Magdalena's Shadow, page 4
Chapter Four
All through the next day, Coco and Tia made a room for Bebe out of one of the guest bedrooms. A bed was dismantled and moved into storage along with several other pieces of furniture. After spending the entire day dusting and organizing, Bebe’s new garments hung on pink silk-wrapped hangers, while her tiny shoes sat sweetly in the oversized cherry wood shoe rack next to hats, scarves, and a dozen other precious little items. Later that evening Coco laid Bebe in the new crib in her own room, a multicolored mobile spinning and singing Imagine above her.
The room was bright with toys, blankets, and the soft wall decals that Coco had purchased during their earlier excursion; animals and stars twinkled and grinned from the walls and ceiling. Tia switched off the light, causing hundreds of stars to shine through the room. Bebe instantly stopped rattling her toy and stared at the store-bought cosmos above her.
Thirty minutes later Coco stood in the kitchen putting up baby bottles next to the few remaining tins of formula. With Tia’s help Bebe had begun eating solid foods. Soon the days of bottles and formula would be over.
“What will we put Bebe’s vitamins in when she’s off bottles?” Coco turned to Tia who was busy gathering her things to go. Coco glanced up at the bottle with the eyedropper top that sat next to the formula.
“I didn’t know you were giving her vitamins.” Tia glanced up at the bottle with its old label handwritten in Spanish. There was nothing interesting about the bottle, nothing out of the ordinary about it except for the fact that Coco alone knew it existed. “Is this what you have been giving her?” Tia took the bottle off the shelf.
“Yes, the bottle came with her. Rosa read me the directions; I’m to give her four drops three times a day.”
Tia stared at the handwritten label and then examined the contents, holding the liquid up to the light. The bottle was only a quarter full. Tia translated the label aloud. “Reduce each feeding by one drop every seven days or use as necessary under a doctor’s guidance. I don’t suppose she read you that part.”
Coco’s face fell. She took the bottle from Tia’s hand and stared at the Spanish words. “It was in her baby bag when she came.” Coco handed it back to Tia.
“I understand.” Tia unscrewed the top of the bottle and chemical fumes filled the air between them. Worse than the scent was the look of dismay on Tia’s face.
“What’s the matter, Tia?”
“This is a drug called laudanum, Coco. It’s an opiate given to babies who were born addicted to heroin. Like heroin, it’s also very addictive.” There was a pause while both Coco and Tia contemplated the bottle. “Do you know if your mother was using during her pregnancy?”
“No, no, no…. Mama wouldn’t do drugs when she was pregnant.” Coco shook her head, dismissing the thought completely. “She wouldn’t do that. No, Tia, there has to be another reason. She loves us. She….”
“Without medical records,” Tia interrupted, “we can’t know why Bebe was given laudanum. They could’ve started her on it for the trip to the U.S. It might have been prescribed to keep her calm on the plane. When I was a child in Nicaragua it was used to quiet sick people and children. Maybe it’s still used in Argentina. I honestly don’t know why they gave it to her.”
A lingering silence settled over the room. When Coco raised her eyes to Tia, the old woman was still staring at the bottle. “Tia, I haven’t been giving it to her regularly… sometimes I miss a dose… maybe I haven’t been giving her enough to hurt her.” Coco stared at Tia, her heart racing.
“Oh, God, Tia, why would anyone give Bebe laudanum?”
Tia pulled her eyes from the bottle. “Everything will be fine. Bebe will be fine.” She handed the bottle to Coco and walked to the darkened living room, the glare from the wall mounted TV casting the furniture in long blinking shadows.
Coco lingered in the kitchen, turning the bottle over and over in her hands. On Bebe’s arrival it had been full; now six months later, it was nearly empty. Bebe had to be addicted.
“Tia?” Coco’s voice broke with emotion. She followed the old woman into the living room. “What do we do?” Coco stopped when she saw Tia standing before an un-blinded wall of windows. Chicago stretched out behind them, mile upon mile of city glaring a pinkish gray in the evening sun. Coco’s vertigo froze her where she stood.
Tia looked out beyond the city, past the skyscrapers and the busy streets.
When she finally spoke, her voice came in hushed tones. “Bebe will cry, she’ll be sick, she’ll be angry, but she will recover. Tomorrow we will give her only three drops three times a day, and we will give her even less the week after. It must be a very slow withdrawal.”
“Okay.”
“When Bebe came did she arch her back and go stiff when you held her? Did she look in your eyes or did she avoid your face?”
“She looked in my eyes and she never arched away from me. She liked to be held. She liked to have me close.”
“Did her hands shake? Did she cry a lot or have trouble catching her breath?
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Babies born addicted to heroin don’t make eye contact. They don’t want to be touched. They can have tremors and irregular heartbeats. Some of them have trouble learning to roll over. Some have breathing problems. Of course, she was not a newborn when she came here. Her treatment may have been good in Argentina. Even still she should have been off the laudanum before she arrived. They must have prescribed it to keep her calm on the plane.”
“That has to be it.” Coco turned toward the kitchen, unable to face the possibility that Magdalena was a drug addict who would use during a pregnancy. Rumors of drug use cycled through the tabloids and magazines Coco read, but the TV had offered no solid evidence to support the rumors. Magdalena looked flawless in her ads and spoke perfectly in her interviews, and she had never once been listed among the celebrities in drug treatment programs. Coco shook the thought from her head.
It had been stupid to trust what the Keeper had read off the bottle. No wonder Bebe was such a good baby: she had been slightly stoned for the last six months. She rarely cried and demanded, and never for more than a moment. Bebe slept much of the time, and that made her very easy to care for.
Coco heard a click as the door opened and then closed. When she walked back to the living room she found Tia’s old coat gone along with her chrome handcart. Tia had left for the night and Coco felt abandoned, frightened, and angry.
“It’s not my fault!” Coco said the moment Tia walked into the kitchen the following morning.
“You’re up early.” Tia skipped the polite “good morning” they usually exchanged. Coco looked exhausted but more importantly, she looked afraid. “I know it’s not your fault,” Tia soothed. “I’m sorry if I seemed angry yesterday. I was shocked and upset; I needed fresh air to clear my mind.”
Coco deflated slightly, her red eyes following Tia through the kitchen. Tia warmed the frying pan and got out eggs, bread, and fruit from the refrigerator. She was ignoring Coco, not on purpose but out of preoccupation.
“How did you know that smell?” Coco demanded.
“What smell?”
“The drops. The moment you smelled them you looked so shocked, like someone had hit you. How did you know that smell?”
Tia shook her head and began to slice a tomato. Coco watched her for a few minutes before repeating the question.
“Not today, I’m not in the mood. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime but not today.” Tia kept her back to Coco while she kept her fingers busy.
Coco went to get Bebe, who was sitting up and looking around her room.
“Good morning.” Coco lifted her up into her arms and kissed her. Bebe smiled pleasantly, her soft brown eyes blinking in the morning sun. In the kitchen, Coco sat her in her swing before giving her the drops. One, two, three, she counted silently as the drops fell into the baby formula. Bebe sucked up her breakfast with happy relish.
Bebe seemed fine for the first part of the day, but by evening, even with the three dinnertime drops, she was restless and angry. Coco played with her, sang to her, and rocked her, but nothing she did could soothe away the signs of withdrawal.
“It’ll be like this for a while.” Tia moved through the house cleaning, tidying, and organizing.
By nine that evening Tia was gone and Bebe began to cry from withdrawal. Coco hadn’t slept the night before, and she didn’t sleep that night, either. Instead she watched Bebe go between exhausted crying to exhausted sleep and then back again.
When Tia walked in the next morning she found Bebe in her swing, staring at the TV while Coco lay passed out on the living room couch.
The days crept by in a cycle of sleepless hysteria until Coco began to cry as well from exhaustion.
“She doesn’t sleep for more than an hour or two before she’s back up screaming. I can’t do this much longer, Tia. I can’t.”
“You can do this, Coco,” Tia answered, gathering Bebe up into her arms.
“No, I can’t.”
“What other choice do you have? This is motherhood, Coco, it’s not just diapers and playtime. Sometimes it’s worry, exhaustion, and endurance. Most mothers have got past the screaming all night stage by the third month. You’re getting to experience it now, and this is the way things are, and there is nothing you can do but get through it. In life, you have no choice but to be strong.”
Coco stared at Tia. She had expected sympathy not a lecture on the hardships of existence. “You are being cruel. I tell you I need help and you talk to me like I’m spoiled and whiny. I’m not whining, I’m tired. What’s the matter with you?”
Tia stopped where she stood, turning with Bebe on her hip to face Coco. “You’re right. I’m being cruel. But I’m not the only one. Your mother was cruel when she sent a drug addicted baby to another country to be raised by the sixteen-year-old she abandoned years before. That was cruel. It’s also cruel that right now there are girls in the streets raising drug addicted babies without the luxury of a penthouse apartment or a four thousand dollar a month allowance.”
“I’m doing the best job I can! I need to sleep and I need you to be nice. I thought you were my friend, Tia.” Coco watched Tia deflate, and in that instant, she realized that nothing Tia had said since she had walked in the door had been directed at her. “What’s going on with you?” Coco looked at her with concern.
“I’m sorry. I’m tired too. It’s been rough… at home. It’s hard to remember that tough love isn’t always the answer. I’ll watch Bebe while you get some sleep. Okay?”
“I don’t know what kinds of problems you deal with outside of this apartment, Tia. All I do know is that I’ve always been nice to you. Remember that the next time you decide to pull this tough love act.” Coco burst into tears and walked from the room.
When Bebe began to sleep through the night, they dropped her dose to two drops two times a day. Bebe became sick again and the screaming resumed. Coco learned to live without sleep and Tia did her best to counter her complaints and bolster her courage. The laudanum bottle was nearly empty three weeks later when they dropped the dose again. This time, the effects were not as severe and with time Bebe was off the drug completely.
Chapter Five
To Coco’s shock and sadness, the Bebe she had loved and nurtured all those months was completely different from the Bebe she now had to raise. Where once Bebe was a happy contented baby, now she was demanding and dissatisfied. She dragged herself around the apartment with absolute determination, grabbing onto tabletops and sofa cushions to pull herself to standing. Everything within arm’s reach went straight into her mouth and then onto the floor. Coco frantically baby-proofed the apartment, but no matter how hard she tried, things were still broken and the mess was constant. Bebe took off her clothes and she took off her diapers. She peed on the carpet and dug in the plants, and Coco found herself wishing she could escape the apartment and the life Magdalena had thrust upon her. Every day she thought up a reason to leave the apartment, sometimes for coffee at Starbucks, other times to buy a new piece of clothing at the store where she had seen her mother’s picture in the window. Yet even these short escapes didn’t revitalize her.
Worse still was how tired Tia seemed each day. There were days when leaving Bebe with her was not an option. Tia wouldn’t discuss her seemingly disastrous home life, and without the bond of trust they had earlier shared, Coco felt unsupported and alone.
Coco’s daydreams shifted from moments with Magdalena and the memory of her once sweet baby, to rich fantasies involving beautiful boys who kissed her in romantic, baby-free destinations. As the months dragged by and Bebe’s newfound attitude developed, Coco’s mind shifted further from reality, focusing less and less on the life she lived, a life that seemed harder to endure with each passing day.
One evening, while Tia and Coco sat on the living room couch, they heard the elevator ding and the doors slide open. It was a sound they would not have heard if Bebe hadn’t been passed out in her crib. Coco rushed to the front door peephole in time to see the black-clad shoulders of a man vanish into #1, the apartment that had been empty ever since she was very little. When the door to #1 closed, Coco moved to the adjoining wall, listening for the sound of movement.
Tia laughed loudly when she saw Coco press her ear to the wall. Coco shushed her with a look and then pressed her ear back against the wall. She heard the TV switch on followed by the sound of running water. Cupboard doors opened and closed followed by silence.
Tia laughed again. “Girl, you need a vacation,” she teased, watching Coco press her ear to a different part of the wall.
“Tia, you don’t understand. No one has lived there in years. A family lived there when I was little. But I can hardly remember what they looked like. I wonder who this guy is?” Coco frowned and walked back to the sofa, her curiosity conjuring up a thousand stories. “I wonder when we’ll get to meet him. I wonder what he looks like. Maybe he has a family?”
Tia shrugged. “If he’s anything like my neighbors you’ll never see him unless the power goes out.”
Chapter Six
“She’s a monster,” Coco told Tia the moment she walked in the door. It was still early morning but havoc had broken loose in #2. Coco was in the middle of washing baby poop off the walls. Bebe had taken her diaper off and played in the contents. When Coco grabbed her up and washed her she had screamed the whole time. The moment Bebe was clean she had run back to her art project and dived back in. Coco had washed her again before putting her into her crib with the safety tent fastened. Bebe’s fingers scrambled over the tent while she tore at the fabric and screamed. Tia arrived as Coco, sponge in hand, began to cry.
“She’s not a monster, she’s asserting herself. Think of it as the terrible twos at a year and a half. It’ll pass, I promise.”
In the other room, there was a thud as Bebe hit the floor and began to cry. The safety tent was totally useless when faced with a toddler like Bebe.
“I’ll get her.” Tia turned toward Bebe’s room leaving Coco alone. The scent of baby poop and disinfectant made Coco sick.
“No biting, Bebe.” Tia’s voice carried to where Coco cleaned. Coco could see Tia lift a struggling Bebe up into her arms. The baby grabbed the skin under Tia’s chin and twisted, starting yellow and blue bruises on the old woman’s neck. Tia grabbed her little fists. “No, Bebe.” They stood staring at each other until Bebe’s fists relaxed and she let go. “Now it’s time to get dressed.” Coco watched Tia set the child on her hip where she stood before the closet. Bebe reached her hand out and began tearing clothes off the hangers. “No, Bebe.”
Turning away, Coco blinked back fresh tears. Bebe made everything hard. Even getting her dressed was difficult.
“I’m taking her to the park.” Tia entered the living room with Bebe. “You take some time for yourself. You’ll have to make your own breakfast, but you’ll be alone.”
“Thank you.” Coco finished cleaning before heading for the shower.
While she stripped off her clothes she heard Bebe shriek as she was forced into her stroller. The screaming didn’t stop until the elevator took them out of hearing range. Bebe hated her stroller; she wanted to run and she knew how to unbuckle the stroller harness in seconds. Tia must have restrained her with a climbing hook snapped across her chest straps. No matter how Bebe struggled she couldn’t figure out how to unhook the climbing hook and set herself free.
Tears ran down Coco’s cheeks. She stepped into the shower remembering the sweet baby she had loved. Where had her Bebe gone and how could that sweet child have become the terror of #2? Coco felt the hot water run down her back and closed her eyes as a new wave of grief overtook her.
In the past, dressing had been something Coco had enjoyed, something she had done with care, picking through her wardrobe for just the right look. Today she was not in the mood for a Prada suit or any of her other dressier clothes. She settled instead for comfort while she tried to remember what she used to do for fun. There were her unread magazines. The Fashion Channel and the storage room stuffed to capacity with all the gift boxes she hadn’t made time to go through.
On entering the living room Coco tripped over a stuffed bear and then had to slide still more toys off the couch to make room to sit. The TV blinked on, pouring light and noise into the gloomy living room. Coco switched the channel from cartoons to the catwalks. Slowly she realized that New York’s February Fashion Week had come and gone along with the last several months of her life. Model after model traipsed across the screen bringing her the latest fashions from a world she had completely lost touch with.
Feeling restless and irritable Coco switched off the TV. She felt like she was missing out on life, missing out on what was important, missing all the things she loved by staying in the apartment with Bebe day after day. Worse still was the idea that she should go out and get a life. If only Magdalena hadn’t dumped Bebe on me, Coco thought. But where would Bebe be if Magdalena hadn’t dumped her here?
