My three-month-old self lay swaddled and snuggled, nestled on the passenger side floor of a white Austin Mini. My caseworker, Helen, was taking me to meet her mother. She had put me on the floor for safety. So I wouldn’t fly off the seat and smack into the dashboard if she stopped suddenly. It was June 1971 on the small Caribbean Island of Barbados, so the car did not have seat belts. They wouldn’t be mandatory for another fifteen years.
Helen claims that I stared at her with unblinking eyes for the whole drive. I argued that I must have blinked. Also, wasn’t she watching the road? How could she have possibly kept her eyes on me the whole time?
But Helen wouldn’t budge. ‘You didn’t blink.’
Helen was taking me to see her own mother, Clara. She hoped that Clara would like the looks of me so that she would take care of me for a while.
I was in desperate need of a saviour. My seventeen-year-old mother, Elena, the other half of Helen’s case, was not coping well with me and my infant demands. Elena, a minor herself, was cast out by her family, with me, a bastard, in tow.
Elena had been placed in an older woman’s home—with older woman who expected her to help with the housework. A squawking baby was a distinct negative, and a dead tired girl helper was a double negative.
Elena said that if she didn’t get a break from me soon, she wasn’t sure what she would do. A veiled threat Helen decided to take seriously. Elena begged Helen to find somewhere for me, anywhere, but Helen couldn’t find anyone to take a tiny baby who cried too much and couldn’t pull her own weight. The only person left to ask was Helen’s mother, who liked children. My future hung on that one word.
Like.
Helen drove with the fingers on both of her hands crossed as she gripped the steering wheel. I needed some luck to get past her mother, and I hadn’t had much in my short life.
Helen’s mother was particular, fussy, everything had to just so according to her arbitrary standards. Anything about me could rub Clara the wrong way. If she thought I was too bald, or had a strange smell, or looked cross-eyed, and most importantly, I shouldn’t be too black.
To Helen, I was a perfectly acceptable baby. She thought that I was cute. I was a medium brown shade; I had a few sprigs of black curls on my head. Elena said I cried too much but Helen didn’t think I cried any more than was expected.
Helen turned left at the tamarind tree and into her driveway. She drove past the black wrought iron gates into her garage. She lifted me off the floor of the car, walked into the kitchen, and presented me to her mother, who sat with her arms crossed behind a white and chrome 50s-style Formica table.
Clara unwrapped the thin white blanket swaddling me then picked me up and turned me to and fro. She fingered the thin pastel animal print shirt and cloth diaper I was wearing.
‘Lord, I wonder how many little bodies have been in dis shirt. It’s almost transparent,’ she said, with her singsong voice. Clara expertly re-swaddled me. ‘She is a nice little baby. What you brought for dis child?’
‘She has a diaper bag in the car. I didn’t know that you would take her so quickly,’ Helen said.
‘What did you think I would do with her den? Bring the bag. Let’s see what we have.’
‘Her mother says she cries a lot,’ Helen reminded her mother.
Clara sucked her teeth. ‘How old dat girl?’
‘She’s seventeen,’ Helen said.
Clara sucked her teeth again. ‘She doan know nuttin’ ‘bout babies. She’s too young.’
Clara looked at her daughter. ‘Stop getting dat bag and get it, please. I asked you dat already.’
Helen retrieved my bag from the car and spread the contents on the table. Six cloth diapers, four diaper pins, two glass baby bottles, and three well-worn baby shirts.
Clara surveyed the contents disapprovingly. ‘Well, dis will have to do until tomorrow de shops are closed. It’s plain milk for you tonight, Child. What is her name?’
‘Melissa,’ Helen said.
‘What kind of name is dat? Dat is an American name.’
‘I think she was supposed to be adopted by Americans,’ Helen said.
‘Well, dat can’t be helped.’ Clara scooped me up into her arms. ‘Come, child, let’s meet Granny.’
Clara took me down the hall to meet her mother. Helen went to her room and closed the door, her duty done.
With that, I was accepted into this house of women.
Yael Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet who lives in South Florida with her son and too many pets. She earned her M.F.A in creative writing from Florida International University and her work has appeared in The Human Prospect, South Florida Poetry Journal and is upcoming in Miniskirt Magazine. She is also an Associate Editor in Creative Nonfiction at West Trade Review.