Baby Talk Read Online Free PDF

that were slowly circling
above her head.
    “Is my baby o-tay?” Annie said, scooping
Natasha up in her arms. She was wracked with guilt over falling
asleep and neglecting her child. That was how crib death
happened!
    Natasha just grinned back at Annie,
completely unaware of any danger, past, present or future. A
rivulet of spittle ran down her chin and onto the orange baby
jumper that Annie’s mother had given her, with Natasha’s name
embroidered across it.
    Annie kissed the child’s little forehead,
then glanced at the telephone. It was, of course, still off the
hook, just the way she had left it.
    Cradling the baby in one arm, Annie picked
up the receiver and listened. It was completely dead, just like it
always was after the
beep-beep-beep
noise stopped. The sound
must have just been in her dream, only—she had been leaving the
phone off the hook almost every day since Natasha was born, and it
had never made that raucous
beep-beep-beep
noise twice. It
only did that for a minute or two after she took it off the hook,
and then became silent. Like it was now.
    Annie placed the receiver back in its cradle
and carried the baby into the kitchen. When she saw the time, she
gasped. It was almost one o’clock! She thought she had only been
asleep for a couple of minutes, and it had been almost an hour.
    As she prepared lunch, she decided that her
unconscious mind had created the sound, as well as the dream
surrounding it, to wake her up so she could go check on Natasha.
Some part of her knew she had slept too long and decided to get her
attention, and with a sound that she associated with the baby.
    Wasn’t the human mind interesting?
     
    * * *
    It was almost 6:15 when Neal got home from
work—it took him over an hour to drive what should have been a half
hour commute, maximum, from the flower shop in Buckhead to the
apartment on Roswell Road. The Atlanta rush hour traffic was
appalling, and fighting his way through it, after spending an
entire day on the road, always worsened his mood.
    When he came in the front door, he found
Annie sitting on the couch, reading some women’s magazine, and, as
always, munching on potato chips and drinking chocolate milk.
Natasha was asleep, sitting beside Annie in her baby seat.
    Neal slammed the door shut behind him. “What
you did today was very, very stupid, Annie.”
    The baby’s eyes opened. She immediately
started crying.
    “Neal!” Annie hissed. “Why did you have to
slam the door? You woke her up!”
    Annie quickly set the potato chips and
chocolate milk down beside the couch, out of Natasha’s sight, and
then picked up the wailing baby. “There, there
sweetie...shhh...everything’s o-tay.”
    Natasha was soon quiet, looking up at Neal,
her eyes locked on his face.
    “I don’t appreciate it, Annie,” Neal said.
“I don’t appreciate it one damn bit!”
    Natasha made some gurgling sounds, but Neal
ignored her.
    “What in the world are you talking about,
Neal?”
    “As if you don’t know,” Neal laughed.
“You’re on my fucking back all the time about getting a good job,
and then you do something that could get me fired!”
    “Don’t use language like that around
Natasha.”
    Neal motioned angrily to the baby. “She
can’t understand a damn thing I say.”
    Natasha made another gurgling noise.
    Neal slung his jacket and the afternoon
paper into one of the easy chairs. The paper slid off the plastic
covering and onto the floor, which only made Neal more furious.
Annie didn’t want to remove the protective plastic from the shoddy
furniture they rented, afraid the company wouldn’t take it back
later, when she and Neal had enough money to buy their own
furniture. That was a laugh! Neal was certain that all of the
rented junk would be worn out—plastic and all—long before then.
    “She can too understand,” Annie said.
“Babies can understand a lot of things, even from inside the womb.
My books say so.”
    “Your books,” Neal said sulkily.