I carry a bucket of brushes in my right hand and a pail of paints in my left. Summertime breeze tussling my hair, I stride down the street with my chest out, chin up, shoulders back, spine straight, and a smile on my face. I'm taking it all in right now. The late morning sunlight sings like a choir of angels. This moment is the height of all moments throughout the entirety of the universe's existence.
I wondered if I would begin anticipating the eventual loss of this moment and for a split second the smell of the air went stale. A car alarm went off and kept going for half a minute. An ominous cloudbank came into view. The cool, moist air became warmer, swampier. My cool yellow cotton T-shirt sticks to my chest and back. I see a woman leaning out the window of the third floor of a brownstone just ahead. She's holding a baby. And it looks like ... Oh, shit!
I drop my bucket and pail as I sprint to get to a space just fifty feet ahead all the while watching as the woman proceeds to drop the baby from her arms. I am getting closer, watching the baby's rapid descent, and I'm not sure I can make it in time. I have to make it!
I reach out my arms, I want to dive but can't take the risk. I am in full flight now and the baby falls into my arms. I catch the infant with grace and passion, slow to a halt, and look down. The baby's eyes are looking back into mine, big blue saucers of surprise. I look up and down the body. She seems to be okay (there's no diaper).
She is wiggling now, in my arms, and cooing. Adorable. She starts to pee and I remember the situation. Striking that I forgot even for a moment almost immediately after it happened, as if it was perfectly reasonable to be holding buckets and pails one moment and a naked baby dropped from a window the next. Honestly, I don't know what to do. I look around the street. No one anywhere up or down the block.
The woman. I remember the woman. I turn and look up at the window. There is no woman. The window is closed. I look down, peer street-level at the stoop running up to the door to the building. The building has four stories so it's either a duplex of two-floor condos or there are four flats. There's only one way to find out.
I look down at the baby girl. Her eyes are closed. Her little chest is expanding and collapsing, somewhat slowly. She's a asleep. I realize I don't know for sure whether or not she suffered any internal injuries or broken bones or anything else. Still, cooing at me and now sleeping soundly seems to indicate she's okay. But I should get her to a hospital, I think. Or a police station.
But I want to see who lives there, who this woman is. What kind of person drops a baby from a third story window?! I'm getting angry now. I stomp over to the stoop and start up the steps to look at the names of the residents next to the corresponding intercom buttons. Stomping was a mistake. I startled the girl and now she's awake again. She's crying. I stop at the top of the steps and look down at her face. It scrunches up; she doesn't look happy. She should be so happy, though. She peed all over me just a bit ago. Cat piss is bad; turns out, baby piss is worse.
She's relaxing again now that I'm rocking her in my arms and cooing back to her softly. Her eyelids droop. I look up and see that there are four addresses. Flats. There is nothing to indicate which name belongs to any particular floor. The names, from top to bottom, read "E. Nowlesby," "Chris Ducharmes, esq." "The Blintzes," and "F. Maddow, G. Chesterton, and L. Paez."
I'm not sure what to do. I should just take the baby to the hospital or the police station. I have no cell phone so I can't call. Should I ring a buzzer? Should I knock on a door from another building, tell someone else what has happened, and tell them to call the police? I'm holding a baby that is a complete stranger to me in a neighborhood I do not know. I have no cell phone, no identification, no money. Nothing. Just the clothes on my back, my bucket of brushes, and my pail of paints.
My brushes and paints! I walk down the steps and look down the sidewalk. The bucket is overturned and brushes are splayed about the sidewalk, a few in the street, some on the grass at the edge of the small yard adjoining the bright yellow bungalow with the pink trim. The pail is sitting on the sidewalk, upright. No paints visible anywhere on the ground. I walk back, pick up the brushes, and place them back into the bucket. Carefully. Baby girl sleeps soundly when I move slowly.
But how am I going to carry the buckets. Maybe someone at the bungalow is home. I have to do something.
I carry the baby with me up the sidewalk through the yard, up the steps to the front porch, and ring the doorbell. A huge oak and iron door. Weird. A young woman, maybe 23, opens the door. She looks at the baby. Her eyes grow wide. She shrieks, "That's my baby!" She rips the infant from my arms and slams the door shut and locks it.
What the fuck? Did that just happen? I pound on the door. Then I realize she might be calling the cops. Maybe the woman who dropped the baby from the window was a baby sitter or a daycare provider. Maybe her sister or mother. Who knows. But I caught that fucking baby.
And no one saw it. Oh fuck.
I have to call the cops, though. What happened happened, but now I'm going to find out what's going on. I ring the doorbell. The woman yells through the door, "Who are you?" I tell her what happened. She says she doesn't believe me. I ask her why her child was in the third story flat of the building up the street. She says she doesn't have to answer that question. I say that's true, but that it makes me feel like I should call the police right now. She says, "Wait! Don't do that! Please ... please. They'll kill me. They will kill me." She was sobbing now, big gulps of air, wails of terror. I didn't know what the fuck was going on, but I knew there was no way I could leave that baby at this house with her. Maybe she was the mother, but if she was, after that weird outburst, she was coming with me.
"Look, I understand you're scared. I'm not here to hurt you. You're baby was dropped by a woman from the third floor of the brownstone just up the block. No matter what's going on, you can't possibly stay here." Silence. Then, "Go away! Just go away!" She shrieked away with such a hateful fury that a chill went up my spine.
I heard sirens. Coming this way. I ran down to the edge of the sidewalk. I wanted to flag a cop down. A police car pulled up. A woman cop stepped out of the vehicle. I waited and stayed put. She sauntered over to me. Yes. She sauntered. Weird.
I asked her if she was auditioning for a part in a postmodern western starring a drunken sheriff looking for a good lay.
No, I didn't. I wanted to do that, but come on.
Instead, she asked me what I thought of the situation. I did not expect that. I told her the story. She seemed impatient. Worse yet, she seemed unsurprised. She looked up at the bungalow. "You say she lives in this house and that she took the baby from you? The baby dropped from the third floor of a flat by a woman leaning out a window?"
"Yeah, that's the gist of it, I guess. I know it sounds strange."
"No, it's not so strange, really. I've heard stranger. Much worse."
"I"m sure you have. Except someone dropping a baby from a third story window seems pretty bad, you know?"
"Well, when you put it that way, I guess it's not such a great situation here. Not at all. But I didn't come here because of any of this."
"You didn't?"
"No."
"Why are you here?"
"I live here."
Oh fuck.
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