The Baby by Kailash Srinivasan

Kailash Srinivasan has made the2024 CBC Short Story Prize shortlistforThe Baby.

He will receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand hiswork has been published onCBC Books.

The winner of the 2024CBC Short Story Prizewill be announced April 25. They willreceive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency atBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the2024 CBC Poetry Prizeis open for submissions until June 1. The2025 CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the2025 CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January.

• The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize is now open to Canadian poets

Born and raised in India, KailashSrinivasan now lives in Vancouver. His writing highlights fractures of all kinds: personal, societal, economic, religiousand political. He also writes about injustice and inequality. His work has appeared in publications such as Identity Theory, Midway Journal, Snarl, Hunger, XRAY, Coachella Review, Selkie, Oyster River Pages, Sidereal andLunch Ticket. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Malahat Review Open Season Awards Fiction, the 2023Bridport Prize for Fiction and the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize. He alsoreceived an honourable mention for the 2023 Craft First Chapters Contest. He's currently at work on his first novel.

Srinivasanwas on the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize longlist twice: for Disprin and for The Baby. He previously made the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for an earlier version of The Baby.

Srinivasan toldCBC Booksabout what inspired his story The Baby: "I came across a survey that asked its female readers if they would choose to have children again if given a choice. A majority of them said 'no,' which made me question our assumptions. Why do we expect women to enjoy motherhood or the constant responsibility of caring for their child/children? Or love them by default? It got me thinking about whether motherhood is a one-size-fits-all role."

You can read The Baby below.

WARNING: This storycontains strong language and is sexually explicit in nature.

The baby's eyes are brown, and when she sleeps on you, her hand the size of your thumb clutches the hair on your chest, tugging it like you are a garden in need of weeding.

Shruti never once said, 'Let's make a baby'; always, 'Let's fuck.'

If you showed her funny videos of babies eating lime or being cute, she said, 'Pop one if you want one so badly.'

If you had a fight and knew you were at fault, she first argued, argued, argued, then apologized for she didn't want you to withhold sex. If you refused because of a headache or an early meeting or because you had one bar of service physically, emotionally, she locked herself in the bathroom, crying, until you said, 'OK,' and only then came out, aroused.After you slept with her, she blinked at you with such longing, like you weren't in front of her but somewhere away. Like in a different city.

Every night before bed, she asks, 'You're still attracted to me, right?'

You never orgasm. After her eyes close, in the bathroom, soundlessly, you masturbate.

Shruti has a migraine. The baby has been crying all morning, the I-am-dying-you-idiot cry, for what feels like three hours when it's only been minutes. You think she's hungry, but you're out of formula. You want to avoid a calamity, so you distract her by howling like a dog, shaking the rattle until it cracks. If the migraine is a bitch, Shruti will be out for two days; four, if it's a dick. Everything is a trigger during this time: chewing; mentioning your mother; breathing, over-trimming your beard.

You knock unwillingly. An earthquake rumbles. She looks at you like she'll swallow you whole. Moments later, she hands the still-wailing baby back, like dropping a dirty dish in the sink. You Google: is it ok to breastfeed a child angry?

The baby's mouth trembles. You change her diaper, burp her, stick a pacifier. Finally, you video call your mother in Bangalore from the bathroom, whispering. She yawns. Sometimes she pretends to be asleep, so you know she's doing you a favour by taking your call, though secretly, she enjoys your reliance on her. Shruti hates your mother, your mother hates her. Both think the other is bitter and judgmental.

'Her Highness dozing as usual? Nice-nice. Making the husband do all the donkey work. Why even become a moth.'

'Shh.'

'Rub a slice of ginger on her gums.'

The baby's breath hitches in sleep. You watch her crooked, sleepy smile before you swallow your fist. The presentation, the financial projections. You haven't prepped for tomorrow's meeting. Three slides in, Shruti is in the doorway, flipping her hair.

Your neck stiffens. 'Lots to do.'

She struts towards you in her black lace bra and open-front panty.

'Babe'.

She has a migraine again. You feel bad, but also elated. No sex tonight.

You bring the baby to work, getting a side eye from the twenty-year-old receptionist. During the presentation, your boss jokes: 'Shruti, where's your husband?'

What the baby loves is dancing. If you're holding her, you must move, left then right, right, then left. It's the brightest summer, and you dance in your office while your colleagues look on; in a park, next to a water fountain; once on a sidewalk in full public view.

At four-thirty, bus 130 arrives. You tap your Compass card and take the only available seat next to a cluster of blond women. Their heads tilt, hands on their chests.

'What's her name?'

'Mira, after her grandmother. On mother's side.'

'Her skin's gorgeous.'

Where are we originally from? They want to know.

Two blocks down, they wade into a deep, passionate talk about things they have pureed for their babies.

'Sweet potato.

Broccoli.

Avocado.

The fourth blond leans back. 'Brussels sprout.' A clear winner.

Last year this time, Shruti was ranting about her best friend from college, who had a baby two months ago. 'Look at her. Using her child for Instagram content.'

They had always done everything together: trip to Europe at nineteen, matching koi fish tattoos on their ankles, even getting married at the same wedding hall a day apart. Shruti showed you the page: the baby's face was covered with a green heart, the parents, glowing, a smile touching their ears. A post about the joys of having a child.

'If you don't want to show its face, don't put it up!' Shruti noticed you were quiet and scoffed. 'How hard is it to make a baby?'

Weeks passed. One evening, on her phone again, she had this look. Said, 'Maybe, we should make one of our own, show her how it's done.'

The next day, she rang you from a Starbucks restroom, crying, 'I don't want this, I don't want to be a mother.' Then, 'Why didn't you pull out?'

Six months in, you took her to her favourite Asian restaurant, and she hid her belly the whole time, nursing a persistent, constant sadness. It made you sad for the baby, for growing inside a sad person.

The day she went into labour, you were sick in the bathroom from eating oysters. When you reached the hospital, Shruti cursing, kicking you the entire drive, it was late for the epidural. Finally, after hours of labour, she pushed the baby out, too drained to move or even turn her head. The nurse arranged a heavy blanket on her, and she fell asleep immediately.

Shruti wants you to make her an omelette. You skip a meeting to cook, watch the pan closely. Her eggs can't be too brown, too white, over, or under-salted. You toast two slices of bread with the butter not fully melted. She likes it that way. Shruti sighs performatively at the omelette. Too many onions. You can make it again. No, thanks, she'll make her own, because, as always, she must do things herself if she wants them done right.

She's drinking again, a glass of wine a day. Since she hasn't had any for a year, that's all it takes to get her tipsy. You're on the balcony, the baby's sleeping on you. Shruti thinks back to when you kissed for the first time. Says, 'Will we ever feel that way again?'

She'd faked a catch in her back on your third date, and you brought her back to your apartment so she could rest. You drank beers, smoked a few joints. She laughed so much back then. Soon, you were making out on your lumpy mattress. Once inside her, the two of you moved in perfect synchronization like rowers, one body, one breath.

'Wish I had Adam Sandler's remote,' she says.

Every time you wake Shruti to feed the baby, she looks confused, as if she's in a stranger's bed. Her eyes wander. 'Did this thing come with a return label?' she asks.

She sends you a New Yorker story at work about a middle-aged man overcompensating for his miserable childhoodmother, an outspoken religious zealot; a weak, passive father, and a rebellious gay brotherby being over-attached to his child. Sound familiar? She texts with winking, laughing emojis. Moments later, she sends you a voice note of the baby whimpering, adding that the baby is just as hard to please as your mother. Followed by a long text about why all the books, all the momfluencers, other people only focus on what the baby needs, 'What about what I need?'

You wonder if there's a course on child-rearing and whether it should be made mandatory for all adults.

You and the baby sleep in the living room, so you don't disturb Shruti. You sing to her, setting her on your chest, belly down, skin-to-skin. You read that snuggling this way calms them, improves the bond between the child and the parent. You tell the baby that you don't care for a normal family. Don't care if you don't go camping with bicycles mounted on the car's roof. All you want is not to fuck her up. The baby pushes her fingers into your mouth, suckling on the milk bottle.

The baby's poop is mango yellow, sometimes green, sometimes loose and curdy. You Google to check if stress can affect poop.

Avery, your colleague, and a new mother who Shruti hates is over one evening with her husband. At the table, she pulls out her pale breasts, green with veins, huge with milk. Her baby swallows, froths at the mouth. Her husband winks at her exposed chest. Avery mock slaps him. You listen to her go on about why a meatless future is the only way this planet will survive. Before the kitchen cabinet, her back to us, Shruti looks for something she doesn't need.

'You lucked out, Shru. Your husband is a great dad.'

'Hundred per cent,' Shruti says, sarcasm evident.

Avery takes her husband's hand and says, 'We can't blame our partners because, as boys, they never received nurturing from their fathers. Naturally, they aren't nurturers themselves.'

'Naturally,' Shruti says.

You lie at work to stay home with the baby.

Rats in the wall.

Plumbing problem.

Taking the wife to the doctor.

The baby's favourite book is My Sparkly Red Hat. She loves it when you do the animal voices, gives a little laugh when you tumble. The first time she eats a mashed banana and her tiny front tooth sticking out of her pink gums scrapes your index finger, you're so happy it hurts. You knock on wood.

The baby likes the park. There, a man is upside down in a dumpster. He brings up a box of half-eaten fries, a discarded cup of coffee. The baby points, says, 'Nom-nom,' already demonstrating more empathy at her age than you ever will. You invite the man to the caf across the park.

'Everything bagel, toasted with butter and a double-double, love,' he says to the nervous Indian girl behind the counter, leaving a greasy fingerprint on the baby's cheek.

Your mother visits that winter. She gets to work her first morning, showing no signs of jetlag. On the bathroom floor, she lays the baby on her lizard-brown thighs and starts massaging: downward strokes for limbs, circular motions along the chest.

'Ma, be careful,' you say, with an inflection in your voice.

'You'll teach me how to bathe a baby now?'

She volunteers to sleep with the baby at night, displacing you as the night guardian. From inside the room, you hear them talking. Being away from the baby is like taking a wrecking ball to your chest. You open the door for no reason and ask, 'Need anything, Ma?' hoping the baby will see you and ask for you.

'No, go back to sleep,' she says.

You can't, you've forgotten how to without the baby's weight on you.

Your mother switches the baby's diaper for cloth ones that she hand washes in the sink. 'It's good for the skin,' she argues. Slivers of poop swirl when you run the tap to brush your teeth before going down the drain. Shruti whispers what the fuck when she passes you in the hallway. And it feels good to be a team again.

Ma insists on feeding the baby steamed peas. She holds the baby hostage, tucking the baby's limbs securely under her thigh. The baby doesn't like peas, keeps pushing them out with her tongue, sputtering, crying noiselessly. Shruti storms out of the kitchen one day. 'Aunty, please stop forcing her to do things she doesn't want to. Our society will do plenty of that when she's an adult anyway.'

Your mother has the expression you're familiar with, hands clasped together, a nervous laugh. She wipes the baby's mouth gently, sets her down and goes to the balcony with nowhere else to go. You and Shruti pass the volleyball, debating who should do the mitigating. Shruti mouths fucking child to you as she goes to your mother.

It's late and your mother's phone rings. 'Fuck," Shruti says, 'how many times to tell her to put that bloody phone on silent?' The baby starts wailing. You leap out of the room to take the crying baby from her arms. She's holding the phone to her ear, and you say, 'Who calls this late on a weekend?''

It's Anjali, your mother's house help. You roll your eyes. Your mother starts sobbing. You get on your knees, beside her, consoling. Blinking back tears, she tells you that the maid's teenage son drowned at the Adyar beach an hour ago. The son Anjali hoped would study, get a job, get her out of cleaning people's homes. Before leaving, the boy had asked Anjali to prepare fish fry for him.

'She's asking, "Amma, what do I do with all these fish I've fried?'''

You can't sleep that night, thinking about what you'll do if something happens to the baby. You keep checking if her little chest rises and falls. 'No beach, no school, no phone, no boyfriends or girlfriends, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no partying, no leaving this house until you're thirty. You hear me?'

One late evening you're burping the baby after changing her nappy for the fifth time. She has an upset stomach and you run your hand over her soft belly. You text Amma and she says breast milk helps, but Shruti's watching a new Love is Blind episode inside and asked not to be bothered.

Anything else? You type.

Mashed bananas.

The baby finally calms down after you feed her half a fruit. You continue chatting with your mother about the aunt who told her she had put on weight. You tell her that it's not nice commenting on someone's body and does the aunt know that her two front teeth are so big, you can grate a coconut with them?

Love you, Amma texts, which she only recently started saying.

You send a heart emoji. It's easier for you to say such things over text.

That's when Shruti waltzes into the room.

'Now?' you ask.

'Wow.'

The baby's stomach gurgles against your chest.

'I mean she's about to sleep.'

Shruti leans, tongues your earlobe. She wants you to put the baby down 'for one bloody second.'

'She hasn't burped.'

Shruti climbs onto your lap, you look at her quizzically.

'Babe.'

'Now.'

'Can you.'

'Come.'

'Stop.'

The baby opens her eyes, starts bawling.

'See?'

'Commme.'

'Stop.'

'Let's go.' She pulls your free arm; you almost drop the baby.

'No.' Your mouth is dry.

She pulls, pulls, pulls, and finally, you snatch your hand back. You try holding on to her wrist, but it's too late. She falls backwards onto the rocking chair that topples, slams the back of her head on the stiff lip of the baby's pink, unicorn potty, and winces. You want to reach and hug her, but there are too many toys, furniture, years of hurt between you.

Instead, you watch the light move through the chink in the shutters.

For anyone affected by family or intimate partner violence, there is support available throughcrisis lines and local support services. If you're in immediate danger or fear for safety or that of others around you, please call 911.

Read the other finalists

• Old Bonesby Kate Gunn (Vancouver)
• Lamentationsby Miriam Ho Nga Wai (Toronto)
• How to Make a Friendby Zilla Jones (Winnipeg)
• Permission to Pauseby Carley Thorne (Toronto)

About the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2024CBC Short Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency atBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the2024 CBC Poetry Prizeis currently open until June 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET. The 2025CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the 2025CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January 2025.