A newborn baby’s cry is often inaudible to the unattuned ear. An infant can wake up and start to bawl, and a stranger in the household won’t hear a thing.
“Come here, you,” Novak murmurs as she scoops the baby up and changes her diaper in a quick succession of movements that betray a lifetime of nurturing children–right hand, left hand, wet diaper off, fresh diaper on. Back in the kitchen, she gives Tiffany a bottle that she has warmed on the stove. The baby rests in Novak’s arms, looking into her caretaker’s warm round face. “There, there, Stinky,” Novak says softly.
It is work Novak grudgingly admits she adores. “For me to get up and get dressed and go to a job in the morning would be a bummer. I can’t get out of my house in a hurry nohow, and I really wouldn’t want to hold down a job every day of the week. Yet I need something to keep me busy. So the babies keep me busy. I like babies. What can I say? Not washing them, but the cuddling, to be sure.”
Her universe is four bedrooms, a living room, and the kitchen. The living room contains his-and-her easy chairs–a rust-colored chair from which Tom watches television every evening and a blue rocker that is Anna Marie’s exclusive province. A baby’s crib occupies one corner, and near it is a battery-operated swing. A metal filing cabinet, topped by a box of Q-tips, contains DCFS forms on Novak foster children that go back years. On a shelf across the room rest two Cabbage Patch dolls, one of which Novak’s grandchildren gave her for Christmas. A 20-gallon fish tank is home to a colony of goldfish. “I stick to three-ninety-nine fish,” she explains, “because that way when they die, I don’t feel so bad.”
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Tom Novak is an old-fashioned, taciturn man who likes to tinker in his basement workshop to the sound of country music, and who’s usually asleep by 9 PM. He leaves the baby tending to his wife. “Outside of sticking a bottle in their mouths, turning ’em over, or watching them when I go to Dominick’s on Sunday, Tom doesn’t have much to do with the babies,” says Anna Marie. Still, he seems to like to have them around. “If there aren’t any foster kids around for a day or two,” says Kachert, “Dad’ll ask, ‘When are we getting more of them kids?’ He likes them underfoot.”
When Novak has a nonsleeper she can usually watch TV or read, but Aaron wouldn’t tolerate that–Novak sat in total darkness. A pacifier might have helped calm Aaron, but Novak doesn’t believe in them. They breed dependency, she says, and besides one of the three family cats is likely to steal them.
Novak has very little sympathy for the parents of these children, particularly the mothers. “What a mother like that wants to do with her own life is one thing, but why would she want to start her baby off on that kind of life? If she’s stupid enough to get pregnant, why can’t she withdraw herself from drugs? I would have no understanding for her, no matter what her hard-luck story is. If a drug-person mother had visiting rights and wanted to visit my home, I would say no, because I would be tempted to tell the woman just what I thought of her.”
