laughing and crying

start time: 1:40 pm

NPR's All Things Considered has this contest, "Three Minute Fiction," for listeners to submit original pieces of fiction that can be read in three minutes (or are 600 words) or less.

I've never submitted anything, but I like to think of the prompts as practice.

Here is an about-130-word-too-long piece I've been working on. The prompt, "laughing and crying," asks for one character to laugh and another to cry.

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He just won't stop. He won't. Not even for a second.

"I'm feeding him at least every two hours--shit, Ma, my nipples are killin' me. And I swear to God I'm changin' him like every second."

I try the whole bouncing and rocking and singing and cuddling and cooing and humming and swaddling, but nothing works. He still makes that noise that makes me want to cry like I did on my wedding day.

"It's normal, honey. Every new mommy goes through this," Ma assures me, her voice breaking through the plastic receiver. "It'll get easier, you'll see."

Well it's been three weeks and I haven't slept more than an hour a night for any of it. Besides, I can't bear to talk to her much anymore. Not as the big disappointment I am, the one who coulda "gotten out" with that scholarship but got knocked-up halfway through junior year. And now I can't even calm a newborn.

And it's not like Jim's been any help, either. He needs his rest so he can "put food on the table." Yeah, right. He's never even once put food on our table. No starch, no vegetable, and certainly no meat. Except maybe me, that one night about a year ago, after we'd shared beers at that self-loathing pool hall and drunkenly stumbled back to this dump, clothes only half off as he hoisted me onto the round formica. Oh, but since I'm the only one able to feed our little bundle of joy, he says, there's no use in both of us getting out of bed three times a night. So there I sit, alone, raw tit out in zombie-gaze.

"I can't..." I try to talk to him about it before he leaves in the morning, but he's always rolling out of bed with seconds to spare.

"I've got my own job to think about," he snaps over his shoulder and buttons up his shirt on his way out the door.

I've called him while he's at work a few times, but his supervisor refuses to stop the line and let me talk to him. He always gives me shit about it later, so I've given up there.

"What about those nice old ladies on your street?" Ma asks.

Those blue-haired maids stop by every other afternoon to "see how the little guy's doing." The funny thing is that whenever they walk in with their matching shoes and pocketbooks, he transforms from the monster he is with me to the wide-eyed, bald-headed gerber baby, bouncing pleasantly on a lumpy lap, mouth forming that annoying little o.

"What a little darling!"

And there I am, on the farthest edge of the couch, bags under my eyes, hair pulled up in a messy knot, grinding my teeth behind a forced grin.

"No matter what, he's just givin' me that look," I whine to Ma.

I wish I could send him back to wherever he came from, back to that night with the lonely beers and the unstable table, before the secondhand white dress and city hall. But I don't tell her that, of course. Gotta keep pretending that this was what I wanted, that I didn't really wanna be a nurse. Too much schooling, in all, ya know?

"It just takes some time," she reassures me before I hang up and free myself from the twisted cord.

I set him in his crib next to a stuffed bunny and a duck, and he makes that unbearable noise. "I guess this is it, bud." I make a run for it, the screen door slamming behind me in protest.

I don't get to the sidewalk before I'm caught under the searchlights of our block, sirens wailing.

But it's only Jim, and he catches me with a gentleness that's so, well, not Jim. He rocks me in his arms, humming in my ear, but it's no use. The sobbing won't stop, the tears keep flowing.

"Come on, let's go inside," he cooes. "Together."

We enter the sky-blue nursery and the noise pounds against my eardrums once again. "See what I'm sayin'? I can't take it!"

Brow furrowed in frustration, he picks up the baby and returns to the Jim I know, "Penny, what the hell is wrong with you? He's laughing for Christ's sake!" Then he tickles his little chin with a finger, coaxing out that aural beast from the tiny body.

end time: 3:04 pm