Here’s a story from years ago. Back then, we lived in North Minneapolis and served as a host family for Safe Families for Children. The baby in the following story was number ten of the thirty-two little ones we ultimately hosted.
It was another time in another world, it seems, but as I reread these words this morning, I’m right back there.
*****
My girl Dicka and I enter the family’s living room in the cramped upstairs apartment in that old house on Fremont, and Monique motions toward the couch, inviting us to sit. We settle into it, the smell of stale cigarettes wafting from the cushions’ fabric. I curtail a grimace. What’s worse? The smell of cigarette smoke, thick in the air and permeating our clothes, or the heat of the place, which probably hovers around eighty degrees?
I gaze at my surroundings. Who all lives here? Monique points out a few relatives, but some others, whom she doesn’t label, mill around in the tiny kitchen too. When I answered the urgent needs request to care for her baby for a couple of weeks, Safe Families for Children informed me of the place where we would pick him up. The address startled me—only five blocks from our house. The roads, crusted with snow the plows have yet to scrape clean, make me want to stay in, but this pick-up situation—so close to home—is an easy one.
From the couch, Dicka and I have a split view of two rooms: the kitchen where two people sit at a small Formica table, crushing out one spent cigarette after another into an ashtray like it’s a contest, and the bedroom where Monique pulls together little Leon’s clothing for his stay with us. The ten-month-old baby is planted on the bed like Buddha, facing his mama while she packs, naked except for his diaper. His hair is a dark mass, curling now from perspiration.
“He’s huge,” Dicka whispers, wrinkling her nose. “Huge and sweaty.”
The place vibrates with activity and noise, but I keep my voice low anyway. “I think he’s kind of cute.”
Leon flaps his arms while this three older brothers—all under five years old—buzz around the cramped apartment with a light saber, a truck, and a ball. They zip through the bedroom, hooting and shouting, where their mama works.
“You get out of here now, you hear me?” Monique hollers at them, swatting one of them on the backside as he runs by, and the group of them bolts from the room.
As we wait, the heat and smoke roil my stomach. Soon, we’ll be back outside in December’s cruel wind, but at least we’ll breathe new air. I’ll have this baby in my arms too then—this little one we promised to take care of for the next two weeks. The mama and daddy will use their freer time to do some apartment hunting while they stay with extended family members in this house.
A few details about Monique’s situation warm me. There’s a man in her life, the father of their four children. He’s a good man, from the sounds of it, committed to the mother of his kids, and holds a steady custodial position at the Twins stadium.
Monique leaves Leon sitting on his wide base on the bed while she lugs two brimming bags of baby clothing out to the living room and drops them at my feet. “This should be enough.”
The moms are always generous with their packing—except for the mother of our first set of twins. Those babies came to us in one set of diapers and the onesies on their bodies—no extras—and we scrambled to gather more for them. Monique gives us enough for Leon to stay a month.
She saunters into the kitchen to collect new and partly used cans of formula. She returns and pokes them into one of the bags at my feet.
“I put a few diapers in there—that’s all I got—,” she says, “so I guess he’ll need more. He wears size fours.”
“He’ll be good,” I say, waving away her concerns. “I have lots of diapers his size in my stash at home.”
I think of my diaper lady, a woman at church who works fulltime, but wants to support us in some way. She can’t host kids herself, but she plies me with diapers and the specific kinds of formula needed for the babies who stay with us. Every time I eye the stack of size fours shelved in our basement, I see her commitment. And every time I watch the milk drain from a bottle as I feed a baby in the night, I see her love.
“I bet you were on the road a long time today,” Monique says. “Was it slow coming in from the suburbs?”
For a number of reasons, all wrapped around safety, the organization counsels us host families to give the parents our contact numbers, but never to tell them where we live. Monique sizes me up as a suburban lady.
“It was no big deal.” I smile. “Really a quick trip.”
If she only knew how quick. If she only knew I lived in the inner city, just like her, and only five blocks from where she now prepares her baby for his stay with our family.
I mull over Monique’s words. What makes her assume I’m a suburban woman? Does she judge me by my externals? Do I judge her by hers? We humans do that kind of thing, making assumptions about life and those around us—not knowing much of anything until we listen.
Monique dresses Leon in the bedroom, totes him out to the living room, and plunks him into my lap. He feels like a twenty-five pounder; no doubt my arms will be stronger after his stay. He flashes me a broad grin, and dimples skewer his cheeks.
I smile at Dicka, grateful for her presence; I need the extra arms for the baby and all his bags of clothes. Monique follows us out to the car, and Leon’s dad pulls up in front of the place—freshly home from work—and climbs out of his vehicle. He joins us, buckles his youngest son into the car seat in the back of my Honda, and smooches the baby’s head.
The two young parents wave goodbye as I drive away from the curb with one of theirs, maybe imagining I’ll care for their baby in a world far from their own. I think about Monique, looking at my skin, my clothes, and making guesses about my life. And I contemplate what I think I know about her too.
Underneath our differences, does she know we’re alike?
Do I?
*****
