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You scream at us, pushing one or two against the brick wall like we’re criminals in lineup. There are so many of us—eight, nine, you lose count, almost all in hand-me-downs, the rest in cheap secondhand duds, a couple sporting diapers, the baby naked, in transition from wet diaper to dry, our misbehavior a form of performance Americana—so that you wonder why you agreed to babysit such a mob. You’re just a girl, a college student hoping to make book money, bide her time until she’s got a degree that’s her ticket out of this backwater. Better than swinging on a pole or waiting tables.
Our house is lousy with Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, headless dolls and books with disengaging pages, everything incomplete and fragmented, subject to entropy. I’m just two, second-to-youngest, not squalling like the baby, but irritable nonetheless, and, like you, wonder why my parents had so many of us. You rock the baby in your arms, but every time you scream at the rest of us, it upsets her further. You keep screaming anyway. You’re from the town and I know you think you’re different and better than us. After this job, you’ll never babysit again and go to your grave thinking that country people are all the same.
Sitting in the rocking chair, you sing to the baby and I can see your mind working, trying to decide what to do next. Maybe you’ll put her on the couch, lock us all inside, and go down the road to catch the bus back to town. Maybe you’ll rummage through the medicine cabinet and swallow a few of the pills mother takes for her spells. I’d like to tell you that night will be here soon and then mother and father will be home and it’ll be over, that you shouldn’t worry, that we’re all trying to escape from this moment into some better, unseen or unimagined moment. But I haven’t learned to express myself yet.
John Talbird is the author of the novel, The World Out There (Madville) and the chapbook of stories, A Modicum of Mankind (Norte Maar). His fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Potomac Review, Ambit, Juked, Riddle Fence, and many others. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and cited under “Notable Essays” for Best American Essays 2021. A professor at Queensborough Community College-CUNY, he lives with his wife and their two sons in New York City. More of his writing can be found at johntalbird.com.