Work Text:
September 1911
Everything was too loud. The grown-ups’ feet pounding on the floor, the low drone of her uncles talking around her, and, worst of all, her mother’s agonized screams. One minute she had been sitting in her parents’ bed, reading a book to her mother, and the next her mother was dripping wet and walking down the hall and her father was running for the telephone and ushering her mother back to bed. The baby’s coming, they’d said, and she’d been so excited, but the knocks at the door hadn’t brought a baby; instead, they’d yielded a series of aunts and uncles, her grandmother, and the strange woman who came once a week to poke and prod at her mother’s stomach. The women had disappeared with her father into her mother’s bedroom, the uncles had shepherded her into the living room, and now it was all too loud. Now it was all too much.
She knew everyone here, but there were too many of them, and they were too big and their voices were too deep and they smelled wrong, all wrong; of sweat and gasoline and machinery, not of ink and cloves. Not like her father. They were sitting in the wrong seats and saying the wrong things and trying to comfort her in all the wrong ways, and all she wanted was for things to make sense again, for her father to sit back down at his desk and pick up his pen, for her mother to smile and read the next page of the book, for her cat to come out from under the bed and curl up next to her the way she was supposed to.
But no one was doing any of that, and everything they were doing was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
And underlying all the wrongness was the horror of her mother’s screams. She covered her ears with her hands, but she could still hear her mother shrieking unfamiliar words in an unfamiliar voice, and she knew that even though her mother was only two rooms away, the distance between them was infinite. And what if her mother never came back? What if her mother stayed in the bedroom, screaming and screaming and screaming, and what if the too-many uncles stayed here on the couch, laughing their too-deep laughs, and what if she stayed like this, too, stuck in this nightmare, unable to hear for the buzzing in her head?
“Mommy,” she cried, folding herself in half to cry into her knees. Her mother made things quiet. Her mother made things safe. Her mother was the reason all of this was happening.
She cried harder, falling sideways and curling in on herself. If only…
Strong arms pulled her close, picking her up and settling her against a wrong-smelling chest in a wrong-sized lap. Wrong, wrong, wrong, but—“Ellie,” came a deep voice, and she paused for a moment. That voice—she knew that voice. She knew that voice even without opening her eyes, because it was deep, yes, but it wasn’t too deep. Not so deep she’d drown in it. Not so deep as to swallow her alive. It was deep but not loud, deep but not wrong. It was deep like her father, deep like her grandfather, deep like safety and kindness and home, and… maybe things weren’t as wrong as she’d thought? “Shh, maydele. It’s going to be okay.”
She turned her head to cry into the wrong-smelling chest. “Unca Day,” she sobbed, clutching handfuls of his shirt to make sure he didn’t disappear. “I want Mommy.”
“I know, lovey,” he said, pulling her flush against him so that she felt warm and swaddled and hidden, safe from the noise and the crowd and the wrongness. “How about we go on a walk?”
She nodded into him and he lifted her up, his strong, broad hands pressed against her back and her head as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist. It was loud outside, too, loud with the yells of street vendors and the honks of car horns and the rumble of trains and the barks of stray dogs and the cries of newsboys, loud loud loud, but this was a good loud. This was her city loud. This was things as it should be, this was what she was used to. She peeked out from her snug haven to reassure herself that yes, this was her street, this was familiar, this was normal.
“Do you want me to put you down?”
“No.” She turned her head back against him and shut her eyes tight, relaxing into the din and the feeling of his gait jogging her up and down. She didn’t mean to, but she fell asleep like that, waking only when the motion stilled and the sound lessened. She startled to realize she wasn’t in her bed at home and pulled away slightly to see where she was, the whimpers coming unbidden.
“Shh, Eleanor. It’s okay. It’s your Uncle Dave. We’re on a walk, remember? You an’ me, on a walk to Central Park. Do you want to go play?”
She sniffled and stuck her thumb in her mouth, taking in her surroundings and then looking up at her uncle. “Kay.”
He set her down on the grass and followed along behind as she stooped to gather all of the multicolored leaves that caught her eye. She handed them to him, one after another, and he did his best to discard the slimy ones and the dirty ones and the truly tattered specimens without her knowledge. “F’r my baby,” she said, handing him a large leaf from a sugar maple. “F’r my baby,” she said, handing him a skeletal leaf from an oak. “F’r my baby,” she said, handing him a golden leaf from a tulip poplar.
She handed him the curved leaf of a camperdown elm.
“For your baby?”
She nodded and reached for his free hand, satisfied with the collection she’d gathered and content to walk hand in hand for a while. She stuck her thumb in her mouth as they strolled, trying to distract herself from the echoes of her mother’s screams and the residual buzzing in her head. The sun continued to sink in the sky and they continued to walk, pausing at each fork in the pathway until she’d had time to decide where to lead them, even though she didn’t know where any of these trails went. It didn’t matter where they went, though. She didn’t care about that, and neither did he. The important thing was to keep going; she knew that instinctively. This foot then that foot, this foot then that foot.
“Ready to go home, maydeleh?”
She moved this foot then that foot, this foot then that foot, even though they were sore and hot and weary for home. But home was wrong, all wrong, and she didn’t want to go back until it was right again.
“Eleanor?”
She shook her head.
“We need to get back, lovey.”
She shook her head again and dropped his hand, sitting down in the middle of the pathway. She watched a lady frown and skirt around her, she heard a man grunt and tug his dog away, she heard her uncle apologize and try to explain.
“We really need to leave, Eleanor.” He crouched down in front of her and tried to catch her eye, but she swiveled sideways, thumb jammed firmly into her mouth. “I know, but it’s getting late, and we need to get something to eat and put you to bed.”
She felt his hands slide under her arms and she screamed, not wanting to go back, not wanting to be where everything was too loud and too much and wholly, thoroughly, completely wrong. Screaming didn’t seem to be working, but she wasn’t going to give up hope just yet—it might work soon, or it might work later, and at least it covered up the memory of her mother’s cries, and who knew—maybe it would work as he carried her up the apartment steps and into the apartment that was all wrong, all wrong, all—wait. She blinked and quieted. It… wasn’t so loud? It didn’t feel… heavy?
“Where ya been, Dave! You’n the kid missed all the action!”
She felt her uncle’s chin brush her hair as he nodded in response. “Is everyone well?”
“Right as rain,” and then there was a pat on her back from someone she couldn’t see through her tear-swollen eyes, and then a, “Take ‘er on back; Kath’s awake. Jack’s there, too. One of ‘em’s holdin’ the baby, f’r sure.”
“Baby?” Eleanor lifted her head to look around the room, which was still too-full of uncles, but now the aunts were here, too, and her grandmother, and then they were walking down the hallway and entering her parents’ bedroom but no one was screaming and it was quiet and—
“Eleanor,” came her mother’s voice, tired and soft but clearly her mother, that was recognizably her mother, not the stranger from earlier, and she pulled her thumb out of her mouth to gape at the tiny bundle resting on her mother’s chest. “Come meet your brother.”
Her uncle crossed the room to set her down on the bed, and she crawled over, her eyes wide. She looked from her mother’s blotchy face to the swaddle of blankets and pointed. “ ‘S dat my baby?”
“Yes, muffin. This is your baby. This is Nicholas. Nicholas Luke.”
“My baby,” she breathed. “Ohhhh.”
“Do you want to hold him?” She turned around to see her father standing behind her, smelling of cloves and ink just as he ought to, his eyes warm and his voice just-right deep.
“Yeh,” she said, extending her arms so they could place the baby in them. She was ready for him right there, but her father picked her up and settled her against the headboard before finally lifting Nicholas from her mother’s chest and laying him gently in her lap. And as soon as she felt his weight against her legs, she completely forgot all of the wrongness and the noise and the too-much-everything from earlier that day. All that mattered was that her baby was here, and she was holding him, and he was hers. She placed a kiss on his scrunchy little forehead and beamed as he smacked his lips and sighed. “Hi Nickas,” she cooed, taking in his wrinkled face, his reddened skin, his fuzzy hair. “See my baby?” She asked her uncle, who was just about to leave the room.
“I do,” he answered, giving her a tender smile.
“Dis my baby,” she said again, gently stroking his forehead. “Hi, baby.”
Had she been able to spare a thought for anything but Nicholas, she would have realized that the noise in her head had faded now. Her mind was quiet, her heart was full, and her world was set to rights. All that remained was the stillness of the bedroom and the soft breaths of her baby, asleep in her arms.