Darcey Steinke - Milk

He snored softly, his features open and relaxed, his hairless chest moving the silky blanket up and back. Snow brushed against the window and outside new snow coated the street, the sidewalks, the bushes, even piled delicately up on tree branches. The traffic light changed from green to red.

Tonight, snow muffled the car tires and ticked like sugar granules on the window ledge. Snow created a silence similar to the silence of God. God was where your mind went when it wasn’t thinking of anything in particular. She stared at the paisley carpet. Pine needles from the Christmas tree floated in the weave. She watched the carpet; red light from the tree bewitched the wool threads. Mary pulled up her nightgown, the one with the bloodstain on the back from her first days home from the hospital, pulled it up gently around her thighs like a girl wading into a river.

After his three A.M. feeding the baby wouldn’t sleep; he was fussy and agitated, so she told him the plot of Anna Karenina , leaving out all the boring agrarian details, and explained that in “The Beast in the Jungle,” Marcher was definitely gay. She told the story of the turtle and the hare and tried the fox and the grapes, though once she established the fox sitting there watching the bunch of grapes she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened.

The key was to keep talking so the baby would be soothed by her voice and fall asleep. She felt his little fist against her collarbone and his tiny kneecap pressed into her breast, and wondered why he was so upset. She began to tell him the Christmas story, starting with the angel coming to Mary, ran through the star, the Wise Men, the divine baby sleeping in straw. Then to Jesus’ later childhood when he was left in the temple but she couldn’t remember the order of his miracles, and after the fishes and the loaves she got discouraged and started telling him what all the various religions thought happened to you after you died, how Jews didn’t believe in heaven or hell and how the Hindus believed in reincarnation. She could come back as a lamb; he could come back as a butterfly. The resurrection sounded ludicrous so she covered its grim details quickly.

Snowflakes big as quarters slapped wetly against the glass, and the baby’s heart was like a tiny fluttery bird pinned inside his chest. She was so tired she was near tears and she missed her own mother’s generous lap and her way with a hamburger, and while she knew her mother was now with God, she was confused about where certain aspects of her personality had gone. Her interest in the occult and the British royal family, the way she laughed even at the smallest joke like it was hysterical. The baby started to scream. What else? She’d exhausted all of her oral information and now felt shapeless as a larva. Maybe it was colic. His arms flung around, and he twisted his head against the collar of her nightgown.

Mary walked into the kitchen to switch on the faucet and let the water mesmerize him. But there was no need, as sparks were falling from the ceiling. At first she thought someone was welding in the apartment above. But who did ironwork at this hour? Besides, the sparks weren’t falling but hovering like fireflies. Maybe there was an electrical short inside the wall. Either way the baby was distracted, he hung onto her neck with his little hands and stared up at the bobbing flames, his mouth wide open.

With one hand she swung the broom up, tried to knock out the tiny fires, but strains of straw just went through the mass as though it were a hologram. A reflection, Mary thought, remembering how once on a train she’d seen what looked like a small pond suspended over a field; it had undulated like tinfoil before the train turned. She glanced out the window into the narrow alley; no moon, and clouds covered the stars. Not enough light really for a reflected magic trick. The lights churned with the same motion as glitter inside a snow dome. The motion enchanted the baby, who bicycled his legs again and rocked his whole body forward.

WALTER HAD FESTOONED St. Paul’s front doors with evergreen garlands and the little statue of the Holy Mother wore a holly wreath around her head. Mary opened the iron side gate; the metal was cold on her fingers and she walked the icy path. Inside, the walls along the corridor were missing chunks of plaster, and Walter’s door was open, his office filled with smoke. He was addicted to incense, the rare variety produced by the Benedictine monks of Prinknash; sometimes his room was as smoky as a rock concert.

“Mary,” he said, looking up from his laptop; the screen’s blue light underlit his face and highlighted his black curly hair. He could be working on his Christmas sermon, but he also frequented a chat room for theologically minded adherents of S&M. The computer light was the room’s only illumination. His bookshelf, the paintings of St. Paul’s former ministers, and all the other ministerial objects were cloaked in a vaporous gloom. Walter pulled the little chain on his desk lamp and the Jesus shade lit up, incense swirling above.

“Thanks for letting me come. I know it’s busy, with Christmas and everything,” Mary said while laying her coat over the warm radiator and unzipping the baby’s snowsuit. Static from his polar-fleece cap made his hair stand on end.

“Look at the little punk rocker.” Walter laughed. “Can I hold him?”

“If you take off that smoky sweater.” Mary glanced at the cigarette butts in the glass ashtray. “What happened to the patch?”

“It didn’t work; it was like getting the Holy Spirit when you want Jesus.” Walter took the baby onto his lap and kissed the top of his head. There was a tap on the door and Junot, the teenage custodian, stepped into the room. His jeans rode so low on his hips Mary could see Mickey Mouse on his boxers. He was a good-looking kid with olive skin and coffee-colored eyes.

“What needs to be done today, Father?” he asked.

Walter had given up explaining that he was an Episcopal, not a Catholic, priest.

“I have a list here,” he said, passing over a piece of loose-leaf paper. “And I guess you better bring up the crèche. I think it’s tacky, but the Sunday school director wants it out there.”

Junot nodded and retreated down the hallway.

“So do you think I’m crazy?” Mary asked.

Walter looked into her eyes, then glanced at her fingers worrying a Kleenex. She knew he was thinking of last summer when a voice had told her to fill the bathtub with dirt and plant flowers. Or that time in college when she’d been determined a little Yorkie had said her name.

Junot walked past the doorway carrying a plastic camel, the electrical cord wrapped around the animal’s long golden leg. The baby whined and Walter jostled him on his knee.

“Well. So. You have this baby,” he began, “this little creature that came through you but from the Great Beyond, or maybe I should say the Great Before or in any case another plane.” He paused; it was when he gave spiritual advice that Walter most resembled the stoner he’d been in college. “So that’s disturbing, right?”

Mary nodded. Junot walked past the doorway again, this time carrying plastic sheep, one under each arm. The glass paperweight on Walter’s desk transfixed the baby. Mary knew he thought it was edible.

“So maybe you feel curious about this spiritual plane and you feel you want some contact with it. .”

Mary nodded. She heard Junot coming down the hallway.

“I mean you probably think God resides out somewhere in the universe, right? So in your mind you need a conduit.”

She did feel a need for some sort of portal. “I guess that’s right, though you make it sound like a Star Trek episode.”