When Babies Dream



  When Babies Dream

  By: James Matthew Dunn

  Illustration by: Susan Robinson

  Copyright © 2009 by James Matthew Dunn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Illustration: Copyright © 2009 by James Matthew Dunn

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by: Joleene Naylor

  Visit: https://whenbabiesdream.blogspot.com/

  *****

  For the real Ciara, and for Ryan

  May you always be safe

  Forever loved by me

  *****

  ****

  I’m dreaming now. My dreams are as comforting as hugs, the good kind of hugs where it would be okay if the embrace lasted forever. In my dream, I float around like a balloon inside a tornado. Windows with fancy curtains, bay windows, storm windows, and lots more float inside the tornado with me, and when I look through the windows, my past plays like a movie.

  The tornado, exactly like the one from The Wizard of Oz, always starts out my dreams by coming for me. It’s strong enough to carry me away, but inside, things are mostly calm, just a little windy. The tornado always stays the same. It’s what happens inside the tornado that changes.

  As much as I dream now, it’s hard to believe I didn’t dream before he came. By the time he had to go, I had enough dreams to last a lifetime. My dreams were so powerful, it wasn’t just me they could carry away—they carried him away, too.

  When I go back in my dreams, I see more than I did in real life. It’s funny how much I missed when I only had my eyes to see with. My dreams let me feel what other people who were with me felt, too, and I can hear their thoughts as if they’re my own.

  My name is Ciara, pronounced like the Sierra Mountains. People always ask me about my name, and no one ever spells it right. It would be easier to explain my name if there was some kind of history behind it, but my mom just thought it was pretty. This dream is as far back as I go.

  Inside my tornado, I find a white-paned window. On the other side of the glass, I’m eighteen months old and a stranger is carrying me. She doesn’t carry me right, and I keep slipping off her hip. She’s in a hurry, and it’s so cold I keep my eyes shut. I can hear the snow crunching under her shoes.

  It was almost Christmas when Mom had to go back to jail. I don’t think Santa Claus was planning to stop by my house that Christmas, anyway.

  The woman not holding me right is my mom’s parole officer. She hands me to the police. If this were a story about my mom, I would have a lot more to say about that, but this is a story about me. At least, about my dreams.

  I press my face so close to the window that my forehead touches the glass. This is the part where he comes for me. I’m so excited, I fog the window with my breath. I try to wipe the window clean, but that only leaves smears. I want to see him without smears, so I look for a different window.

  I float down to an octagon-shaped window, probably from the attic of some house taken up in my tornado. This window has a much better view.

  The first place you go after the police take your parents away is the hospital. The doctors poke at you and look at every part of your body to see if there’s anything that needs fixing. They have to do this because so many kids come hurt, but I wasn’t. I was just alone, and all these strangers touching me made me feel like I had done something wrong.

  Just before he arrives, the doctors are putting a catheter in me. I wish I didn’t have to remember this part, but I do. I scream, and the nurses hold me down. My social worker, Jessica, is there, and she holds my hand. I close my eyes and look away from the window for a moment.

  When I look back, Jessica forces a smile for me. She’s as traumatized as I am. “All done, Ciara. You did so good!” Her voice is strained.

  We both need a quick distraction, so Jessica burrows into her purse like she’s digging in sand. When a nurse checks the monitors next to my bed, Jessica stops her and asks, “Can she have a sucker?”

  The nurse feels sorry for me, I can tell, but she sees a lot of kids like me. “Of course,” the nurse says to Jessica, but she’s looking at me.

  The sucker is a cotton-candy flavored escape. I give up my whole mind and body to this little sucker. That’s probably why I don’t realize Jessica is telling me about him. She leans over my bed and says, “Ciara, I have a special friend who wants to meet you. His name is Jim, and you’re going to stay at his house tonight.”

  My Jim! His name didn’t mean anything to me at the time, or I would have listened. Jessica tells me how Jim lives in a big house with lots of toys, and how he has a bed just for me, and that I’ll be safe there. But I’m not ready to leave my cotton-candy world long enough to pay attention to her words.

  Jessica could have said that Jim lived in the most magical dreamland imaginable, and that he was coming to take me there. I might have left my cotton-candy world long enough to pay attention for that. That description of Jim would have been accurate, too.

  I’m almost done with my sucker when Jim walks in. I know now that he was thirty years old, but he looks like a big kid, younger than even my Mom, who was twenty-three. He was white like my mom, too. I was mostly brown.

  He comes right up to me. “Hi, Ciara,” he says. “I’m Jim. I’m excited you get to come to my house.”

  And then Jim notices my messy hair. His eyes swell to the size of quarters. He doesn’t say anything, but pats the top of my hair as if it’s a bowl of bubbles. I don’t think he knows what to do with me.

  When the social workers called Jim to see if he’d take care of me, there was some confusion about my age; they told him I was only four months old. Even then, Jim didn’t know if it was right for him to take me because he was a boy and he lived by himself, and I was a girl. The social workers told him that a baby is a baby, and not to worry about that. By the time the social workers called Jim again with my correct age, he was on his way to get me, but he still said yes.

  Jim shows me two pairs of pajamas he brought for me. One pair is for a little baby, but it was in a different bag than the pair that fits me. Then, he gives me both pairs to hold as he and Jessica move to a corner of my room to talk. The pajamas are new, and they don’t smell like cigarettes.

  “Is she okay?” Jim asks.

  “The doctors didn’t find anything. A couple marks on her backside, but the mother admitted to spanking her. She had a catheter, but—”

  “A catheter?” Jim interrupts.

  “I know. The doctor thought . . . because of her age . . .” Jessica tries to explain. She’s really young and too timid to ask the doctors why.

  “Is it still in her?” Jim asks.

  “No. They took it out.”

  “Good!” Jim says, relieved. “I’m so thankful I wasn’t here for that.”

  “Yeah . . . it was really hard to watch. It took three nurses to hold her down.” Jessica pauses. “Her urethra is probably still sore, so you’ll want to watch for irritation when you wipe her.”

  Jim realizes right away that Jessica is embarrassed; his face is red, too.

  Jim turns his attention to me and his voice softens. “I can’t even imagine what she’s feeling.”

  I can see it in his eyes, even then. Jim would do whatever he could to make me feel better. He just doesn’t know what to do yet. I’m already curious about him.

  Jessica looks at me and tells
Jim, “We’ve been watching this one since before she was born. She’s a sweetie with lots of energy and her own little language only she can understand . ”

  The curtains on the white-paned window slowly begin to close. I keep watching, even as the view out the window gets farther and farther away. Then, the window takes flight, as if it had the wings of a butterfly, and disappears into the grey swirl of my tornado.

  In my dreams, I often see myself in the hospital on that night when Mom went away and Jim came. I start off feeling everything a kid could feel: scared, alone, mad, sad—I could go on and on and on, with so many more feelings I now have words for. Then, Jim comes; he’s with me for only a little while, but by the time he’s carrying me out of the hospital, I feel something I know must be real because it goes from my mind to the ends of my fingers and toes, but I don’t have the words to explain it. Much later, I would learn that spring is a time of melting and new growth. The night Jim came for me, it felt a lot like spring.

  There’s more to that night, so I look for another window. I let dozens of windows pass me by because only one kind of window will do. I’m looking for a skylight.

  I find it floating up from inside the depths of my tornado. The skylight is alive with glow from the light inside the window. I wait patiently for the skylight to come closer. Then, like a hummingbird, I drift above the skylight, directly into the amber glow from the window below.

  When I look down, I see Jim’s