Chapter 2

Sitting on the floor, Ed was playing with the blocks as Beth crawled towards him. She was able to move around the room with ease and fast enough that it was difficult to catch her when she wanted to evade a pursuer. Without much of an effort she sat up to concentrate on the blocks that Ed had stacked one atop the other. With great deliberation, she knocked the bottom block out of the stack and watched the stack fall down. Looking up at Ed, she said, “Good.”

Ed rebuilt the stack and watched as Beth studied the stack. Reaching out, she knocked out a middle block. Again the entire pile fell, as the top blocks brought down the bottom blocks as they traveled back to the floor. A frown crossed her face as she said, “Bad.”

Ed was about to rebuild the stack, when Beth started grabbing the blocks. Watching her as she recreated the tower, he was struck by the concentrated effort that she made to reproduce his tower to the same number of blocks. Once it was done, she looked at it for a long time before knocking the top block off the tower. The tower remained standing as the knocked block fell harmlessly to the side. A smile crossed her face and she said, “Good.”

She replaced the block and then knocked off the top two blocks. Again, the rest of the tower remained standing as the two blocks landed to the side. Looking up at Ed, she said, “Good.”

Staring at her open mouthed in amazement at what she had done, Ed said, “That was very interesting Beth.”

John looked up from the couch where he was reading a journal article and asked, “What was interesting?”

Ed answered, “Beth brought down a tower of blocks by knocking the bottom block out. She then tried knocking the middle block out, but the whole tower fell. Then she rebuilt the tower and knocked off the top block leaving the tower standing. She rebuilt the tower again and then knocked the top two blocks off.”

“That is interesting.” John wasn’t surprised that Beth was knocking the structure down and rebuilding it. He had read that a lot of children did that, but she was doing it a little earlier than most children did.

“It’s even better. She commented good and bad if the behavior was what she expected.”

Sitting up a little straighter at the new information, John asked, “Really?”

“Yes, really,” replied Ed. He then added, “Her expectations were pretty good.”

“It would have been interesting to see what she would have thought of frictionless blocks,” replied John. He considered the demonstration of gravity that he had performed a couple of days before. Noticing that Ed had rolled his eyes, he added, “She’s a physicist.”

“I think it’s too early to say that. She said that my rocks were pretty,” replied Ed.

“She just built an arch! She’s either a physicist or an architect. Besides, your rocks are pretty even if you aren’t a mineralogist,” commented John.

The men were still discussing the future occupation of their daughter, when Beth said, “Mama Ling.”

Both men looked up at Ling standing at the entrance to the informal living room. Her swollen belly looked like it was about to burst any moment. A grimace crossed her face as she bent over. Anyone could see that she was having a contraction and a major one at that. Ed pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial. One the second ring, Dr. Hayes answered, “Hello.”

Excited, nervous, and happy at the same time, Ed exclaimed, “Ling is having a contraction!”

“Calm down. Has her water broke?”

Ed looked over at Ling as John was helping her into the room. He asked, “Has your water broke?”

“Yes.”

Seeing the excitement of the adults in the room, Beth started to get fearful. As Ed relayed the message to the doctor, he reached down and picked up Beth. She immediately calmed down in his arms.

Dr. Hayes said, “Get her to the van and stop by to pick me up. I’ll ride with her to the hospital. You and everyone else can follow in your own cars because I don’t want the van crowded in case I have to deliver a baby.”

Ed hung up the phone and said, “John, get her to the van and pick up Doc Hayes. I’ll get everyone else and we’ll meet you at the hospital.”

John picked up Ling and carried her out of the room despite the fact that she could still walk. At least he didn’t run, although he did walk a little faster than necessary.

Looking down at Beth, Ed smiled and said, “You are about to become a big sister! I think that you’ll love being a big sister.”

After a minute of looking at Ed, Beth said, “Mama Ling.”

“She’s okay. She’s having a baby and we need to take her to the place where people have babies,” replied Ed.

Ed picked up the phone in the room and called Cathy. When she answered, he said, “Cathy, let everyone know that Ling is on her way to the hospital to have a baby.”

This was going to take a little time since Kelly was in her bedroom, Leroy was at the University, and Linda was at the library. Chuckling at how difficult it was to get the whole family in one place, Cathy answered, “Okay, I’ll send out the word.”

Within minutes, Kelly showed up in the informal living room. She looked at Beth snuggled comfortably in Ed’s arms and listened as he explained to the baby that she was about to become a big sister. She interrupted, “You two ready to go to the hospital?”

“Yes, we were just talking about how Ling was going to have a baby,” replied Ed.

Shaking her head, Kelly felt that Beth was too young to understand exactly what that meant. She went over and accepted Beth from Ed. The first action that Beth performed was to grasp the medallion that hung around Kelly’s neck. Noticing the action, Kelly said, “She just loves my medallion.”

Puzzled, Ed said, “She totally ignores mine.”

“That’s because she’s always holding your finger,” replied Kelly with a smile. She had come to believe that Beth really looked forward to being with each of her parents. She dealt with each of them in very individual ways. If she was feeling finicky, no one could calm her down faster than Linda. It was interesting how fascinated Beth had been with Ling’s belly. It was as if she could feel the life growing within Ling. Beth would race around the room, crawling as Leroy chased her and then they would reverse roles. Of all the relationships, the one between Beth and John was the most complex and hardest to describe.

Getting out of the chair, Ed put an arm on Kelly’s back to guide her to the car. On the way out of the house, he stopped and picked up the baby bag with spare diapers, a change of clothes, and a book. After that, it was a matter of buckling the baby into the baby seat of the car. It always amazed Ed at how much longer it took to get somewhere with Beth along.

At the hospital, Ed and Kelly went to the waiting room. Dr. and Mrs. Hayes were already in the room, sitting on two of the chairs talking to each other. When they entered, Mrs. Hayes said, “Give Beth to me so that I can be a grandmother for a few minutes.”

Laughing in acknowledgment that getting time with Beth was difficult at best, Kelly handed the baby over to the elderly woman. Mrs. Hayes bounced Beth on her knee remarking, “She’s such a well behaved baby.”

Puzzled by the comment, Ed asked, “Why wouldn’t she be well behaved?”

“Some babies are fussy.”

“When she’s fussy, we give her to Linda and she calms right down,” answered Ed as though that explained everything. Of course, having six parents meant that each could deal with the child in their own fashion. Linda calmed her down and Leroy cheered her up.

It wasn’t long before Linda and Leroy showed up in the waiting room. After a quick hello, Linda headed off into the hospital to be the Lamaze coach for Ling. Leroy came over to Dr. and Mrs. Hayes to see how they were doing. Leroy had basically taken care of the elderly couple ever since they had arrived. However, little Beth had different ideas about what Leroy was supposed to do and exclaimed, “Daddy Leroy!”

When Beth started to struggle, Mrs. Hayes set her on the floor. Within seconds, Beth was racing around the room, crawling as fast as she could. Leroy was on his hands and knees chasing her. Even though she was out-pacing him, he called, “I’m going to get you!”

After about four circuits around the waiting room, Beth was tired and hungry. She returned to Kelly and slowly stood up using Kelly’s leg as a support. With a wink at Leroy, Kelly picked her up. Once Beth had reached her lap, she started pulling at the buttons of the shirt. Getting the hint, Kelly undid her blouse to feed her. As Beth went to suckle, her hand closed around the medallion.

Ed noticed the gesture and thought about it. Most people missed the medallion, not seeing it unless it was pointed out to them. Beth was always aware of the medallion as though it was a bright presence that couldn’t be ignored.

Mrs. Hayes watched the domestic scene with interest. When she was a mother, most women used a bottle to feed their children, often times without ever breast feeding the child once. When she was a mother, a woman with money never bared her breast to feed a child, especially in public. She commented, “In my day women didn’t breastfeed their babies. I think we missed something special.”

After years of hearing her mother talk about breast feeding her, Kelly replied, “My parents were free spirits and I was breast fed. I guess that was kind of the exception at the time.”

Listening to the conversation, Leroy had a totally different perspective. He had seen lots of women breast feeding their children when he was growing up. He said, “My parents weren’t rich and lived in the country. Breast feeding was very common.”

For Ed, the conversation was about a topic that he had never given any thought. It was an interesting discussion, as he had never thought about how people raised their children in such fundamentally different ways. He had always thought that everyone fed babies milk out of a bottle. He couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone breastfeeding a baby before. By the time the discussion ended, Beth had finished feeding.

Another family came into the room just after Kelly had finished buttoning her blouse. There were two women and two men. It wasn’t difficult to identify the relationships among the group. The two men were brothers, about two years different in age, and differed only in behavior. The younger brother was very nervous while the older brother was calm. The elderly woman was the mother of the young men. The younger woman was married to the calm brother.

The people were not well dressed. The brothers wore tee shirts with the names of bands on them and looked like they did manual work; at least when they worked. The older brother had a pack of cigarettes rolled in the sleeve of his tee shirt. The wife wore shorts and a halter-top; her hair was cut short and styled in spikes. The mother was dressed in tight fitting jeans and a frilly blouse.

The younger woman came over to Kelly and, smiling at Kelly, bent down to look at Beth. She tickled Beth and said, “Goo, Goo, Gah, Gah.”

With a look of puzzlement on her face, Beth said, “Huh?”

It was at that moment when Kelly realized no one in the family ever used baby talk with Beth. The thought of talking nonsense to the baby had never occurred to any of them. The woman was puzzled by the baby’s odd response. She said, “Is she deaf or something?”

Looking over at the woman, Kelly explained, “She doesn’t understand what you said. Could you maybe restate what you were saying?”

Without really thinking about it, Leroy added, “I didn’t understand it either.”

Confused by his statement, the woman said, “It isn’t supposed to mean anything, it’s baby talk.”

Everyone sat there for a moment not knowing exactly what to say. Finally, Leroy asked, “Beth, do you like baby talk?”

“No.”

As she shrugged her shoulders as an apology, Kelly looked up at the woman and said, “I’m sorry. She doesn’t like baby talk.”

The woman scoffed, “You can’t be serious. She can’t understand that much.”

As her fingers rubbed the medallion around Kelly’s neck, Beth answered, “Can.”

Looking at the woman, Ed asked, “Why would you make nonsense sounds to a baby so that they spend their time trying to learn a nonsense language?”

Staring at the baby, the woman returned to sit beside her brother and parents. She answered, “You are supposed to talk to a baby like that.”

Leroy said, “She’s not used to baby talk. We tend to talk to her like an adult and she is used to that.”

The younger man sat in his chair, bouncing his right leg up and down out of nervousness, feeling that his sister-in-law was rather bossy. Hoping to change the subject, he said, “My wife is having a baby today.”

Smiling at the young man, Ed said, “So is our wife.”

The group just stared at Ed as if he had said something completely unexpected. After considering his words for a minute, the older woman asked, “Whose wife?”

Gesturing to the whole group, Leroy said, “Our wife.”

“Oh.” It was a very flat response that indicated disapproval. She looked over each of them with distrust. A black man, a cowboy, a woman with a baby, and two old folks. It was a strange group and she suspected they were members of some sort of strange cult.