A Day in the Life

"Damn, Rooster!" Trudy muttered under her breath, staring out her window at the shadow of the multi feathered creature, and for a moment wondered what it would taste like, for dinner, tonight. For a moment, a smile creased the deep lines of her face and she cackled, somewhat hag like, before shuffling into the next room to gather up her wailing infant baby boy.
"Come on, Ted!" Her voice monotoned and loud and aimed at the heap of husband buried under the blankets. "Up and at um!" Trudy didn't look back, she knew that it would be at least ten more reminders before he even moved. She pulled back the curtains and opened the window, letting in the morning air, that shuddered into the room cold and smelling of rain. For a moment, while she undid the front of her thread bare night gown she wondered what it would feel like to take flight over the sweeping hills of growing corn and crooked trail of blue rivers. She closed her eyes and pretended she was weightless like dandelion wisps floating where the wind took her, away, away, anywhere but here.
It was only a moment, and then she heard Charles down the hall, moving with his stealthy stride down the creaking back stairs and out the back door. She gathered her baby to her and sat down slowly in her old rocker, that had been made for her great grandmother Edna by her great grandfather, Arthur as a betrothal gift. This rocker had rocked forty five infants and five grandparents into adulthood and oblivion, and Trudy could feel the weight of all that ancestry on her every time she sat down in its well used polished seat.
This baby was her biggest so far, weighing in at twelve pounds at birth, with a small thatch of yellow hair, rosy cheeks and deep blue eyes. Already at three months he could hold his head up and sometimes teeter back and forth on his little bottom in an almost sitting position. Trudy blamed it on all of his fat and health that oozed out of him in smiles and coos. She hadn't named him yet, fluttering back and forth between Thomas and Henry, mattering on the time of day or the way he looked at her. Ted didn't care, he was just glad that it was a boy, and healthy, unlike the prior one. The one who had been born with dark wispy hair, long lashed pale eyes and puckering blue lips that refused the breast that Trudy had offered, sobbing into the late hours of the night. The one that had lived only one day and had thrown predictable sturdy Trudy into a state of cautious restlessness for three years.
Sometimes when she watched this one, this greedy healthy one, she resented it for its own need for survival that the other one had lacked and refused. One pudgy hand curled and pink always struck her while his mouth sucked and sucked, taking its food from her elongated breast with a zest that sometimes startled her. This one, Henry now, for its hair seemed slightly red in the rising sun, reminding her of pictures of King Henry the eighth, gazed deeply at her, into her eyes as if he was aware of the resentment she felt towards him, even though she attempted to disguise it behind her high pitched words of endearment.
"What?" Ted suddenly thrust himself from the bed, eyes wide and bewildered.
"You're still asleep." Trudy turned and watched him for a moment as he stared at her, first sightlessly and then slowly recognizing himself.
"Why didn't ya wake me?" His voice sounded slurred as if he were still drunk from the night before. Without waiting for an answer he stood, scratched his head and moved towards the bathroom, closing the door with a gentle click.
Trudy let her gaze return to the window where dawn lay like a pale yellow saucer across the sky. For a long moment the only sounds were the water in the bathroom and the rhythmic sound of her son's constant sucking. She forced herself to concentrate on today's plans and lists. Starting with breakfast, eggs, ham, applesauce and oatmeal. She would have Katie gather the eggs while she started the kettle for the tea and then, then. Her thoughts stopped and passed to other things.
She remembered a time when she was able to do everything. When it wasn't such a struggle to get up, or to remember what to do or where to go. That Trudy, as she called her previous self, was someone she had loved and admired. That Trudy could do anything, quip a joke, cook for ten men without batting an eyelash with a baby slung on one hip, clean up after breakfast and do the laundry all before lunch, which was always on time, and always something different. That Trudy, could still make Ted's eyes flash and grow quiet like the earth before a storm and that Trudy, had loved that look in her husband's eyes and the dance that followed it. That Trudy was dead, and this Trudy hated her with a passion for all that she had been and all that she could have been.