Free Girls in Trouble by Caroline Leavitt

kitchen and then ran downstairs to throw in laundry and got back upstairs just in time to put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. She was just about to go downstairs and put the clothes in the dryer when Anne woke up, and the mewling cry that had seemed so impossibly delicious a week before now made Eva shut her eyes. She grabbed a bottle from the fridge and ran it under the hot water to warm it. Anne’s cries went up a decibel.
    “Here’s Mommy,” she said, entering Anne’s room. Anne’s face was scrunched tight as a purse. Her hands balled into angry fists, and when Eva picked her up, Anne’s whole body stiffened, as if it were Eva’s fault that Anne had to wait. She fed her, and then lifted her up to change her. “There, a nice clean diaper,” Eva said, and then, just as she was about to fasten the tabs, Anne peed over the diaper.
    “God!” Eva breathed, and Anne waggled her arms and legs. “Stay still,” Eva ordered. Her temper frayed. Grabbing for another diaper, she heardthe jangle of the phone in the other room. It might be school and she needed to talk to them, to ask about her class for next year. It might be George. She picked Anne up to go get the phone, and it abruptly stopped ringing. How did anyone ever have time to do anything? She thought of the mothers at the preschool, how the nonworking mothers were just as harried as the working ones, how sometimes the only difference was that the working mothers were better dressed, and that instead of a sloppy pony-tail, they had a really good haircut.
    She fastened Anne’s diaper and Anne suddenly yawned. “Sleepy again?” Eva said. She felt guilty. She shouldn’t have snapped. Anne was just a baby, what was the matter with her? She put Anne back in her crib and went to finish the laundry. She boiled bottles, and then went to check on Anne, who was awake in her crib, not making a sound.
    Anne was now so quiet, it was eerie. Eva picked her up and made parabolas on her little back. “Sleeping?” Eva asked, and started to set Anne down in the crib, and as soon as she did, Anne’s eyes flew wide open. “Don’t have anything to say?” Eva whispered. She watched the tiny chest rise and fall and rise up again.
    “A quiet baby! Count yourself lucky!” Christine advised when Eva called to give her the daily report. “You can work. You can read.”
    “Of course I can,” Eva agreed, starting to feel a little better. When she got off the phone, she decided to work on her lesson plans for the next year. She set Anne in the bassinet beside the table and she started fiddling with ideas. But Anne was so silent, that instead of helping Eva to concentrate, it took her focus away. “Hey,” Eva said, and Anne gazed up at her with enormous eyes. “What are you thinking?” Eva asked. Anne yawned, her lids fluttered, and then Eva bounded up and turned on the radio. She had heard music was good for babies, that it helped them with their speech, and she, for one, couldn’t wait for Anne to start talking. She leaned over to Anne. “So what do you think, should we go to the park, see some people?” Eva asked. “Are you getting a little stir-crazy, like me?” She suddenly thought of Sara and missed her; it’d be wonderful to have her company in the house again, her help. Anne studied her toes, ignoring Eva. She got Anne’s jacket, she filled some bottles. Already, thinking about getting out, she felt a little lighter, and then as soon as she reached to putthe jacket on Anne, she heard a pattering against the window, and when she looked up, she saw the rain, and the heaviness came back.
    That night, Anne woke them at three, an hour before her normal feeding. Eva turned to George, who was sleeping so soundly an atom bomb wouldn’t have woken him. “George,” she said, shaking his shoulders, but he still slept, and she swung her legs over the bed to go and get the bottle.
    She held the baby and fed her, humming something under her throat. Anne sucked more