Black Spring

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. That was one of the things I liked about Nathaniel. He didn’t try to sugarcoat. “But he is not here now. I am. And you need to clean yourself. While you do this, I will wash the baby.”

“He needs special stuff,” I said helplessly. “Like baby shampoo and whatever. I don’t have any of that.”

“Madeline,” he said, and his voice was full of infinite patience. “I know how to do magic.”

“Right,” I said. I still didn’t want to let my baby go. He was mine.

“Madeline,” he said again, and he held his hands out. “I was the first person to hold him. Trust me.”

I did trust him. Because you couldn’t love without trust. And finally, after everything we had been through together, after he had protected me from harm over and over, I did trust him. I loved him.

But again, the circumstances didn’t seem right to tell him. I handed Nathaniel my son, and knew he would take care of him.

I took off my pajama shirt, shoved it in the trash bin (I seemed to be throwing away a lot of clothing lately) and climbed in the shower. I turned the water up as hot as I could make it and scrubbed all over until I felt really clean. My legs looked even worse than I’d thought. Birth is a messy thing.

My belly felt strangely empty. I poked the formerly taut bump and everything there kind of jiggled around.

“Oh, that’s sexy,” I said.

I turned off the water and climbed out of the shower, wrapping up in a bathrobe and putting a towel around my head. Nathaniel was nowhere to be seen.

When I entered the hallway I could hear a lot of ruckus coming from the kitchen. I padded toward the noise in my bare feet.

Nathaniel was washing the baby in the kitchen sink. Beezle was sitting on his shoulder, giving him instructions, which Nathaniel ignored. Jude and Samiel were making goofy faces at my son, and J.B. was watching all of it with an indulgent smile on his face.

“Nothing like a baby to turn perfectly rational adults into a bunch of goofballs,” J.B. said. “He is pretty cute, though. He looks just like you.”

I looked critically at my offspring, a tiny being cradled so gently in Nathaniel’s huge hands. “I can’t tell. He just looks little and wrinkly to me right now.”

“Gargoyle, make yourself useful and hand me that towel,” Nathaniel said, indicating a small baby towel with a blue elephant on it that was on the counter beside J.B.

“Where did we get that?” I asked. I knew for sure that I had not bought any baby stuff.

“I got it,” Beezle said. “Or rather, Samiel and I did.”

“When did you have time to go baby shopping with all the crises going on around here?”

Beezle shrugged as he handed the towel to Nathaniel. “We did it a while ago.”

Samiel nodded. We didn’t think you would have time, so we got towels and diapers and pajamas and all that stuff.

“Don’t cry again,” Beezle said. “I just didn’t want the kid to spend the first week of his life wrapped in a dishcloth, which is what would have happened if we had left you in charge.”

I wiped at my eyes, which had grown suspiciously watery. “You’re probably right. Although I don’t even know how to put the diaper on him, so I’m not sure they’ll do me much good.”

Nathaniel very gently laid the baby on the counter. He covered him all over with baby lotion, expertly wrapped him up in a diaper, put him in a cute little footie sleeper that had lions printed on it, and topped off his head with a matching hat. His little baby wings tucked neatly inside the sleeper. No one would ever know they were there. Then Nathaniel presented my child to me, all perfect and clean and sweet-smelling, and said, “You should feed him.”

“With what?” I asked blankly as I snuggled my little bundle to my shoulder.

“With those,” Beezle said, pointing at my chest.

“Oh,” I said. I had no idea how that would work. It didn’t feel like there was any milk in there.

“You’ll figure it out,” J.B. said, correctly interpreting my expression.

“Oookay,” I said, and went into the bedroom to try to figure it out. Luckily the kid knew what to do, and after a bit he pulled away, so I figured he had gotten what he needed out of me.

I carefully placed him in the very center of the bed with no blankets around him—I had read enough of the pregnancy book to know that babies shouldn’t be surrounded with blankets because they could suffocate—and got dressed in some comfy sweats and thick socks. Then I lay down on the bed beside him, listening to him breathe. His eyes were closed and he was making little suckling motions with his lips.

I kissed his soft little cheek, and wished that Gabriel were here to see him. Gabriel would have been the world’s most amazing dad.

Of course, I reflected, Nathaniel seemed like he would be a pretty good stepfather. He already knew how to do the diaper-fu, which was more than I could say. I wondered how long I could pass off diaper duty by claiming incompetence.