How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane by Johanna Stein Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t hear through the G.D. marbles . . .
    If a baby’s cry is the most powerful sound in all of humanity, then the second most powerful sound is me whisper-yelling through two panes of glass, “IF YOU DON’T TURN OFF THAT VACUUM CLEANER, THEN I AM COMING TO YOUR HOUSE WITH AN ARMLOAD OF DIRTY DIAPERS AND I’M LEAVING EMPTY-HANDED!!” *
    Perhaps she heard me—or perhaps she didn’t hear me and it was just the specter of my psychotic, snarling face through the blinds, looking like some sort of deranged toilet demon . . . Whatever it was, it worked. The vacuum cleaner gets switched off.
    I listen at the child’s door; miraculously (and luckily for our marble-sucking neighbor), it appears she is still sleeping.
    I turn to check the timer on my phone—then realize I don’t have my phone.
    My phone.
    I have left my phone in the baby’s room. With the timer running. The timer that will count down to zero and then end with the blaring horn of a 1923 Packard.
    I have to get it out of there in the next . . . I’m not sure—I started it at fifteen minutes, maybe we’re at six minutes now? . . . without waking her. This will be tricky.
    With incredible precision (of an order that would put Carrie-Ann Moss to shame), I enter the child’s room using the slow, silent, walking-against-the-wind skills I honed back when I was a professional mime. * I can hear the gentle shhnooooccchh of her sleepy breaths. I can see, too, the light of my phone on the changing table where I’d set it down without thinking.
    As I grab the phone and switch off the timer, the child stirs and turns over. I dive onto the shaggy throw rug where I refrain from moving until I am certain she is still asleep.
    Lying on the floor, I am surprised at how comfortable I am; that mime bit really took it out of me—it may have been the most actual exercise I’ve done all year. The child’s overpriced tea-towel-size crib blanket has fallen onto the floor, so I pull it over me (over one-quarter of my torso, anyway), and I begin to drift off to sleep—which doesn’t seem like the worst idea I’ve had today, so . . .
    What the hell. I let it happen.

    I am awakened. By my bladder. I have to pee, urgently and with the intensity of a blocked fire hose. I can tolerate sleeping on my face next to an overflowing diaper pail on carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed in two years, but I draw the line at lying in my own urine. I would try peeing into (onto? at?) one of the baby’s ultra-absorbent diapers, but the fresh ones are out of arm’s reach.
    I have to get out of here. But the hallway light that would have lit my escape route is no longer on. The husband must have turned it off, the thoughtful bastard, and now I find myself in a pitch-black abyss.
    I begin to feel my way across the toy-strewn floor, crawling on my belly toward the door, when my knee hits something. I cast my eye downward and see a small multicolored ray of light begin to flash. And then . . .
    â€œTWIN-KLE TWIN-KLE! LITTLE STA-AAR! HOW I WON-DER WHA-AAA—”
    It’s that goddamn singing drum! I throw myself on top of it, hoping that my muffin-top flab will stifle the sound while I search frantically for the off switch. Why mustevery toy sing? And always in the same voice, some wannabe country star who sings every song with far too much sincerity and earnestness and ohmygod I’m gonna fly to Nashville and find her so I can rip out her vocal chords and make sure she never sings another G.D. note!
    The toy stops its squeal-singing . . . and then switches abruptly to singing in Spanish (still the same woman, Ay Dios Mio)! I claw at the toy, locate the power switch again, this time turning it OFF.
    The crib springs creak as the kid’s 20-pound frame bolts upright.
    I can see the whites of her enormous eyes glinting in the darkness.
    â€œMmmuh? Mmmuh?”
    I slide the tiny blanket over my face and