You Are My Only by Beth Kephart

and stops, and when the bright door pops apart and the two men get out, I know they are not the thieves of Baby. I know that the woman in the green dress leaning against the yellow-brick of station wall is, likewise, not hiding Baby, nor the man and the woman, cuddled close as they make their way near. I have Baby’s sock in my purse. I have the smell of her in my heart. I have instinct, the mother’s kind. I will know when I am near to Baby.
    â€œSlowing her down,” Arlen calls out from behind. “Brace yourself.” And now we are hitching on the broken-up walk and jouncing hard and jittering near upon the crowd that’s not so much gathered as converging at one of the station’s many glass doors. I hear the squeal of the applied brake behind me and the big slap of Arlen’s shoe on the ground. I hear the second shoe slapping down, and in the tumult and pitch of the almost stop, I cannot hold on. I am heaped upon the walk, smashed down, the front wheel of Arlen’s bike riding the hill of my spine.
    Arlen’s on me in a second, his big bat-wingy arms. “Emmy,” he says. “Emmy, I’m sorry.”
    Already a trickle of blood has opened high on my elbow and that old man’s loose mutt is quick to my heels. “Get,” I tell the dog, and Arlen smacks it on the rear. And then he puts his arms around me, big and tight. When the mutt starts barking, the old man says, “Come,” and despite all of those who have stopped to stare, despite the shatter of my ankle, the rip-through near my elbow, no one reaches in with help, not one.
    â€œI had to brake,” Arlen says.
    â€œDon’t start with feeling bad. We made it is all.”
    I look beyond him to the station door, to the people coming early, the people from taxis. Everywhere is the smell of train metal and speed. I scan the outside crowd for lumpishness, wrong parcels, babies, but I know what’s true: whoever has her is not here in this morning’s sun. It’s a dark thing this one has done; dark keeps to darkness. To the wooden benches lined up like church pews inside the station. To the cool blue corners near the sweet blued walls. On the other side of the sunbeams that the station lets in through its high panes of glass.
    Arlen is careful with all the pieces of me. He lifts me upright off the ground, with my bad leg hanging. He tips the sleeve of his jacket toward the blood on my arm, but I put out my right hand to stop him.
    â€œDon’t you spoil that jacket of yours,” I tell him. “You’ve done enough.”
    â€œKnown you since last night,” he says. “And look.” Meaning my ankle. Meaning my arm.
    â€œI won’t hear such nonsense talking,” I say. Because what matters now is what happens next. What matters is that we find my Baby before she’s put on a train and taken to where I won’t know enough to follow. The fender of Arlen’s bike is smashed. Its streamers are all crinkled. It looks like a puddle down there on the walk, some other thing needing rescue.
    Arlen smoothes his frizzled hair, tugs at his shirt. He pulls a chain and padlock from his trouser pocket and pulls out a key. “Wait for me,” he says, hop-walking me to the stretch of wall where the lady in green stands, unmoving, a patch of warm on her face. I lean against the wall beside her, until I’m certain I won’t fall. I watch Arlen scoop up the bike and weave it to a nearby barrel trash can. He strings some part of the chain through the bike’s front wheel and loops the rest around the barrel, loops and loops it. He takes more time than I wish he would, but Arlen’s very careful. All of a sudden, a white police car with its red blare on is speeding past and my thoughts speed with it—home to Peter and the empty swing, to the sergeant finally finished with his coffee. Gone to our house, maybe. Asking Peter, And your wife? Where is