Re: Dante’s Infanzia
Chapter 11- Communion.
Dante immediately told Lysa the next morning about the horrible nightmare he had had the next morning. “Don’t let it rattle you,” Lysa had told him. “It was just your typical survivor’s dream. We all have it from time to time. It’s perfectly natural.”
“But it seemed so real,” Dante had said to her.
“Homesickness is a bitch.” she smiled sadly. “Anyways, let’s just focus on you getting used to this place.”
It had been a little over two weeks since then. Much like spending two weeks at summer camp, where you’re kept constantly busy and away from everything and everyone that was familiar, it felt much longer. Two weeks of constant babying- the scheduled feedings, the naps, the stupid activities and playtime, and of course the diapers- made Dante feel like he’d been there for a month, not half of one.
After a rough first day, Lysa and Dante had really hit it off. They did everything together. They played, ate, and bathed together, but mostly they just talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. Dante felt as if he already knew more about her than he knew about any other girl he had ever met. (Not hard, considering his past, but still cool.)
They knew each other’s favor color, (Him: Blue Her: Purple), favorite book, (Him: I am the Cheese. Her: Frankenstein) favorite movie (Duck Soup for both of them oddly enough.) and favorite song (Him: Gotta’ Keep ‘Em Separated. Her: Paper Moon). For her part, Lysa was fascinated on what had been going on in the living world when last Dante left it. So intense was her questioning, that at times it felt more like an interrogation at times.
“Who’s the president, now?” she asked one day.
“Barack Obama.” he answered.
“Of America, I mean.” she clarified.
“No, that’s his name. He’s black…er…Negro” he replied. Lysa rolled her eyes.
“I know what ‘black’ means, you big dope.” Lysa informed Dante. “I’m lost to current events, not language. Wait. Black President? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Lysa thought about it for a moment then tilted her head sideways. “Huh…neat.” That was pretty open minded for a girl who had died the same year Brown v. The Board of Education was decided.
“What kind of music do people listen to, now?” From president and straight to top 40. That was how Lysa’s mind worked.
“Um…let’s see,” Dante began. “There’s a lot. There’s Alternative, Punk, House, Acid House, Metal, Hip-Hop, Folk, R&B, Blue Grass, Pop, Blues, Electro, Dub-Step, Fusion, Ska, Gangsta Rap, Grunge, Goth, Industrial, Goth-Industrial, Alternative Hip-Hop-”
“Stop!” Lysa cut him off. “What I really wanted to say was, ‘Is Rock n’ Roll still around?’”
“Yeah, that’s what I just said.” Dante remarked. “Rock n’ Roll kind of evolved and split off into a bunch of different branches and some new styles were invented and thrown into the mix. Your Rock n’ Roll is all on the oldies stations now.” That that had him a playful shove that knocked him flat. Playful. Yeah. At least she had been smiling that time. Consult mental note made on first day.
The only thing that interrupted their long talk sessions, was Lysa’s visits to the newborn room. She visited Caroline once a week. Unlike the first time, she visited her baby sister alone, leaving Dante and Midori without her presence.
That didn’t mean Dante was ever truly unsupervised though. Another Judy always came to watch over Dante while Lysa and the Judy in the nursery scrubs had been gone. One time, the Judy with the green dress had babysat him, and brought over her wards. Dante had tried to explain things to the other kids- as an act of kindness- but none of them seemed to buy it or even want to talk about it. They had completely rejected any and all outside help. By then, they had all also developed an unconscious need to have something in their mouths at all times. Dante didn’t bother to learn their names. Soon enough, he figured, they wouldn’t need them anymore.
As Dante sat in the highchair today, awaiting his next dose of mush and milk, he couldn’t get Lysa out of his head. All and all, she was pretty damn cool. Not just for a girl, for anybody. If only. Crap. Was he starting to crush on a dead chick? Worse yet, was he starting to get a crush on a girl who- were she still alive- was old enough to be his grandmother? Was Lysa a G.I.L.F. ? One thing at a time, Dante. One thing at a time.
The Judy’s had also caught on to their blossoming relationship…friendship. The Judy who watched over them regularly had dressed them similarly every day this past week, usually modifying them so Lysa’s outfit was decidedly more feminine. When Dante was put in a green onesie, Lysa had been dressed in a pink one with a completely pointless skirt attached… When he had been dressed in a blue romper with a baby bee on the front, she was put in a pure white romper with a violet on the front. When she was clothed in a frilly purple dress with puffy sleeves, they dressed him in Navy Blue Shortalls with a baby polo shirt (Yes, something resembling pants!)
This morning, as Midori chomped away on her not-quite-baby cereal in her bib and yellow checkered sun dress, Dante and Lysa were wearing solid, blue and purple baby t-shirts and diapers. What sicko invented these, anyways? The shirts didn’t even pretend to cover their diapers. The hemline of the shirt literally stopped centimeters from the diaper’s waste band. There was literally no concealment whatsoever. If he and Lysa had been wearing shirts like that as teens, he would have been called gay and she a slut. Right now, they were “adorable”. Stupid fucking backwards double standards.
That was another thing- the weird backwardness of babyhood: As an adult, (or at least close to one), Dante would go to a special table to eat all his meals. A while later, when the food worked its way through his system, he would go sit on a special chair designed to get rid of the mess that his body produced. Now, as a giant baby, Dante went to a specially designed chair to eat all his meals, and later, after the food worked through his system, he would go to a special table designed to clean up the mess that his body produced. All he needed right now was a bad Russian accent, and he could be a big baby Yakov Smirnoff. (In Soviet Russia, Diaper Change You!)
Hmmm, maybe that was Dante’s anchor, social commentary and ironic inner monologues. Heh. An ironic anchor. Word play. Loved it. That was another obstacle: Dante had yet to find an anchor; something he was so passionate about that it made up a piece of his adult identity that he could cling to instead of regressing.
He tried painting, but it did nothing for him. He just wasn’t any good at it.
“It’s not about talent,” Vivian the painter girl had told him. “It’s about loving what you’re doing. I couldn’t paint for beans when I first got here. I had always wanted to try though. This is what a decade of practice will do for you.” she held up a finger paint recreation of Van Gough’s “Starry Night”.
“It’s not even about improvement.” Kevin the play-doh kid added later that day. “I’ve been here for about 18 years, and this stupid doll is the best thing I can make.” He pointed to the Mr. Bill look-alike, as well as several more identical versions on the plastic play mat. “The thing is, every day, this junk gets torn apart, rolled back into little balls, and stuffed back into the containers. My goal is to see how many I can make in a given day. Maybe eventually, I’ll make so many that the nursery will run out of play-doh, or the Judy’s will get tired of cleaning up after me and leave these creepy little things be. I know it’s a Sisyphean task, but it keeps me going.
“What? I died as a nine-year-old, so I can’t know the meaning of the word ‘Sisyphean’ ?”
Even Jamal had added in his two cents. “Look man, find something to pass the time besides cuddling with teddy bears and pissing in your britches. This place is like any joint; you can make it if you just find a way to pass the time without losing your mind. Oh yeah, and fuck you.”
Dante had tried everything with little to no success. Forget learning sign language. Playing with blocks has the exact opposite effect on him as he felt especially juvenile with those. He must have played with blocks a lot as a real infant. He had never had any little brothers or sisters, so playing with actual babies just felt awkward and bored him to tears. Even his walker was losing its initial thrill. Playing pretend car just didn’t compare to the genuine article and made him seem more infantile. He needed something real to hold onto.
Speaking of “pretend”, playing “Dress up” seemed asinine to Dante. He was already dressed up like a baby, why did he need to dress up even more? Oh look…he put on a hat, now he’s a baby policeman. Oh joy, a white coat, now he’s a baby doctor….woooooh. (Thank goodness he hadn’t regressed too far, so he could still maintain a difference between “dressed as a baby” and just “dressed”.)
But Dante had regressed, anyway. Not as fast as some had, though. The three rebels from his first day now sat comfortably in cradling high chairs, dressed in baby clothes and bibs and behaving well. When they talked at all, it was in short bursts with infantile language and pronunciation, such as “Pwease” and “Fankyou”. Dante swore he saw the Judy in the green dress mouth the words “Not long now” to her fellow angel nannies.
Dante was slipping, still. He could feel it. On more than one occasion, Dante had been genuinely surprised when a Judy checked his diaper and found it wet. Originally, he had enough warning from his bladder to know that the dam was bursting. That was happening less and less.
Now he was constantly worrying whether or not he was wet or dry. He literally had to rub the front of his diaper to be able to tell. Hell, he was beginning to be unable to tell the difference between wet and dry at all! Even the smell of a wet diaper didn’t register to him anymore. It was like when you’re in a chain smoker’s house so long that you don’t notice how everything in there smells like smoke until you step inside into the clean fresh air.
