Hoodie (Patreon)

Based on the fairy tale "Tatterhood."

The young Congresswoman had had a difficult pregnancy. The ultrasound showed clearly that she was having one baby, a little girl, but her stomach was distended as if she was having twins. Her doctor suggested a Caesarian. The Congresswoman rejected the idea, determined to have a natural birth… but after her labor began, it lasted an entire day without the baby’s head crowning, and this time, the Congresswoman listened to her husband and doctor pleading with her, and agreed to the c-section.

It turned out this was a good idea, because there was nothing about the first baby they lifted out that was not strange.

On the table, with an epidural numbing her and a sheet blocking her view of her child, she heard her husband and her doctor speaking in frantic whispers, of which she could make out nothing but “What the hell—” She demanded to see her child, and when her husband demurred, saying she’d just been through surgery and she needed to rest, she demanded it again. So the doctor, having just cut the cord, brought her the baby.

The Congresswoman had certain entirely reasonable expectations for her newborn daughter. Such as, her daughter would look like a baby, without teeth, without hair, with plump bent legs that could not walk. Also, that her baby would be born naked. Also, that she would not be wearing roller skates and carrying a pool noodle.

All of these expectations were dashed. Her child had a monkeylike face and a full head of curly hair, clown-red. She was the size of a baby, but her proportions were those of a child of five or so. She was wearing a yellow hoodie that was somehow entirely clean and untouched by bodily fluids, and roller skates, and she was waving a purple pool noodle, baby-sized, in her hand.

“Yo, Mom, don’t sweat it!” the baby said. “My sister’s still in there and she’s a perfectly normal baby! A real sweetheart. Best baby ever. You’ll love her!”

And so it was. There was, indeed, a second baby in the Congresswoman’s womb. It seemed that the ultrasound had seen her, the perfectly normal baby, but not her sister.

“Hey, can I get some food around here?” the first baby said. “None of that colostrum junk. I want formula until Mom’s milk is in and she’s strong enough to feed me. Anyone got some of that?”

A nurse nervously took the first baby and fed her. Meanwhile, the Congresswoman racked her brain trying to remember if there had been anything that could explain the first-born girl. She finally recalled that day at the farm rally.

***

The Congresswoman represented a state that had many farms. When she succeeded in getting a bill she’d proposed and helped to write passed, which subsidized farmers for growing produce like fruit and vegetables, and gave aid to family farms, a celebration was scheduled for her at a large family farm in the state, and farmers from all over the state came to thank her and speak with her.

She’d just been telling a group of women that she would truly love to have a baby, but her schedule was so busy and she had so much work to do, she didn’t know when she’d have time. An old woman had pushed through the group and handed her two fruits. She didn’t recognize them; they looked like apples, but had the soft fuzz of peaches, and the color of cherries. One of them was large, obviously ripe, soft with the promise of juiciness, and absolutely perfect looking. The other one was missing some of its fuzz and was small and a bit twisted looking.

“You need to eat one of these!” the old woman said. “That’ll solve your baby problems, for sure!” She pressed them both into the Congresswoman’s hands. “But only eat the nice one. If you eat the weird one, there’ll be no telling what will happen.”

“Ma’am,” the head of her security detail said, “give those to us.”

But the big juicy one did look delicious, and the Congresswoman hadn’t had time for lunch. “I’ve never seen that kind of fruit. Let me try that,” she said, and bit into the big one. It was so soft, juicy and delicious, with a tiny pit, cherry-sized. The Congresswoman had just intended to take a taste, but instead she devoured it. She looked up to ask the old woman what it was, and if she could have another, but the woman had faded back into the crowd.

It had tasted so good. The second one wasn’t as appetizing, and the old woman had said not to eat it, but why had the old woman even given it to her if it wasn’t good to eat?

The Congresswoman set it aside, but later, when her aides were packing up the table and her mouth was dry from all the speechmaking she’d done, she saw the fruit again, and this time couldn’t resist biting into it. It was a little more bitter than its delicious sister had been, and a little less juicy, but it had a tartness to it that she liked and it was just a little buzzy on her tongue, as if it had just barely started to think about maybe fermenting. Quickly, before her security detail could see her and tell her to stop, she ate the whole thing.

Three weeks later she missed her period, and there were two pink lines on the pregnancy test. Her birth control must have failed. It was close to the election and she was very, very busy, but in nine months’ time either she’d no longer be a Congresswoman or she’d have made it through another election cycle and could afford to take some time off for a baby.

***

It made no rational sense for a fruit to have made her get pregnant, let alone give birth to a child on roller skates and in a hoodie, but on the other hand, nothing about her older daughter made rational sense, so the Congresswoman decided to just roll with it.

She named the older one Katherine, after her mother-in-law, and the younger one Anne, after her own mother. “Katherine” was quickly shortened to “Kate” by her and her husband, but no one else called the child that. The aides, the family friends, and even the grandparents all referred to Kate as “Hoodie”, for the yellow garment that she never took off and that seemed to grow with her.

***

Hoodie’s prediction that Anne would be a perfectly normal baby was slightly off. Anne was in fact an unusually beautiful baby. She was healthy and plump, looking more like a two-month-old than a typical scrawny little newborn, and everyone who saw her had to smile at her, or make a funny face to entertain her, or tell her parents what a beautiful child she was.

Anne hardly ever cried. When it seemed like she might and her babble took on a distressed note, Hoodie was there to translate for her. “She’s hungry!” “Yo, Mom, Anne wants a diaper change! She just laid down a real stinky one!” “Mom, Anne’s bored, can I play with her?”

Hoodie was not quite as mature as her ability to talk – and roller skate – implied. She still wore diapers. Roller-skating and talking were apparently not nearly as challenging as the potty. There were many words she didn’t know. She refused to take off the hoodie, and would bite anyone who tried to remove it from her. And she refused to abide by a bedtime, or instructions that she shouldn’t climb the refrigerator. While she very quickly graduated to solid food she could chew, since she had teeth, she didn’t stop asking for bottles or her mother’s breast. She could also entertain herself for some time by throwing her food on the floor and making her mother or father or the babysitter pick it up.

The Congresswoman, her husband, and her aides discussed whether to allow Hoodie to be photographed. Her strangeness might hurt the Congresswoman’s re-election campaign, but a Congresswoman having a baby while serving in Congress was news – it had happened before, but rarely. Concealing both their children would look odd. Concealing just one seemed reasonable… but the Congresswoman knew that treating children differently could lead to resentment, and as ugly and strange as she was, Hoodie was her daughter too.

So she asked Hoodie. “Would you like reporters to take your picture and show you in the newspaper?”

“What’s a newspaper?”

The Congresswoman showed Hoodie a USA TODAY, and the photographs on the front page. “This is a newspaper.”

Hoodie shrugged. “I can’t read. What’s it saying?”

“It’s the news. It’s talking about all the important things that are happening right now.”

“Am I an important thing?”

“You’re very important to me,” the Congresswoman said. “But it’s not important for the whole world to know about you. If you want to be in the newspaper, you can be, when they interview our family, but if you’d rather not be in the newspaper, you can be in your bedroom playing with your toys.”

“My toys are boring,” Hoodie said. “But, Mom… I know I’m a weirdo. If the whole world knew about me would that be a problem for you?”

“It might be. It might not be. I would fight for you if it’s what you wanted.”

“Naah, let my sister get in the newspaper. But don’t leave me alone with baby toys. I want video games.”

The Congresswoman was secretly relieved. “I don’t know if your hands are large enough to work video game controls…”

“I’ve got two hands,” Hoodie pointed out. “And my pool noodle.”

The Congresswoman wasn’t really sure what Hoodie’s pool noodle could do in the context of video games, but she didn’t question it. “We’ll get you a Nintendo Switch. The joycons are small, you’ll probably do fine with them.”

***

When she wasn’t playing with her Nintendo Switch, Hoodie was either getting into trouble or playing with her sister.

“Getting into trouble” generally entailed climbing on things she wasn’t supposed to climb on, skating on surfaces she wasn’t supposed to skate on, going places she wasn’t supposed to go, or running through the house, diaperless, shrieking and hitting people with her pool noodle. “Playing with her sister” involved pattycake, peekaboo, funny faces, and other adorable activities age-appropriate for a baby. Perhaps because she was a baby herself, Hoodie never seemed to get tired of doing these things with her sister, but she also didn’t sleep as much, so there were many hours when Anne was napping and Hoodie had to entertain herself.

Riding a bicycle down the banister of a Washington townhome was right out. The Congresswoman and her husband didn’t even know where Hoodie had gotten a bicycle sized properly for her tiny body, but no matter where it came from, it was to stay in the back yard with the locked fence, and also, do not climb the fence. Do not climb the one tree in the back yard, whether or not you’re going to use it to get over the fence. Do not get the garden hose and a large Rubbermaid bin and fill it with water because you’ve decided you’re old enough to learn how to swim. Hoodie, stop rolling in the mud and get back in the house right now for a bath. Pretending you’re a cat is a fine game for a child, but actually catching mice is not acceptable. Also, do not feed oatmeal to the DVD player, that is not a place for you to put a plate.

At least, unlike Anne, Hoodie slept through the night.

***

The two girls grew. Hoodie just got larger, like she was a photograph on a computer being sized up in proportion. Anne grew like a perfectly normal baby, with some exceptions. She was quicker to roll over, crawl and walk than most babies, with a patient older-by-two-minutes sister who already could do those things and was eager to see her sister learn. But she was slow to learn to speak, because Hoodie could translate her baby babble and always knew exactly what she was trying to say.

Eventually the Congresswoman had to separate her daughters for Anne’s own good. “She’ll never learn to talk if you’re always talking for her,” she said, relaying what the speech therapist had warned her.

“But Mom! Don’t you know how hard it is to be a baby who can’t talk yet? All she can do when she wants something is cry, unless I’m there!”

“That’s how it works, Kate,” the Congresswoman warned, as patiently as she could. “All humans go through this… except you, I suppose.”

“That’s because I’m a space alien! Beep boop baap, take me to your leader, Earthling!”

The Congresswoman laughed, though privately she thought, That would explain things. “Anne needs to learn how to talk, and she never will if you always do it for her, because it’s hard.”

“What if I tell her she has to learn to talk?”

“You can certainly try, but she needs to spend most of her time around people who don’t already know what she’s saying.”

The Congresswoman tried to keep Hoodie confined to her bedroom, where she had her Nintendo Switch and a large number of games for it. This didn’t work very well, because Hoodie could reach the doorknob, and when the Congresswoman had a lock installed on Hoodie’s door, she learned that her strange child was as accomplished a lockpick as she was with her roller skates. Nothing would help except teaching her how to read. When she was occupied with learning her letters and how to turn them into an understanding of books, she was willing to settle down and listen, and not go haunt her little sister’s room.

Still, they spent many hours together. When Anne finally learned to talk, her first word was “hoo-hee”… or, translated from Baby, “Hoodie.”

***

Eventually the girls caught up to each other, Anne becoming old enough to match Hoodie’s proportions and Hoodie growing tall enough to appear as a normal child her age… if you could call a child with a monkey face “normal”. Usually she was covered with so much dirt, it was hard to make out her face. The Congresswoman couldn’t get Hoodie to ever take off her hooded jacket, either; its immunity to the fluids of birth hadn’t extended to mud and grass stains and chocolate ice cream, but Hoodie wouldn’t take it off even to take a bath. The solution was to make Hoodie take showers with non-toxic detergent sprayed on her hood and liquid soap drizzled down her body from the opening at her neck, to try to wash her body and her jacket at the same time. The problem with this was that Hoodie hated water, unless she was trying to swim, climb into a fish tank, or get into her sister’s bathtub. The solution to that became to bathe the girls at the same time, and when Anne was old enough, encourage her to tell her sister to wash. It didn’t help much; it got the filth off, but Hoodie was usually dirty again within half an hour of the bath, and her yellow hoodie was permanently stained all over.