"Mom? Mom?" I stirred, opening my eyes at the sound of the tired voice. I was tired, too. I'd been crying, I think.
Something had happened and I'd been secure and warm and then it had all gone away and I'd cried so much because it was so uncomfortable and I hadn't wanted to go.
Now I was warm and sleepy and I just wanted rest.
"Yes, sweetie?" answered another voice. I peered upwards, trying to make out the details of my surroundings.
The first voice seemed to be coming from somewhere near me, loud and clear, but everything was blurred.
"Where is he? Where's Roy?" There was a long pause before the second voice answered.
"He's not coming." There was a moment and I wondered what was going on even as I blinked. My vision didn't clear. My tiredness didn't fade.
"You didn't tell him. Didn't do as I…" There was a bout of coughing and then the female voice wheezed. "Mom, he's got a right to her. He's got a right to Dawn."
"He has no right to you or her!" growled the clearly older woman. "He should have never laid his hands on you. Never."
"I am as guilty as he is," muttered the first female. "Mama." The callout was far more childish.
"Mama, you… You know I'm dying." There was the sound of an aggrieved sob. "You kept me from him, Mama. But I can give him what we made. I can give him Dawn.
If he doesn't want her, then that's fine… but at least let her have her daddy when she can't have her mother."
What was going on? This was all so confusing and… The place I was laying shifted slightly and I saw the blurs move.
I was… Was I being held? Why were my eyes so blurry? I knew I needed glasses but… My vision wasn't that bad.
This was barely sight. I was practically blind. My body didn't respond like I wanted it to and I tried to say something, to offer some kind of plea for help, only for it to come out as an infantile cry.
That startled me to no end and I froze for a moment even as I felt myself being lifted up, head carefully cradled.
It occurred to me then that I was a baby. That I'd somehow become a baby. 'Oh, this is just degrading.'
"He doesn't deserve her or you," the woman now holding me said seriously. The bitter one. The angry one.
"I still love him," my apparent mother whined. "I… I wish you hadn't hidden me away. I know he would have done the right thing for the both of us. I know…" She sighed.
"Sleep, Abby," my grandmother said simply. "I'll make sure Dawn is taken care of."
"Promise me, Mama," insisted 'Abby'. "Promise me you'll introduce her. Promise me that, if he wants her, you'll let him have her." There was an aching silence before the woman holding me agreed.
"I'll do that. I promise. Go to sleep, Abbigail. I promise I'll do as you ask." There was a long silence and soon the woman began crying. "Why did you make me do that?"
she sobbed as she clung to me, nearly squeezing me tight. "Why are you making me give up the only piece of you I have left?!"
I was clutched closely to the woman and felt sadness roll through my tiny form. This woman had lost her daughter to something. Perhaps childbirth.
That meant that I had inadvertently caused my mother's death. Still, my body tired and I whined instinctively.
It earned me a bottle and I found myself cleaned up and changed not long after I had been burped.
"Oh, my Dawn Rose. My granddaughter." My new grandmother settled me in a bassinette. "She was wrong to tell me to give you up… but…"
She sobbed and I stared up at her quietly though I couldn't make out much. "I can't deny her that dying wish." She left me there, cradled in the frilly bassinette.
And that left me to discern what was going on. 'Dawn Rose? That's my name, huh? So, clearly I'm a girl.
And I'm just born. Talk about awkward. But… how do I have my memories?' That was a good question but one I couldn't readily answer.
I drifted asleep, nestled securely in my crib. I didn't know why or how but I'd somehow managed to become a baby again. A baby with my memories intact no less.
It was a conundrum I would have to solve at a later time. For now, I needed to sleep.
.
Waking up did not solve things. In fact, things were steadily worse when I woke.
I had messed my diaper and I was starving and there were these instincts that I had that seemed to indicate that I was at least in part really a baby because those instincts said to scream for attention.
Because instincts were stronger than I intended, guess what I did? I screamed. It came out as a wail and it immediately brought people out of the woodwork.
It wasn't until the person spoke that I realized it was the grandmother. My mother was dead.
I'd killed her? I didn't know.
I found my butt and crotch exposed to the cool air and cried at the discomfort even as I tried to work my weak, almost rubbery limbs.
I remembered from some biology-anatomy textbook that baby bones were still very 'green' upon birth, mostly cartilage and flexible and delicate, due to some evolutionary thing that made it possible for the mother to survive childbirth instead of dying from a too-large baby. It meant that, while formed, the bones were soft and harder to break.
It also meant harder to move because it was uncomfortable when I put pressure on them. And I did not like how I was grabbed by the feet, hauled up partially, and wiped down.
I soon got a new diaper and felt a bit better as I was swaddled again. "You're hungry, aren't you?" my grandmother asked in a cooing tone. I couldn't help but whimper at the blurry shape above me.