Bottles, I soon learned, were wonderful things. And, being so young, it was all I could stomach to take in what seemed to be massive quantities but wasn't really all that much. I was fussed over and loved.
"Isn't she just precious, Barty?" I was confused.
"Yes, dear, but we need to take her to the boy." The world became frigid and my grandmother spoke coldly.
"He doesn't deserve her. He didn't even come to support her."
"Now you're being ridiculous. It was your idea to keep Abby out of the public eye. How was he supposed to know she was pregnant when you told him she was sick and denied him the right to see her?"
"Barty!"
"At least let's support our child's last request." I was transferred into new arms rather carefully as my grandmother cried. "She wanted us to let him see her. Sarah, we can't ignore that."
As they spoke, I listened intently. Not like I could do much else considering I was a helpless infant.
I am pretty sure that I'd gotten off easy, the language barrier not being there at all, but I was a baby.
A newborn at that. It took a lot of energy to stay awake, considering that my full existence in this body numbered more in hours than it did days.
My grandfather's name was Barty. My grandmother's name was Sarah. My mother's name was 'Abby' but that was clearly a nickname.
Abigail? Or the ten million variants thereof? Or another 'Abby'? Abilene? Abele? Ab… Okay.
I'm making names up and Abilene was a town name, I think. I don't know. The likelihood of it being 'Abigail' was too high. Or one of the variants.
The argument was heated but the man's insistence that it was what their daughter wanted wore his wife down. From what I understood, my mother had been a teenager.
A harsh blow for any parent to lose a child that young but there was the compound of 'she had gotten pregnant'.
My mother had been sixteen-seventeen years old. My father was apparently a boy she had known from school and had fallen for her. Clearly, the feelings had been reciprocated and I was born.
Teenage pregnancy. Yay.
Not that I was ungrateful. I had no idea how I had died even if bits of my old life visited. Not enough to be coherent, of course, but I was aware I was supposed to be a fairly young adult (but not too young) and independent, financially and otherwise. Now, I was a baby.
No, I'm not getting past that point until I could at least feasibly wipe my own ass.
As I was in a perpetual state of boredom. Let me tell you, babies are boring. Especially when you were one. I couldn't hardly see. I pissed myself.
I shit myself. I couldn't eat anything. I could only process milk. I was fairly certain I was drinking goat's milk because, apparently, it's better than cow milk and there was no human milk to drink as the only one that had any had been my mother and there weren't any wet nurses.
I slept a lot. I cried when I needed something. My entire existence was limited to anything within arm's length. And even that was limited.
The only other thing that I had was sound and I couldn't stay awake long enough at times after being fed to even understand what the hell the adults were talking about.
Even then, it didn't take much to realize they were discussing funeral arrangements and making runs to get things done.
I was, of course, the ever-so-cute doorstop for about how useful I was.
.
The funeral was probably nice. There was crying and talking and the usual hullabaloo of funerals.
Then there was me, the baby. I couldn't see. I could hear. I was in someone's arms, I think my grandmother's.
It became public knowledge that my mother had died in childbirth. After the rites were concluded, people came to see me.
Not that I could see them though I damn well tried. I got cooed over, touched, and even held for short periods. Family, friends, and even some of my mother's peers.
It was obvious when the teen that was my father came because there was a definite stiffness to my grandmother that communicated in waves.
"Hello, young man," greeted my grandfather after a long moment. "I was wondering when you'd come over here."
"You said she was sick," an unfamiliar voice accused, somewhere between grief-stricken and numb. "That… But she wasn't. Why? Why didn't you tell anyone she was pregnant?"
"To be fair," my grandfather, whom I'd decided to call 'Grandpa' for simplicity's sake, said soothingly,
"it was not really a normal situation. Abby was sick quite a bit. The doctor did say she needed bedrest. However, it was not my decision to keep you out."
"Oh, are you going to put all of this on me now, Bartholomew?" accused my grandmother. I protested at the squeezing she was giving me and instantly her grip eased again. "I wasn't the one that-!"
"Sarah!" The woman stopped. "Dawn is his daughter." There was a shocked gasp. "She asked us to let him know and to let him have a chance to have her. You know this."
I was hanging in the balance and I didn't even know the faces of those around me. All I had were voices.
I didn't even know. I realized I was scared. What if I was rejected? What if I was accepted? What if I was going to forever be passed back and forth? I didn't know.
"Let him hold her." It was a command and, with some reluctance, my grandmother turned me over.
It took some guidance and an uncomfortable moment where my head wasn't supported but the one who was my father was holding me.
"She's so little."
"She's healthier than her mother was at the end. I think they had conflicting blood types," admitted Grandma. "Abby was type 'B'."
"And I'm type 'A'," grunted my father. "So, that means… Dawn?"