Photo Prompt Story: Mumm-Kay

~ beetleypete

This is a short story, in 790 words.
It was prompted by the above photo, the second one sent to me by Kim Barker.
https://cadburypom.wordpress.com/

I used to look at other women all the time. Well, the pregnant ones, and those with babies. Friends told me it didn’t matter. I could make something of my life. We had a double income, and free time. Nothing to hold us back. We could go on vacation, stay up late, sleep in at weekends. Kids weren’t everything.

Steve’s mom suggested we got a dog, or maybe a cat. Perhaps both.

Easy to say when you already have kids.
Easy to say when you are six months pregnant, and showing the scan photos around.
Easy to say when you fall pregnant any time you’re not ‘careful’.
Easy to say when you have three kids, and think maybe a fourth would round things up nicely.

I stopped visiting friends who had babies.
I stopped going to my sister’s house when she was expecting.
I stopped looking in stores that sold baby goods.
I stopped looking at the windows of toy stores.

When it finally happened, nobody was glad. Steve’s mom said I was too old, and my parents were sure either me or the baby would die.

Even Steve was worried. I had known him for over twenty years. I could tell.

So I was forty. So what? It was the twenty-first century, and I lived close to the best hospital in California.

And I fooled them all. No complications, no bad results from the amnio. Healthy mom, healthy baby. But just in case, I opted for a C-section anyway.

Nathan Robert was a revelation. He had my eyes, and Steve’s nose. Yet still nobody seemed to be happy for me. They were waiting, waiting for it to turn bad, like they were wishing it on us. Even Steve looked like he was waiting.

I got mad at him for that.
Then I got mad at him again when he denied it.

After we brought Nathan home, Steve came in one day carrying a big soft toy. It was a monkey, with a cute face, and legs that you could pose. It was too big for little Nathan, but I would sit him next to the toy on the couch, and love how small he looked next to it.

Development. They have charts. They expect this to happen by that age, and that to happen by this age. He wasn’t deaf, and his vision was fine. But he was late to crawling, and then he didn’t crawl much. When he was even later to walking, they started with the tests and scans.

When you go in to see a specialist and his smile is too wide, and too set on his face, that’s when you should worry.

He started talking about a possible diagnosis, and my head went fuzzy. It was as if I was under water, and he was speaking from the surface. I got most of it. As much as I wanted to hear anyway. Epilepsy for sure, and Autism. Not just any Autism. Level three, and severe. It couldn’t be much worse, he said, that smile hardly fading.

I told him we would cope. Whatever it took.

We tried, we really did. He had said something about fits, but not how many, and how bad they might be. As well as the minute by minute struggle of dealing with his hysteria and aggression as he got older, there was the constant concern over the fits and seizures. It put a strain on both of us, then it put a strain on that twenty- five year marriage too.

No chance I would ever give up. I went to support groups. I read anything I could get about the condition. I met up with other families who were living the same nightmare, and I worked at it. I worked real hard at it. I stopped being me, stopped being a wife to Steve, and just became a thing who cared for her son, and fought the evil inside her boy’s head.

Then one day, Nathan managed two words. He said ‘Juice’, and I knew what he wanted, even though it sounded like ‘Goosh’. Then when I was sitting on the floor with him, he looked up at the couch and said ‘Mumm-Kay’. I knew right away it was ‘Monkey’. He had heard us say it a thousand times. I was so happy, I cried. Steve cried too. In fact, he sobbed.

But Nathan never did manage to say ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’, or anything else before the final seizure that took him from us forever.

Steve didn’t stick around long after that. I couldn’t blame him, and I no longer cared. I downsized, but insisted on keeping the couch.

And the Mumm-Kay.

53 thoughts on “Photo Prompt Story: Mumm-Kay”

  5. My goodness, this is how it goes for real. You would think you had gone through the same situation. Very well written! The ending was too abrupt for me, perhaps a little matter of fact after all they went through, but that is a small moment in the context of a great story. Best to you, Pete.

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    1. Thanks, Jennie. If I had made it much longer, it would have been better in a serial format. But the photo-prompts are almost always one story, under 2,000 words.
      As for her being matter-of-fact, that was actually deliberate. She had nothing left inside.
      Glad you liked it.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  6. (1) Overheard at a family reunion of Transylvania ghouls: “Yes, Frankie, Jr. was indeed a revelation. He had Abby Normal’s brain, my eyes, and Steve’s nose.”
    (2) I thought of something “easy to say,” but “I stopped” myself from saying it. I stopped myself four times.
    (3) Stuffed monkeys don’t have seizures.
    (4) “He started talking about a possible diagnosis, and my head went fuzzy.” As fuzzy as the head of a stuffed monkey.
    (5) Nathan was a misfit.
    (6) One man’s guzzle is another boy’s goosh.
    (7) “Mumm-Kay.” Nathan was actually trying to reassure his mother: “Mum, I’m okay.”

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  15. All it takes is a trigger mechanism (a photo) to get a thought and from there “Katie Bar the Door.” An interesting approach to set up the feeling of doom from the “get-go”. Well done, my friend, well Done Warmest regards, Theo

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  18. Thanks, Pete. Utterly depressed. Actually, your voice with the bad grammar and taking on the persona of a 40 year old female in California is not in your comfort zone. Neither is first person POV, so this was one of your better stories because it wasn’t you. It was the woman. She didn’t have a name. That’s something, too.

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  22. Bloody hell! You got all of this from one image?
    Life can be so hard for some of us, unfair, unkind and cruel. You must have experienced some of these things, Pete, in order to write about them.
    But if all of this came out of the ether, you are an incredible writer!

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    1. I saw the photo, looked at the monkey alone on the sofa, and thought about the child who might have left it there. Of course, I did experience such medical issues when I was an EMT, and I had a friend who had a child ‘late’ in life. (With no complications)
      But I tried to imagine the devastation of such a situation, and then set it in America because Kim is American.
      It took 30 minutes to write last night, then 30 more to re-space and make corrections.
      Many thanks for your kind words, Jaye and Anita. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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