Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,68
a seat beside me. The tulle of her tutu erupted stiff and straight, hiding the lower half of her small body, save for the tips of a pair of wiggling, pink ballet slippers peeking out from underneath.
“Oh no!”
I looked up just in time to watch a myriad of bottles, pacifiers, and other assorted baby paraphernalia spill out of the diaper bag and down the sloping path away from us.
“Damn it!” another more frantic exclamation followed the first. Quickly she clapped a hand over her mouth as she stared at her daughter with wide eyes. “That’s an ugly word, Astrid. Mommy didn’t mean to say the bad word. We won’t mention it to daddy about the ugly word, will we, sweetheart?”
The child eyed her mother speculatively.
When she realized her eldest child was neither going to confirm nor deny her request, she held an impatient hand out to her daughter.
The little girl didn’t move.
“Astrid,” she commanded in a voice I could only assume all mothers came to possess on their child’s first birthday.
Astrid blinked, her big Bambi eyes unwavering. The mother looked on the verge of tears, glancing down the embankment where the diaper bag’s contents had come to rest. The baby’s cries spiked as if to put an exclamation mark on the situation.
“She can stay with me.” I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was because she was a little ballerina, just like I had been once upon a time. Or, maybe it was the first strings of motherly instincts pulling at my heart. “I’ll watch her.”
The woman’s surprised eyes met mine like she hadn’t even noticed me until that moment. Distrust lined her expression before trailing down to my enormously, round belly. It was as if my pregnancy was a big fat ‘Trust Me’ sign.
“I’ll just be a minute, Astrid. Please be a good girl for the nice lady.”
As soon as her mother was gone, pushing the incessant baby away to collect the lost items, Astrid came to life. Climbing onto her knees, she maneuvered clumsily until she was an inch away from my face. Her breath smelled sweet like candy or ice cream.
“What are you?” she asked.
Already I was regretting my hasty offer. Kids had never been my thing. Apparently looming parenthood hadn’t changed that.
“I’m a girl.”
“I’m going to be a ballerina,” she informed. Her light brown hair, just a shade or two off from her mother’s, was wild, kinky, and frizzing at the ends. It was a mess, but, one day, with age and the wisdom of a few hair products, it would be beautiful – the kind of glossy curls you see on shampoo commercials. “My mom used to be a lawyer. So what are you?”
I hesitated, thrown off by the question. As unrealistic as it was, ballet had always been my future. What exactly that meant, or how far it would take me, had never been important before. I’d assumed I’d worry about that when I came to it.
“Well…I haven’t really decided yet. I suppose I could be anything I want to, really.” And for a second it really did seem like all the possibilities in the world were laid out at my feet, begging me to choose between them.
“Wrong, silly,” Astrid cried victoriously before wrapping her small arms around my stomach and pressing her rosy cheek to the fabric covering my belly. “There’s a baby inside you. You’re a mommy! That’s what you’ll be forever and ever and ever.”
Even after Astrid’s mother collected her and thanked me profusely, the child’s words echoed in my ear as if she were still whispering “forever, and ever, and ever, and ever…”
“Wait,” Madeline yanked me into the present, impatient of my sidetracked silent daydreams. “If Cam really wasn’t there when you went to the agency, then how accurate could his account be?”
“I did tell him about it later,” I assured; a little offended she’d assume I’d keep something so important from him.
“So this is exactly how it happened?” She demanded skeptically.
“The important stuff anyways.” I looked away, avoiding her eyes, but her stare and silence burned me as if she’d set fire to my lie. “Well…the agent did ask me why I’d chosen adoption.”
Her emerald eyes sparked like fireworks, delighted by my seemingly harmless admission. Madeline was a shark. She could smell a drop of blood in the water from miles away.
“What was your answer?”
“I told her that I was too young to be a mother. I wanted Cam’s child to have a better life than