"The Sound of Gratitude" by M. Eileen Cronin

The cars up ahead blur into one steaming mass of metal under this Midwestern summer heat. Agitated clouds crowd the sky. A noon sun breaks through in spots. I'm mesmerized by the pulsing heat waves until Mom steers the Beetle, our “Buggy,” into the A&P parking lot. We groan. Only our dozing eight-month-old is oblivious to the threat of this turn off. He's curled up like a milky kitten in the lap of my smock.The Sound of Music is playing up the street at the Hollywood Cinema. We're eager for that cave-like movie theater, but Mom says, “First I have to get a couple things.”We plead. “Noooo. Not now. The movie!” Mom zips into a spot, slams on the brakes, cuts off the engine. Our voices soar and come to a halt when Mom gives us a look that says, “Don't push your luck.”Patty is eight and the oldest child in the car. She's in the front seat. “Are you sure, Mom?” she asks.“Am I sure?” Mom mimics Patty with a pout and drops her forehead to the steering wheel, pretending to bang it there. We can only see her red beehive when we hear her whisper to herself, “Dear God, what did I do to deserve this?” Mom's pregnant with her eighth baby.“Gosh,” says Patty, “Just asking.” She flicks her swimmer's brown hair over her shoulder and turns away, staring numbly out of the passenger's window. I'm right behind Patty, so I can see her jaw tense up. Tommy, Luke, and I sit, uncharacteristically silent, in the backseat. The baby's slumbering breath is all we hear.Tommy is four, and I just turned six. Everyone calls Luke and me “Irish twins,” though Luke will be seven in August, and I'm wondering if we'll still be twins afterward.For the first time in days, we aren't in swimsuits. Even Tommy has on clothes. “No A&P,” he screeches, leaping up on the back seat. “No way.” He folds his arms in defiance. Luke and I start to giggle because of Tommy's devilish smirk right at Mom's ear. Mom rolls her eyes and waves him off. We usually tease her, but with the movie at stake we don't want to risk it. She snapped about a week ago after Tommy hurled a basketball through the kitchen window. It landed in the sink, inches from Mom's pregnant belly as she washed the dishes. He may be four, but Tommy's got the arms of an eighteen-year-old boy. Mom says he's got the devil in him, which might be true also, though Luke and I tend to follow Tommy's lead, despite the fact that we're older. On that day that Tommy sent the ball through the window, Mom came out of the house swinging a broom. We ran after Mom, shrieking, while she chased Tommy down our street swatting so hard that she broke the stick on his bottom. Tommy only laughed, but Mom cried.Again like Tommy, Luke and I lean toward Mom, while Tommy reaches around her seat and puts his grimy hands on her shoulders, smudging her white linen shift. With his mouth to her ear, he bellows, “Maaaaah!” We all crack up, even Patty, so he does it again. “Maaaah!” He beats the back of Mom's seat. “Movie. Movie. Movie!”Mom has to laugh. She loves movies, watches all the oldies on television, but rarely takes us to them because she can't stand cinemas. She believes that, with the exception of Marshall Fields, most public places are filthy havens for chewed gum, bitten fingernails, and worse. She usually sends us to the movies with our older sister who can drive, but that sister is now on her senior retreat with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. And this movie is different. Mom loves Julie Andrews. In this film Julie Andrews plays a nun, not just any nun, but one who outsmarts the Nazis to save a brood of children. Even Mom admits, “Who can resist Nazis?” She's up for this one. She will sit in a musty theater among the stray hairs and greasy popcorn kernels left by strangers. Still, we worry that this side trip to the A&P is a ploy to escape that promise.Mom checks the rearview and taps her hair. “I'll be quick.”“Can't we just skip it?” says Luke.“She'll talk to the cashier for an hour,” says Tommy.Patty huffs. “Ah, geez!” She hates when Mom starts talking because Mom talks incessantly to cashiers and beauticians, and they chime right in with her. Mom doesn't mind holding up the check-out line at the A&P because everyone should have an opinion on whether nuns should shorten their habits. But Patty's mortified by people who stand out in a crowd, and Mom not only stands out, she makes a one-woman show.“Do you have to go in?” says Patty.To this Mom yanks up the emergency brake and mumbles, “I should have been a nun.”Luke, Tommy, and I look at each other in the backseat. Tommy rolls his black eyes. He's heard from Mom's friends that his coloring makes him a “Black Irishman” like our Dad, who runs a construction company. Women swoon over Tommy's thick lashes, so he bats them twice just to make sure we notice. Then Mom steps out. She wears a loose hanging shift with her nylons and patent-leather pumps. Her cat-eye sunglasses with black lenses make it impossible to read her face when she leans into the car to say, “If you stay in the car, I'll be right back and we'll go.” Then she stares hard at Tommy. “If you get out of the car, I won't take you.” Her skin is always smooth but today there are beads of perspiration lacing her upper lip, and her pinwheel curls droop into sideburns.She slams the car door, not exactly with anger, but just as Mom slams on the brakes, she slams doors.Except for Patty, who reaches over and strokes the steering wheel, we all turn to the parking lot where Mom dodges a sedan, her patent-leather purse weighing her down on the left. Patty switches radio stations, stopping for a Beach Boys tune about catching a wave. We love the Buggy because even with the engine off, we can listen to its radio. Dad bought this used Buggy for my oldest sister so she can drive us to the swim club, where she tears off her cover up and makes us swear not to tell Mom about her two-piece. That sister is now driving the nuns in Mom's station wagon to their retreat.“Stay put,” Mom calls, waving. Patty waves back and when Mom's out of sight she scrambles into the driver's seat and pretends to shift gears. Luke climbs into her abandoned passenger's seat.The baby's pale and napping in an undershirt that snaps at his crotch. His warm back presses against my stomach, his face flopped on his chest, and he's drooling. I absently stroke his neck, which is typically soft as butter, though now lumpy. A rash creeps up from his back. I squint with concern before I'm distracted by my own sweat. My smock is stuck to the leather seats.Luke and Patty both poke their heads out of the windows up front; the back windows don't open. I'm now wishing we had the station wagon, but we will stay in this broiling Buggy because none of us will jeopardize this movie. So Tommy pokes his head past the driver's seat to get some air from Patty's window. I'm quick to prop the baby against the leather seat, where I figure he'll be cooler without our bodies pressed together. Then I poke my head past Luke's seat and out of the passenger window.Over in the driver's seat, Patty flicks her hair, which is parted dramatically to the side, a shiny curtain draping her face. She's allowed to grow hers long; mine is in a pixie cut. I finger my skimpy bangs. With her head pushed out of the window, Patty flicks that hair again, but a clump of it stays matted to her ruddy cheek. She has on cutoffs with a sleeveless gingham blouse and looks to me about as slick as any girl I know. I stick my face out of Luke's window again. A drop of my sweat splatters onto the blacktop.From our side of the car, Luke and I see Mom in the store, weaving through aisles, her cart getting fuller with every turn. I want to press a bag of frozen Tater Tots to my cheek. I say to Luke, “We'll have to put all that stuff away.”Luke barks at the store window, “Come on, Mom!” He's wearing the same red-and-black-striped T-shirt that he wore almost every day to school, except for the days Mom yanked it off and slid another one over that greased-up burr of his. He calls again, “Come on!” Then Tommy says, “Maaaah!” and we all yell, “Maaaaah!” Our voices hang limp in the humidity.I glance inside the car and see that Tommy's gray T-shirt is soaked along his spine. He peels it from his stomach and swipes it across his sweaty face. “I'm gonna go sit in the shade,” he says, pointing to a bench at the storefront.We all snap in unison. "NO!"Luke says into the car, from the side of his mouth, “You'll ruin it for all of us.” And to our surprise, Tommy stays put.Patty's fished a towel from the floor of the passenger's seat, and she's perched on it in the ledge of her window. Over the rooftop, she says to Luke, “Go in and tell Mom to hurry.”“You go. I'm not missing the movie.”My chin touches the piping hot door, and I pull back into the car.Everyone pulls inside to discuss. “Luke has to do it,” says Patty.At this point, the baby, slumped against the back seat, exhales an exhausted wheeze. “He's snoring,” says Tommy with a smirk.“No he's not, you retard,” says Patty. “Get him off that seat. Who put him there, anyway?” She eyes me suspiciously. I go from burning hot to cold sweat. “Figures.” She rolls her eyes. “Well! Get him out!”“We can't,” says Luke, “Mom'll take the movie away.”“Would you shut up?” says Patty. “Go tell her to hurry.”“You tell her!”I lift the baby's chin from his chest and see that the rash has spread. His cheeks are now blotches. “He's burning up.” Then he exhales another limp breath, and we hear it as if it were his last. Patty bites her tongue and swoops down between the front seats to scoop him up; his skin peeling from the leather seat sounds like it's ripping from his bones. Luke's eyes widen into blue orbs.“Get Mom!” yells Patty. “Now!”Luke whips out of the car and through the parking lot, while Tommy and I stare at each other in shock. In the meantime, Patty's hauling the infant out. Since there is no back door, Tommy and I squirm around the front seats to climb out onto the skillet of blacktop.“I'm taking him to the shade,” says Patty. “He passed out.” The baby is raw-looking in her arms. She shakes his bottom as she heads for a tree on the edge of the lot.None of us is even sure that he's breathing, but we don't say those words. I can't outrun Luke so I wail, “Moooom!” The tears sting my eyes, but I can see that our mother is talking to the cashier.Now Tommy takes off after Luke, and overtakes him as they burst through the doors, calling for Mom. Through the window I see Mom's head jerks toward the empty car with its doors open and radio blaring. She jerks again to spot Patty with the infant under an oak tree at the edge of the lot. I can't hear Mom's shriek from opposite the plate glass, but I see it. She shoves her cart aside, scrambles past the check-out counter, and chases to keep up with the boys in a race to the baby.Outside, Mom cuts across the lot. “Noooo!” Before she even catches her breath, she whisks the infant from Patty and holds his mouth to her ears. “Oh, God. He's barely breathing.”Mom might simply take him back into the store where it's cool. Maybe it's not air-conditioned, but at least there are frozen foods in there. And she could call an ambulance. I'm still in the middle of the lot when I glance inside as the cashier slams her drawer closed. Meanwhile Mom hustles toward the car. “You hold the baby up front,” she orders, handing the baby off to Patty, who stammers. The rest of us look at each other, and stop just shy of the metallic heat of the car.“Come on!” Mom climbs in and turns the key. The engine doesn't start. She tries again. Patty jumps in with the boy in her arms. “Turn that damn radio off,” says Mom, closing her door. Patty flips the switch. The rest of us are dumbstruck, standing around outside of Patty's door while Mom counts to five. “What are you doing?” says Patty.“Shut up,” snaps Mom. “You kids ran down the battery with that stupid radio.”“Oh,” says Patty, slouching into her seat. Her proud chin drops to her chest against the baby's head. I feel sorry for her. But then Mom yells at us, “Don't just stand there. Get in!” We squirm around Patty's seat to climb in back. Mom turns the key again; the engine catches. “Thank God,” she whispers. She shakes the knob on the stick shift to put the car in reverse. “Hold that baby close to the window for the breeze.”Then, just as we're at the mouth of the parking lot, ready to pull onto the main road, the cashier flies out onto the sidewalk, waving and calling, but Mom shifts and takes the left onto Maple.Beside me in the backseat, Tommy stares straight ahead, gritting his teeth like a bitter soldier, tears streaking red cheeks. Luke's eyes bulge with stifled tears; they're loaded with anticipation. I start bawling. If our baby dies, then it's because I stole his air. I'm the one who left him there to suffocate.“Is he going to die?” asks Luke.Mom doesn't answer. Now I'm heaving sobs. “Shut up,” says Patty, and I stifle a moan. We all look at Mom whose face is gray, and I'm afraid she'll faint next.“I didn't mean to take his air,” I say.“Uh huh,” says Patty, doubtfully. She's holding the baby's face to the breeze. He's all but dangling out of the window in our eight-year-old sister's arms, but Mom catches none of this. Mom's moving her lips like she does when she says a rosary: blessed-is-the-fruit-of-the-loom-Jesus . . . She drills the gas, shifts from gas to clutch and switches gears. The wind this generates, although hot, is some consolation. The baby is still passed out, though.Maple Street has a hardware store, a gas station, an old barn, and a strand of houses. After a few houses we come to Sacred Heart, our church and school, which seems like a white sandstone oasis under pine trees. Mom slows down. Maybe she'll take the baby into the shaded church. The parking lot is empty, and the school is closed for summer. The curtains of the rectory are drawn.The priest's black DeSoto is not in sight. The nuns' quarters are around the corner, but every summer they run a camp out in the country. Mom lingers then drills the gas pedal.“Where are you going?” asks Patty.“I don't know,” Mom whispers, “maybe Good Samaritan.”That's so far! We've been to that hospital with Mom for dozens of baby check-ups. The next block is Lakeview, and our house one long block away. The baby's silence demands immediate attention. We focus on Mom's every move, forgetting our own discomfort.Near Lakeview, Mom slows down in a surprisingly smooth motion with a gentle pump on the brakes. Is she stopping for the light? It's not red. Or will she speed up and make a mad dash for the hospital? If she turns off, we'll be home in a matter of seconds. But then what? We have no air-conditioning. No choice seems good enough.When she finally reaches the corner, she comes almost to a full stop even though the light is only now going to yellow. What? Why?Then she makes a quick jerk to turn right, leading us away from the hospital and instead toward our house. I lean back, relieved, until I look at Luke and Tommy, both of whom are slack-jawed, their eyes darting nervously from the baby to Mom up front. None of us will ask her what she's planning next. A decision has been made: We're taking the baby home.Mom pushes into the wheel as if to pressure her trembling hands into stillness; she passes two houses. We are only about eight houses from our corner when we approach our cousins' newly-built house. I start to say something but Mom's already spotted it. Today our cousin's faux-Tudor house is beckoning us like an ice palace in the desert. Mom whips into the drive, and in one magical swish she has put an end to this unspoken debate.We all sigh in relief.Our aunt is the smartest person we know. She has won a television game show. Her house is custom built with amber windows at the front entrance like a cowboy saloon, an unlikely façade for a pregnant game-show contestant in pearls.“Come on, come on!” Mom orders us. A sweat ball drops from her earlobe as she yanks up the emergency brake. She holds out trembling fingers to take the baby from Patty, who hesitates before handing him over. “Oooh,” says Mom, pressing her cheek to the baby's. He starts squinting. He's coming to, so maybe the air helped. He whines. Then he twists as if he's trying to crawl out of his own skin.Mom swings her legs around and hustles in her pumps toward the house. Patty's right behind her, while we edge around the front seats to get out from the back. Luke and Tommy slip out first. They overtake Patty and Mom to reach the front door, where they begin to pound with closed fists. “Help!” Mom, chasing after them, yells, “Ring the bell!” She stumbles. “Damn it! Knock harder!”I finally catch up to them. Mom's body is shaking at every joint: knees, wrists, elbows. The pregnant belly is the only part of her that seems grounded. Above that the baby squirms and howls. Her sunglasses dart across the saloon-style windows. She pushes the glasses up on her head to peer through those rings of amber and then back to the driveway. We all silently note its lack of cars.She snaps, “Luke, go look for your aunt's car in the garage.”Luke hops over the shrubs and takes off. I'm expecting Mom to put a fist through one of those taproom-style windows so she can get into the house. Then the door opens, and standing there is not our aunt. Standing there is—come to think of it—an even smarter lady. This is Esther, the woman who babysits us and our cousins while our mothers go into the hospital to deliver babies, or to the beauty salon.“Esther!” says Mom. “Oh, thank God!”Esther has ten kids of her own. At our house, Esther is usually in slippers with her black polyester dress stretched over her massive hips, her hair natty and bound at the back by a barber's comb jammed in sideways. Here at our aunt's house, Esther greets people at the door in lace-up shoes. She has on the same black dress but now with a crisp white apron and her hair is teased and flipped up as if she's just come from the salon, which is unlikely because Esther has neither the money nor the time for beauty salons. In fact, I've never seen a black woman in Mom's salon. But Esther bothers to do her hair like this because she's at our aunt's house, and Esther is savvy to the shifts in expectations from one home to the next. She reads those expectations better than the families who hold them.Esther even cooks differently at our aunt's house. In our house she serves up a fat-filled, cavity-inducing feast, not because our mother encourages it but because Esther knows that we're used to dried roasts and iceberg lettuce. She nurtures our fantasies on the sly with candied apples and fried chicken. Here at our aunt's house, she ushers us into a foyer that smells of cheese puffs baking. This formal Esther is greeting us in an air-conditioned home with silk and velvet upholstered furniture, a home that up to this moment has been defined by structure and serenity, despite its saloon façade. Thank God, for our uncle's New England intolerance of these stifling Midwestern summers. Thank God, he sets the thermometer at refrigerator temperatures.We shove into the foyer, Mom in front with the bellowing baby. Mom's sunglasses crown her head now. “He's burning up,” she barks at Esther through tears, before whizzing past her into the kitchen, clutching the baby to her chest.Esther follows, her brows push together in concern. She says only, “Mmn.”In the kitchen, Mom begins to pace in a robotic fashion while the baby shrieks. Esther is stealthy as she moves in and plants herself in Mom's path. “Mary Jane?” she whispers to Mom, using the same tone she takes with us when we're having a fit.We inch our way through the foyer, elbowing to get a view from the hallway.By now the baby's face is purple with agitation, and he gasps for air between sobs. Mom and Esther square off. “He can't breathe,” says Mom. Her voice is oddly detached as if she were explaining some quirky trait to a total stranger.“Let's have a look, M.J.” Esther gently pries the baby from Mom's arms and says, “He's crying, and he'd have to be breathing to cry like that.”Esther's hands are sturdy against this frail, red baby, who is usually pale, almost translucent. Immediately, she puts him to her breast and hums, bending slightly toward his ear as she glides to the sink. Esther is a hummer. We don't recognize the tunes, but we figure they come from the prayer meetings that she goes to down in Alabama. After one of those trips, if you ask Esther how she's doing, she always says, “Grateful.” She has ten kids, a husband with a back injury, two sons in Vietnam, and Esther is grateful.Now with another baby at her breast, Esther walks as naturally as if she had been born with a baby attached right there in that cozy spot. The infant's swollen cheek relaxes into that breast and his mouth falls open as his whining softens to a gurgle. She unsnaps his undershirt and lifts it over his head. He's hardly disturbed. We onlookers gasp at his exposed belly. It's covered in welts.“Sweet Jesus, this child is burning up. Mmmmn mmn.” We know when Esther says Mmmmn mmn that she is really saying, “Shame on you,” which she will say to us when she catches us fighting, but Esther never says that to Mom.“What'll we do?” says Mom, sounding so young.Esther doesn't answer; she's busy removing the diaper. We stand right inside the kitchen, mouths agape, watching this all unfold while our cousins play Pickle in the backyard, romping and innocent of this horror.Mom waves us out as if we were a bad smell. “Go on. Outside!”“Is he gonna die?” I ask.“Good Lord!” shrieks Mom“No,” says Esther. “He's just real hot. We have to give him a bath.”“Go on!” says Mom, shooing us away.We move in one solid mass but only into the sunken family room. Not one of us is about to go outside. We keep our eyes on the baby.Esther has him at the sink, which she's filling with water.Mom is at her back. “Should we put ice in there?”Esther is not exasperated by Mom's ideas. Her tone is as steady as if she were deciding what to serve for dinner. “One cube on his lips. We don't want to shock him.” Esther is going to teach Mom how to save a baby's life. I'm wondering what Esther thinks about this. Is Mom a ninny for leaving her baby in a boiling car? If so, it doesn't show on Esther's face.We kids tease Mom about things like chasing Tommy with a broom, and Mom laughs along. From something like this, though, we'll protect her. We will speak of this to no one, especially not to Mom. Not even to Dad. That is the pact. We have never actually discussed the pact but we know the deal.Esther lowers the baby into the cool water one foot and then the other. The baby's fists clasp onto her apron at her shoulders. On his way into the water, he agitates again, arching his back and tugging hard. Mom is standing at Esther's other side where she can't see me, so I sneak back into the kitchen. By the time I reach the counter, the baby's adjusting. His back relaxes into a slouch; he lets go of Esther's apron.From the family room, Luke's watching so closely his tongue is hanging out as if he's the one being lowered into the cool water. He sees me; we exchange nods. It's going to be fine. But Patty jerks her head with that curtain of hair to wave me back into the family room and away from Mom. I pretend not to notice, although the sweat on my back chills and turns my skin to goose bumps.The baby moans. I whip around to see Mom feed him an ice cube, which he spits back furiously before bellowing all over again, his face reddening to purple. Mom registers each scream like a rock smacking her upside the head. She leans into Esther's shoulder and cries.Esther keeps the focus on the baby while comforting Mom. “It's okay, M.J. He's gonna be fine. His lungs are working fine.” She trickles cool water down the back of the baby's head and begins to hum again. All eyes in the family room—where Patty, Luke, and Tommy form a frozen cluster—are fixed on this scene up at the sink, with Mom's sobs a soft rain against the baby's rattling lungs and Esther's humming. We've seen Mom cry but it's usually over something odd, something no one would expect.For Christmas our Dad once bought Mom an expensive negligee, and she bawled, not because she thought it was so beautiful, but because she thought it an awful waste of money. The next day she returned it. She came home with a mink stole.This time, with the baby almost dying, Mom has reason to cry. The gravity of this day weighs on me at the counter so that I begin to cry again, burying my face in my arms on the countertop. This lasts about twenty seconds until I hear Patty whisper, “Faker.” I stop crying. She's right. I just want to be near Mom, to have her hold me. From under my arm I peek into the family room at Patty, who has since moved to the window that overlooks the backyard where our cousins are playing. Patty cocks her head sideways; she's biting her tongue, ruefully. I'm pretty sure she's longing to be out there with the other kids, and I marvel at how she never seeks to be coddled or held, no matter how sad she might be.The baby's cries slow to an occasional heave. “Good boy,” says Esther. “He'll be fine, M.J.”I wipe my tears with the back of my hand before I turn around and slouch against the cabinets beneath the counter. My legs slide out from under me until I land on the floor with a thud. When I look up, Mom is above me, staring down, as if to inspect the linoleum. She collapses into the chair beside me at the head of the kitchen table. We're all silent except for Esther's cooing.Exhaustion has settled in all over the house, and the only noise now is the baby's breath. I pull myself up by the spokes at the back of Mom's chair and lean into her shoulder. That's when I see that Patty has pressed her palms to the windowpane in the family room. I see her wipe away a tear. I'm stunned because I can't remember when I've last seen her cry. I don't know if she's crying because our baby has almost died. Or maybe, like me, she blames herself for what happened. Or, also like me, maybe she's trying hard not to think about our helplessness in that heat, or why exactly we were put in that situation. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Patty is instead longing to be one of those kids with nothing more on her mind than making it to the opposite base without being tagged. Patty will see to it that this secret remains between us.Just then, I hear gurgling. It's a happy sound, a sound that was almost stolen from us. I glance over the counter to the sink and find my infant brother slapping the water, glee in his eyes as he grins at Esther's smiling face, grateful.