Lila picked up the onesie, but then let it fall back on the table with the rest of the unfolded laundry. Then she decided to walk through the door again. She’d been in fifteen minutes before, saw her baby ashen and dead, and backed out. Now she braced herself, and stepped up to the crib rail, her gut a clenched fist.
They’d never believe it was an accident. That pinched-faced woman from family services would be back. Last time, she’d refused to sit on the couch, instead pointing to the hard-backed kitchen chairs. “On home visits I never sit on upholstered furniture. They hide roaches and fleas.”
“I don’t have —”
The caseworker cut her off, “The kitchen table, please.”
Lila’d sat an hour explaining how Jeremy had unbuckled himself, pulled the door handle, and then toppled onto the driveway. Her car was old. It had no child locks. Innocent scrapes and bruises: that’s what the daycare had seen—gruesome, but accidental. She’d said “accident” many times with increasing desperation. By the end of the conversation, even to her own ear, it had sounded like a brittle lie.
The caseworker had then gone to the neighbors. Lila had watched through the curtains, burning with humiliation.
The caseworker had stayed for 20 minutes. I bet she sat on their couch.
Lila leaned forward. She brushed her finger across her baby’s cheek. It was yielding and tender, like dough left on the counter to rise. She inhaled his musky scent. He was smaller than Jeremy had been at that age, and his cries were different. She’d explained at the clinic, but they had dismissed her with a coupon for a different brand of formula.
When she’d found out she was pregnant again she’d been thrilled, even though she knew Marcus wouldn’t see her through to the end.
Lila glanced at the clock; Jeremy would be home from school soon.
The neighbors never spoke to her again after the caseworker’s visit. Their eyes followed Jeremy when they saw him playing, but when they caught her watching, their gazes dropped. They’d wave nervously, then turn their backs.
“Being a single mother can be overwhelming,” the caseworker had said, scribbling notes, “Did you know that St. Sebastian’s has parenting classes every Wednesday night with free daycare?”
“I work Wednesday nights.”
“Still—if you can make the time.” She looked up from her notes, her expression weary.
Lila nodded. “I’ll talk to my boss.”
The caseworker nodded, “Do that.”
It had ended, not with exoneration, but a form letter stamped “UNFOUNDED” and her first name misspelled as “Layla.”
It had taken her a year to scrape together enough money to move to this new house with its fenced backyard.
Lila straightened the baby’s blanket. There were dishes in the sink, laundry piled on the table, Jeremy’s Tonkas everywhere. She sighed and tip-toed away from the crib, the way she always did when the baby slept. So much undone, and Jeremy would be home any minute.
Shawna Mayer has a Masters degree in English from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Her flash fiction has been featured in the Illinois Times, Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak, Everydayfiction.com, and Fine Lines Literary Journal.