Ugly Baby by Molly Foltyn

You were an ugly baby. As the first, you had a difficult journey, paving the way for yourself and then me, and your head came out pointed like a traffic cone. The uncles did their best to compliment you. “Look at that hair,” they said. “Joanie, she’s got your eyes.”

Mom was exhausted. “Those?”

The nurses weren’t alarmed when she cried. They fluffed her pillow and massaged her feet.

“Sleep, sleep,” the uncles said. “While you can.”

But she had trouble sleeping. There were beeping instruments and irritating tubes. There were women shuffling down the hall and babies crying loudly in other rooms. Her own baby could wake at any moment, demanding things. She missed her mother, who had been dead for a decade, but who should have been here—to swaddle the baby, to sing softly in her ear.

The nurses understood. They took you to the nursery. When Mom looked at your empty bassinet, she felt an ache in her ribs, but then she slept.

***

You bought me a pink razor and taught me how to shave my legs.

“The knees are the tricky part,” you said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nicked them.”

You said not to bother with shaving in fall, winter, or early spring. It only mattered when it was skirt season or if you had a boyfriend. You were beautiful by then and you’d had many boyfriends. You smelled like Chapstick and color safe shampoo. Like artificial fruit.

I did cut myself, but only later. I tried to remove hair from the blades and scratched up both my thumbs. I never told you, because I didn’t want you to think I was dumb, or that you had forgotten to teach me something.

***

When you became a mother yourself, you were young but ready. You’d had my whole life to prepare. In the waiting room, the uncles turned on a baseball game, and when it was over, they traded newspapers and discussed the mayor. I spent six dollars in the vending machine but was too nervous to eat.

You called me in first. Your daughter had long, wrinkled limbs and thin lips that made her look dissatisfied.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. The hospital light made everything look unhealthy, especially you, with your pale face and your eyes that only opened halfway. I didn’t recognize your expression. I felt dizzy, like I was experiencing the moment too quickly. I felt sick—not recognizing you.

“She’s beautiful,” I said again, although I still didn’t mean it. It would happen later. When she cried and I sang to her—a song from such a long time ago, I couldn’t believe I remembered it, how easily the words returned—and I would find her beautiful then, the soft, polite way she closed her eyes, the weight of her head on my arm, my voice as it washed over her, how it sounded a lot like yours.

Molly Foltyn holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award and served as editor-in-chief of New Delta Review. Her fiction has been published in The Greensboro Review. She lives in North Carolina.