There’s Not So
Much That’s New,
but Different
—
Janice Leadingham
WE SHOULDN’T WATCH THIS trash in front of The Baby, Peggy says, flashing her eyes over at the old, black cat stretched out on the sofa. It’s the episode with the small man who has a real fondness for rubbing himself down with party balloons red and clear like cherry flavored lollipops. The Baby does look a little bothered, but that’s only because she’s been alive for 5000 years. I’m 5000 years old, Peg, The Baby says. My wife’s memory hasn’t been so good lately. Well, Peg says, I still don’t think it’s right. The left corner of her mouth dips a bit low. She walks back into the kitchen, house shoes slapping, to heat up last night’s mac and cheese for lunch. The Baby and I don’t look at each other because if we do, we’ll get caught up in each other’s worry.
The Baby is 5000 years old, she could’ve known almost anyone you’ve ever heard about, met them and their ghosts, but probably didn’t. She’s lived in one-room homes heated by wide fireplaces, she’s been kept to kill rats in barns and chased out of towns where both cows and nursing mothers’ milk have turned sour. A college kid hid her in her dorm for a whole winter, feeding her meatloaf and yogurt smuggled from the dining hall. She was once brought to a priest for blessing, and many times she’s been cursed by fishmongers and their wives. Name a city, she’s visited it, and most likely has a reason she won’t return. She can say, I’m 5000 years old, Peg in languages people no longer have the tongue for, leapt after birds you now can only see stuffed in a museum, the feathers loose in their sun-faded wings. She worked in a museum for a small while, had an employee badge with her little picture and everything.
Our contribution to her life has been mostly mac and cheese and reality tv. In her next home, she can reassure everyone that she already knows that noise is only on the tv. That’s me, I taught her that one. And our friends, she likes our friends too, and their stories about how it used to be so much better. This city used to be so cool, full of weirdos, artists, and freaks, before all the corporations moved in and the freaks couldn’t afford to be freaks, and then they talk about all the freaks they used to know and the ones they wished they’d fucked while they were still freaky. And the weather, how there used to be weather too, like real weather you could count on, spring felt like spring and held more bugs in it, and fall lasted longer than a Sunday, and we felt the rhythm of that, understood this clockwork together. The Baby nods along the best a cat can, she gets it, she understands. This isn’t unique to her she tells me. Most cats are fond of gossip, and familiar, if not intimate, with regret.
The little ding of the microwave, and The Baby stands up and stretches. Peggy brings in our mac and cheese, shoes slap-slap-slap. She pinches a noodle off her plate and cradles it in her palm, blows on it until it’s just warm, holds it out for The Baby. As is their custom, regardless of her many lives, The Baby eats the macaroni right out of my wife’s hand. The peach tree outside the front window is blooming in February but our neighbor’s across the way isn’t, and I wonder on the mechanics of that, and further down in the yard a crow hops along with a crooked wing. A balloon pops on the tv, candy-red latex shards fall to the man’s bare feet. Peggy points to him with a forkful of macaroni, anyway, she says, we’ve seen this one before. •
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Janice Leadingham is a Portland, Oregon based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere near Dollywood, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in Flash Frog, The Northwest Review, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, Tiny Molecules, Maudlin House, and Best Small Fictions 2024, among others.
Website | Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram
The Baby is 5000 years old, she could’ve known almost anyone you’ve ever heard about, met them and their ghosts, but probably didn’t. She’s lived in one-room homes heated by wide fireplaces, she’s been kept to kill rats in barns and chased out of towns where both cows and nursing mothers’ milk have turned sour. A college kid hid her in her dorm for a whole winter, feeding her meatloaf and yogurt smuggled from the dining hall. She was once brought to a priest for blessing, and many times she’s been cursed by fishmongers and their wives. Name a city, she’s visited it, and most likely has a reason she won’t return. She can say, I’m 5000 years old, Peg in languages people no longer have the tongue for, leapt after birds you now can only see stuffed in a museum, the feathers loose in their sun-faded wings. She worked in a museum for a small while, had an employee badge with her little picture and everything.
Our contribution to her life has been mostly mac and cheese and reality tv. In her next home, she can reassure everyone that she already knows that noise is only on the tv. That’s me, I taught her that one. And our friends, she likes our friends too, and their stories about how it used to be so much better. This city used to be so cool, full of weirdos, artists, and freaks, before all the corporations moved in and the freaks couldn’t afford to be freaks, and then they talk about all the freaks they used to know and the ones they wished they’d fucked while they were still freaky. And the weather, how there used to be weather too, like real weather you could count on, spring felt like spring and held more bugs in it, and fall lasted longer than a Sunday, and we felt the rhythm of that, understood this clockwork together. The Baby nods along the best a cat can, she gets it, she understands. This isn’t unique to her she tells me. Most cats are fond of gossip, and familiar, if not intimate, with regret.
The little ding of the microwave, and The Baby stands up and stretches. Peggy brings in our mac and cheese, shoes slap-slap-slap. She pinches a noodle off her plate and cradles it in her palm, blows on it until it’s just warm, holds it out for The Baby. As is their custom, regardless of her many lives, The Baby eats the macaroni right out of my wife’s hand. The peach tree outside the front window is blooming in February but our neighbor’s across the way isn’t, and I wonder on the mechanics of that, and further down in the yard a crow hops along with a crooked wing. A balloon pops on the tv, candy-red latex shards fall to the man’s bare feet. Peggy points to him with a forkful of macaroni, anyway, she says, we’ve seen this one before. •
Janice Leadingham is a Portland, Oregon based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere near Dollywood, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in Flash Frog, The Northwest Review, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, Tiny Molecules, Maudlin House, and Best Small Fictions 2024, among others.
Website | Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram