I Celebrate Myself
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
—"Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman.
The stench was overwhelming, a mixture of mildewed fast-food, feces, rotten fruit, used sanitary towels, crumpled tabloid sheets of the New York Daily News and God knows what. I gagged and fought back the bile that threatened to lead a revolt of my stomach as I crawled over trash in the shadows. If my husband could see me now, he'd have a fit.
Grasping the long rubber-covered flashlight, my hand was wet with sweat—and it wasn't just the close fetid atmosphere here inside the compactor, nor the constriction caused by the body armor under my shirt—it was raw, naked fear.
If your patrol includes the housing projects, you have to be on guard. All the time. I'd learned that from other officers, and from bitter experience. No matter how calm the projects looked, never let your guard down, or else that's when things—nasty things—start to happen.
The project's porter, Travis Johnson, said he heard a baby crying while he operated the compactor. But what if old Travis was baiting me? What if the 911 call was a setup? It had happened before with firefighters and feral adolescents. Now that I was deep inside the trash compactor, he might turn it on again, crush me between the machine's powerful metal walls. I shuddered, cursing my vivid imagination, and crawled forward.
I recalled my NYPD instructor's gravel-voiced words four years back. He'd introduced himself, then said, "You've a lot of learnin' to do, rookies. Some of you ain't goin' to make it. Now, remember. You do as I say—or sadness will creep into your lives. Understand?" He glowered at our new police academy class, said, "What'll happen if you don't do as I say?"
As one, we mumbled, "Sadness will creep into our lives, Sergeant."
He'd seemed pleased with the response.
It was awkward, crawling in the confined space with the added bulk of the body armor. I'd been reluctant to leave the radio, nightstick and cuffs with Travis. Belt-weapons hindered my movement too.
Garbage rustled and clinked as I gingerly placed a sticky damp knee a little further forward. The flashlight beam had already disclosed half-empty yogurt cups, Schlitz bottles, greasy carry-out cartons, Brownberry Seasoned crouton packs, saw-tooth-edged tin cans, countless Coors bottles, crumpled newspapers and the faces of missing children staring from milk cartons. Now it highlighted shards of glass. But it wasn't what I could see that worried me. There was always the danger of vicious slivers and diseased needles just below the surface, waiting for me to press down...
The Velcro of the body-armor rasped suddenly, making me start. God, I'm jumpy.
Then I heard it, a faint rustling.
Could be a rat. An uncomfortable thought. Hoping it wasn't. I hate rats.
About fifty roaches scuttled away from the light and sent my skin crawling.
Then the torch-beam hit a tiny leg that glistened in the light. Involuntarily, I took in a breath and wished I hadn't, the stench set me coughing. I swallowed and the taste was vile; but I'd recovered control at least. Cautiously, I moved over to it and then let out a gasp of relief. It was only the leg off of a baby doll; I held it up. Maybe that's what Travis had heard—just the doll mechanism imitating a baby's cry as the garbage settled. Hell, there was no way I was going any further just to root out the doll's torso. I was glad, even if I was a stinking mess. The alternative didn't bear thinking about.
Then I dropped the plastic leg as my light fell upon something sticking out of a bunch of National Inquirers. My stomach sank, my heart turned.
Two legs this time, thin, malnourished, and they moved slightly, poking out of the crumpled papers. So, old Travis hadn't imagined it, he had heard a baby crying.
Instinct said hurry, but I moved carefully. What chance did the little tyke have, really? Maybe I'd just save him the trouble of dying from an overdose of crack on the street corner. I could just turn and leave. Right now. Take the doll's leg and explain to Travis that it was a false alarm.
I smoothed papers and trash away from the little body. A baby boy glistened with afterbirth and blood.
The infant mortality in New York's ghettos is nearly as high as tropical Africa. Drugs and ignorance—the western world's malaria. A city that averages three murders every twenty-four hours, was this really a place to bring fresh life into the world?
The baby still had a faint pulse, though he was cold, turning blue. I lifted him up, amazed at how light he was.
The poor little mite's chest didn't move. I had to make a decision. My heart hammered. Blood thrummed in my ears.
Gently, I breathed some air into him—not a lot, just a shallow infusion of my life into his delicate new lungs.
Alternately, after giving mouth-to-mouth, I lightly massaged his puny chest.
The baby coughed in spasm. Whimpered.
"Thank God," I breathed. Maybe, if he was rescued, he'd become something. A cop maybe. Or an inventor. Maybe he'd find some way to transcend these beginnings, if he just had a chance.
Clumsily, I slipped off my jacket, wrapped it around him.
My heart ached as he blindly nuzzled against my shirt, instinctively seeking a breast and nipple... and found only body-armor. He whimpered again briefly but didn't seem to have enough strength to cry his disappointment.
Normally, any return journey seems shorter. This one took a lifetime and I hoped it wasn't the baby's.
When I reached the compactor's opening, the arm that pressed the baby to my chest was stiff and tired.
Two paramedics, carrying their metal medical cases, were hurrying down the basement steps.
Wheezing with the effort, old Travis Johnson helped down the baby and me. I almost collapsed as my feet settled on the concrete floor, legs all wobbly. It was a strange sensation, firm ground beneath my feet after wading through all that revolting trash.
In seconds, the baby was taken from me and wrapped in insulating crinkly foil.
The porter helped me up the steps. I squinted, the sun seemed so bright.
Outside, standing by the station-wagon ambulance, the tension seemed to flow out of me and I felt a little groggy. I shook my head to clear it.
"You all right?" asked the tall blond medic.
"Yes, fine, just the God-awful smell..." I breathed deeply, thankfully. "Will he be okay?"
"Hard to say. Can't have been born more'n two hours. He's a tough cookie, though, to live through this so far..."
I retrieved my jacket now that they'd wrapped the baby with a clean blanket.
The precinct would send someone—a social worker probably—to question the inhabitants of the block. They'd try to find the mother—she needed help too. And they'd need a statement from old Travis. He was still wheezing, shaking his head in amazement. "Well done, Mr. Johnson," I said. "If you hadn't heard the baby's cry—"
"It's a miracle, officer." He smiled. "A miracle."
And, as if in response, the baby bawled with gusto.
I recalled some appropriate lines from Walt Whitman, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself." I smiled. It was a good feeling, to save a life.
Old Travis screwed up his eyes and said, "The baby sure as hell is celebratin', ain't he?"
On my way in the back of the ambulance, I wondered what the investigators would find. A twelve-year-old girl had abandoned her newborn baby? Perhaps shoving him down the garbage chute as dawn crept over a city that couldn't support the people it already had...? Something like that.
But against the odds this one had survived. I brushed away moisture from my smelly scruffy cheeks as we approached the hospital from where little Travis would set out upon his new journey through life.
-END-
