Taste Test

Reese was diagnosed the winter after his birth.

He was born in the summer when Queenie got most of her pickling done. Jars lined up across the countertop. Vinegar in the air.

Queenie’s skin took on the salty perfume from pickling all summer.

They could tell when they kissed him.

People came over to kiss the baby. They leaned into his pink milk skin, then pulled back with puzzled expressions. He sucked the moisture from their lips.

They said they had never kissed such a salty baby. They joked that Queenie planned to pickle him but he had climbed out of the jar.

The temperature dropped outside. Their house wasn’t well insulated.

Anniebelle was the first to notice Reese’s winter saltiness.

She started washing him. She gave him baths like he was her baby doll. Her small hands cupped and poured tepid water over his head. Anniebelle would lift him up from the bath, dry him off then lick a patch on his arm. After, she would lick a patch on hers. Anniebelle never tasted as salty.

Reese giggled and spat when Anniebelle licked him. He stuck out his tongue and screamed. Sometimes his screaming sounded muffled, like his voice had the door shut.

One night Anniebelle wanted to test him by the salt lick. She had taken it out from the cellar and tied it with string low to the fence, all on her own, so that when she sat with the pigs in pasture, they would gather and she could pat their heads. When the pigs were elsewhere, the same thing happened with the does on the other side of the fence. They didn’t startle if she let them notice her stillness first.

Anniebelle carried Reese out to the fields. Three year’s difference between them and he was already almost as long as she was. If she hadn’t swaddled him, she would have tripped on his dangling feet. At the edge of their back property line, Anniebelle fluffed up a snowy mound, patted it into a sort of makeshift moses basket, and laid him in it.

There, baby, she said.

She exhaled deeply onto the salt lick and onto Reese. She sucked both thumbs for a few seconds, wiped one across the salt lick, one on Reese then sucked them again.

Close!

Reese became sick. He coughed and his nose ran and he choked on his own snot. His cough cut through the thin walls. Their big cousin Maggie suspected something might be the matter. She talked about bronchitis. Whooping cough. RSV. Someone in her class had lost a brother to it last winter.

Anniebelle kept giving him more baths at Maggie’s recommendation—when she doesn’t feel good a bath always makes things better. Plus he needed it anyway, with his dripping nose.

The first time they took Reese to the hospital was after one of these baths. His screeching grew garbled. Anniebelle thought he was laughing and kept licking his arm to get a better giggle out of him. His saltiness burned her chapped lips. Reese began struggling, his skin soon looked less pink. More greyish. Anniebelle couldn’t tell if this was the time-change-light.

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Raegan Bird lives in Salem, Massachusetts and co-runs the publishing project, BLUE ARRANGEMENTS.