Free Wink by Eric Trant

friends because I’m at the handicapped table all by myself and none of my old friends talk to me anymore. It’s like they’re scared they’ll catch crippled from me. They don’t call or come over or anything. Plus, who did Jesus hang around with?”
    “Stop it. I don’t want you messing with the Jamesons. They do drugs and Lord knows what else, baby.”
    Sadie’s mom leaned over her, picked up the sign, and looked at it. Her mom twisted the sign and looked at the other side, at the pictures of oranges and the words Florida’s Best . She turned the sign around and studied what Sadie had drawn on the front. Sadie saw her eyes move to the trio of hearts in each corner of the cardboard sign and the artistic squiggles beneath the arrow. Her mom fingered the question mark at the end of Peaches? and traced out the heart at the bottom of the mark.
    Her mom folded and unfolded the sign in what Sadie could only guess was a nervous reaction and then she handed the sign to Sadie and said, “Alright. But I don’t want you going over there. He is welcome in our home so long as he leaves the devil outside. That’s the Christian thing to do, baby.”
    “Jesus is the Friend of Sinners, Mommy. That’s what the song says. He hung out with prostitutes and sinners and bad people. He washed their feet and oiled their heads. It’s the only way they got saved.”
    “I know, baby. And look what happened to Jesus.”

Chapter 11   Dead Babies
    Nothing prepares you for the loss of your child.
    When you get pregnant out come the doctors and nurses and Lamaze specialists. They show you how to change diapers, how to nurse, how to push and breathe during labor. They tell you what the baby should eat and warn you against the toxicity of eggs and honey and bovine milk, seemingly benign things unless you stuff them into your little baby.
    There are stores dedicated to clothing your baby. Entire sections of the local grocery are filled with baby necessities, fluids for when they are sick, bibs for when they drool, plastic seats for when they ride in your car. Friends and neighbors pour into your yard when you release blue or pink balloons into the sky and announce your baby’s gender. People clap and cry and cheer your baby’s arrival.
    It is different though when you lose your baby. People grow hushed and cover their mouth and turn away. Sure, they send food for a few days but after that gesture, afterward, after the afterlife where there is no life after, after you find the baby stiff in the crib for no good goddamned reason, after you find him nose-down in the kiddy pool in a few inches of water, after you find her behind the couch with a marble in her throat, after you find him on the dining room floor with a bullet in his head. After the friends and neighbors and family send food and maybe attend the funeral if there is one, because sometimes, if the baby dies in the womb they don’t even do that.
    After all that you are a pariah. You are a topic of conversation. These conversations begin with the words, “Have you heard about,” and end with the words, “I can’t imagine.”
    All the stuff in-between those two phrases is a garbled mess of disbelieving nods and hand-waving.
    There are no classes about how you breathe. There are no doctors or nurses who rush to your side to guide you. There are no shelves in the store dedicated to burial clothes. Hell, there aren’t even greeting cards, maybe one that reads, “So sorry you lost your toddler down Old Man Johnston’s well. Better luck next time!”
    People don’t discuss it with you. They discuss it all right but not with you, not anywhere near you. They shun you as if you are diseased, because you are diseased. You are ostracized and condemned and moved to the other side , wherever the hell that is, probably near hell because that’s how it feels. You are one of them, one of the others, one of those who lost their kid, so tragic, and have you heard about and I can’t