Laying It All Out There

Chapter Two: Nothing and Everything-2

Three days after he was certified the social worker called and asked Mitch if he would consider fostering a child younger than five. “Hhm, yeah,” he said, “I guess a little younger than five is fine.”

Would he consider two children instead of just one? She did not like to separate siblings.

“Well, ah, sure, I—” he started to say.

She was on the way over to his house, in the back of a cop car.

*

Mitch called me at work. There were two babies in his living room. Brothers. One was five days old, the other eleven months. Their mother had already lost custody of two previous children, had just given birth with drugs in her system, then fled the hospital two days later with the infant. Bexar County spent three days tracking her down, then kicked in her door. Three sheriffs entered, took both babies, arrested the mother, and called the social worker, who called Mitch. It was Friday, and every shelter was full. The social worker needed to do an emergency placement after the sheriff’s emergency removal. If she couldn’t find a foster, the babies would spend the weekend in her office in a playpen on the floor; it had happened before.

When I got there after work, Mitch’s mom was sitting in the living room watching the eleven-month-old toddler toddle around in the late afternoon light and the five-day-old infant asleep on the couch, one cushion over from her. She kept staring at the infant. Mitch was wandering around with a cell phone in his hand, unsure what to do but doing things nonetheless. He had already spent seven hundred dollars at Target, assembled one crib, a changing table, and part of a second crib, bought diapers, bought formula, called his mother, called women friends with kids to find out what else he needed, had gone back to Target, bought car seats, and called me.

His eyes were glazed and doing a focused-unfocused thing; his gait was a little jerky. He was talking non-stop, telling me what had happened while also saying out loud the mishmash of thoughts careening through his head: he needed to go back to Target, where was that list, he was making a list of all the things he needed to get, he had nothing, this morning he had absolutely nothing for a baby, and now two babies, he’d make another Target run in the morning, he didn’t have any baby clothes, Allison’s kids were past baby clothes, he needed to call her.

He turned, eyes trying to settle on me while he paced. “Look at this. There’s babies in here. Two babies; never thought I’d ever get a baby. They’re impossible to get ‘cuz that’s what everyone wants. Don’t even ask for a baby. Everyone said so.”

I could tell he was in a daze, but also really giddy. Mitch’s mom, Miriam, was also talking steady, to herself, to me, and to Mitch. She spoke in an undertone that created a rambling white noise counterpoint to his rambling monologue. Mitch’s dad had died while we were in grad school and part of the reason Mitch had sought a job at Crockett State was so he could move back to town to be near his widowed mother as she got older. His mom still lived in Stone Landing, the subdivision Mitch grew up in, which was next to my subdivision, Winter Forest. After her husband had died, Miriam had moved to another house in her same neighborhood and decorated it all in white, which was a dream she’d finally been able to fulfill, now that her kids had grown up and moved out. The interior was lovely and sterile as a snowscape. When I visited, I’d tiptoed across the white carpet and perched on the white couch, afraid I might fart and leave a mark.

Mitch introduces me to the babies; the eleven-month-old is Fernando Egan, and the infant is Mackey Fernando. I grimace.

“Yeah,” says Mitch. “Awful names.”

The boys both have the same father, Fernando, and I register that two siblings both having the same father is a thing.

“So, what do you think?” Mitch grinned.

I think I expressed how happy I was for him, but my mind had shifted into assessment mode. He’s a single man who’s never taken care of small children and who, when he got up this morning, had no idea how much baby food cost. I looked around; the social worker must have shifted into assessment mode too when she was here. He has a restored house downtown with pricey artwork on the walls; an extensive network of well-educated snoots that’ll have his back; and a widowed mother living in the ‘burbs who spends her days hanging out with her lady friends at the Hebrew Community Center, which has a heated outdoor saltwater pool that’s just glorious, plus a renowned daycare with an eighteen-month long waiting list. So what if Mitch had never changed a diaper before, the social worker must have calculated, he could contract that out.

Peripherally, I hear Mitch’s mom say that the toddler is hungry again. “He just finished a bottle, Mitchie, not ten minutes ago.”

The infant needed a diaper change. I volunteered and carried him to the one hundred dollar changing table which was hardly wobbly and stripped off all his clothes. He had jaundice. I’d noticed it in the living room and now, close up, I looked him over and wondered if Mitch’s mom had also realized it; Mitch had not. The baby’s arms were drawn up against his body. I moved his arms and legs around—they worked—then turned him over. He had a dark red welt the length of my finger across one butt cheek.

By the time I redressed the baby and took him back to the living room, Mitch was rattling about how to warm up formula. A phone was in his hand, but he wasn’t talking into it. I pressed him for more details about the sheriffs, the emergency removal, and the social worker.

“I went in to work early, even though I don’t have a class today,” he said. “Student exhibit coming up. Not the graduate students, but still, I take it seriously, when Leah called.” Leah was the social worker who had interviewed me about Mitch’s fitness. “So I head back home thinking, thinking what? That there’s going to be a four-year-old who needs a place to stay over the weekend. I barely get home when two cop cars race up to my house.”

“What do you know about the mother?”

“Not much. Leah didn’t stay long, which surprised me.”

“You said that the mother previously had kids removed?”

“Yeah,” Mitch suddenly looked at the phone he was holding. “The state permanently terminated her custody to her first two kids. She has a d**g problem and p**********n, I think. Mom, did you hear that part? Were you here yet when Leah was talking about all that stuff?”

Miriam’s eyes flicked away from the toddler for a moment. “She was leaving when I got here. She hardly said hello.”

“Yeah, well, she left two babies in the house. Did you notice? See that? Wow.”

“Mitch,” I start, but the toddler has managed to pick up something he shouldn’t have off an end table. Miriam doesn’t move. I take the knickknack thingy away from Fernando One and put it back. He grabs it again and I put it up higher, out of reach. His eyes follow it. It strikes me that Fernando One is unperturbed by the sudden change in his circumstances. He’s been expecting this turnabout? “Mitch,” I start again, “the baby has a red mark on his behind.”

“Yeah, I saw that. Diaper rash maybe? Mom, did they have automatic bottle warmers when we were little?” He means himself and his brother. “I should call Kaori; she’s in Chemistry. I don’t know her that well, but we served on that search committee together last year and she’d just had a baby girl. Talked about it during our meetings; kinda annoying at the time, but now.”

I pick up the toddler, set him on my lap, and gaze into his face. He stares back, chestnut brown irises against sclera that glow bright white. His baby fat is not distributed evenly and instead, he’s oddly pear-shaped. Then he squirms, wanting to be set down again. He continues inspecting his new belongings and I realize there are no toys in the house. “Mitch, you need to take the babies back to the hospital to get checked out.”

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea,” he says, trying to bring up the Crockett State directory on his phone.

Nothing I say is landing. Miriam is rocking back and forth a bit, arms folded in her lap.

When I get home that night, I go into my parents’ room and sit in the blue swivel rocker next to their bed. After he retired from the Air Force, my dad earned a degree in counseling. Wanting to ‘give back to the community,’ he worked for the County Mental Health Hospital because he felt everyone should have access to mental health, not just people with money and insurance. The job was stressful. At two in the morning, he got calls from police who needed him to talk one of his clients off an overpass or out of a barricaded room. Seven years into the job, a co-worker, a younger man in his forties, had a stroke from stress. My mom decided that it was time for my dad to retire again, before he was the one having a stroke; she did not want to spend their hard-earned retirement years spoon-feeding him.

When I finished explaining the babies in Mitch’s living room, my parents agreed with me that the social worker saw his house, realized that he had resources and decided she could score a double. My dad had worked with social workers and knew they carried excessive caseloads, were underpaid, and had to do scary home visits in even scarier neighborhoods, just as he’d had to as a counselor. Nevertheless, he was scandalized; two babies to an unmarried man with no experience? Crazy. Suspicious even.

I hold off calling Mitch until Sunday afternoon, by which time he’d spent another five hundred bucks. He starts listing all the things he’d had to buy on his Saturday Target run, when I cut him off by asking what the doctor said about the infant, Fernando Two.

He hadn’t taken the baby to the doctor yet.

Why?

Well, he’d had so much to do, he hadn’t slept, hasn’t been able to sleep, and the baby’s really healthy, and he’s gotta figure out the Medicaid paperwork; they explained it in the foster classes but it’s complicated, and Chemistry Department Kaori brought over a load of baby clothes. And not just her. Niema too. She’s staff and really nice. Some of the clothes are pink, but he’s grateful to have them and the babies won’t know the difference. And—

“Look Goddamnit!” For the first time in twenty years, since a little cafe on the side of El Escorial, I raise my voice to Mitchell Benjamin Teller. “That kid’s got a welt on his butt as thick as a f*****g pencil! He’s seven days old. His d**g-addict mother escaped from a f*****g hospital and abducted him, and he was out of official custody for three goddamn days. Who the hell knows what she did or where he’s been all that time? That social worker went straight from wherever three sheriffs did a no warning entry and kicked the damn door down at whatever low rent hourly motel room d**g den they were at, to a lights-and-siren drive straight over to your house. The social worker didn’t have time to do a five-point inspection on that baby. She stayed at your place less than half an hour because she had a half dozen more cases to settle before the weekend hit and every shelter in town fills up and stops doing intakes. That kid might be sick. He might have other injuries. Right now, a doctor’s gonna be able to determine how old that welt on his butt is and that it occurred before you took custody of him and that it’s days and days old. You wait any longer and they won’t be able to figure it out. You’re a single man with two babies that you haven’t even had for a full weekend. Who do you think’ll be blamed if that kid is hurt? I told you to take that baby to the doctor. Where’s your head? What are you thinking?”