Strangers

So I arrived at room 450 in the Roseville Radisson and the door opened and a woman stood there with glasses and thin hair in a low ponytail and a smile that said "I see you are an obsessively worried first time mom with whom I shall be patient but not overly so" and then she said "I had nine foster children at one time, it will be OK to leave her here"

(and I won't bore you with the details of how we came to this moment, just the details of the moment)

I put your changing pad in the bathtub (no water) of room 450 at the Roseville Radisson and I put you on top of the changing pad and I covered you with a quilt, I pulled the orange satin edging of the quilt just up to your hands so you could feel the smoothness and then I wound up your mobile music box (no longer attached to the mobile) and I set it on the side of the tub and the tiny hammers inside played their song and I left the door open a crack.

I opened the black diaper bag then and showed the woman the diapers and the change of clothing and the two ounces of milk in the black freezer pouch. I showed her your squeaky giraffe and the ring with the smaller rings around it and the knit finger puppets from Peru (monkey, chicken, parrot) and she said "everything will be fine."

Then I took a piece of paper out of my purse and scribbled my cell phone number on it and I scribbled her phone number onto the large (now missing a corner) piece of paper. My hair was wet from the pool and then a shower and I was wearing the necklace with the definition of poet on the front and the brown turtleneck that shows how my belly still bulges and I was going to tell the woman other things, the million things someone should know about you before bending down to lift you from your nap but Grandma Ricki was late and carrying a bag under each arm so we left, I left you with a mostly strange woman in room 450 of the Radisson Roseville and I went and ate a turkey-cheese-avocado panini at the Ginkgo cafe on Snelling Avenue.

A boy mixed plaster for Diego Rivera in the book I read.
Then, in the lecture called Young Adult Historical Fiction, Anita Silvey (who was giving the lecture) flashed a picture of the cover of Grandma Ricki's book and at that moment in the dark lecture hall Grandma Ricki reached over and took my hand.

When we walked back across the Hamline campus, carrying four airpots of coffee but without the coffee, Grandma Ricki said "I could die tomorrow. I mean, professionally."

And in room 450 of the Roseville Radisson you were still wearing your fleece sleeper with the red arms and the reindeer insignia and you had tears on your cheeks. The woman with the thin hair in the ponytail and the nine foster children gave you back to me.

I took you back to room 421 and nursed you and cried about how I left you and how I was going back to work soon and would leave you again and again. And Grandma Ricki said "think of the mothers and babies in Haiti right now" and she meant think of how lucky Thisbe is in comparison, but instead I just thought of them, of the people sleeping in the streets and all the houses showing their broken ribs and I cried harder.

In the car, on the way away from the Roseville Radisson, the music box mobile tried to finish its unwinding, just a hammer beat or two at a time, but each time was a surprise. Each time the thing I thought was emptied of song kept singing.