Page 24 of Hat Trick
LILIANA
I’m busy cleaning my apartment on a glorious fall afternoon—as glorious as fall can be in Florida. I’m counting my blessings because at least it hasn’t been in the nineties for the past week.
?1 All of my windows are open, fresh sheets on my bed, and I have my cleaning playlist going, which is all old 2000’s hip-hop and R&B. Music that you can shake your ass to but also clean the whole damn house simultaneously. And when I hear “Salt Shaker” come on, I’m sure the neighbors are begging me to shut my windows.
Not thirty seconds into the song, there’s a knock on my front door. I let out a huff, hoping it’s not the fancy-ass apartments’ security. Not that I couldn’t get out of it. My brother-in-law owns the whole building after all. I roll my eyes as I open the doorbut immediately put them back into normal position when I see who’s on the other side.
“Oh, there’s Auntie’s sweet little Prince!” I say excitedly. Sticking my arms out I make grabby hands at my favorite little neighbor, Charlie.
He comes to me willingly because babies are obsessed with Liliana Campos.
What’s not to love, honestly?
Having a neighbor with a baby has been a win-win for me. I get to be fun Auntie Lil but don’t have the full responsibility of having a child of my own.
Gigi, my favorite grown-up neighbor, says, “We heard the Ying Yang Twins and couldn’t resist. Charlie will have good taste in music one way or another.”
With him propped on my hip, I wave my arm, gesturing her into my apartment, and then head over to the balcony door to shut it. The last thing I need is my number one man crawling off through the railing.
I plop Charlie on the freshly cleaned floor so he can explore and grab a couple of toys I keep stashed here for him, while Gigi and I take up our usual spot on the couch. I lower the music a tad so that we can catch up. I’m not really Charlie’s aunt, obviously, but since Gigi and I became fast friends a little over six months ago, she bestowed the title of honorary Auntie on me. It’s a name I wear with great pride.
I didn’t know she was my neighbor for the longest time, though. That is, until one Saturday I was listening to a newborn baby screaming bloody murder for what felt like hours. Wanting to make sure everything was okay, and that a small infant wasn’t left in the apartmentalone, I knocked on the door directly beside mine, and what I was met with was nothing I had ever experienced. An exhausted mother bent over in what looked like pain, bags under her eyes that could’ve been registered as their own zip code, and a screaming Charlie in her arms.
We stared at one another for a good thirty seconds before I introduced myself and explained that I could hear her baby and wanted to check on them. She immediately started to cry. The kind of cry that hurts your soul to watch. A cry so bone deep, it seemed that every tear that rolled down her cheeks held the weight of the world within it. There was no way I could have left her there to deal with whatever she was going through alone. So I did what I would hope any other woman would have done—or what I hoped they would do for me if I was in her shoes—and I wrapped my arms around both of their crying forms. Scooping Charlie up in my arms, I told her to go shower while reassuring her I wasn’t going to go anywhere with her brand new baby. It was my new mission to get him settled. To give his poor mom some reprieve.
And that’s exactly what I did.
“How have my two besties been? It feels like I haven’t seen you two in forever.” It’s only been two weeks, but just in those two weeks, Charlie’s clearly gotten the crawling thing down pat.
I’ve noticed they gain new skills so fucking fast when they’re little like this.
I still remember her explaining the day I met them that she had to have a C-section to deliver Charlie onlythree days earlier, and that her parents had just gone back to their home, which is about twenty minutes away, that morning. She was in pain and couldn’t get the baby settled, and she just sobbed to me because she felt like a failure. I, of course, explained that she wasn’t a failure, and that even though they say it takes a village to raise a child, some people don’t always have that luxury, and that it’sokayto struggle a little without one.
From that day on, though, I became her village. And I did it gladly.
Since then we’ve pretty much had an open-door policy. If she needs me, she lets me know. No one, and I meanno one, should have to go through raising a baby on their own.Especiallywhen the father is the biggest piece of shit known to man and isn’t helping in any way, shape, or form.
But I digress. Another story for a different day.
“We’ve been good. I was tired of being cooped up in my apartment. And honestly, I don’t know what it is about your apartment, but he’ll be fussy all day, and we simply set foot in here and he’s a completely different kid. It’s like magic, I swear.” Gigi chuckles, while watching him try to pull himself up on the coffee table before falling back on his butt when he loses his grip.
“I think they like seeing new environments. Even though he stays here pretty often, it’s just different, ya know?”
“Yeah…” she says, staring off into the distance but not really focusing on anything.
“Are you okay, babe? Not to sound like a”—Iwhisper my next word even though Charlie doesn’t know what any of it means yet—“bitch, but you look exhausted.”
“He’s going through a sleep regression and teething, and I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in probably six months.”
I huff a faint laugh because six monthsisthe entirety of this kid’s life but… semantics. “I know you’re iffy about it, and never want to put me out, but I’m going to offer again and again. Let me keep him tonight, Gigi.” She looks over at me, and for the first time I think she might actually be convinced. So I keep going. “You’ll be right next door if anything happens. And it’s only a couple of hours until his bedtime anyway. I know what to do. I’ve watched him at bedtime before, and he’s more than comfortable with me doing it.”
“What about him waking up?—”
I cut her off. “I’m off all weekend, so even if he’s up partying all night, we’ll just party together. But I promise he’ll sleep. And I don’t mind if he does wake up. I need you to rest. I worry about you, Gigi.”
She’s staring off again, mulling over my words. She’s a volleyball player at Palm University but redshirted this year to have Charlie and care for him until he’s a little older. So while being a full-time student in her third year of college, she’s also a full-time mother. A single mom. Her only reprieve is that her parents are a short drive away and that the two of them are so loaded, they’re more than willing to help Gigi pay for college, her apartment, and anything else she and Charlie would need.
Financial help or not, sometimes I still don’t know how she does it, but I help out whenever I can, or nights like this when I force her to let me help.
