Babies, and Why I Hate Them: A Memoir

by Rebekah Anderson

Baby #1
United flight 23, LAX-JFK, My seat # 26A, Baby’s seat #27A

The first baby has its own seat for our overnight flight, with a car seat even. I put the instructions my boss Estelle had flung at me (for the IPO she was managing) in the seat pocket in front of me and strap on an eye mask when I feel an insistent, soft tapping in the small of my back. Then a gentle Ugh, ugh, starts up behind me. The baby repeats it over and over, growing louder and louder, Ugh! UGH! The guy in front of me turns around with a huff and peers at me over the seat back. I shrug and shake my head, “Not my fucking baby.” He looks over my head then, and I turn to join him, united against baby, a front of displeasure. The ugh’s continue. The parents don’t seem to notice us. They sit blithely holding hands on the arm rest. My god. How can they be immune to this wretched noise?

I pull the IPO paperwork back out. It has splotches of brown from Estelle’s diet Coke on it. She screamed for awhile about that. I wasn’t expecting her to be able to do much screaming at that point, as I had just tried to kill her. I flap the pages around angrily on my tray table. May as well get some work done since I can’t sleep.

Baby#2
American flight 401, LaGuardia-Ohaire, My seat #15D, Baby’s seat unknown

The second baby is far less insidious and luckily seated somewhere in the back of the plane where I am not. Unluckily, this is the short leg of my trip so it doesn’t help much.

On the phone that morning, Estelle had sounded fairly calm for someone who should have been dead. I was expecting her usual screaming, throwing, breaking, slapping, sometimes crying. This deal had pushed her to new heights of abuse and me to new desperation. The day I left for New York, she sent me to get her another diet Coke and I couldn’t help myself, I loaded it with whatever I could find under the break room sink. I guess I didn’t really expect it to kill her, just maybe fuck her up for awhile.

The baby somewhere on my flight cries softly as we take off and for the rest of the flight, throws everything that comes in its path on the floor. The flight attendants think this is cute.

Baby #3
Delta flight 4501, Ohare to LAX, My seat #9C, Baby’s seat #9B

The third baby is the most menacing of all, doe-eyed, dew-lipped, curl-headed. A vamp of babies. Gorgeous. Sinister. I press myself as far toward the aisle in my seat away from the baby as I can. To be accurate, the baby does not have its own seat. The parents pass it between them like an oversized football and then prop it on their laps. The more I ignore the baby, the more intently it seems to want my attention. I can feel it staring at me. They give it a boarding pass to play with, and it tries to slap me with it. I pretend the baby doesn’t exist and finish my paperwork.

When I brought Estelle her diet Coke, she screamed at me for taking too long. She slammed the can on her desk and reached into her pen caddy for something to throw. I ducked but not before I saw her elbow catch the can and dump it all over her desk. We both stared at the fizzing brown liquid pooling under her keyboard for what seemed like a full minute until I got up and went to the break room for paper towels.

The flight attendant looks at me warily, as I cram myself into the arm rest. Her look says, what kind of woman doesn’t like babies? I can’t help it. Perhaps it’s Darwinian and there is something terribly terribly wrong with my genes and nature is preventing me from passing it on by making me hate babies. I guess there is something unnatural about me. I did just try to poison my boss.

The father finally notices the boarding pass the baby is wielding recklessly at my shoulder and takes it away. They give the baby a bottle and it sucks on it, still staring at me. It pulls the bottle out of its mouth with a pop and drops it in my lap. I don’t move a muscle. There is no bottle. The parents are looking out the window, and I screw my face into the most grotesque thing I can at the baby. Its eyes grow wide, its mouth hangs open. The baby stares at me like this until the landing gear hits the tarmac and the bottle rolls onto the floor.