Free Momfriends by Ariella Papa Page A

at her. The answer is no, I most certainly do not want to get the baby. As usual he will be a completely different baby when I go into his nursery. After almost seven weeks, I still have no idea what to expect. If I go get the baby, he is just going to keep crying. I am going to try everything I can possibly think of to make him stop, but nothing is going to work. It is all futile. A never-ending futile cycle.
    I am really going to cry now.
    “I’ll get the baby,” Bob says, decisively. She looks at the other one. “Kirsten can you make sure they don’t break anything? Or kill each other?”
    “Sure,” Kirsten says.
    I hear the stranger go into my son’s room and speak to him in loud happy tones. She can have him. She can have it all.
    Kirsten looks around my apartment. The living room is a mess. We quasi cleaned it three days ago for Steve’s mother. And it is already out of control. How does it happen so fast? There is a basket of unfolded laundry on the floor, a bowl of half-eaten pasta on the couch and magazines that have been piling up, because who has any time to do anything but stare at the TV? Normally, I would have cleaned up or at least been embarrassed by the sty, but it was the least of my worries.
    Kirsten sat down on the couch and started folding laundry.
    “You don’t have to,” I start to say, but Kirsten pretends not to hear me and I don’t know how to continue. Of course she doesn’t have to, but I certainly wasn’t going to. That was pretty obvious.
    “Look at this little guy,” the other one says, coming back in with my son who is calmly nestled in her arms. I think I hate him for showing off. Kirsten leaps off the couch, smiling.
    “What a beautiful baby,” she says, touching his head and beaming at him as if he is her own. “My daughter is seven months, but you forget they start out this tiny.”
    “You have a kid,” I ask, eyeing her perfect breasts.
    “I have three, they’re addictive,” she says, laughing. She looks back at the Abe. “This guy is so precious. Claudia, can I hold him?”
    I am the one who should be asked permission.
    Claudia hands him over but doesn’t exactly let go. She keeps cooing at him and laughing. These two are really having a ball. Maybe I can slip out the back door and climb over the fence in the garden.
    “You should have seen the load in his diaper. Whoo-ee!” Claudia drops her distant tone and is apparently totally psyched about wiping my son’s stinky ass.
    “You changed him?” I ask. It is embarrassing to have someone else change your kid. I had changed a poopy diaper before I put him down. I want to make sure these two understood that. “I changed him a half hour ago.”
    “Some days it’s nothing but shit,” Kirsten says, glancing quickly over at the twins to see if they heard. They are oblivious. They are tearing through the box of books that people gave Abe and I haven’t touched or written thank-you cards for.
    “And then some days you wonder why they are so backed up,” Claudia says. It’s her turn to look around the living room. She settles on me. “Would you like me to get you a glass of water or make you some tea?”
    “Um, okay,” I say, not picking either. Claudia leaves the living room, not waiting for clarification, but not before taking the dirty pasta bowl with her. She returns with a tall glass of water for me and then goes straight back to cooing at Abe. I drink the whole glass down in almost one gulp. Kirsten looks at me and smiles.
    “Breast-feeding totally dehydrates you, huh?”
    “Yeah,” I say, finding it hard to believe that anybody had ever gnawed on those beauties.
    I watch them fussing over Abe and then the teakettle starts whistling. Claudia races back in the kitchen. When she returns she is balancing three cups of tea and another large glass of water on a tray that had been a wedding present. She sets it down on the ottoman and gives her kids a stern warning to be careful, but they are interested