Bubble's Baby

Bubbles’ Baby
by
Austin Mitchell

As I drove into Creighton on my way to Latore’s Ridge a young lady waved me down. When I stopped the car and she came up to it, I recognized her as ‘Bubbles’ Kenton, one of my former students.
“Teacher, can I beg you a ride to Rennals?”
“Sure, Bubbles, get in.”
I opened the car door for her and she got in.
She had a young baby with her, but I noticed that she didn’t have a bag, although the baby was wrapped in a towel.
“Your first baby, Bubbles?” I asked as I drove off the car.
“He’s Leta’s baby, teacher. I don’t have any children yet. She’s gone for an interview in Kingston so she begged me to keep him for her.”
I used to teach both Bubbles and Leta at Mc Cauley High School in Oakley district. That was about seven years ago. I was no longer teaching school. Bubbles might have been about twelve and Leta was two years older.
“So what are you doing for yourself now, Bubbles?”
“I plan to go to evening classes next year.”
“That’s good, so what do you plan on studying?”
“I want to do nursing so I have to do over Mathematics and Biology.”
“I wish you the best. By the way what’s the baby’s name.”
“His name is Russell, Deron Harper is his father.”
“Deron Harper, I remember him. He was in class with you? Wasn’t he?”
“Yes, teacher.”
For the rest of the journey we just discussed things in general and about other past students and teachers at Mc Cauley High.
When we reached Rennals I let Bubbles out and continued on to Latore’s Ridge.
When I completed my business in Latore’s Ridge night was already falling. I drove back home and decided to stop in Creighton and have a drink at Archibald Crook’s bar. Creighton was a mile away from Oakley so I knew most people there.
There were only about half a dozen patrons in the bar. Archie was behind the counter.
I ordered a beer and was drinking it when I heard Archie remark.
“I don’t know what this country’s coming to. The girl just left her baby sleeping and somebody took him away.”
“Somebody stole a baby around here, Archie?” I asked.
“Dennis Charley’s daughter, Yvette. You should know her, Don. You should have taught her at school.”
Yvette Charley, I remembered her now. She was in the same class as Bubbles.
“Laddie Harper’s son, Deron, is the baby’s father,” Leslie Johnson, a middle aged farmer informed me. My head began spinning. Now what the hell was happening here?
“I used to teach Deron too.”
I ordered another beer and told Archie to refill their glasses.
I was still anxious to find out more about the child stealing, but I hadn’t planned on doing any drinking and I hated to drink and drive. I bought them another round and decided to leave.
Before I left I announced that I hoped that the child would be found. I went outside and was opening my car door when I saw Leta Kenton and I beckoned her over.
“How are you, Leta? I thought you didn’t live in Creighton anymore.”
“What makes you say that, Mr. Reed?”
I told her to have a seat in the car as I didn’t want anybody to hear what I was about to say to her. She was dragging her feet as she came into the car and I turned on the overhead light.
I told her about Bubbles and what she told me and she started to cry.
“I don’t have a baby, Mr. Reed.”
“So why did Bubbles take away Yvette’s baby and told me that it was yours?”
I was of course assuming that the baby I saw Bubbles with was Yvette’s baby.
Leta was crying even harder now and then she told me what had happened.
“Deron got Bubbles pregnant first and then we heard that Yvette was pregnant for him too. The two of them start to curse each other, although they never came to blows.”
“One day Bubbles was sitting on a tree stump and it broke and we had to take her to the hospital and she lost her baby. When Bubbles was pregnant anything she wanted, Deron would give her. After she lost the baby, Deron changed. He no longer cared about her.”
“I know that something’s wrong with Bubbles, teacher. After Deron stopped talking to her, she took it badly. I told mummy and daddy but they said nothing was wrong with her. They believe she will soon get over Deron and the loss of her baby.”
I reflected on my meeting with Bubbles. She certainly didn’t act as if something was wrong with her.
“We have to find her and take away the baby from her. I’m not saying that she’s going to harm it, but you never know what might happen. The police are going to charge her with child stealing plus a battery of other charges.”
“He made a fool of my sister. I told Bubbles not to talk to him, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“I have to report it at the police station. There is some new law about children and having knowledge that persons are ill-treating them and not reporting it. I don’t think it applies in this case, but I think we’d better report it.”
“I don’t want the police to beat up my sister. They aren’t going to treat her good, especially after what she has done.”
“Even if we find Bubbles and take the baby away from her. Do you think Yvette is just going to take back her baby without raising a stink?”
She sat in the car silent but still shedding tears, but after a while I saw her nodding her head.
“I’ll call Jassette and tell her what’s happening and then we can go to the police station.”
“How is she, teacher?” Leta asked of my wife of twelve years. It was at Mc Cauley High that I first met Jassette when she taught Mathematics and I taught English Language and Literature.
“She’s okay, you know that she’s a college lecturer now.”
I saw Leta nodding, but she didn’t say anything. We drove to the police station, which was a half a mile away and I reported it.
I didn’t know any of the policemen at the station. I remembered playing dominoes and ludo with some off duty policemen, but they were no longer there. They took a statement from me and one from Leta. I was quite sure that they were going to treat it as a case of child stealing.
After leaving the police station we drove to Rennals and asked around but nobody knew anything about Bubbles nor did anyone see her and the baby. I returned and dropped Leta home and drove to my home.
Jassette was waiting for me and had warmed my dinner in the microwave oven.
As we ate our dinner, I told her what had happened. She expressed her horror and surprise at the turn of events.
“I can’t believe that Bubbles would do something like that,” she said midway the dinner.
“Based on what Leta told me, Bubbles doesn’t seem in her right mind, although to be fair she didn’t look that way to me.”
“There is a pond behind Rennals going up to Keswick.”
I thought over what she told me and then I remembered going there.
“My God,” I said, “Suppose Bubbles went into the pond with Russell.”
“Who’s Russell?” she asked.
“Yvette’s baby, that’s the baby, Bubbles took away.”
“What do we do?”
“We’ve got to go up there. I don’t know if we’ll be too late. I’m going to call Leta and we’ll make up a search party.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll have to lock up the house.”
Our house was a three bedroom detached one. I guessed we’d built it in the hope of having children who hadn’t arrived as yet.
We arrived at Latore’s Ridge at nine o’clock that night. Leta, her father, Rubber, and twenty six year old brother, Tenny, were waiting for us. The mood in the car was somber as we headed for Keswick.
When we reached Keswick the place was empty. It was as if everybody was asleep. We knew that the pond would be about two miles in.
I parked the car by the side of the road and locked it up. We all had flashlights as there was no moon and just a few stars in the sky. We started out at a slow pace with Rubber and Tenny leading the way. It was a dirt track, but there were several houses nearby and all the way to the pond.
“People stop coming here to swim after so many people drowned in it,” Rubber remarked.
“How far do we have to go now, Rubber?” I asked him.
“About a mile, teacher.”
“Don’t you think we should stop at one of these houses and ask if they’ve seen Bubbles and the baby?” Jassette asked.
“It’s better we reach the pond first and if everything’s all right we can always ask when we’re coming back,” Rubber replied.
We continued walking and finally we could see the pond down in the valley below us. We shone our flashlights down there. Everything looked serene and peaceful.
Slowly we made our way down to the pond. I don’t know where the water was coming from to the pond, but persons had always theorized that there was an underground source. The
pond was probably half of a football field in size. People from nearby communities did their washing and bathing there.
We all shone our flashlights on the pond, but the water was as calm as ever and then above us we saw other flashlights being shone and we were soon joined by Derron, Yvette and the policemen for the station.
People living nearby the pond were coming out now. All of them denied that they had seen Bubbles and Russell near the pond.
Then Yvette became hysterical and tried to attack Leta.
“Tell your mad sister to bring back my baby. I had nothing to with her losing her child.”
We had to restrain her and Deron led her away.
“I want back my baby. Oh God, why did she have to take him way. I just went to the shop and asked my mother to look after him and by the time I came back he was gone. If she ever let anything happen to him the whole of you aren’t going to like what I’m going to do.”
Then Leta started.
“Yvette, if it wasn’t for my parents and Mr. Reed and his wife, you’d see something tonight. You went behind Bubbles’ back and started sleeping with Deron. You knew that she was already pregnant for him.”
“Leta, see Deron there, ask him which one of us he started talking to first. She went behind my back and got pregnant for my man.”
“So what did she expect me to do? Stop talking to Deron and let her have him?”
“It’s all lies you’re telling, Yvette. Why up to now Deron hasn’t said anything.”
Then Tenny sought to attack Deron. The policemen had to warn all four of them that they would spend the night in jail if they didn’t behave.
We left the pond at around ten o’clock that night, all of us scratching our head as to where Bubbles and Russell could be. Yvette and Leta were in tears. After we walked a mile we heard shouts from a small house. The old woman who lived there was Miss Veta and we made our way up there to hear a baby crying. It was Russell and both girls stopped crying.
“She gave me the baby to hold and said that she was going for a swim,” Miss Veta reported and Leta started crying again.
“I don’t think she went into the water because I was looking on the pond and I never saw her in it. I said that if by tomorrow morning she didn’t return for the baby I was going to take him to the station,” Miss Veta told us.
The policemen told us that they couldn’t let Yvette have Russell as they had to take him to a doctor for checks to be done on him.
We made our way down to the road and I assured both Yvette and Leta that I would be in touch with them.
A week later Leta phoned me and said that Russell had been returned to Yvette the next day. Two weeks later she phoned to tell me that Bubbles had given herself up. In court I was shocked to see how Bubbles looked calm and reassured. She was given a suspended sentence of two years. The psychiatric report said that she had been severely depressed by the death of her baby and being abandoned by her baby’s father.
I saw Leta a year after that and she told me that Bubbles had moved to live in Portmore. She was still on medication and was improving all the time. The End.Please visit my blog at:http://stredwick.blogspot.com