BABY'S DAY OUT: THE STORY

The bawling doesn't come,

Oblivious to the expected,

The baby doesn't cry,

Abomination! They cry,

And WHAM!

Calloused palms meet smooth skin,

We must elicit the essential.

Robust and high-pitched,

The baby's throaty reaction,

As if to say,

"I've heard your gist,

I'll be old enough soon,

I'll get u for it,

Wicked nurse."

After the nurse had slapped my butt, and I had burst to life, she handed me to my mother who in turn crooned admiringly before she handed me back to the nurse, the cue for washing up. I was bawling quite loudly now, and I could sense the nurse’s discomfort. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted – loud bawling? If only she knew, she wouldn’t have slammed her palms on my little bootie, baa baa baa. Maybe she hasn’t eaten. Now we were strolling down a white hall. Ok, the nurse was strolling down the hall, me in tow, bawling still, the antiseptic smell of the hospital violating my virgin nostril, this fact nudging up the volume of my bawling a fair few decibels. My face was ensconced in a rather succulent swelling – rather comforting –

but this didn’t cool the vigour of my bawling. At first, I didn’t quite catch it, my virgin eardrums not being quite used to sounds that weren’t bowel movements. She held me out again, and repeated (I think) – probably for my benefit…

“You nasty lil’ turd, will you shut your mouth? You are giving me a fucking headache!” I caught it the second time around, looked up to the nurse with rheumy eyes and started yelling. Her step quickened, past a bald man in blue overalls pushing a wheelchair containing a bald man, past another woman who had two rather obvious, relatively large points in her blouse, past hysterical people clothed in white frantically wheeling a man bleeding from his side towards the opposite direction and finally into a side door.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!,” the nurse continued, and then changing tack, she whispered, “You little cutie, hush hush hush.” All I did was stare and bawl, no sweet-talking daughter of Eve was gonna sweet-talk me this early. I had heard gist about what Eve did to Adam, and what her ilk continue to do today, at Baby Factory, on Baby Avenue, and I wasn’t falling for the oldest trick in the Book. The nurse gave up, and splashed warm water on my derriere, perhaps hoping that would calm me, but I didn’t budge.

Then she bent to my eye level and said, “Bloody babies, always crying, always trouble. I can’t wait for you to get out of here, you and your slimy body, rheumy cry-all-the-time eyes, tiny pecker and everything! If you weren’t such a cry baby, you actually don’t look too bad, but all you do is bawl. Mmmmph! Maybe I should make you cry more…”, and then WHACK!, she shacked my butt again. Predictably, I increased my bawl volume. Does she not know that smacking my butt smarts a lot? Air-headed bimbo, with fronts like huge paw-paws.

Catch 'em young!

Some noise, similar to mine, whinier and definitely gaining in body, tone and quality, was filtering through into where I was being bathed. I opened my eyes wider. Who was making that racket? Who had the audacity to sound louder than I? I increased my own volume, much to the consternation of Nurseypants.

The noise was very much close now, and the door, which was to my left cracked open, causing me to glance in that direction. Another nurse was coming in, and oh, she was bearing gifts, or rather, a baby wrapped in clothes. She was clutching the baby to her chest, and he was the whiny bawler, what a show-off.

“Okay, Sade, this is the cutest little baby girl I’ve ever handled. She’s so gorgeously adorable!”, Nurse 2 purred.

“Okay, but it’s crying, duh,” my evil nurse, Sade replied.

“Oh, c’mon,” and then she set down the “girl”, whatever those are, and turned her towards me. My eyes widened for some five seconds, and I spluttered momentarily, before my bawl volume knob centred on zero. Then a big grin spread over my face, and I started babbling excitedly. She had stopped crying too and was staring at me. I had actually never seen a naked girl in my life, and my eyes were shut as I came out of my mum, which ruled that option out. My eyes lingered on her adorable face with the adorable down that slicked – not quite visibly, but slicked anyway – over her little head. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen in my lifetime, however short. The nurses’ voices trickled into my ears as if from a distance, because I couldn’t quite multi-task just yet, and the little brain power I could muster was actively doing something else. My eyes were tracing a path down the naked body opposite me. They stopped briefly at some ridiculous outgrowth – two of them – on her chest, and continued straight down until a gully suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Now, that was strange. I stared in disbelief, then slowly, I brought my eyes back to myself, and with them, I found the equivalent of the position where I had seen the gully. Now, that was strange. There was some protrusion of sorts, a curious appendage, very tiny. I pulled my eyes away and again rested them on the “girl”. So, that was they meant when they said girl. Fantastic. Googoogaga!

I stuffed my palms, tiny again (why was everything about me tiny – is it because I’m a baby? I must fight against marginalization of “babys” when I get out of this hot bath), into my mouth excitedly. I felt a curious attraction to the girl-baby that was smiling at me, and googoogaga-ing at the same time. Was this what we were taughtt could happen between girls and boys?

“You”, I said, in the general direction of the girl, “I have my eyes on you. Googoogaga!”  It probably came out a lot worse than that, but I’m sure someone got the idea.

A subtle pinch from my nurse brought me back from my reverie, and once again, I could feel the lukewarm water I was half-immersed in.

“Sade, these babies are just gorgeous...”, she paused as if something just occurred to her, “imagine how romantic if two of them were to eventually go out. It would be perfect!”

“Blessing! You are beginning to babble like these babies, sure you don’t want one of your own?”

And then I remembered I had to cry. Cute little baby girl had taken that thought out of my head for a little while.

“Waaa…”

TWENTY YEARS LATER

“Bunmi, I feel like we have some strange, deep connection, and I can’t quite place the reason.”

Bunmi, my girlfriend for two years now, had always had that effect on me, since I first laid eyes on her when she came to write the editorial board admissions test. She had come over to spend the weekend in my house in town, and was presently nestling her head in my chest.

“Maybe you just love me, and I, you, in return,” she looked up at me and offered.

“Wait, I remember the departmental secretary told me to submit my credentials to her office. Let me go get my file,” I said, carefully moving her head aside so I could stand up. I kissed her forehead lightly (like in those Hollywood movies I watch) before I moved off. God! She was just so gorgeous!

She was leaning on her elbows now, watching me go off in my boxers.

“I’ll finally get to see all your dirty secrets.”

“The ones you don't already know?” I replied.

I laid my file on the bed, and…

“I’ll help you with that,” she said, as she snatched the file and opened it.

“Your birth certificate looks nice.”

Her face turned serious as she studied the certificate.

“You never told me you were Biodun. I think I prefer it to Seun.”

“Do you?”

Suddenly, her eyebrows flared up, a gasp escaping her throat at the same time, as if in astonishment, and then she slowly glanced up at me.

“You were born in the same hospital as I, St Mary’s…”