Baby Isaac
by Tinker Babbs
The first time I ever seen a cadaver laid out at our family funeral home was a month after my parents died. That’s when I laid eyes upon you and your mother. I was barely ten years old when my nineteen-year-old brother, Henry, comes a-running into my bedroom in the middle of the night and commences to shake the ever-loving sleep outta me. I remember rolling over in bed and pulling the pillow over my head and him getting madder than hell and shoving me down the staircase. Wasn’t too pleasant an experience. Now, up to that point, I’d never set foot in our morgue. Place scared the-you-know-what outta me. Of course, Henry knew this. He knew the only way he was ever gonna get my ornery hide to help him was by force. That night, Henry succeeded.
In those days, a family funeral home was just that. Your living room got turned into a parlor. The dining room became a place for wakes. And your basement got turned into a morgue. In a town the size of Carthage, Texas, there were only two undertaker families. Both come into the business cuzza parents learned the trade and passed it on to the kids. The good news for me was while I grew up around it, my Pa had spared me the gruesome details until he thought I’d be old enough to handle it. Let me tell you something. At age ten, I wasn’t old enough. Pa knew that when he was alive. Henry did not.
So, getting back to that night—Henry hauls me into the basement, and as I come into the morgue, I look up and see this woman lying naked on the slab. Couldn’t have been more than my brother’s age. Henry had laid her out and gotten her prepped and ready for embalming. Mind you, I was a short scrapper, and that table stood about as tall as me. Looking up at that woman, all I could see was her profile. And what I saw was a human being who looked more alive than dead. She was pretty as all get out. And did I mention she was pregnant? Eight months along, she was. Her belly was swollen up, and her breasts were all droopy-like and bloated. And I turned to Henry, and I remember saying how she didn’t look dead, and him saying that she was “fresh” cuz her old man had shot her four hours earlier. The man got himself drunk. Said he didn’t wantta baby. Guess he got his wish.
Anyways, I couldn’t believe it cuz from my angle, she looked normal as all get out. And I grabbed a stool and stood on it to get a better look-see. What I saw was a small hole in the woman’s forehead, no bigger than a pinkie. The woman’s eyes were closed shut, and I figured it was all right to poke my finger in the hole to see if it was real. It was. And Henry starts laughing and shaking his head. And I asked him what was so darned funny, and he comes back and tells me that for someone scared of coming within a hundred feet of the morgue, I was taking to it like a duck to water. I ignored him and kept checking things out while pointing out a slug on the table. He told me that he removed the thing from her brain. Turns out the Sheriff was gonna use it as evidence to hang the man. I said, “Then what do you need me for?” And he says back, “To take out the baby. They want a separate burial for it.”
Before I could say or ask anything else, Henry takes a scalpel and un-zippers that poor woman, your mother. Defiles her body. Cuts her clean from the sternum to the pubic bone. Runs the knife three more times through layers of skin tissue and muscle all the way through the placenta. I was in too much shock to run or scream. All I could do was stare. Then he pulls apart these things he just cut on, and there curled up inside is you, dead.
With Henry stretching your mother wide open, he looks over at me and tells me to lift you up while he cuts the cord. I knew better than to argue again or else suffer the consequences, so, without thinking, I reach in and yanked you out. You couldn’t have weighed more than four pounds. “He’s still warm,” I announced. “What’d you expect?” Henry says back. Then my brother got real serious and real angry at the same time. Not with me but with the whole situation. “I knew her, Billy,” he says. “She went to school with me. I really liked her a lot. She’d come to school with bruises and cuts and whatnot. Had a bad home life. One day, I walked her to her house. Carried her books. When we got to the front gate, her pa saw her with me. Got madder than hell cuz she was with a boy. We was only thirteen. Innocent as it gets. But her pa was crazy jealous, and he threatens me, slaps her, and grabs her by the arm, and drags her inside the house with her screaming the entire way. I should have killed him then and there. I could have saved two lives. But I made the wrong choice.”
All of a sudden, Henry gets all choked up. I’d never seen him before or since shed tears like that. And he looks me square in the eyes and says, “That son-of-a-bitch raped her. Her own pa. Let me tell you something, Billy. If you don’t remember anything else in life, remember this: There are good people and bad people in this world. The good ones deserve to live. The bad ones deserve to die.”
And he’s telling me all this while I got you in my hands. And I’m thinking to myself how much you deserved to live and how easy it woulda been for Henry to have changed all the events leading up to that night if he had just outright killed the man. Now, I’m not saying Henry blew it or anything like that. What I’m saying is that sometimes killing to spare a life is the right thing to do. At least, that’s what I believe.
When Henry was done saying what needed to be said, he told me to put you in the sink and “wash it off.” Now, that word upset me, and I said something like, “It is a boy. And as of now, it has a name.” Henry went along with what I was driving at. “So, what’s the name you come up with, Billy?” And I said, “Isaac,” on account Pa’s name was Isaac. Henry liked my giving you our Pa’s name.
As I look back on those years, it doesn’t take much to figure out why I wanted to get outta Carthage first chance come along and quit the funeral business. Washing you, Baby Issac, off in a sink? Hell. That sorta work wernt ever for me.
In those days, a family funeral home was just that. Your living room got turned into a parlor. The dining room became a place for wakes. And your basement got turned into a morgue. In a town the size of Carthage, Texas, there were only two undertaker families. Both come into the business cuzza parents learned the trade and passed it on to the kids. The good news for me was while I grew up around it, my Pa had spared me the gruesome details until he thought I’d be old enough to handle it. Let me tell you something. At age ten, I wasn’t old enough. Pa knew that when he was alive. Henry did not.
So, getting back to that night—Henry hauls me into the basement, and as I come into the morgue, I look up and see this woman lying naked on the slab. Couldn’t have been more than my brother’s age. Henry had laid her out and gotten her prepped and ready for embalming. Mind you, I was a short scrapper, and that table stood about as tall as me. Looking up at that woman, all I could see was her profile. And what I saw was a human being who looked more alive than dead. She was pretty as all get out. And did I mention she was pregnant? Eight months along, she was. Her belly was swollen up, and her breasts were all droopy-like and bloated. And I turned to Henry, and I remember saying how she didn’t look dead, and him saying that she was “fresh” cuz her old man had shot her four hours earlier. The man got himself drunk. Said he didn’t wantta baby. Guess he got his wish.
Anyways, I couldn’t believe it cuz from my angle, she looked normal as all get out. And I grabbed a stool and stood on it to get a better look-see. What I saw was a small hole in the woman’s forehead, no bigger than a pinkie. The woman’s eyes were closed shut, and I figured it was all right to poke my finger in the hole to see if it was real. It was. And Henry starts laughing and shaking his head. And I asked him what was so darned funny, and he comes back and tells me that for someone scared of coming within a hundred feet of the morgue, I was taking to it like a duck to water. I ignored him and kept checking things out while pointing out a slug on the table. He told me that he removed the thing from her brain. Turns out the Sheriff was gonna use it as evidence to hang the man. I said, “Then what do you need me for?” And he says back, “To take out the baby. They want a separate burial for it.”
Before I could say or ask anything else, Henry takes a scalpel and un-zippers that poor woman, your mother. Defiles her body. Cuts her clean from the sternum to the pubic bone. Runs the knife three more times through layers of skin tissue and muscle all the way through the placenta. I was in too much shock to run or scream. All I could do was stare. Then he pulls apart these things he just cut on, and there curled up inside is you, dead.
With Henry stretching your mother wide open, he looks over at me and tells me to lift you up while he cuts the cord. I knew better than to argue again or else suffer the consequences, so, without thinking, I reach in and yanked you out. You couldn’t have weighed more than four pounds. “He’s still warm,” I announced. “What’d you expect?” Henry says back. Then my brother got real serious and real angry at the same time. Not with me but with the whole situation. “I knew her, Billy,” he says. “She went to school with me. I really liked her a lot. She’d come to school with bruises and cuts and whatnot. Had a bad home life. One day, I walked her to her house. Carried her books. When we got to the front gate, her pa saw her with me. Got madder than hell cuz she was with a boy. We was only thirteen. Innocent as it gets. But her pa was crazy jealous, and he threatens me, slaps her, and grabs her by the arm, and drags her inside the house with her screaming the entire way. I should have killed him then and there. I could have saved two lives. But I made the wrong choice.”
All of a sudden, Henry gets all choked up. I’d never seen him before or since shed tears like that. And he looks me square in the eyes and says, “That son-of-a-bitch raped her. Her own pa. Let me tell you something, Billy. If you don’t remember anything else in life, remember this: There are good people and bad people in this world. The good ones deserve to live. The bad ones deserve to die.”
And he’s telling me all this while I got you in my hands. And I’m thinking to myself how much you deserved to live and how easy it woulda been for Henry to have changed all the events leading up to that night if he had just outright killed the man. Now, I’m not saying Henry blew it or anything like that. What I’m saying is that sometimes killing to spare a life is the right thing to do. At least, that’s what I believe.
When Henry was done saying what needed to be said, he told me to put you in the sink and “wash it off.” Now, that word upset me, and I said something like, “It is a boy. And as of now, it has a name.” Henry went along with what I was driving at. “So, what’s the name you come up with, Billy?” And I said, “Isaac,” on account Pa’s name was Isaac. Henry liked my giving you our Pa’s name.
As I look back on those years, it doesn’t take much to figure out why I wanted to get outta Carthage first chance come along and quit the funeral business. Washing you, Baby Issac, off in a sink? Hell. That sorta work wernt ever for me.
Tinker Babbs is freelance writer by night and an Uber driver by day. He obtained a journalism degree from SMU and an MFA from UTEP, and he is seeking his second literary publication this year. Currently, he is working on a collection of short prose.