When Anita came over and took his hand to lead him back for his nap, he whimpered quietly at being forced to abandon his project before he had finished. Planning the horizontal portion of the flue for the smoker had been a bear and he hadn’t quite gotten all the kinks worked out yet. As they walked down the hall, Howard cast several longing looks over his shoulder at the model he had left behind.
Anita tucked him in and kissed him on top of his head as she wished him sweet dreams. Howard felt strangely comforted by her kiss, even though he found her condescending treatment of him to be extremely demeaning. Within minutes, he was fast asleep. Anita closed the curtains to keep the afternoon Sun from disturbing his sleep and closed the door behind her. When he awoke, she took him out to let him play on the floor again. Howard was relieved to see she hadn’t disturbed his model. The pile of blocks and the long rectangular building-like structure he had made with them were still intact. Howard fell to his blocks immediately and restarted his design work where he had left off a few hours before. He didn’t take a break until Anita came to take him in the kitchen for dinner. The meal was a bit of a shock to Howard, he hadn’t expected Anita to cut up his food for him and feed him the bits from a fork. Once he got used to the idea, however, he started to enjoy it. Anita had decided to make his favorite dish for him, Veal Parmesan. When she saw the trouble he had controlling his knife, she took it away from him and cut his meat for him. Then she forked up each bite and fed it to him as if he was an infant. If it had been any other dish, Howard would have objected to being fed. But the dish was perfect and he didn’t want to give Anita any excuse to take it away from him. He knew that if he made a fuss, she was likely to send him to bed without his supper and he REALLY liked Veal Parmesan! She wiped his mouth with a napkin when his plate was empty and took him back to the bathroom for his evening bath. Anita stood him in front of the toilet and pulled down his panties for him while the tub was filling, saying, “Mommy has decided that she wants you to call her when you need to potty. She doesn’t want you to fall off of the potty and hurt yourself. Do you understand?”
Howard nodded vigorously to show he understood. She smiled and said in a friendly tone, “Mommy wants her little boy to practice his baby-talk for her. Can you do that for Mommy?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Howard said.
“And what is Mommy’s little Sugarplum going to do?”, she asked.
“I’ll call Mommy to help,” he answered promptly.
“That’s a good try, Honeybunch, but Mommy thinks you can do better. Mommy doesn’t want you to use the word ‘I’. Mommy wants you always to use the word ‘me’ instead. And try to make your sentences simpler, okay? Can you do that for Mommy? Now be a good boy and try it again,” she said gently.
“Me call Mommy!”, Howard said.
That’s a gooood boy, Howie!”, Anita said, patting his head, “Can you do better than that? Make the sentence even shorter for Mommy!”
Howard got a look of intense concentration, then said, “Me call Mama!”
“One more time for Mommy, Howie! Even shorter!”, she commanded.
“Call Mama!”, he said immediately.
“One last time for Mommy! Come on Baby! You can do it!”, she encouraged.
“Mama!”, Howard answered.
Anita hugged him to her breast and said, “That’s a good baby! Mommy KNEW you could do it! Come on, Baby! Let’s get you into the tub for your bath. See Mommy put some bubble bath in the tub so you can play with the bubbles! Won’t that be fun?”
She picked Howard up and gently lowered his feet into the white mountain of foam that had bubbled up while she was giving him his language lesson. He let his feet slip forward as she immersed his body into the invitingly warm caress of soapy water. Howard was surrounded by the frothy suds of the bubble bath. He patted the nearest mound and heard an miniature avalanche of sounds. Howard smiled as he shaped the mound into a hummock and listened to the tiny sharp clicks of thousands of miniscule bubbles bursting simultaneously.