The Baby in The Bottle

Benjamin Bautista
The truth was, Mr. Libre felt sorry for his wife. He But five years passed before they had their first
was very careful to hide it from her, of course, but child, and when it was only four months in the
day by day, through the years, as he saw her womb, it was prematurely born.
watching the shriveled half-black baby in the bottle, It was a boy but it didn‘t even look like a baby. It
he felt more and more sorry for her. She would had eyes and ears and arms and its skinless body
touch the bottle gently, once in a while, and run her had been formed, but it was only four inches long
hands fondly over the cold glass; inside, the stiff, and looked cold and raw as though it was just a
skinless body of a four-inch boy now dead for five piece of peeled flesh that never had life at all. Mr.
years, would bob up and down in the green Libre felt it to the nurses but his wife asked to keep
alcohol. And then sometimes, slowly, to herself, it and take it home with her; he didn‘t know why,
she would smile. until the doctor told him that his wife knew that she
Mr. Libre‘s wife was a plain woman with high could never have any more children. After that
cheekbones and a sad mouth, who was only neither of them talked about it much and they
twenty-nine years old but whose eyes were no slipped back to the routine of everyday living. Still
longer young. Mr. Libre himself was thirty-three but he took it on himself to try to make it easier for her
graying hair and some thick corded veins on his through the days.
hands made him look older. He was a small man
and thin, and long hours of bending over receipts One afternoon in the last busy week of January,
had given him a stooped posture and made him Mr. Libre was looking over some old files in the
appear even smaller and thinner. Recorder‘s cubicle when all of a sudden he
Very often, whenever he could, Mr. Libre would try remembered that on that day the baby in the bottle
to walk to his wife to get her to start talking too, but was five years and seven months old. He thought
it became harder and harder for them to find things no more about it but kept it in the back of his mind
to talk about. The talk always turned to the past to tell his wife that night; she wanted to hear him
and how different it might have been if they‘d had talk about the baby. He went on checking the old
children. Mr. Libre didn‘t want to talk about those files but when he was almost finished, his eyes
things but his wife did, and gradually, the pauses hurt again and he had to go back to his desk.
stretched longer and made them both uneasy. But Mr. Libre was a clerk in the freight department of
he was always patient with her; even if he was an import-export corporation and all day he had to
tired or irritable he never showed it in any way. By sit behind a high desk and sort out receipts and
now he had learned to put up with many good record them. At was not a hard job but it kept him
things. constantly busy because there were so many
He was married when he was twenty-two and just receipts and he was so very careful about his
out of high school. He had been alone in the city work, he seldom found time to leave his desk from
for four months when he met her. She understood eight-thirty to five o‘clock every day.
his dialect and they got along well together. At first He had been with the firm for nine years now and
he wanted to go on to college but when he thought he knew his work well but still did not find it easy. It
it over again, he felt that it wasn‘t fair. That would demanded so much concentration from him and
be asking too much from his wife. there were days when it all seemed to be painfully
They moved into a rented room which the owner hard but it only made him try even harder. May
said was the ground floor of a two-story building, times he would have to focus his eyes on the pink,
but it was just a room actually, with thick cardboard yellow and blue receipts and make an explicit act
walls to divide it into smaller rooms. They planned of the will to follow the items on them. Usually he
to move out after a few years because they would have to strain his eyes excessively so that
thought the room would be too small for the often the muscles behind his eye sockets tightened
children to come, and they hoped to have many and he would feel a smarting throb in his eyes.
children.

May times he would have to focus his eyes on the not want to be the way she was, he told himself, to
pink, yellow and blue receipts and make an explicit live in a small cramped world of her own, to look at
act of the will to follow the items on them. Usually the baby, make up daydreams about it all day, to
he would have to strain his eyes excessively so want to touch it, hold it in her hands. She could not
that often the muscles behind his eye sockets help any of it, he knew, and he did not stop her,
tightened and he would feel a smarting throb in his and day by day he got used to her being that way.
eyes. He would stop work at once and close his But still he felt sorry for her. The blinds on the west
eyes as tightly as he could. The he would force a window had been lowered and he knew it was
smile until his jaw hurt because, although that getting late. He shook himself from his thoughts
didn‘t ease the pain any, it always held back the and worked faster because he wanted to finish the
tears. Tears always embarrasses him. They made last batch of receipts for the day. It would hardly
him feel helpless. He did not rest his eyes long make any difference because he would be back
because there were many late receipts that he had the next day anyhow and there would always be
to go through and he went back to work on them. more receipts, but there were things one should do
But after a few minutes he grew restless with the and finishing the day‘s work was one of them. He
papers and he wanted to go over to the window took everything as it came and he found it possible
and get a breath of air. But the window was across to lose himself in his work. He wished he could do
the room and the assistant manager was talking to even more and he felt he owed that much to his
a typist only two or three feet away. He tried to sit wife. It was almost five-twenty when Mr. Libre got
still on his high chair. He shut his eyes and took a up, locked his papers under his desk and shuffled
deep breath and continued to line up the figures on out of the office. Almost everyone had gone by
the record sheet but his fingers shook and the then except some of the typists and a secretary
pencil point broke under his hand. He grew doing overtime. He did not look at them as he went
annoyed with himself for being upset over a little out. He left quietly and alone. Out in the street he
thing like that. He was sure his wife was not having hoped the crowd would not hold him up for long.
an easy day either. Concentration always came Heavy traffic snarled the afternoon rush and cars
hard to Mr. Libre because sometimes in the middle and buses and people on the sidewalks hardly
of the day he would find it impossible to keep his moved at all. On the pedestrian lanes as he waited
thoughts off the many unrelated little things that for the go signal, it became stickily hot; no wind
came into his mind. He would catch himself stirred the inert air, thick with gasoline exhaust
thinking of his wife eating lunch alone every day or fumes. But Mr. Libre did not mind the heat. As he
the cardboard walls of their room that seemed to crossed the street he clenched and unclenched his
close in on them or perhaps the dead baby fists and he tried to walk as fast as the crowd
submerged in its bottle of green alcohol. He would let him. He was getting impatient. He wished
thought of his wife a lot but many times he thought he were home that very minute. He pushed the old
of the baby, too. During the first few months and narrow door of their room open and sat down on
on to the end of that first year, the bottle had the first chair he saw. He felt very tired btu the
seemed too small for the baby. It looked as though chair was hard and rigid and it did not help him
it needed a glass jar with a lid instead of that bottle any; it arched his back. His shoulders felt heavy
with a wide mouth; it floated limply on the surface and he was breathing hard but did not rest long.
and slumped against the glass sides. But after a His wife was in the other room. He stood up and
while the alcohol seeped through it and hardened stretched behind the cardboard wall. He pushed
it, and it sank stiffly to the bottom. Then little by the old narrow door of their room open and sat
little it blackened and shriveled up and it would down on the first chair he saw. He felt very tired
neither float nor sink but bobbed up and down in its btu the chair was hard and rigid and it did not help
green world of alcohol and glass. And then the him any; it arched his back. His shoulders felt
bottle didn‘t seem too small for the baby any more heavy and he was breathing hard but did not rest
because now the baby‘s shrunken body was long. His wife was in the other room. He stood up
completely confined. The bottle fully contained it. and stretched behind the cardboard wall. His wife
Mr. Libre fully noticed too that his wife had sat on a cat staring at the baby in the bottle. She
changed. In the beginning she was no different at sat in half darkness a few feet away from the table
all, although at times she did not fall into brooding. where the bottle was. From where he stood he
Then slowly for no apparent reason she grew quiet could see sharply the hollows of her eyes and thin
and kept to herself, and that was when the baby in bloodless lips. Her face was totally without
the bottle took a strange hold on her. He tried to expression. Her hands were on her lap and she sat
understand her and be patient with her. She did unmoving but when he came in and she saw him,
she turned slowly to him and her face broke out in
a clumsy uncertain smile. It was a slow half-silly
smile that twisted the corners of her mouth
upwards and nothing else; her eyes remained sad
and empty. He has never seen her that way
before. He was afraid she did not recognize him.
He could not look at her directly. For a moment he
felt it was cruel to watch her. Instead he turned to
the baby in the bottle. The tiny half-black thing was
drifting and circling as always in the green alcohol.
But now he saw that the bottle and the alcohol and
the long years had gnawed it and little by little the
baby was shredding and peeling off its flesh. The
bottle and the alcohol and the long years had
choked and shrunk it and now were eating it up. All
the time, through the years, as the baby bobbed up
and down in its own cramped world, it was slowly
being destroyed. And no one could do anything
about it.
Mr. Libre felt helplessly hollow inside; he turned his
head and shut his eyes tightly. He forced a smile
until his jaw hurt because although he felt no pain
in his eyes now, he wanted to make sure he could
hold back the tears.