If I Tell

stopped, but she rocked harder in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself as if trying to squeeze her insides out.
    “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” she chanted softly.
    I swayed and shushed the baby while my mom repeated the words over and over. The baby hiccuped and then quieted again, his little eyes beginning to flutter with sleep. I stopped swaying and crept toward my mom, but his eyes flew open, and the cries resumed.
    I really wanted to hand the baby over and run from the room.
    “Mom.” I swayed the baby again, trying to calm him. “You can’t what?”
    She was supposed to stop the crying, not me, but she continued to hug herself, repeating her words over and over and over.
    “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
    The baby’s eyes closed and his body stilled to a quiet breathing rhythm, but I didn’t dare stop swaying.
    “Do this,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
    “What?” I didn’t know what she meant. She was freaking me out. “What can’t you do?”
    She lifted her arms and swept them upward, gesturing around the entire room. “This. I can’t do this.” She ground her teeth together and began rocking again, shaking her head and muttering, “No. No. No. No. I can’t. Can’t.” Her voice sounded dead, as if she’d cut out her emotions.
    “I’m going to call Grandma. Okay, Mom?”
    She didn’t stop rocking. “Take the baby away.” She wailed again, uttering a wounded cry that was barely human.
    Panic pooled in my stomach. A bead of sweat dripped from my forehead onto the baby’s yellow sleeper, but it was quickly absorbed by the fleece.
    She wasn’t okay, not at all. “I’ll be right back, Mom. Will you be okay?”
    She didn’t answer or look at the baby. Her motions didn’t stop.
    I carried my brother from the bedroom and closed the door behind me. As I hurried down the stairs, he started whimpering again. It intensified my feelings of inadequacy. I didn’t know how to look after a tiny baby.
    “Are you hungry?” I asked, hoping by some miracle that he’d grasp speech really, really early and tell me what he needed. “Do you need a clean diaper?”
    At the bottom of the stairs, I lifted him in the air the way I’d seen Mom do. “You are so going to hear about this when you’re a teenager.” I sniffed at his tiny butt. Nothing foul.
    I spotted a pacifier in the baby’s playpen in the middle of the living room. I hadn’t noticed what a mess the place was when I’d rushed in, but now the chaos struck me as odd. Usually my mom was the neatest person around. Baby or no baby.
    I balanced my brother in one arm and reached inside the playpen for his pacifier. When I held it up, he stopped fussing and wrapped his lips around it. His little body quivered and shook, but he began to calm down.
    “There. That’s better, isn’t it, buddy?” I looked around. “Okay, I’m going to phone Grandma and see what we should do.” I went to the couch and sat, settling him in my arm and managing to dial the phone at the same time.
    Grandma picked up. “Tara?” she said, sounding angry. “What now?”
    “No, it’s me,” I shifted the now contented baby in my arms.
    “Jasmine? What are you doing there? Aren’t you supposed to be in school? I don’t want you missing more classes because of your mom.”
    “Mom called me at school. She was freaking out.” I peered into the baby’s innocent face, wondering if he’d remember any of this. I hoped not. “Something’s wrong with her. She’s acting really weird. It’s bad. I think you should come over.”
    Grandma made a clucking noise. “She’s fine. She just needs to take some responsibility. She wants everyone else to do the work for her. It’s not easy, but this time she can look after the baby herself. She’s thirty-three years old. I’m too old to raise another baby.”
    “But she’s really freaked out, Grandma. I don’t think it’s normal.”
    “She’s a drama queen. She hasn’t even named him yet, for goodness sake. Leave her with the baby. Go back to school. She’ll handle it if we make her.”
    She was wrong about this. I felt it. “But I don’t think she can. I don’t think I should leave her alone.”
    “No buts. It’s her son. She’s a big girl. You’re contributing to the problem by running over there whenever she calls. I want you to go back to school,” Grandma ordered.
    “She called me and said she was dying.”
    “I mean it. Go back to school. I’ll see you at home in