Authors: Darla Phelps
Her breath steaming the air as she kicked off the blankets and slid from the bed. Her feet had gone to sleep and every step down the hallway felt like she was walking on needles. Still she staggered to the window to check first the empty driveway and then the position of the shadows on the ground. Noon had long since come and gone. The sun was already behind the house. In the kitchen, the coffee-maker had switched itself off again, and the coffee remained untouched. It also smelled slightly burnt, although the pot was now cold to the touch.
So unbearably hungry and thirsty, Bebe drank the strong black liquid straight from the pot. She also raided the pantry cabinet, stealing a package of sour fruit because there were a lot of those and that might make her theft significantly less obvious. She hugged it to her stomach, hiding it in both hands as she crept past the sweeper (which couldn’t possibly have cared) on her way back to the bedroom and the warm, engulfing folds of the blankets. She pulled the blankets all the way over her head before breaking open the thin, plastic seal.
She scooped out the fruit with her fingers and sucked on each one afterward until she could no longer taste the tartness on her skin. The plastic edge cut into the corners of her mouth when she licked the inside clean, but she got every last drop from the bottom. Then she sat there, huddled in the dark, guiltily hugging the empty package to her chest. Her stomach still felt empty, but at least the gnawing aspect of her hunger was softened.
Where were Sir and Ma’am? Tears flooded her eyes, but she blinked rapidly to stem the tide and quickly swiped what few escaped from her cheeks with the back of her wrist. They loved her, she told herself. They loved her and they would come back.
Breathing deeply, struggling to find some semblance of calm, she went to the bathroom to wash her hands and, knowing the incinerator logged its use, she stashed the empty food package beneath some old rags under the kitchen sink. She turned her face away so she wouldn’t have to think about how she could possibly get rid of the evidence further without getting caught.
She always got caught.
Always.
Her bottom tingled, and it was such an awful prickling sensation of dread. After several minutes of finger-tapping indecision, she went and got the Bad Bebe hairbrush from Ma’am’s dresser top and hid that under the kitchen sink as well. There was no preventing the cascading consequences at this point. All she could hope to do now was mitigate the inevitable penalties.
Bebe looked at the clock above the cooking box. Five of the seven squiggles and lines were recognizable. If this were any other day, Sir would be coming home from work soon. If this were any other day, by now the house would be awash in wonderful smells, and Ma’am would be sitting on the couch, a book propped open in her lap, with one hand lazily rubbing at the rounded girth of her belly.
If this were any other day...
But it wasn’t. Bebe set the table anyway, and then because the edge was creeping back into her hunger, she drank the rest of the cream from the pitcher and set the now empty container in the sink. She looked at it there, dripping slow creamy drops into the metal bottom. Blinking back tears, she quickly pushed her stool up to the counter to wash the pitcher and hide that evidence back up in the cupboard too. Then she washed the coffee pot, cleaning everything as if this morning had never happened. As if she’d forgotten the coffee and the cream, everything in its entirety. She wasn’t disobedient. She was just...forgetful.
Rubbing her stomach, Bebe went back to the bedroom, climbed onto the foot of the bed and pulled the blankets close around her. Miserable and close onto tears again, she let the warmth creep into her. Her eyes already felt so impossibly heavy. If she lay down, she’d probably fall asleep again and she didn’t want to do that. Not on Sir and Ma’am’s bed. They would definitely disapprove of that, and she had already been so bad.
But after a few moments, she shifted back far enough to lie down anyway, curling on her side so that she could watch the door. She was still hungry, but the stolen cream made it a little more bearable to be this empty. More than anything else right now, all Bebe was, was tired. She could close her eyes for a little bit, she decided. Just for a few minutes and then, cold or not, she’d go back to her cushion by the door and wait for Sir and Ma’am to come home the way she was supposed to.
Like good girls should. When they weren’t stealing food, or climbing up on the furniture, or going into places they knew they shouldn’t.
When they weren’t forgotten, neglected or abandoned.
Her bottom lip beginning to quiver, Bebe covered her face with one hand and cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
An overprotective parent is a good
pet’s worst nightmare.
“Bebe!”
The room exploded into light and Bebe jerked awake so violently that she fell off the foot of the bed, landing flat on her fanny under a tumbling waterfall of blankets. They instantly covered her, casting her back into blinding darkness.
“Bad Bebe!” Sir’s voice thundered, and she scrambled to her knees, batting and throwing back the blankets until she’d fought her way out from under the pile and into the light once more. She stared up at Sir, frowning and positively filling the doorway with his disapproval, and her jaw dropped. He was home!
Sir glared from her to the corner of the bed where she had been lying only moments before. He shook his head and repeated no less firmly, “Bad, bad Bebe!” He stormed the distance between them in only two steps, leaning down to thump her on top of the head with the tip of his finger. It was a very gentle thump, all things considering. Then he gestured to his mattress. “No!”
Off the bed, Bebe. Yes, off the bed. She knew all about off the bed.
They’d come home!
Unable to bite back an excited squeal, she launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his waist and hugging him fiercely.
He made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat, but a moment later his hand came down on the back of her head, offering her a distracted pat or two before regaining control of the situation with a slightly disgruntled, “Down, Bebe.”
From out in the living room, she heard Ma’am’s voice half muttering and half laughing. They were
both
back! Ducking past Sir as he bent to gather the blankets off the floor, Bebe ran down the hall. A somewhat skinnier Ma’am was in the process of moving her cushion and blanket back to their customary position near the mantelpiece. She straightened when Bebe threw her arms around her hips now too, hugging her every bit as ardently as she had Sir.
“Okay, okay,” Ma’am cooed at her, stroking her claws through Bebe’s hair and giving her back a fond pat.
When she finally pushed away, Bebe let her go but followed fast at the taller woman’s heels, another squeal of excitement bursting from her throat when Ma’am headed straight for the kitchen. Food!
Bebe’s eyes darted from the raided cookie tin, to the innocent-seeming sink, her excitement not exactly diminishing, although she did tap her fingers once or twice. She should confess to stealing the food. Neither Sir nor Ma’am had ever starved her before, and she didn’t for a second think anything that had happened this last day had been intentional. If she gave them the empty package now, maybe they would understand. Maybe they’d think she wasn’t hungry any more and send her to bed in disgrace. Or maybe they’d feed her but they’d also think that, since she hid the Bad Bebe hairbrush along with the empty food package, then obviously she felt she ought to be spanked, and then they’d oblige her. They had done that before; Bebe’s bottom began to tingle again, and distracted as she was, it wasn’t until the soft, white sling around Ma’am’s neck made a soft grunting noise that Bebe noticed it at all.
She blinked, startled, her blue eyes fixing on it as it made another soft grunting sound. Ma’am paused in the midst of pulling Bebe’s special dishes from the cupboard. Her arm came around the bundle, patting and smiling down into the folds of cloth.
Fixed on the sling, Bebe forgot herself. Without having been invited, she took three hesitant steps into the kitchen before she stopped, her fingers constantly, nervously tapping at one another as she rose onto tiptoes in an effort to see what was making those noises. There was something alive in that sling. The breathy gasping sounds became punctuated by wet sucking or smacking noise. Even knowing it invited disaster, Bebe shuffled two steps closer still, skirting around Ma’am to rise on tiptoes yet again. A very tiny three-fingered fist appeared above the folds of the sling, making a single grabbing, flexing motion at the empty air before disappearing below the edge of cloth again.
Bebe’s instinctive step back somehow became a shaky step forward as, fingers nervously tapping away, she leaned in for a closer look.
Ma’am noticed her long before Bebe came back to herself enough to realize where she was. And more importantly, where she ought to be.
Bebe flushed, a burning, uncomfortable shade of pink. Ducking, she hurriedly retreated to the kitchen doorway, but froze when Ma’am stopped her.
“Come here, Bebe.” A good three feet taller than Bebe, Ma’am lowered herself to squat, bringing the sling to Bebe’s waist level. With two fingers, she pulled the folds back to openly reveal the newborn baby cradled in the crook of her arm. She beckoned to Bebe with her other hand, snapping her fingers like she did when she was impatient, though Bebe could see no hint of annoyance anywhere in Ma’am’s expression. She was smiling, and that made her instinctive urge to obey easier to succumb to.
Bebe crept closer, her gaze dropping from Ma’am to the baby once more.
“No touching,” Ma’am cautioned as she drew near.
Bebe dutifully tucked her hands behind her back and, with a good two feet between herself and the sling, stopped advancing.
It was a very strange looking baby, seemingly so small in Ma’am’s arms, although it likely would have overflowed Bebe’s. It had a copse of thick black hair on top of its head and, when it yawned, there wasn’t a single tooth that she could see in its mouth.
When it smacked its gums on the fist of one small hand, a long-buried memory suddenly flooded to the forefront of Bebe’s mind: her mother leaned against a slat-board stall wall, bathed in sweat and gasping in relief, one arm hugging a bloody newborn daughter to her breasts, the gnarled length of its umbilical dangling down between her splayed and shaking legs. It was just a flash of a memory, dashing quickly in and out of consciousness again. A fleeting, intangible thing that didn’t bear thinking on, and yet Bebe couldn’t stop the cold tangle of knots from tightening in her gut. She didn’t like change. Change always seemed to bring new and terrible things.
But this was Sir and Ma’am’s baby, and that made it her baby now too. For their sakes, she tried to swallow past the rising dread inside her. “Hello,” she whispered, winning an instant smile from Ma’am—which changed nothing and yet somehow held the power to almost make everything feel better.
Ruffling Bebe’s hair fondly, Ma’am stood up. “Out,” she said cheerfully, gesturing towards the open kitchen doorway, and Bebe went. She leaned against the jamb, resting her forehead lightly against the wall, scratching nervously at one shoulder as she tried to reconcile herself to the baby’s presence. She watched while Ma’am filled her bowl with grain cereal and water and put them in the cooker. Pressing her thumb to the pet-proof key plate, the box hummed to life, but Ma’am wasn’t paying attention to it. Once more, she occupied herself with the baby, rocking it slowly, alternately humming and singing and every now and then Bebe heard familiar words tossed in, like ‘come’ and ‘sleep’. After a few minutes, the cooker beeped and Ma’am brought out her bowl. She mixed a package of purple fruit into the soft and steaming grains before calling, “Supper time, Bebe.”
The sweet fruity aroma accompanied Bebe as she followed Ma’am to table and her special chair, the seat of which was set a little higher than the others and which had an extra rung at the bottom to make it easier for her shorter legs to climb. By now, Sir was in the living room. He gave Bebe a very brief but knowing glance as he pressed his thumb to the keypad, and the fire sprang effortlessly back to life. Without offering so much as a single word of scolding, he crossed the dining room to ruffle her hair before meeting Ma’am at the table. When she pointed to the package questioningly, they both looked at it, and then across the table at Bebe.
Pulling her bowl closer, Bebe pretended not to notice just so she wouldn’t have to meet their judging frowns. In her mouth, the cereal had all the guilty consistency of sawdust, especially when Sir made that knowing sound in the back of his throat.
They conversed over her head, his ‘Bebe’ following the word ‘outside’, which made Ma’am hm in disapproval now too. Their censure was both fleeting and half-hearted, and when both seemed willing to let it pass without further scolding, some of the knots unfurled inside her. Bebe swallowed what was in her mouth and breathed a little easier.
Cutting into the package with his thumb claw, Sir opened the box.
“Oh,” Ma’am said, and Bebe glanced up in interest as Sir withdrew a small sleepsack from the box. Now here was something familiar. Bebe used to have one just like it, back when Sir and Ma’am had first brought her home. This one was decorated with speeding transports in an assortment of pastel colors, while hers had simply been blue. She never had liked wearing hers, but this particular sack was obviously meant for the baby. It was much too small for Bebe.
Sir bent to kiss Ma’am’s cheek. They both bowed their heads, briefly touching the baby in its sling. Then Ma’am took the sack and the baby and retreated to their bedroom, presumably to put it on him. Poor baby. Bebe felt bad for him, and frankly, she couldn’t see much point in making him wear the sack. As small and feeble as he was, Bebe had a hard time picturing him getting up in the night to wander the house.