I wondered if Melanie had any infant Tylenol. I saw all sorts of rubbish on top of the fridge, including an empty adult Tylenol bottle but no sign of anything for Trevor. I opened her fridge for a bottle and there wasn’t much in it. There were three baby bottles filled with milk and half a jar of baby food peaches other than a pizza box and a few jars of condiments. I opened her freezer to see if there were any teething rings in there and found nothing but an empty ice cube tray and something pink and gooey in a wrapper; a melted popsicle, likely.
I didn’t worry about warming the bottle up because he wasn’t a tiny baby and I was thinking the coolness might also help with the teething. I gave it to him, but he cried loud as he tried to drink it and I saw that his tongue was coated in white. Was this oral thrush?
This baby had some teeth in his mouth already (he was ugly-crying so it was obvious when I’d first seen him at the park) and Luke had been gone eight months. I would’ve guessed this little guy was likely just over a year old and that might mean that these could be molars coming in and I knew those ones were rough ones to come in. He was on the thin side. There was no food here but a part of a jar of peaches and some milk. I looked in the cupboards and didn’t find anything but a couple of chipped bowls and nothing that you could make into a meal. But, if he had thrush in his mouth, which I’d heard of but never seen before, it’d be hard to get him to eat anyway.
I also suspected he’d be wet, so I looked around for a sign of diapers. I found a diaper bag in the bottom of the stroller. It had two diapers in it and a half a box of teething cookies.
I decided to get him changed and then see if he was interested in a cookie.
He was drinking from his bottle but still had wet tears on his face and seemed to be struggling with it. I took his track bottoms off and removed his diaper. The diaper rash I saw made me hiss in shock. It was red, raw and looked sore. His diaper was heavy with wet. He’d had it on a long time, for sure.
“Oh wow, you poor little guy.”
I sifted through the diaper bag for any sort of ointment but found none.
I left his bottom half naked and took him with me to the bathroom. I grabbed a bottle of baby body wash and took it and him to the kitchen and decided to give him a bath in the (now) clean sink. Another problem. No clean towels.
Damn it.
The linen closet had some pillowcases and a mess of make-up but no towels. I kept him in my arms and rapped on the bedroom door.
No answer.
I opened it a crack, wondering if I’d find a basket of clean laundry. What I found rivaled the mess I’d already cleaned. There was an empty crib with a large and very stained adult sized pillow in it.
And there was something else. No Melanie.
I moved deeper into the room and it was getting increasingly alarming with every step I took. An empty booze bottle. Condom wrapper. A hypodermic fucking needle.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Where the fuck was she? I stepped back out for my phone and did a twirl trying to find my purse. What?
Oh, my phone was in my pocket. I reached for it. But, where was my purse? I’d set it down on the couch when I got in.
I stared. I didn’t put it in the tub with the dirty clothes, did I?
Nope. No sign of my bag anywhere.
Did she sneak right by me and fucking steal my purse on her way out while I was washing dishes or carrying clothes into the bathroom? I went back into her bedroom and looked out the window. We were on the ground floor so she could very well have gone out that way, too. And she had to have taken my bag.
I spotted some diaper cream on the floor by the crib so grabbed it. Almost empty but I would scrape what I could get out for at least one application.
Trevor was clinging to me and looking around curiously, still naked from the waist down.
“Oh boy. We’re in a pickle, aren’t we? Where’s Mommy, Trev?”
He’d stopped crying, but his face was drooly and he was definitely running a fever.
I took him back to the kitchen and ran the water to give him his bath in the now clean sink. He played with a few clean Tupperware containers while I washed him. He was definitely underweight and not feeling well. I tried to be silly and get him laughing, hoping to put him at ease, but he sort of looked at me like I was crazy, but kept emptying the water from the sink he was in to a square container in the empty sink beside him with a plastic cup.
I got him clean, used a pillowcase to dry him because nothing else was clean enough, found some powder for his bum area and then put the rest of the salve on him and diapered him up. I put a sleeper on him that wasn’t clean, but that was the cleanest thing he had and then I sat him on a blanket I’d spread out on the floor with the Tupperware and a little set of blocks to play with while I dialed on my phone. Thankfully, my phone was in my pocket, not my purse or I’d have been well and truly sunk.
“Aunt Delia? Need your help.”
***
Child Services had taken Trevor into foster care temporarily as it was now eleven o’clock at night and there was still no sign of Melanie. We’d waited for hours before making the phone call.
Delia had come over with a rash ointment and a clean outfit along with baby food, baby Advil, and more milk. After hours of sitting there with still no sign of Melanie, Delia called Child Services.
Yeah, and Melanie had not only taken my purse, she’d also committed grand theft auto. Delia drove by the park on her way to me and told me my car wasn’t there. She’d tasked a couple club members with looking for it. I had about seventy-five bucks cash in my wallet and my bank card as well as a credit card. I checked my balance and there had been forty-three dollars used at a gas station on my credit card. I put a freeze on the card through my credit card app. My bank card didn’t have tap enabled so she’d need my PIN number to use that.
My brother Rider was phoning me, and my battery was low.
“What the fuck’re you doing, Joelle?”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Jojo!”
Clearly he already knew where I was and what I’d been up to. Probably also that not only was my car and bag stolen but that Melanie left me with a marker. Her baby.
“I visited Mrs. Hanson and Mrs. Hanson told me about Melanie. She’s been showing up there looking for money.”
“That baby ain’t Lick’s.”
“And he’s not yours either, right?”
“Nope. You go there because you thought he was mine or Lick’s?”
“Well, he’s someone’s.”
“Not my problem. Melanie’s a skank and I didn’t get her pregnant. She’s also not your problem, Joelle.”
“Rider,” I clipped. “This is a baby we’re talk---"
“You shouldn’t be there. You shouldn’t have gone there at all. You shoulda called me and asked me and I woulda given you the score. Now she’s taken off and left you with her kid? Stole your purse and your car?”
“Aunt Delia called Child Services. We waited for hours first.”
“Fuck, Joelle. You, of all people, shouldn’t have victim written on your forehead. You shoulda seen her spiel a mile away.”
“No shit,” I said. “And I sorta did. But, she was in rough shape and the baby is teething and she just asked me to watch him so she could grab a nap. I started cleaning her apartment because it’s a fucking sty and she must’ve grabbed my bag and slipped out while I had my back turned.”