TREAD
Unsafe Spaces #36: I wrote this in 2017 and it's never seen the light of day until now. Content warning for grisly things happening to babies. Please avoid if that's not what you feel like reading.
On the echo of the impact, she’d pulled the car screaming into a diagonal stop across the hard shoulder and whipped her head around to face the impossibly empty child seat in the back.
It was the relief that hit her first.
Oh thank God, Jessica thought.
The how’s, what’s and why’s weren’t here yet: they were probably a few cars back, lost in the traffic, but she expected them to pull up at any moment amongst the staccato symphony of horns. The incoming hysteria. For now, she sat frozen in her seat as cars skidded to a stop and people blurred past to pool around the ruin of her son. She turned off the engine and stared blankly back at herself in the rear-view mirror. The cold air came in from the back seat passenger window and tickled the hairs on her neck.
How was the back window open?
Oh, there was the first ‘How’—the first of many she suspected—he had crawled out somehow—and there was the second—and almost immediately her mind wandered to find a ‘Why’. She wasn’t sure who’s ‘Why’ she wanted to understand first. Hers were as long as the motorway, but her sons was singular and simple: he had wanted to get away from his awful mother.
Could she really blame him?
It was the crying that had done it. Not that this was an admission of guilt or anything, but the crying and shrieking every hour of every day for the past eight months had broken her. She knew she hadn’t been in the right frame of mind. How could she expect to have been? All those nights spent snatching a few moments of peace between the random but regular wailing.
Her thoughts turned to her husband Harry. How would she explain this to him? Would he have blame to point? Was there blame to be pointed? Yes, she was sure there was. Had she properly secured that child belt? Obviously not, but had it been deliberate? When she looked at the back seat what did she see? Had she intentionally piled up those crates of toys next to the window? Had she hoped?
She’d known Charlie was able to crawl. Mum had purchased some stair rails to halt his progress, but they’d only resulted in even more tears now he was trapped downstairs in their pokey little flat. Had her restricting him from the staircase at home led him to climb onto those boxes? Those damned storage boxes which in transit had shuffled into a staircase to oblivion.
That wretched crying was over at last. She would not miss that. A wrangling guttural shriek that crumbled all that had been good in her world. Tearing through every moment. Replacing her definition of normal. Some peace and quiet, that’s all she’d wanted, but the longer it went on the shorter the ceasefire lasted, and the shorter her patience got.
“It’ll only last a few weeks, Jess.” Mum had told her after the first week. “You were a crier too. Your dad and I never got any sleep for the first month! Awful at the time but, well, we can laugh about it now!”
Which was all fine and dandy, but they’d been in their eighth month now, and nothing had changed. Jessica’s state of mind had taken a slow downward spiral. Of course it hadn’t started like this. It had been lovely before the wailing began to cut through like an ice shard driven into her temple. They’d been so happy. The lead up to the birth had been all the things she’d dreaded—and therefore completely appalling—but bearable due to the pain of expectation. Once it was over, and Charlie was in her arms, the world had become clearer and simpler. The anxiety from the last nine months faded and in its place was a beautiful baby boy. Her loving husband smiled at her, they posed for the pictures, both sets of grandparents hugged and laughed, tears had even ran down Harry’s face…
It was everything she’d wanted; everything they’d wanted.
In the days that followed, her phone had blown up, tagged in all her friends Facebook photos, notifications every hour of the day, friends texted asking when they could come around. It had been all go. Centre of attention. Those times had been wonderful.
But, even then, those first two weeks had only been sufferable because of the support. Surrounded by her family, friends and Harry who’d taken the statutory two weeks paternity. The crying had been there, of course, but Mum had held her and done all the right things to shush her. The things Jess never could get right. But then it had been over. Harry back at work. Family gone. The newness wore off and it was just her in the flat with the baby, alone.
In retrospect the first day had been the same as the last: non-stop crying.
She thought of the opening of Unbreakable. Their favourite M. Night Shyamalan film. Their first date. It begins with a baby screaming over and over and the doctor asking if it has been dropped as it has multiple broken bones. In those first two weeks that’s where Jessica’s mind went during Charlie’s never-ending crying. There had to be something wrong. There just had to be. She imagined things that weren’t there: a hole in the lung when his crying hit its crescendo; saw things that weren’t there: a lump on the side of his head could be a tumour...
The doctor’s reassured her there was nothing wrong even after she pushed for a second opinion. To top it all off, once Charlie was in someone else’s arms the crying softened then stopped, almost to spite her.
Perhaps there was a trick? A special combination that would unlock some peace and quiet. Feeding followed by rocking, then a lie down? Nope. Dummy followed by feeding followed by a nappy change. No? Feeding followed by rocking followed by caving its goddamn head in then. But no, she hadn’t wanted that. She really hadn’t. It was down to her patience ebbing away as the support strings were cut, as the isolation began to fester and the monotony stung. Texts from friends dried up, notifications vanished, and the ones she received only agitated her further. It’s hard to take a publicly shared comment from Kate like ‘Oh isn’t he adorable. I must visit soon’ in good spirits when your last three private texts to Kate have gone unanswered. Soon enough her Facebook feed was updates of her friends out on another session in Malones downing cocktails. How soon they’d moved on without her.
Over the last couple of months Jessica has come to terms with the key issue of her misery: Her child hated her, and the feeling was mutual.
Oh, that wasn’t fair or true, but the constant bombardment of need had changed her, turned her into a person she never thought she’d be: spiteful and uncaring. Twisted and cruel.
It was the way time moved so slowly when she was alone with Charlie that drained her patience and exhausted her. A couple of years ago she’d had the flu, and the lack of energy had knocked her out for two weeks. By twelve each day she’d been knackered and ready for bed. Back then it had just been her though, so although time had moved like a clock dipped in treacle, watching a couple of films, skim reading a favourite novel with tired eyes, and taking the odd nap, she’d managed to get through the day. With Charlie none of that were possible. Unexpected loud noises from films broke any sleep pattern he had, turning the pages of a book risked jolting him awake, and taking a nap was impossible, if not a little irresponsible. So instead of treacle the clock moved like it was drying in concrete. All she wanted was rest, to sleep for a couple of hours, to refill her patience and bring her back from the edge.
Now that wasn’t to be.
All that planning. All that time spent nursing him. All that sobriety. All that scrimping and saving. All that and now he was dead, and it all was her fault.
It would finish her and Harry. If Harry and her weren’t finished already. Since he’d been back at work his absence from home had become more apparent. Before Charlie he’d always been back from the office by six. Now she was lucky to see him before eight-thirty.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’re doing...”
“What are you talking about?” he’d protested as he barely got in through the front door.
“You don’t want to be home with me. You want to stay away! I know you’ve been drinking. Again.”
And then it had all spilled out. His parents. Their sex life. His childcare responsibilities. His job. Every grudge. Unfocused, angry, pointlessly hurtful.
He’d rescinded as he always did. “I’m going to bed. I have to be up early, so I’ll sleep in the other room.” A beat. “I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes to that old trauma and opened them to this new and, by all likelihood, ultimate one, then loosely reached for the door handle. Weak fingers clutched at the hard plastic as she pulled the latch back. Even though the back window had been open, the sound, once she stepped outside, was overwhelming. All the traffic had stopped, a jam as far as she could see.
Jessica looked again at the back of the car. The empty child seat on the right, then the big boxes sandwiched between that and the open window. Why had the back window been left open? She knew she’d be asking herself that question for the rest of her days, although her subconscious kept throwing spiteful accusations.
A few feet away a dark red smear began and led away into the gathered crowd. From somewhere deep within came the haunting shriek of an elderly woman. Presumably that’s where Charlie’s body was. It stopped her in her tracks. Did she actually want to see this? To see her dead child? She supposed she had to. How was she supposed to act though? This terrible guilty relief she felt wasn’t appropriate, was it?
You’re in shock—however you act won’t matter.
Determinedly she pushed her way through the crowd, each step like walking in heavy boots over dry sand.
I need to get this over with. I need to see his body. Then phone Harry. The sadness will come then. It has too. Things will move on, she rationalised to herself, last year I didn’t have a baby and now I don’t have a baby. Maybe everything could go back to the way it was.
She heard herself say ‘my baby’ to the crowd as she reached the end of the bloody trail. The red got brighter the closer she got. A man tried to stop her, tried to say something, but Jessica shrugged him off then pushed past to look down at the corpse of her child.
His legs were gone, mushed gore like red plasticine mixed with a raw egg. The cruel darkness continued to creep up his baby grow, soaking it through. For such a small thing she couldn’t believe the amount of blood there was. Looking at the car that had hit Charlie, she could see it was splashed right up to the wing mirror, he must have burst on impact and been dragged up into the wheel arch before the driver had slammed on the brakes, throwing him free, where he’d rolled to a stop. She could see leftovers of him in the tire tread. A black goo pricked with tiny needles of white bone.
Jessica’s eyes hunted for the driver who was sat frozen in his car. His hands were wrapped, white knuckled, around the steering wheel. His eyes were closed in a fruitless attempt to wish it all away. His wife was wailing in the seat next to him, Jess imagined what it would have been like: tearing down the motorway on their way to some unimportant destination. Maybe they’d been heading to the same park they were. Then this happened. A child falls into the road in front of you and you fail to swerve in time. The little boy in the back seat peppered his dad with questions. Each one more haunting than the last.
“Why did you hit that little boy, Daddy?”
“Why didn’t you stop in time Daddy?”
“Why is Mummy crying, Daddy?”
The elderly woman who was weeping hysterically looked Jessica hard in the eyes and quickly covered her mouth to muffle her grief. A strange reaction. She reached up to touch her own face to check her expression; afraid it was betraying her true feelings. Whatever it was it was enough to make this elderly woman turn away while she wiped tears from her eyes.
The wind whistled and another cold flush ran through her and forced her to look back at her son. Did he move? It must have been the wind. No, he was dea-
But little Charlie’s glazed eyes caught focus, met hers and, with a defiant glare, he took a breath, and his ghastly cries filled the air once more. Jessica felt herself go limp as the full weight of the world dropped onto her shoulders juxtaposed against the relief of the surging crowd. He was still alive. Impossibly. Horror pounded in her temples as her mind fast forwarded through the rest of her life trapped caring for her crippled son forever.
The elderly woman uncovered her mouth as the wails from the mess of her son mixed with the dreaded sounds of the ambulance sirens coming to save him. The woman reached out to rest a frail hand onto Jessica’s collapsing frame, her voice full of hope: ‘Oh thank God.’
Photo by Emily Rusch on Unsplash