Myra Schroeder desperately wanted, needed, and dangerously obsessed over having a baby.

By: P Maxwell

Born and raised in West Virginia, P Maxwell is a transplant now taking root and thriving in the Windy City.  She has a Bachelor’s in English under her belt and will soon have her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  P writes short fiction, but is secretly at work on a longer project to be disclosed at a later date.

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Mrs. Schroeder’s Baby

 

 By: P Maxwell

 

 

Myra Schroeder wanted a baby.

It was the only thing she had ever really wanted in life, and at the age of fifty-three, it was one of the many things she had never gotten. Motherhood eluded her, and like a petulant child on Christmas, the longer she had to wait for a baby, the more she wanted one.  It had become an obsession.  She read parenting books the way other women read romance novels and shopped in the Infants Department at the Murphy’s, buying tiny clothes and toys.  Sometime ago, she had converted her guest bedroom into a nursery, which her sister found decidedly inconvenient when she came to visit; the yellow ducks and ponies were cute, but a crib makes for cramped sleeping quarters.  She had even child-proofed her little bungalow, all four rooms and the bath, though she had some trouble now opening the locks on the kitchen cabinets.  But most important, she spent every day wishing and hoping and praying to Jesus and Mary and Joseph for a sweet little baby of her own to love and cuddle.

Mrs. Schroeder, although everyone in the neighborhood knew her as Missus, was not really a Missus at all, but actually a Miss.  And as just about anyone between the ages of seven and one hundred and seven can tell you, a Miss means very little without a Mister when it comes to providing the full set of chromosomes necessary to make a little Miss or Mister.  So, unfortunately for Mrs. Schroeder, who had never been married even for a little while, Nature with a capital N was against her.

In purely Darwinian fashion, Myra was not one of the lucky individuals who would ever be chosen to pass on her genes.  She was a tragic female born to become what Victorian literature deems a spinster.  She had never been the type of aesthetically-pleasing maiden to be gifted someday with a husband, a family, and a happily-ever-after, but instead was the type who lived frugally in a shabby, paint-peeling house with a weed-riddled lawn and an interior full of dusty silk flowers, crocheted doilies, and porcelain cats.

Mrs. Schroeder led a lonely and unfulfilled life.  That is, until the miracle.

 

She awoke one morning in the throes of nausea and staggered to the bathroom just in time to vomit up the previous night’s tea and pound cake.  As she slumped over the almond-colored toilet rim, she thought back to the day before.  She hadn’t eaten anything funny—the milk was one day past the sell-by date, but that had never made her sick before; the beef roast had been fresh; and she’d taken all her vitamins.  Myra thought and thought, but she could only come up with one plausible explanation for her sudden sickness.

“I’M GOING TO HAVE A BABY!” she cried out to no one in particular as she struggled up from the bathroom floor.

 

The ob-gyn she went to the following week did not exactly agree with her amateur diagnosis.  “Myra, there is not even the remotest possibility that you could be pregnant,” the doctor said.  “Negative blood and urine tests aside, by your own admission you haven’t had sexual intercourse with a man any time recently or, well, ever.  I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Schroeder was silent for a moment, lips pursed.  Then she lifted her chin imperiously and looked the doctor straight in the eye.

“Do you believe in God, Dr. Mackey?”

Dr. Mackey blinked.  “Excuse me?”

“Do you believe in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?”

“Ms. Schroeder, you are not pregnant.  Not even God—”

“Dr. Mackey!  If God wanted me to have a baby, He could certainly make it happen, and I think you’d do well to remember just whom you are talking about in such a frivolous manner.”  Mrs. Schroeder punctuated this last remark with an upward jab of one bony finger.  The doctor scooted away from her on his low wheeled stool.

“I wasn’t trying to offend you, Myra.  I just want you to know that the chances of Immaculate Conception are… pretty much nil.”

“I know he isn’t going to be Jesus reborn.  I’m not so vain as to think myself as deserving as Mary.  I just want a plain, ordinary baby.  That’s not so much to ask, is it?”

Dr. Mackey sighed.  “No, it’s not.  But you’re not pregnant.  You might actually be very sick if you’re vomiting constantly.  Myra, you need to see your family doctor.  This could be very serious.”

“I am pregnant, Dr. Mackey.  I will have this baby.  You will not talk me out of it.”

“Myra—”

She rose from the table, leaving a flutter of crinkled paper in her wake, and snatched up her pocket-book.  “May the Lord be with you, Doctor,” she sniffed, and marched out of the room.

She could take care of this baby herself.  She didn’t need any heretical doctor to deliver her sweet child into the world.  No, she would do it herself.  She’d seen those television shows plenty of times where the women have babies by themselves, and she was certain she could do it if any of those women could.  She’d just check a few books out of the library and read up on the subject of home child birth, simple as that.  She wasted no time and stopped at the Marshal County Public Library on her way home, where she checked out What to Expect When You’re Expecting; The Natural Pregnancy Book; Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn; and every available book by Dr. Spock.

 

The happy months of expectancy passed in a blur for Myra Schroeder, but unbeknownst to her, the rumor mill was grinding away on the news of her purported pregnancy.

“I heard it was the mailman,” said the Clemsons, who lived on her right.

“No, no. It must’ve been that fella from Tiddlyville who eats at the diner every day,” said Mrs. Daniels, who lived on the left.

“I heard from Sally Mae, who heard from Bob Douglas, who heard from the office assistant that she says Jesus gave her the baby,” said the cashier at the Fresh Mart.

“No!  Even Myra Schroeder isn’t that nutty.  Is she?”

Regardless of who the father was or wasn’t, Myra continued to grow larger and larger.  The whispering in church grew louder and louder, so that poor Pastor Evans could barely make himself heard.  Mrs. Schroeder, normally a very attentive listener in church, paid no attention to anything but the baby, rubbing her belly and thinking about the little life within.

Still, Myra continued to feel sick, and the larger she became, the more she seemed to vomit.  According to her grandmother, God rest her soul, the sicker you were, the stronger the baby.  Myra thus assumed that the constant roiling of her insides meant the baby inside her must be a little Samson.  But as the baby supposedly grew stronger, Myra grew weaker, and it became impossible to do even ordinary tasks.  Eventually she had to stop going to church, could eat only the blandest of diets which consisted mostly of things the color of wallpaper paste, and spent most of the day in bed.  The last ten days or so before the birth, she never left the house at all.

The night it happened followed a particularly unpleasant Tuesday.  Myra had been in bed most of the afternoon, struggling up out of tangled bedclothes only to eat a little Cream of Wheat and urinate or vomit at intervals of two or three hours each.  She was wan and miserable; the haggard face that gazed back at her from the mirror had deadened eyes and a complexion like whey.  It was not a face she recognized, but it didn’t matter.  It was all for the baby.

The baby, who was due “any day now”, had chosen that most foul of days to make its entrance into the world.  Mrs. Schroeder was returning from the kitchen with a lurching stomach.  She had been unable to eat even a few spoonfuls of thin gruel and thus was on her way to the bathroom when it happened.  She screamed like stapled skin and fell to her knees in the hallway.

“Dear God in Heaven,” she groaned, clutching her distended belly, “Help me!”  Myra looked down, seeing a burgundy stain spreading rapidly across her formerly pristine cream-colored carpet.  She screamed again, feeling something tearing and something falling, and kept screaming until everything was black.

She regained consciousness sometime later, not knowing how long she’d been laying there in the hallway.  The rusty odor of aging blood and rotting flesh seared her nose as she staggered to her feet.  The baby, Dear God, where was the baby?  Silent, still attached by a slimy purple strand of something stretchy and fibrous, it lay on the floor. He.  He lay on the floor.  She scooped him up and took him into the bathroom to clean them both off, tenderly holding his tiny hand.

“My sweet little boy.”

 

The screaming was what alerted the neighbors.  No one had seen Mrs. Schroeder for almost a week, and, while she was mostly a homebody, it was unusual not to see her out attempting to prune her bushes or walking to church or something.  After that night, one of her next-door-neighbors called the minister in to check on her.  Pastor Evans, thirty-something with a mild expression and timid hands, approached the small faded bungalow with trepidation.  If the screaming had been half as bad as the Clemsons had reported, it was highly likely that she was dead in there, or worse.  (Whatever was worse than just being dead.)  He swallowed harshly before knocking on the door as loud as he dared.  The young minister was rather surprised to see Mrs. Schroeder answer the door.  Wan and tired-looking, she mustered an unexpected smile.  She was holding a blanketed bundle in her arms.

“Pastor Evans!  How lovely to see you.  Please, please come in.” She shifted her little burden and opened the door for him.

“Bless you, Myra, but I can’t stay long.  I just wanted to check up on you.  Your friends and neighbors have been very concerned since you haven’t been to church for a few weeks, and I heard there was a bit of a disturbance last night?” He raised his voice at the end, hoping she might have some reassuring explanation for everything.

“Oh, you must stay and have some cake, Pastor.  But first, I want you to meet my son.”  She turned towards him, drawing back the blanket from her little bundle.  Wrapped inside the blanket was a large glass jar, and inside the jar there was something that the pastor could only identify as ungodly.

The tumorous lump floated in a liquid reeking of formaldehyde or some other preservative.  Something limb-like protruded from the ghastly form, but the appendage looked more like the scribble of a hand a kindergartener would draw than an actual hand.  A misshapen bulging eye with a milky pupil peeked out from an unnecessary fold of skin.  A few jagged, calcified nubs vaguely resembling teeth stuck out of a gummy-pink patch with a clump of crinkly brown hair that swayed in the fluid.  Whatever it was in the jar, it was not a baby, or even the remains of one.

Pastor Evans gulped down a mouthful of bile as the color dribbled from his face, his skin now nearly as papery pale as Mrs. Schroeder.  Mrs. Schroeder, who smiled, turning towards the jar, and stroking the glass.

“This is Frederick.  Yes you are, aren’t you?  Who’s my special boy?”

The pastor turned from Mrs. Schroeder and Frederick and vomited violently into her unpruned azalea bushes.

 ♦