfect spot. "Why don't you go out to the party and put your feet up? Jan should be in a minute."
Sherry frowned at the mention of her sister. She could see her sister and her sister's husband through the window, standing around with their father, and all their uncles. The group was taking turns between chain smoking a cigarette and a joint. Jim, Sherry's husband, stood out there with them, but politely had his hands in his pocket, only coming out to refuse the cigarette or joint whenever it was held out to him. They had the courtesy to at least smoke outside. Neither Sherry or Jim smoked, but they blamed her being pregnant as a reason to have everyone smoke outside.
"No, it's fine. I'd rather be in here, than out there." Most of the party guests were Julia's friends from church.
To Sherry, for church friends, they seemed much too loud and rowdy. And besides that, Sherry would have much preferred a small party, or even no party at all would have been fine with her.
"Honey, you need to learn to relax," Julia said, tweaking at one of Sherry's tightly plaited braids. "Especially with a baby coming."
Normally, a comment like that from her mother would have really upset her-she was always too high strung, to pinched. But this time, there was a prick of excitement, that she was going to get to share a special moment with her mother.
"Mom, there's actually something I have to tell you about that."
"Hmm hon?" Julia asked.
"I'm actually having twins," Sherry replied quietly, fingering the edges of the gingham apron wrapped around her bulging belly.
Julia's mouth opened to reply to her daughter. Before she could get a word out, Jan's presence erupted throughout the room. "No fucking way! Twins?" She was suddenly rushing through the back door and ran forward, her glistening black mane streaming behind her. She came and wrapped her arms around her sister, carefully not squishing her two new nieces or nephews, or a combination of the two. "Piper and Livi are going to be thrilled to have a new cousin!" Jan exclaimed, talking about the toddler and baby she had. Livi was born almost a year ago.
Locking up, Sherry froze for a moment, flustered by her sister's reaction. Everything was always such a big deal. This was another reason she didn't want to have a baby shower. It was so mortifying; everyone fawning over her belly.
"Yeah. Yes. I'm having twins," Sherry replied stiffly, once her sister released the hug.
She looked over at her mother who had an arm around Jan, cooing about how excited she was to have two new grandchildren.
A stiff, vague smile appeared on Sherry's face. Every moment that she'd tried to have with her mother was ruined by her sister. They were just too similar and Sherry didn't fit anywhere in the equation.
She took a breath and decided she wasn't going to let them show that it bothered her.
"I think it's time for cake," Sherry announced coldly. She felt her anger simmering as she reached for the cake. Hefting it under two hands, she turned too quickly, toe catching on the kitten heel of her other foot. The world around her began to pitch sideways, and she was sure her body would soon make contact with the floor.
But instead of falling downwards, she was spun upwards, landing up against the fridge, and arm wrapped around one of hers.
As she gathered herself, Sherry shook the stars from her eyes and noticed Jan was holding her up to the fridge with one hand, the other one expertly balancing the intact cake onto a solid surface.
"You alright?" Julia asked, invading her space.
"Fine," Sherry hissed back, shrugging out of Jan's grip.
"How'd you do that?" Julia asked, turning to her daughter.
"Do what?" Jan appeared to look innocent.
"Stop her from falling and save the cake. It was like something Bruce Lee would do."
Jan shrugged, glancing at her mother. "I don't know. Quick reflexes I guess."
"Huh. I'll say." Their mother laughed. "How about we have cake in here? What do you say, Sherry?"
Already done with the interaction, she waved her hand and told everyone she would be a minute.
Pushing past the throng of sinning church-goers, Sherry rushed up the stairs and shut herself in her bedroom, breathing heavily. She sank down on the edge of the bed, and succumbed to the tears that had become too familiar for her liking.
She sobbed quietly into her hands, and stopped to wipe her hands when there was a knock at the door.
"What?" She asked, trying to sound composed. Instead, it came out as a wretched sob.
"Sher? You okay?" Jim appeared, quietly closed the door behind him.
"Just being emotional."
"What's wrong?" Jim asked, coming to sit beside her.
"All these people. I don't know them. I don't like them in my house. They're messing up the blanket on the couch and moving around the coasters on the coffee table. And then Jan and Don and everyone just acting like this is some kind of whore house with that marijuana. And my mother-she just doesn't care about anything!
"I just want everyone gone. I want my house to be clean and quiet and peaceful!"
Pushing Jim away, Sherry stood up and stalked down the hall to the nursery. She opened the door and went to stand inside.
Ever since she'd found out there were twins, they had painted the room a yellow color and added another bassinet. The sheep were still on the walls.
Standing in the room, she stood between the bassinets and gripped them. She closed her eyes and breathed heavily, imagining two babies in the two bassinets.
In her mind, there was only cloudiness. She squeezed her eyes shut, even harder, trying to see two babies.
Ever since the doctor had revealed that they were having twins, Sherry knew her reaction was strange. She should have felt overjoyed that she was getting a bonus baby. But when the doctor had said that, she felt strange, like she couldn't believe it would ever happen.
Jim came and stood in the doorway, asking if she needed anything.
She just shook her head.
All she saw was the single bassinet in the blue room.
Months Later
"I always get bananas but they're just never ripe," Julia complained, while she plopped a green bunch of bananas into the cart, already commenting on the next item on the list.
Behind her mother, Sherry had felt like a duck, struggling to walk. She had two hands placed on her stomach as she waddled through the produce section of the grocery store, focusing on her breathing, and not running into anyone else.
When her mother was debating between kinds of cereal, Sherry suddenly felt a tsunami wrack the lower part of her body. She leaned against the shelf with one hand, the other on her stomach.
There was a pressure that built like her bladder was full. And suddenly, there was a pop, like a balloon expelling air. Sherry immediately thought she relieved herself in the middle of the grocery store.
"Oh hon!" Julia exclaimed. "Your water broke!"
Realizing what she meant, Sherry shook her head. "No! It's too early I-"
"Sher, it's time," Julia responded in a calming, but direct voice.
Backing further into the shelf, Sherry shook her head. "No. It's not time. Not yet. I have-"
Watching as Sherry began to panic, Julia steadily responded. "It's time. We need to go."
And they went.
She was pushing, literally fighting for her life. Around her, there was a team of doctors and nurses telling her to push out the baby.
She wanted to tell them to be quiet, wishing they could just scoop the baby out.
But eventually, there was a feeling of release, and Sherry relaxed.
Breathing heavily, she felt sweat coat her entire body, like a newly burnt candle.
There was a single cry. Followed by many.
"Let me see them!" Sherry cried, reaching out her arms.
A nurse appeared. "It's a boy," she said.
"Oh! A boy! The first one!" Julia exclaimed, from near Sherry's right shoulder. It was her first grandson.
Sherry couldn't think of anything as she held the perfect child, staring at his tiny face, thinking about how sweet he would look in his bassinet, in her arms, and sleeping peacefully.
He was fucking perfect.
"He's so beautiful," Sherry said, holding him close, her face nuzzling into his sweet one.
It was about fifteen minutes of her cuddling him and whispering sweet-nothings when suddenly he coughed once, twice.
And then the third time.
Then there was nothing.
Sherry laughed, thinking he was sleeping. She gently rocked him.
Nothing.
She cooed at him.
Nothing
She shook him.
Nothing.
She talked loudly at him.
Nothing.
She pried her mother away from him.
He didn't move.
She heard her mother call for help.
He didn't react.
She wrestled as the baby was snatched from her grasp.
She cried. He didn't. No one cared.
She heard him being put on some kind of life support.
Nothing.
Then.
And then she heard she had to push again.
The first time she pushed out a baby, she was fighting for her life. The second time, she wished she just didn't have one. It was like a balloon deflating, and pulling it off from the pump. Like a helium balloon taking off from a defiant kid in a parking lot.
Sherry was numb. She didn't notice as the second baby was taken to be cleaned off and diapered. She didn't notice the afterbirth or the other terrible things she'd never heard about birth.
"Here's your daughter," The nurse said, trying to shove some fleshy, wiggly alien at her.
"No." She couldn't say it more or less.
Sherry remained in her world as her mother cradled her and her sister was the first person to cradle her unnamed daughter.
As Jan held the perfectly healthy baby girl, Sherry cried for her baby boy. Julia tried to placate her as Sherry continued to sob, wishing for her baby boy that would never cry back.
Jan continued to shush the baby, standing near the window, letting in sunlight, as Sherry sobbed.
Jim was let in eventually, expecting a radiant wife with a baby in each arm. Instead, he encountered a world of sobbing, confusion, and pain.
At Sherry's side, he quickly learned their first child, their baby boy, was no more. But still, there was a baby with strong lungs in Jan's arms.
At that moment, Jim moved away from his wife to grab his living baby from his sister in law. Jan slowly gave the baby girl up. The baby immediately quieted in Jim's hold.
"Is she dead?" Sherry asked, from her bed.
Jim shook his head, moving closer. "No. Just sleeping. Do you want to hold her?"
Sherry immediately shook her head. "No. No. She's fine. I'm tired." Sherry turned to the side and tried to sleep.
Three Months Later
Sherry had been eating less and moving a lot when Jim wasn't home. She was almost back to the figure she was before she gave birth.
As she predicted, they had only needed one bassinet. But now the room was pink.
Just about to take a sip of a strong drink, Sherry heard a cry.
Aggravated, she stood and slowly made her way to the room. In the new pink room, she found a baby girl crying for something.
"Hi baby," Sherry said neutrally. She'd figure out what the baby needed, give it to her, and then go away.
There was a rocking chair with a windowsill nearby. As the baby nursed, Sherry blindly groped for the windowsill, where she'd put her drink. Mother and daughter both drank at the same time. Maybe it should have been a bonding moment, but it just created distance between Sherry and her daughter.
It had been three months. At the beginning, Sherry was mourning her baby boy. But after that, she tried. She really did. She really tried to be a good mother and waited for that moment when she would fall completely in love with this new baby that she had.
But it hadn't happened yet.
The result was Sherry resenting this baby girl, taking the place of her baby boy, and also a confusion and terrible guilt she felt for being a refrigerator mother.
A Year Later
Antelope Canyon, Arizona
Underneath the arches of sand frozen in time, a silent processional stopped to a spot, sunlight streaming through a hole to the sky.
At the beginning of the processional was the matriarch. Julia wore a cream silk scarf wrapped around her neck, white canvas pants, and large sunglasses. She looked like a movie star.
Immediately behind her were Jim and Sherry. In Jim's arms was a babbling little girl, hair pulled into two lopsided pigtails. She chatted away happily, mixing actual words and gibberish. Every now and again, Jim would whisper something to her, and kiss her cheek.
Sherry was beside him, solemn. In her arms was a burlap bag, held tightly to her chest.
Bringing up the rear were the Suttons. Don had Livi on his back, followed by Piper who held hands with her pregnant mother. The family was naturally athletic; as the two young girls and a pregnant Jan had no trouble keeping up with the rest of the family, and actually had been sent to the back because Sherry and Julia were having a hard time keeping up with them.
Julia turned back to her daughter. "What do you think of this spot?"
Sherry glanced around, the only sound wind tunneling through the strange places like through the inside of a woodwind instrument. On the ground, there were no signs of footprints. Other than the howling wind, the place was undisturbed.
But something didn't feel right. "No. This isn't it." Some of the group members held back an audible sigh. This was about the tenth time that Sherry had said it wasn't the right spot.
Coming forward, Sherry gently moved past her mother. "Let me lead for a little bit."
Julia shrugged, and patted her daughter on the shoulder.
Taking her place at the front, Sherry pressed on. She didn't know where the perfect place would be, but she figured she'd know when she saw it.
They continued through a winding, open-air cave system, sometimes heaving uphill, other times stumbling down.
After coming through one final uphill push, Sherry gasped, stopping at the sight before her.
In a round, carved out area was the sound of rushing water. There, from up above was a steadily pouring waterfall, aquamarine water falling down stair steps of carved rocks into an oasis, lush trees framing the edge of the water.
There was a quiet inhale behind her. "Oh Sher, it's perfect," Jim whispered, coming to stand beside his wife. Even their baby girl was silent, transfixed by the paradisiacal oasis before her.
Moving forwards, Sherry came to the edge of the water and dropped to her knees. Removed from the burlap bag was a small wooden box with angel wings and a halo etched into the top.
She clutched the box tightly to her chest, pretending it was her little boy, feeling the tears beginning to escape. After the amount of tears she had shed over the past year, she realized they were infinite when it came to her baby boy that she'd never get to hold again. She clung to that short memory when she held him, cradled him, and loved him more than anything in the entire world. It had been such a fleeting moment, but had become one of the most-if not the most-important, defining moment in her life. She had become a mother and then had that ripped away from her.
When his soul left this earth, a part of hers did as well.
His spirit was gone, but she still had the ashes, a physical reminder that he had been real-he had been hers.
But now, just like his soul, it was time to let him go.
Giving one last squeeze, she took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay. It's time," she said.
With the help of her husband, Sherry stood, and turned around to the rest of her family. She glanced over at her mother. "Do you mind leading the prayer?"
Julia nodded and asked everyone to bow their heads. She had always been a gifted orator, and Julia painted a picture of the words Sherry had never been able to find. She talked of how some people got their wings earlier than others, and that the baby boy had come here for only a little bit of time, and had always meant to go home to God. The little baby had never belonged to them.
At the end, Julia said the Lord's Prayer. Everyone did the sign of the cross and looked at Sherry expectantly.
She opened the lid of the box and stared down into the gray ashes on the inside. In certain light, and if she didn't know what they were, she'd say it looked like sand with little shells scattered throughout.
But she knew what it was.
With a shaky hand, she reached in and grabbed a fistfull of the powder. Grains fell out of her hands as she pulled a handful of the ash out of the box. Her hand hovered over the water, clenched tightly around the stardust of her angel.
And finally, she opened her fist, the particles catching in the wind, floating down like snowflakes, landing and dissolving into the bright blue water.
Soon after that, Sherry held the box as her family members came and took turns reaching in and pulling out their own handfuls of her baby.
Hands flew up and glittering gray particulates floated down, softer than rain.
As this process repeated itself, Sherry felt the box in her hands growing lighter and lighter.
Eventually there was nothing left.
She must have said something and didn't notice when everyone left, just noticed when the only other remaining person was her husband, holding the little girl.
Sinking back down to her knees, she rested at the edge of the water, the box, now with a closed lid, set before here. It was square and dark wood. And written in between the halo and the wings was a name.
It was a short name. A sweet one. A Biblical name of a priest from the highest order.
It was Eli.
Those three letters created a word, a word that was incarnated as the epitome of all of Sherry's love, bundled into a little blue blanket, with ten perfect fingers and toes, the most perfect child she had ever seen.
The box suddenly felt cold underneath her touch and she retracted her hands.
He was all gone.
It was done.
Reaching forward into the soil, Sherry began to dig with her bare hands. Normally, if she were going to do some gardening, she would wear gloves that make sure her nails would stay intact.
But instead, she dug through the wet clay, deeper and deeper. She heard Jim say something in the background, but he stopped, coming closer over her shoulder, observing as she battled the earth.
Jim watched his wife dig in the dirt, as attentive as a dog searching for a bone. It was strange to see her be so diligent about it, so focused. It was the clearest he had seen her be since before the babies had been born.
As he watched, Jim turned upon hearing a disturbance behind her. He saw Don come forward, his youngest daughter, Livi, hand in hand with him. "Are you guys doing okay?"
Don nodded at the other man, but didn't say anything. He didn't want to disrupt Sherry's concentration. The baby in his arms was now subdued, as if she knew was the time to be quiet.
Removing her grip out of her dad's hand, Livi stepped forward, peeking around her aunt's shoulder. "Eli," she said, reading the box.
"Shh!" Jim whispered, pulling Livi back by her upper arm.
"Hey!" Don snapped back, snatching his daughter away from her uncle. "There's no need for that!" He told Jim, picked up a shocked Livi.
Realizing how roughly Jim grabbed the girl, he shifted his daughter and came to stand before his niece. "I'm sorry, Olivia, I didn't mean to grab you that hard." He turned his attention to the other man. "Don, I'm sorry I-"
Demeanor becoming more open, Don nodded and placed a hand on Jim's shoulder. "It's forgiven. I can't imagine what you're going through."
Jim just shrugged helplessly. Sherry had been the happiest he had ever seen her when she found out she was pregnant. And that happiness only doubled when she found out it was twins.
But ever since the realization that their first born child, a son they had named Eli, had been dead before Jim even got to lay eyes on him, there was however another baby that was waiting.
Their second child, a girl that they had named Alice Francine, after Jim's mother, was alive to the world. Jim's mother had grown up in Spain, and had been given the name Alicia Francesca, and the only way Sherry allowed their daughter to be named after her grandmother was if they anglicized Alicia. Thus, the baby became Alice.
So, just in the sense of the name, Alice already held a significant amount of meaning to Jim.
Hugging the little girl tighter to himself, Jim nodded at Don and Livi and the two disappeared around a turn in the cave system. Once they were gone and the small, young family was alone once again, Jim approached his wife, and watched as the box was plunged into the earth, a squelching sound sucking it deeper to the core. There was a pause as Sherry stared at the top of the box for a moment, before she slowly began to move the earth over the wooden lid.
When it was done, Jim sighed, hoping his wife would stand back up. Instead, Sherry reached into her purse and pulled out a red rosary and began to pray, quietly muttering under her breath. As if sensing this wasn't going to be a short affair, baby Alice began to fuss. "Sher," Jim said softly, he placed a hand on her shoulder. "The baby's starting to get tired."
"Then go," Sherry waved back, shoving Jim's hand off her shoulder. "Just go and leave me alone." She didn't bother to look back at her husband.
That was the beginning of the fissure. It was one that would slowly grow and grow, like two tectonic plates moving away from each other, inch by inch, year by year. On one side, Sherry stood with the ghost of a boy that would never be. On the other side, not at all her fault, was a baby that would grow into a girl, and then a woman who would always wonder if the bad things in the world were her fault. Straddling the fissure was a man who tried to be there for his wife and be there for his daughter, trying to mend the cracks, but ultimately, falling into the abyss.
I'm hoping to be updating more frequently now!
Going forward, Alice's story will be interspersed with the rest of the family.