Lisa Thornton

Listen to Lisa read her story:

The baby had been down for twenty minutes when she heard it. Like a bike tire skidding to a halt in gravel. High-pitched friction. Then the screaming started. When Rosalee ran into the bedroom, she smelled it first. 

She knew when accepting this job that this was the youngest child she’d ever babysat, but she felt confident after working in the church nursery during Sunday service and Wednesday night bible study. She’d learned to change diapers, burp after feeding, and rock tiny bodies to sleep in the lactation chair with the padded corduroy arms. 

When the Roberston’s left for dinner and a movie, they said the baby was not fussy, liked sweet potatoes and bananas mixed together (there’s a bowl in the fridge, just heat it up in the microwave twelve seconds and don’t forget to stir thoroughly), and slept well with the nightlight on. 

The screaming intensified and Rosalee flicked on the overhead light to an avalanche of partially digested sweet potato and banana. It was strewn diagonally across the hot air balloon sheet, streaked across the sky and blotting out the red and yellow striped canvas of the balloons. The baby’s cheek was lying in the sludge, and it was moving its head around frantically, working the chunks into the fabric. 

Rosalee’s feet stuck to the carpet like they were glued there. 

She was old enough to take care of this. She was old enough for Nick in drama class to stick his tongue down her throat while they waited in the dark off stage left for their cues. She was old enough to ask Mrs. Dougherty, the French teacher, for a pad (As-tu une serviette hygiénique?) when she started her period in third hour. She was old enough to buy her own makeup and feel slightly uncomfortable in the passenger seat of the babysitting dads’ cars when they drove her home at midnight. She was old enough for her mother to ask her advice about what to do when men bought her gin and tonics at The Office II downtown, and she was old enough to watch her brother Ian when her mother went away with one of her new boyfriends to St. Louis or the Ozarks. 

Ian. 

Rosalee unstuck her feet from the carpet. The screams intensified. She had never heard such a small thing make such a big noise. She ran to the kitchen and dialed home, just three streets away. Please please please, she whispered as it rang. 

When Ian picked up the phone, she heard Super Mario beep booping in the background. I need you, she told him before running back to the bedroom. 

Moments later, Ian bounded up the Robertson’s stairs like he owned the place and announced Good god as he held his nose and bent over making a fake barfing sound. Rosalee lifted the baby from the carnage inside the crib. She stripped off its soaking pajamas, undoing the metal snaps running from its neck to its left ankle. Her fingers slipped in the slime. Ian put his hand over his mouth. You could not pay me enough, he said through his fingers. He tossed his skateboard into a pile of stuffed animals in the corner, clocking a male lion in the jaw with a scuffed wheel. 

The baby continued to scream, unbelievably, at the top of its little lungs. To wipe the baby’s face and head, Rosalee used the dry side of the onesie before dropping it in the crib where it made a clacky splat. She laid the baby in the middle of the floor. Watch it, she said to Ian.

Rosalee pulled the fitted sheet from the crib mattress and balled the vomit in the center – making one large putrid balloon. She ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, and down the basement steps to the washing machine. She had no idea whether  the chunks would drain through the holes in the basin, or end up floating like driftwood in the soak cycle only to get  stuck to the bottom of the machine after the rinse. What else was there to do? She poured in some soap and slammed the lid, twisting the knob to the “heavy soil” setting. 

There was silence from the floors above. Rosalee tore back up the basement stairs. She should never have left her brother with a baby. He was only eleven. All he cared about since her parents split up was ollies and pretending to get high. Their dad had said Ian could come live with him, but that was before he met that woman.   

Why was it so quiet? Rosalee hit the bedroom stairs, taking two steps at a time. She rounded the corner with the photos of the Robertson’s smiling on a beach in Florida on their honeymoon and found Ian sitting cross-legged next to the baby, staring down at its peaceful face. 

The baby was holding its foot, naked leg smooth and shiny, and chewing on its toe. In the arc of Ian’s slouch Rosalee could see dirt on his shirt, probably from sliding out in the skate park or falling from the big oak. She should have washed his clothes days ago. 

Then he laughed like she hadn’t heard in a long time. Maybe since that last weekend they all went camping and her mother dropped an unopened can of baked beans into the fire and her father said what the hell, Marie, are you trying to kill us all and her mother looked angry for a second but then said yes, yes that’s exactly what she was trying to do and her father chuckled until he was buckled over, and Rosalee and Ian laughed so hard they almost lost their hot dogs. 

The baby dropped its foot and its eyes widened as it stared into her brother’s. Then it began to giggle – a tiny helium sound Rosalee never heard in the church nursery. A sound she imagined a glass of champagne would make when being sipped on the deck of a cruise ship with a lover under a big moon. Or the clouds on a summer day if they began to whisper to each other. Ian stuck out his pinky and the baby grasped it, squeezing tight with its tiny fingers.

Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has work in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hippocampus Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, and other literary magazines. She has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction award and the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize. Her stories have been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Illinois and can be found on Bluesky and Instagram @thorntonforreal.