I held my grandson against my neck, and for the first time in months I felt something settle inside my chest, the way a house settles on its foundation. His skin was hot and cracked against my cheek. His name, I learned, was Rayburn, after my husband, and Kaylee said it in the doorway as if she were afraid I would not like it. I liked it. I liked it so much I could not say so, and I only kissed the top of his head.
The note from the pediatric dermatologist was clear and kind. The rash was severe atopic eczema, common in newborns and treatable. Kaylee had been given a plan: a prescription ointment, a gentle fragrance free cleanser, short lukewarm baths, thick moisturizer within minutes of drying, and a recheck in 21 days. Under the last line the doctor had written a personal remark: Mother is exhausted. Please support her. Kaylee had underlined 21 twice, and in the margin she had written: Ask Hazel about the baths.
Kaylee sat at my kitchen table under the lavender, and she told me everything. She was frightened, she said, and sleepless, and ashamed. The baby cried through the night. Every product she tried made it worse. She had said the word witchy at the shower because she was terrified of everything, of the smell, of the barn, of being a bad mother, of being watched. “I took my fear out on you,” she said. “And you brought a gift for my baby wrapped in brown paper.”
I did not say it was all right. I said I understood. I said that when I started as an aide I was twenty two and terrified of every newborn, and that a nurse named Pat taught me a frightened mother is a mother who has not had enough sleep. I told Kaylee I was not a doctor and would not pretend to be one. I would follow the plan of the doctor to the letter and not argue with it. What I could do, I said, was show her how to bathe him.
We ran a bath in my kitchen sink at once, with the water barely warm, tested on the inside of my wrist. Kaylee called the nurse line at the pediatrician first, and the nurse said the plain unscented bar from the shower basket was fine to use as a gentle cleanser. Kaylee watched my hands. I showed her how to cradle the head, how to wash lightly and quickly, no more than five minutes, and how to pat dry rather than rub. I showed her how to apply the ointment in a thin layer.
Rayburn fell asleep in my arms wrapped in a towel, breathing in short, easy sighs. Kaylee cried again, but quietly this time. She said she had not seen him that still in three weeks. I told her the stillness was not a cure. It was relief, and the cure would take the full plan and the patience of a saint. She promised to follow it. I promised to come every morning for the first week to help.
Fear speaks in a harsh voice, but gentleness answers it in the language of the heart.
I drove to their house at seven every morning in the truck of Ray, with a thermos and a clean towel. Cody went off to work, and Kaylee and I did the routine together: the bath, the ointment, the moisturizer, the soft cotton clothes. On the third day the cracked patches on his arms began to close. By the end of the week his cheeks had gone from raw red to a gentle pink. Kaylee photographed every change for the doctor, and she wrote it all in a notebook.
At the recheck on the twenty first day, I drove with them to Little Rock. The dermatologist looked at the baby and then at his mother, and she smiled. She said the skin was responding beautifully, and she adjusted the ointment to a gentler strength. Then she looked at me and asked whether I was the grandmother. I said I was. She said, “You have good hands.” I told her it was thirty years of practice and a very good doctor.
Kaylee came to the farmers market on the Saturday after. She stood in front of my card table in the sunshine with the baby on her chest, and she bought a bar of every kind: lavender, oatmeal and honey, and the plain one. Then she turned to the people in line and told them, loudly, that Hazel made the best goat milk bars in Arkansas and that she herself had been very wrong about them. The lady with the eczema on her hands, in the line, raised her fist in the air.
That afternoon, at her request, I took Kaylee to the barn. She stood at the gate of the goat pen in her sandals while Pearl and Biscuit came up and sniffed her pockets. Biscuit nibbled her sleeve. She laughed, a surprised, young laugh. I showed her how to milk, and she was clumsy, and the first squirt hit her shoe. The baby slept in his carrier on a hay bale, perfectly content, smelling of goat and sunshine.
Rayburn is nine months old now and crawls across my kitchen floor at tremendous speed. His skin is clear and soft, with only an occasional flare that we treat promptly, as the doctor taught us. On Fridays Cody and Kaylee bring him to the barn so he can see the goats. Pearl and Biscuit have decided that he belongs to them. The boots of Ray are still by the back door, and Biscuit still sniffs them every morning, and the baby has started to sniff them too.