Anything for My Baby

After turning the washer dial to the heavy soil setting, she shook her head and spoke to the laundry basket at her feet. “I can’t believe this is still happening. At your age, honestly,” she said.

“I know, Mama.”

Behind her, a shadow shifted in the hall. She could feel him there without having to see he was there. Still, she turned around to look at him because she loved him. Always would.

“You should know better by now,” she said.

“I’m trying,” he said.

The light from the utility room caught his contours. A wisp of a boy with a damp cowlick smack in the middle of his forehead. The lenses of his prescription glasses shined like polished stones. She couldn’t see his actual eyes, but they were there. Maybe brimming with tears.

“Sometimes I can’t help it,” he said.

“Well, you need to try harder,” she said. “You can’t keep having these accidents. What if you had done it at someone’s house? You can’t expect them to clean it up.”

“You’re right, Mama. You’re always right.”

“Here I am trying to give you tough love, and you’re trying to sugar-coat me.” She shook her head again. It was a practiced exasperation. “What do you think I am, a laundry queen?”

She was a rotund woman in house slippers and an old muumuu. The muumuu was decorated with red, white, and blue paint splatters. Her large breasts swung inside the muumuu as she lifted the laundry basket and set it on the edge of the washer. Her face was florid from the work.

Again, she could feel him watching her. She didn’t know what he was thinking. He was a quiet boy. Sad, really.

“I won’t always be here to clean your messes in the middle of the night,” she said. “You’ve got to try to be better.”

“I can. I will.”

“Sooner I see it, the better.”

He took a hesitant step toward the utility room. He stopped short of crossing the threshold. Below his black shorts he was barefooted. His feet were hairless and pale. His toes belonged to some nocturnal frog. They gripped onto the floor, sticking him in place.

“You told me it was a phase,” he said. “That I’d grow out of it.”

“I hope that’s true...”

His face was stricken. “You don’t think I will?”

“I want you to. I do. But it’s the third time this month this has happened. I’m getting tired. Look at this.”

With her forefinger and thumb, she pinched the edge of a bedsheet and lifted it from the basket. The bedsheet twisted in on itself, heavy with wetness.

“Sopped clear through. Filthy,” she said. “And these are nice sheets. Egyptian cotton, five-hundred thread count. But if this happens again, they’ll be ruined. It won’t be worth the trouble to clean them.” Then she said, musing but loud enough for him to hear. “I should’ve burned them after the first time.”

A small sob escaped him. He hung his head. “I said I’m sorry. How many times can I say it?”

She tipped out the contents of the laundry basket. Everything landed inside the drum with a wet slap. “You can do it by handing me those bleach pods. They’re right inside the door there, next to the lye.”

He didn’t move.

“Go on,” she said.

“But Mama.”

“A little light ain’t going to hurt you,” she said. “But I will.”

Quickly, he slid into the utility room. He did not make a sound. He moved along the wood paneling, lightly touching the walls. His hands were pale. He stepped around the industrial buckets and the neatly folded tarps but stopped before the rakes and shovels.

In between was a secondhand table. A glass soda bottle with a sprig of lavender sat on its surface. There was also a stack of homemade lard soap, the kind cut with a steel wire. The thick bars were veined with lavender sprigs. The utility room was cloying with lavender.

Next to the soaps was the pouch of laundry pods. The brand name was Eager Beaver Bleach—Dam Clean Guaranteed!—The tagline promised. He snatched it up and brought it to her.

“Was that so bad?” she asked.

“...a little,” he said.

A quirk of a smile lifted her jowls. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Love me?”

“You know I do.” She stroked his head, trying to calm the cowlick in his hair. It wouldn’t stay down. It didn’t stop her from trying. “You promise this is going to be the last time?”

“I’m going to try, Mama. Try real hard. I thought it was done the last time, but…”

“You had an oopsie?” She gestured to the washer.

He nodded. “It just happened before I knew it had started. I swear. I didn’t want to have it happen this time.” He looked away. “Not like the other times.”

“I do appreciate your honesty. Sometimes you can’t control what your body wants to do...”

She opened the pouch and dropped an Eager Beaver Bleach pod into the washer. She looked again at the dirty load and deliberated before dropping in three more pods. “...but it’s how you clean up after yourself that matters,” she said.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good.” She closed the washer lid and turned on the cycle. The water began filling the drum. “So, did you clean yourself?”

“Yes.” His voice was hollow, robotic, practiced. “I sudsed up everything. Lathered, rinsed, and repeated with my hair. I bleached the tub when I was all done.”

“Mm hmm. And what about the basement?”

“It’s clean too.”

“You used the stain remover and the brush?”

“Yes.”

“Did you light a candle?”

“Yes.”

“What scent?”

“Lavender,” he said. “We don’t have any other scents.”

“It was a trick question.”

The washer kicked into its cleaning cycle. It rumbled, agitating the sheets, scrubbing the fabric. The sound was pleasing and productive.

“Okay,” she said. “Did you use a tarp?”

“Yes. Bungee cords too. Like I said, it’s all cleaned up, Mama.”

“All right then. No need to get sassy.”

The washing machine churned, lifting away the stains. He was close. She could see his eyes. Pale, pale green. “Are you still mad with me?” he asked.

She held his gaze. Then she sighed with her whole body. The muumuu rippled over the softest parts of her. “You know I can’t stay mad at you,” she said. “Come here.”

He let her draw him in. His head rested on her ample bosom. She smelled him. Lavender soap, the same she used to bathe him with as a baby. Now he was older. He was different. He was clean but cold. His skin was clammy. She still loved him. No matter what.

“Okay,” she said. With reluctance, she nudged him off her breast. “It’s late. We can let the machine take care of the sheets. I’ll finish them in the morning.”

“Thank you, Mama.” He was already edging away from the light, back to the hallway. His eyes were clouded over again. “Can I sleep in your room tonight?”

“Yes, but on the floor. Bring out your sleeping bag.”

“It’ll be like when I used to be afraid of thunderstorms,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She gave a small smile. “Just like that.”

He was halfway down the hall when yellow lights clocked across the ceiling and down the wall. Above the sounds of the washing machine, a car engine rumbled outside. He froze, staring out the picture window. She joined him.

A car had woven its way through the woods to the house. The engine turned off and the headlights died. Before it went dark, the type of car was unmistakable from the light bar on its roof. It was a police cruiser.

The cruiser door opened and closed. The shadow of a man stepped out and headed toward the porch. His footsteps were very loud on the gravel. They watched him come closer.

“What’s he going to say, Mama?” he asked.

“Same thing he always does,” she said. “Where is the mess? And do you have what I need to take care of? He’s very predictable that way. Unassuming. It’s a helpful thing, let me tell you.” She looked at him. “You do have what he needs, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“What was it this time?”

He shifted, like he had some inner itch. “A steak knife,” he said.

“One of my good ones?” she asked. When he was quiet, she knew. “Now I’ll have to get a new set. You can’t have four place settings but only three knives.” She clucked her tongue. “It was an anniversary gift, too.”

“I’m sorry, Mama…”

“I know, I know. I don’t mean to make things worse. They are what they are already.”

The policeman’s boots stopped. He was outside the front door.

“You just do what your Mama tells you,” she said, “and come clean about what you did. It’s the best way to get better. Some people just take longer than others to get better. Will you tell him everything?”

“...I will.”

“Good boy.” Her hand was on the doorknob, ready to turn it. “Your daddy will understand. He deals with these messes all the time. He is the county sheriff, after all.”

About the Author

M.C. St. John is a writer from Chicago. His stories have appeared in Chthonic Matter, Flame Tree Publishing, Tales of Sley House, and Thirteen Podcast.