The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,77

arms while she was nursing. Her mother kept kissing Melissa on both cheeks and her mouth, saying that it was to keep the baby smell away so that the evil that stole babies couldn’t find Melissa. Her mother stayed past visiting hours and yelled at the nurses when they asked her to leave. She finally left after midnight, saying that she would come back the next day to visit. Before she left, she pinched Melissa under the arm. She said it was for good luck. Melissa started crying.

The next morning, Maxine left the hospital without telling anyone and walked the four miles home, carrying Melissa. She knew why her mother had come to see her. And she knew why God in his mercy had been making her sick. He had wanted her to stay in the hospital to protect her and Melissa from Maxine’s mother.

Maxine knew that her mother was coming to take Melissa, just like Maxine’s grandmother had taken Maxine’s baby sister.

When Maxine was about five, she and her sisters had been home alone one day. Her mother had taken her brother with her while she got her hair done. Maxine’s older sister, who was seven, was left in charge of Maxine and the baby. Their mother had been gone for only a few minutes when the front door slammed open and their grandmother walked in, carrying a suitcase. Maxine and her sister ran into the kitchen, afraid of Abuela and her pinching fingers. They heard her throwing things into the suitcase in the baby’s room. Then Abuela was in the kitchen, carrying the baby and the suitcase in one arm. Maxine was hanging on to her sister and both were in the corner, crying. Abuela reached down and pinched Maxine hard under her arm and said, “If you weren’t so fat, you would go with me, too.” Then Abuela and the baby left.

Maxine knew that her mother would come for Melissa the same way Abuela had for her sister. This was God’s test. God, in his wisdom, was making sure that Maxine would sacrifice anything for her daughter. With Daniel, she had been tempted and had given in to the sin of gluttony. With Melissa, God was tempting her with the sin of sloth.

Maxine never left Melissa alone. After Maxine walked home from the hospital, she locked the front door of her house and closed the curtains to make her mother think she wasn’t at home. Ernesto and Ron weren’t allowed to turn the lights on at night in the living room or their bedrooms. The only light that could be turned on was in the kitchen, because it faced the back of the house. Ron slept mostly at Manny Cordova’s house. Ernesto changed to the night patrol. Maxine didn’t answer the phone and stopped going to church, instead saying her own Mass at her shrine to Daniel, with Melissa sleeping on the floor next to her. She would pray for God to protect Melissa and ask Our Lady to keep her mother away. Maxine moved her bed back into the nursery, holding Melissa all night and singing her songs. Then, one day when Melissa was fifteen months old, the Lord took Maxine’s mother. The doctors said that it was a heart attack and Maxine said a novena to Our Lady in thanksgiving. No one had come to steal her baby. Maxine knew that she had passed God’s test. She hadn’t given in to the sin. God was going to allow her to keep Melissa.

The next day, Maxine opened the curtains and called Ron at Manny’s house to have him come home for dinner. She made posole and chile rellenos. But Ernesto didn’t come home for dinner. He stayed on the night shift until he was killed.

Maxine had seen her baby sister for the first time since they were children at Ernesto’s funeral seven years ago. Her sister had come dressed in a fancy black skirt and blouse. She’d said that she was the superintendent of a school in Albuquerque and had been a French and history teacher before that. She had married an engineer and had three children. One was teaching at New Mexico State University. They lived in a house with a swimming pool. She’d told Maxine, “The day Abuela took me was the best day of my life.”

Joyce Paine gave Gil the name of one of Sandra’s friends—Lacey Gould. Mrs. Paine didn’t know the address but gave him directions and a map drawn on a