These three eerie if not downright nightmarish stories, all written by Judy Budnitz, feature Kay, a real baby; the hundred-pound baby Kay's older brother Nick imagines is creeping unseen through their house; a black baby born to white parents; and a baby whose mother refuses to give birth to him until she get into the United States -- four years later the "nice big American" baby is finally born.
Here's baby Kay, from "Hundred-Pound Baby," a very good story about post-partum depression from the perspective of second-grader Nick*:
Kay was lying there wriggling around. So pink all over, and her arms and legs were so fat, they had creases in them. Her eyes stayed closed most of the time, and with her bald head and scrunched-up face, she looked like a little old man.
"I want to show you something," my mother said. She leaned into the crib and I saw her breasts swinging loose. She lifted Kay up, carried her to the changing table, and changed her diaper.
"Now you do it," she told me. "Take this one off and put on a new one."
Kay squalled. She didn't like going through it all again. Her body felt soft and trembly and loose. It felt like my face, my chin. She was so light. I could have picked her up and swung her around and around over my head.
I tried to do it too quickly and it was like wrapping up raw meat, like chicken. It was not too hard because she was already clean. My mother looked satisfied as she went back to sink down in her hollow on the bed.
Afterward, my mother asked me to change Kay again and again. I started to wish I hadn't done such a good job the first time.
Here is the hundred-pound baby Nick believes his mother has given birth to, secretly. (She gained a great deal of weight after Kay's birth as a result of her depression, went away with her sister for some time, and came back thinner.)
The hundred pound baby comes to me that night. I can't see him -- it's too dark -- but I can hear him breathing like soft hiccups. He whimpers beside the bed; he thumps against it, shaking me. He's saying, Me, me, me, what about me? Can I stay? What about me?
He doesn't say it , but that's what he means. I can tell. I have learned from reading Kay.
I reach down to touch him, give him a pat maybe, but he is already lumping away. I can see his shadow across the hall. He's crying, crying, crying: his tears leave a wet path behind him like a snail's trail.
"Hundred-Pound Baby" is included in Budnitz's first collection Flying Leap
. Both "Miracle," the one about the black baby born to white parents which you can read the full text of here -- it's not one of my favourites -- and "Nice Big American Baby," also not one of Budnitz's best, are found in Nice Big American Baby. If you want to try Budnitz, start with her earlier work.
*Just a quick note about writing a short story from the perspective of a second grader -- it is hard. Even though I like this story, the voice sounds much older than that. Would a second grader, for instance, have any more experience dealing with raw meat than a baby? Would a second grader say he knew how to "read" the baby? A lot of Budnitz's work is written in the first person -- it works best, for me, when that person is at least an adolescent.
