Leanne Banks - Underfoot

“Looks like she’s happy to see you,” the teacher said.

A thrill shot through Trina. Her child’s adoration for her never failed to give her heart a squeeze. “How’s my little carrot cake?”

Maddie gave a wide oatmeal-lined smile and Trina walked over to take over the feeding duty. She brushed a kiss over her daughter’s soft head where her carrot-red topknot tilted to the right.

“And how has your day been?” Trina asked Maddie as she lifted the spoon to her daughter’s rosebud mouth.

Maddie swallowed the oatmeal and made a gurgling sound and other sounds in an unintelligible language as if she were making conversation.

“Gramma Aubrey would not approve of talking with your mouth full, but we’ll wait on that one. Okay?” Trina said with a nod.

Maddie nodded and opened her mouth for another bite. Trina finished feeding Maddie then cleaned her face and hands despite her baby’s protests.

After changing her diaper, Trina carried Maddie to a rocking chair in a quiet corner of the room and began to rock. After a morning that had shaken every nerve in her body, the weight of her little daughter in her arms felt so reassuring.

As Maddie relaxed, Trina felt her own heart rate and her breathing slow. The muscles in the back of her neck loosened. She would have never predicted it, but in her arms, Trina felt as if she were holding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

When she’d first learned she was pregnant, she’d panicked and considered terminating the pregnancy. She wasn’t in a position to be a mother. Her apartment was too small. She didn’t have a husband. Plus she had a mother who would die if her daughter became an unwed mother. Aside from that, Trina had plans that didn’t include children until, if, or when she should get married. And there was the fact that Trina had no mommy skills. Heck, she hadn’t even done much babysitting during her teen years. What did people do with babies anyway? They seemed like little savages that cried and peed and cried and pooped and cried and ate and cried some more.

So the obvious choice had been to call the doctor to do the deed and not be pregnant anymore. She’d made a mental note to call the doctor to make an appointment tomorrow, but she’d been too busy that day. And the next tomorrow, she’d felt creepy about calling, which was hormonal, she was certain. So she told herself she would call when she didn’t feel creepy about it, when she felt confident and sure and had no regrets.

That tomorrow had never arrived.

She’d hid her pregnancy reasonably well until her sixth month when her abdomen had sprouted outward. She’d avoided face-to-face contact with her mother by claiming business was taking her out of town. Lord knew, her mother could smell weight gain of anything over a pound.

People at work had reacted with surprise and curiosity. Trina had reacted as if it were perfectly normal for her to be pregnant. Pretty soon, the questions died down.

Her mother, however, had gone into a hysterical frenzy that had required heavy doses of sedatives. She’d locked herself in her bedroom for a solid week.

Trina had secretly hoped she would stay locked up longer, say a year. Or two.

Trina glanced down at Maddie, asleep on her lap. Her dark eyelashes stood out against her fair complexion. Trina had fallen in love with her daughter at first sight. What she didn’t know about child rearing could fill a library, but she understood a few things about what her daughter needed. Love, food, sunshine, a bath, sleep and her mother.

Trina figured she would learn what she needed to know along the way. Lifting Maddie against her chest, she carried her to the crib marked with her name and laid her down, her heart full at the sight of her baby.

Waving to the teachers, she left to return to her office.

DESPITE TRINA’S BEST EFFORTS, Dora continued her inquisition about Walker throughout the afternoon. Every mention of his name shredded her nerves even more. Bamboo sticks under her fingernails or water torture would have been easier to bear.

Promising herself she would buy Lean Cuisine the next time she got to the grocery store, Trina picked up Maddie and grabbed a take-out sandwich through a drive-thru while Maddie sang in her car seat in the back seat.

Before she arrived at her town house, she smelled a distinctive scent that told her the first thing she would be doing when she got inside would be changing Maddie’s diaper.

Grabbing Maddie’s bag and her carryout sandwich, she walked inside, dumped both bags in the foyer and immediately headed for the nursery.

Just as she put on a fresh diaper, the doorbell rang three times. Trina paused. The doorbell rang again, this time five times and Trina tensed. Her mother.

“Please tell me I still have some wine in the fridge,” she said to Maddie.

Maddie gave an unintelligible but sympathetic sounding response.

“Carter-Aubrey?” her mother called from the now open doorway. “Carter-Aubrey, are you there?”

Trina groaned. Her mother refused to call her by her preferred middle name. The other two just did not fit her at all. “I’m here, Mother,” she called from the top of the stairs.

“Thank God you’re okay,” said Aubrey Carter-Elizabeth with a perfect hairstyle, dyed perfectly auburn. She wore a perfect size-four suit and sported a perfect manicure. “I looked at the mess in this foyer and was afraid your house had been looted.”

“Just needed to make a quick diaper change,” she said. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, look at her. She’s a mess. Nanna Aubrey will get you shiny clean in no time,” she said, reaching for her granddaughter. She glanced down at the fast-food bag on the floor. “Dear, you really need to eat better food. You’ll never lose your baby weight if you keep eating that stuff.”

“Thanks for the encouragement, Mother,” Trina said with a heavy trace of sarcasm.

“I’m just looking out for your best interest. Someday you may meet the right man who will be a good father for our little Madeline and you want to be ready.”

Meaning Trina clearly wasn’t ready today.

Her mother studied her suit jacket. “What is that?” she asked, scraping her fingernail over the sleeve.

Trina glanced down and shrugged. “Oatmeal? Applesauce? I dunno. I don’t have anything to offer you except baby food and half my sandwich. Are you interested?”

“No, thank you,” her mother said, wrinkling her nose. “I just came over to see Madeline and drop off the application for the Ambrose school for girls. You probably should have signed her up the day she was born. They have a very long waiting list. It’s so competitive to get in, but since you, your grandmother and I graduated from Ambrose, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Trina felt her stomach twist as she led the way into her kitchen. “I haven’t decided if Ambrose is the best place for Maddie. I’m looking into the Montessori school.”

Aubrey gasped. “Not there. Oh, darling, there’s hardly any structure, no uniforms and she’ll never meet the right people.”

Trina bit her tongue and lifted her fingers into a peace sign, the sign she used to tell her mother she was overstepping her bounds. Again.

Aubrey dropped her mouth. “Oh, you can’t think I’m interfering by merely bringing over an application. And speaking to Owen Randall in admissions,” she added.

Trina continued to hold her peace sign.

Audrey sighed. “May I give her a bath?”

“She’ll love it.”

Aubrey beamed at Madeline. “She’s as beautiful a baby as you were. You did well.” She tossed Trina a sideways glance. “Although it would have been nice if you’d at least married her father.”

“Life’s not perfect,” Trina said. “You should know. And remember our agreement about the discussion of that subject.” If Aubrey didn’t bring up the subject of Maddie’s father or Trina’s love-life disaster when she’d been nineteen, then Trina had agreed not to bring up the subject of her father or the fact that he’d died due to an automobile accident when he’d been arguing with her mother.