Don’t Be a Baby

Rachel Aldred-Shepherd


The summer before Ben’s first year of high school was extraordinarily hot. It was the kind of heat that warped the blinds in the bathroom and made the asphalt on the driveway sticky like molasses. Ben planned to spend the day flat on his back on the tiled floor in front of the air conditioner with his eyes closed, letting the cool air blow over him.

He was just considering which flavour of icy pole he should sneak from the freezer when he heard footsteps walking towards him. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, anxiety bubbling in his stomach already.

A sharp jab struck his side and Ben looked up to see his older sister, Madison, standing over him, her hands set firmly on her hips. She stuck out her foot and prodded him again.

‘Hey!’ Ben reached out to push her away but missed, and his palm slapped against the cold tiles. ‘Stop it!’

‘Get up, we’re supposed to clean out the old playroom today.’

Ben draped his arm over his face and let out a long sigh. At dinner the night before, Madison had asked their dads if they could turn their old playroom into a loungeroom. She had said that they were teenagers now, and they had no use for a babyish playroom. Their dads had agreed so long as Madison and Ben sorted through their old toys together. Ideas for paint colours and couch styles had been thrown around excitedly while Ben had picked at his vegetables, wondering what was so wrong with keeping the playroom as it was.

‘Come on, we made a deal,’ Madison said.

Ben wanted to tell her that no, actually, they hadn’t made a deal, she had made a deal.

Madison stared at him expectantly, her frown as deep as ever. He chewed at his lip. It was too late to say anything now; their dads were already on their way to Ikea to pick out new furniture.

Ben had watched through the window as they had climbed into the SUV, chattering enthusiastically to one another and waving their hands around as they described their ideal room layout. They had each taken a water bottle with them. Ben figured that they would probably be there all day trying to decide on the perfect couch and the perfect cushions to sit on it. Very important stuff. The kind of stuff that Ben supposed adults worried about.

‘Ben!’ Madison snapped her fingers in his face.

‘Fine,’ Ben sighed. He peeled himself off the tiles and followed Madison down the hallway, dragging his feet.

The playroom, which had originally been a large study, had custard-coloured walls that were dotted with butterfly stickers and glow-in-the-dark stars. Boxes full of toys had been awkwardly stacked into a corner, and loose markers and crayons were strewn about the floor. As the fan swooped overhead, Ben and Madison sat cross-legged on the carpet and began sifting through their childhoods. Their dads had told them that there were to be three piles: a rubbish pile, a donation pile, and a keep pile, though Madison had scoffed at the idea that any of the toys in the playroom might be worth keeping.

The costume box was the first casualty. It was full of gaudy feather boas, beaded necklaces, and a variety of other costume pieces that delighted Ben. Despite the heat, he draped an orange feather boa around his shoulders and slipped several jelly bracelets onto his wrists. Madison said nothing, but Ben saw her roll her eyes before she dumped the rest of the costumes onto the donation pile.

Ben unearthed two small plastic horses from the next storage tub on Madison’s hit list. He chuckled softly, recalling how the two of them used to fight over who got to play with which horse. The chestnut horse, with its sleek and brushable mane, had always been far superior to the beige horse, whose mane had been a tangle of knots before Ben had taken to it with the kitchen scissors.

‘Do you remember these guys?’ Ben made the horses gallop on the carpet beside him.

‘Yeah, I remember how you completely butchered that one’s mane,’ Madison laughed.

‘I gave it some style.’ Ben ran a finger along the mohawk sticking out from the horse’s neck, remembering how hard Madison had cried when he showed her what he had done.

Madison eyed the two horses for a moment before she reached over and took them from his hands. She turned them over, considering them. ‘You don’t want them, right?’

‘No,’ he lied. He was almost 13, and 13-year-olds didn’t play with toy horses, even if they had mohawks. He watched wordlessly as they hit the donation pile with the sharp crack of plastic hitting plastic. He snapped his jelly bracelets against his wrist and tried to forget about them.

While sorting through a box of story books, Ben stumbled upon a copy of The Wind in the Willows. The edges of the book were scuffed slightly, but the cover was grand and colourful. Though he had been quite small at the time, he could recall looking through the pictures with Madison when she was learning how to read, many years ago. The two of them had been closer then.

‘This was yours, right?’ He held the book out for Madison to take.

‘Oh wow, I used to love this book.’ She admired it for a moment. ‘It was the only story I ever wanted our dads to read to me.’

Her fingers brushed over the embossed cover, tracing the words. The corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly, and then she tossed the book onto the donation pile, seemingly without another thought. Ben searched her face for any sign of hesitation but was met only with stone.

The siblings made great progress, largely due to Madison’s efficiency, and had sorted most of their old toys into the appropriate piles by mid-afternoon. It seemed that no toy was safe from Madison. As Ben watched the rubbish and donation piles grow larger and larger, he resisted the urge to curl up on them like a dragon and burn anyone who tried to take his treasures away from him.

The last storage tub was filled with stuffed toys, whose faces were squashed against the sides of the clear plastic. When Madison popped the lid off the box, the mass of toys seemed to take a collective breath. There were stuffed animals of all shapes, sizes, and species, and there, at the bottom of the storage box, was Ted.

Madison fished Ted out of the box and held him up by his left arm. A cloud of stuffing fell out of a hole in the bear’s side and dropped onto the carpet. The threads of Ted’s mouth had come loose, giving him a lopsided smile, and one of his eyes was hanging from his head by a single thread like an optic nerve. Madison frowned and tossed the old bear onto the rubbish pile.

‘Hey!’ Ben stretched over to pluck Ted from the pile, but Madison batted his arm away.

‘It’s just a gross old bear, Ben.’

Ted sat crumpled and dejected atop a box of broken crayons. His wonky smile seemed sadder now. Ben fiddled with his bracelets; his gaze locked with Ted’s good eye. He could accept giving away the costumes and the plastic horses, but Ted? A guilty feeling gnawed at Ben’s heart as he thought about the little bear rotting away in a landfill and disintegrating into nothing.

‘Seriously?’ Madison asked, noticing that Ben had stopped working.

‘I want to keep him.’

‘Keep it?’ Madison reached over and prodded Ted’s matted fur with a single finger, her face sour. ‘Ugh. You’re joking, right?’

‘I’ll give him a wash, sew him up,’ Ben said.

‘You don’t even know how to sew!'

Ben shrugged.

‘If I have to give my things away, then so do you. Don’t be such a baby about it.’ She turned her attention to a collection of boardgames and began moving them to the donation pile.

Ben snapped the jelly bracelets against his wrist again. It was starting to sting now. He tried to focus his attention on sorting through the boardgames with Madison, but he could feel Ted looking at him with his sad little face. Ben’s chin started to wobble. His eyes felt hot and itchy. He couldn’t cry over a stuffed bear. He wouldn’t.

Don’t be a baby, he told himself.

Don’t be a baby.

Don’t be a baby.

Despite his best effort to contain them, two dewdrop tears rolled down his cheeks and plopped onto the Monopoly box on the floor. He wiped at them angrily, hoping they would absorb into the cardboard before Madison could see them, but he wasn’t fast enough.

‘Ben?’ Madison’s face softened. The Scrabble board in her hand drooped towards the floor.

‘I know he’s just a toy and he’s old and worn out and I’m nearly 13 and I shouldn’t care, but I do.’ The words seemed to fall out of his mouth, punctuated with sniffles and shuddering breaths.

Madison crawled around the rubbish pile to sit beside him and snaked her arm around his shoulders like a feather boa. It was too hot for hugs, but he didn’t shrug her off. She lifted Ted off the rubbish pile and pushed the bear into his lap. He held Ted close, though his cheeks burned.

‘I’m sorry,’ Madison whispered. ‘You used to drag that bear everywhere with you. He’s important. You should keep him.’

Ben nodded and cradled the bear in his lap, his arm tucked around its middle.

‘Can you pass me my book? I think I’d like to keep it.’ She motioned towards The Wind in the Willows, and Ben did as she asked. She ran her hands over the cover of the book again, a relieved smile on her face. ‘We can keep the horses, too, if you’d like,’ she said. ‘But I call dibs on the one with normal hair!’

Ben chuckled. The one with the mohawk was his favourite, anyway; it had more character. Madison picked the lump of Ted’s stuffing off the carpet and held it out to Ben.

‘I suppose you'll need someone to help you sew?’