"Slow down, mother," Lana hissed between her teeth. "Slow down, will you, already?"
Minnie glanced over at her daughter, lips pressed together, gripping the steering wheel of the 1967 Ford with a hawk-like grip, her false nails clicking, plastic on plastic. "There ain’t nothin’ wrong with five miles over the limit, Lana-cake. You just hold tight, and we’ll have you home in no time."
"There isn’t any rush," said Lana, and hitched the baby up a little higher in the crook of her arm. A swathe of bleached-blonde hair shielded her eyes from her mother. "Not now."
Minnie sniffed as if to say, You let me be the judge of that.
It was the first time they’d spoken in over an hour, since leaving the hospital parking lot. They’d blazed through city traffic, then hit the sandpaper ribbon of Virginia’s Highway 404 around lunchtime. Lana felt she’d been holding her breath for the last sixty minutes, as tightly as she now held the little girl in her lap. The adrenaline that had propelled her to sign the necessary papers and gather the new baby in her arms back in Norfolk was slowly ebbing, leaving her irritable and sleepy.
Lana caught her mother darting glances her way and turned her attention to the baby. Three days ago, someone else’s. Today, her baby. She shifted the bundle a little and smoothed out the wrinkles in her designer polka-dotted dress underneath, once again thinking, She's heavier than I expected. Nothing but that seemed to stick in her mind for more than a few seconds, not the passing highway mile markers, or the slate-gray sky bearing down on them, or even her own bone-weariness from days of stress … all she could think was how heavy eight pounds and six ounces really was.
"We’re doing fine," her mother murmured after a moment. "Just fine. Eyes on the road."
Lana shook her head. "She just keeps staring at me."
"She’s never gonna know the difference, child. You’re always gonna be her mama. Three days ain’t enough to stick gum to the side of a fence."
"She’ll know," insisted Lana. "I’m going to tell her."
Minnie set her jaw, teeth grinding away. Lana ignored the sound, which had grated on her soul her entire life. "I see," Minnie said after a moment.
"Yes."
"You got less sense than a shoe if you do tell." When Lana didn’t retort, Minnie persisted. "Look. We all gotta recognize what we can and can’t do. Where we’re strong, where we’re weak. You were smart enough to hook up with a good earner like Randall. I taught you good on that. But that’s the smart you got in your face and those tits. The smart you got in your head you could dance on that pin with the angels."
"Shut up, mother," Lana squeezed her eyes shut. "I’ll think of something."
"Yeah, well, you do it," Minnie shook her head. "And you see where it gets you."
Lana stared down at the newborn, who didn’t even have a name yet, and ran her knuckle over the powdery-soft, dimpled left cheek. There was not a hair on this child’s head, but her eyes were as blue as the tinted glass of Danny’s sunglasses … Danny, who’d promised her the world and a cherry on top … Danny, who said they didn’t have to have any kids, it was okay about her female problems, it didn’t matter to him, so long as he could come home to her every night … Danny, who went off to enlist in the Navy and didn’t come back … Danny, who was replaced by Randall a few months later.
Randall, who wasn’t nearly so understanding.
But those eyes … Mama said all baby’s got blue eyes for a little while, but Lana was certain: These would stick. She glanced in the side-view mirror at her own, dull, hazel ones, and felt them start to burn, just around the corners. The baby reached up, groping for purchase, located Lana’s finger, and closed around it, dragging it to her mouth. Lana turned away from the road and watched her gnaw, an embarrassed warmth spreading from behind her cheekbones all the way down her throat, where it lodged a moment, then spread around her body. The tight, warm wave hit her all at once, a feeling that reminded her of the way the times Danny had kissed her neck, but this was different. This time, the force of it stole her breath and for a brief second, she felt invincible. "Randall knows," she said softly.
"’Course he does," Minnie sighed. "That don’t mean the little one gotta know. Not right away."
"I’ll tell her," said Lana again. "I’ll tell her before she knows any better. So all she’ll ever know is she’s special. Not different. Special."
Her mother cackled. "Tell her the truth, tell her a lie to tell her the truth. That’s a good one, Lana-cake. You make a story up, then you go tell it to me first. I’ll tell you if it’s diamond or cubic zirconia."
Another green highway sign approached, glinting in the winter sun, then vanished behind them. Lana felt as though the baby had come to her like that sign … just a faraway distant notion that came faster and faster until, after a brief flashing moment, it was over. Less than seven months ago she’d figured Randall would leave her if she didn’t catch pregnant, and now look at her. A perfect little girl. Randall’s bank account took a dip, a teenage mother thought her baby was stillborn, and nobody was the wiser. Except Lana and Minnie. The call had come from their inside man on Monday. On Thursday she was a mother. And Lana had not a stretch mark on her. No one’d cut her … down there. She was as good as new. Randall would be pleased.
"Mama…" Lana’s voice trailed off, trying to hold onto the sunny feeling she’d felt a minute ago, "are we gonna be okay?"
Before Minnie could answer, the baby began making a puckering noise with her mouth, releasing Lana’s finger. She tried smiling down at the infant, which had worked before when she’d started shifting around in the blanket, but the puckering continued, and for an instant the little girl was a blowfish. "What?" she wondered in a singsong tone that she used on her cat. "What can I do for you, baby? What can your mama do for you?"
"She’s hungry," said Minnie. "We’ll pull over."
Lana felt a tightening in her head. Feedings. She should’ve guessed. A mama should know if her baby’s hungry. Her hands felt numb. She’d have to learn how to feed her baby. There was no breast milk, there never would be. But even with a bottle, how would she ever handle feeding a baby this heavy?
"Here," said Minnie, whipping the wheel to the side and pulling the car out onto the sandy shoulder, cutting the motor. With the efficiency of an Army general, Minnie slammed out of her side of the car, then circled around to let her daughter out. "Get in the back," she waved a pointed fingernail. "I’ll get the bottle from the cooler."
Lana did as she was told, climbing into the back seat while Minnie drew a bottle from the red and white cooler the family had used for beach parties. Lana recalled last seeing it four years ago, the weekend before she met Randall, half-buried amidst the sands of Virginia Beach. From it, Daddy would pull every kind of surprise, peanut butter sandwiches, homemade chocolate chip cookies, Cokes so cold they’d’ve slushified inside the bottle. Now, the sight of it filled with baby milk and pacifiers and diapers and all manner of necessities sliced into her. "I can’t," she shook her head, bending over the baby, hair coming loose from the bobby pins. "I’m no good at this. I don’t know how."
"Hush up," snapped her mother, craning across the seat and pointing the blue plastic bottle at her daughter. "I never got no special training. Nobody’s a professional. You can, and you will."
The crying took hold of her, and she felt hysteria waving howdy, about to come inside. "No, mama, let’s take her back, please, I can’t…."
Her mother stared at her. "Okay, let’s."
Lana heard what she’d said, and scrunched further back in the seat. The notion wrenched at her. It was too late. The gum had fixed to the post.
The baby began to whimper.
Minnie sighed deeply and wiped at her forehead, then crouched into the car and hissed, "You listen good, Lana-cake. This wasn’t my idea, but now you got me into it, you are gonna do this. This little girl’s the rest of your life, and she’s your insurance that Randall’s gonna stick with you. Maybe you’ll make one with him, maybe you won’t. For now, without her, you’re on the street. So snap out of it." She caught her breath and sighed, then added, more gently, "You said it already. You’re her mama. No give backs on this one."
A high flush had come into Lana’s cheeks, and she stopped sobbing, accepting the bottle. The rubber nipple glided naturally between the baby’s lips, and she began sucking away with intense concentration.
"See?" Minnie stood straighter, fists on her wide hips. "She don’t even know the difference."
Lana offered a small smile. "I guess she doesn’t."
And then, the police prowler ground to a halt behind them.

---

Outside the car, Minnie again took charge, striding up to meet the officer who had emerged from the dusty cloud his car had kicked up. Polite, as all Virginia boys are polite, he paused for her and tilted his hat back a smidge in greeting. Lana, cowering in the back seat, could only watch the pantomime, but knew her mother was working every charm in the book. A pat on her heavily-sprayed, curled-weekly hair, a light swipe with those thick fingernails against a forearm, a few bats of eyelashes that were as false as her intentions and Lana knew there was no such thing as resistance.
But this was a policeman. It wasn’t Ernie the butcher who grudgingly gave her an extension of credit just this one last time; it wasn’t Rhoda the cleaning lady who agreed to babysit Minnie’s children while she scrubbed at the windows; the officer standing a few feet away had a belt around his waist that carried every item necessary to ward off charm: a gun, a baton, a walkie-talkie. As Minnie spoke to him, he removed his sunglasses and folded them neatly into a shirt pocket, nodding gently. Lana buried her face against the baby’s shoulder, knocking the bottle out of her mouth and under the car seat.
"Please, Lord…" was all she got out before the baby started to wail.
The cry echoed inside the Ford with such force Lana first stared around her to see if it was coming from somewhere else. A hush did nothing to silence the infant, and she began groping around the back seat for the misplaced bottle, trying to balance the baby at the same time, and feeling that old friend hysteria coming back for another call at her door. Lana willed herself to keep it together, but all she could think was She’s so heavy, she’s too heavy, I can’t do this, I can’t do this….
"Everything all right in here, Ma’am?"
Her last words evaporated and she realized she’d been talking aloud. Afraid to look up, trying to silence the now-squalling baby, Lana held her tighter and continued to root under the seat, fingers lightly passing over crumbs, a coin, something moist, gum … and just brushing the bottle out of reach. Realizing too much time was passing, she glanced up and wiped a loose lock of hair from her face. "Just a little incident … oh."
"Ma’am," said Danny.
Behind him, Minnie continued speaking, an unbroken chain of chatter that roared like white noise in the background of Lana’s head. And she remembered how young she’d been once upon a time when she would sneak out her bedroom window after lights out, racing across the backyard lawn to be with Danny, who’d meet her at the end of the road and drive her to the movies, to juke joints, then to the top of Harrison’s Hill the night he said he was leaving to join the Navy, the night they made love that first, hard time and she died a little when he left her off again at the corner. She’d been sixteen then. And now she was an old woman of twenty, with a baby not her own and probably unrecognizable to him any more.
"Everything’s all right," she managed after a moment, and chose a random phrase she’d heard her mother use. "Someone didn’t get her nap today, and she’s crankier than an out-of-tune music box."
Minnie continued to speak into the crisp November air, and no one was listening.
The policeman she knew as Danny reached inside the car. "Ma’am, let me have the baby, please."
We almost made it, thought Lana in a rush of confusion. She could have been ours. With that thought, she handed over her baby girl to the only person she would have allowed. Danny stared into the baby’s eyes, and immediately she stopped crying, a long stream of spittle gleaming like a silken thread from her lower lip. Lana scooted forward in the seat and peered up at Danny’s face, obscured by the midday sun.
Minnie reached to take the baby away, but the glare Lana shot her lowered her arms and caught her tongue. Danny held the baby up against his chest like a sub sandwich and patted her between the shoulders once, twice, as gently as he’d once caressed Lana’s breast. The baby made a sound between a cough and a hiccup, and a milky residue stained the policeman’s uniform. "There," he said with finality, settling the baby against his chest.
"Why, Lana-cake, isn’t he just a godsend?" Minnie grinned with herky-jerky nerves. "I don’t know what we’d’ve done without you, officer."
"Ma’am," he nodded at her. "It isn’t right, doing what you did."
Lana closed her eyes and felt calm flood through her, an easy softness, like rain, like drowning. They’d sent Danny to take her baby back. It made sense, somehow. "Okay," she agreed. "We’re sorry."
Minnie broke her tight silence and clucked her tongue. "Officer, we haven’t got a clue what you could possibly be referring to. The baby was hungry and we couldn’t just let her –"
"Mother," frowned Lana, getting to her feet and folding her arms. "Wait for me in the car." When Minnie didn’t immediately hop to, Lana stared down the older woman until she broke a little and did as she was told, pulling the door closed behind her. Lana walked around to the trunk of the car and leaned against it.
Danny followed.
"Are you going to arrest us, Officer?"
"No, Ma’am. This is just a warning." Danny paused a long moment and tilted his chin at the side of the road. "Shoulder’s only for emergencies. ‘Nother car comes around too fast, skids, and you go right off the side. You, your mama, and your little girl."
Lana blinked furiously, her hands and feet numb suddenly, and nodded. She didn’t want him to see the relief in her eyes. He wasn’t taking her baby. Her baby was staying.
"Here," he continued, lifting the sleeping infant from his shoulder. "This is yours."
Their hands brushed as she took her baby from him and nestled her in the crook of her arm. "You’re very good with children, Officer."
"I have three of my own," he said in a flat voice, then reached up and fitted his sunglasses back on. Eyes the color of her daughter’s flashed out at her, a blue, clear tint. "And now you’ve got one of yours. There’s nothin’ like having babies with the one you love."
Lana blinked wetly at him, her heart seared.
"But I don’t know that either of us knows anythin’ about that part of things," he added, and touched the brim of his hat. "Ma’am."
"Danny," she whispered.
But he’d already turned back to the prowler. Just before he got inside, he turned halfway and added, "Keep her out of Virginia for a while, Ma’am. Some places just ain’t safe, shoulder or no."
Lana waited until he’d driven away, then turned back to her baby. She isn’t so heavy after all, she thought. And for the first time since leaving the hospital parking lot, she began to imagine what living with Randall and a newborn baby might be like. She’d be a good baby, Lana was sure. And in exchange, Lana would tell her a cubic zirconia version of the truth.
Lana walked to the side of the car and slid into the front seat. "Danielle," she said firmly. "I want to call her Danielle."
"It’s a good name," said her mother.

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