10 minute read

SHIRLEY EDMONDSON | TRASH

TRASH

Dumbfounded and confused, two teenage boys, a jogger, and I stared down the bottom of a garbage can on a sunny Saturday morning: June 14th, 1997. I recognized the incongruity of this moment, the banality of my mental errand list against the insistence of the sound we heard spiraling up and out of the waste receptacle:

1. Call Ava to wish her Happy Birthday

2. Return books to the library

3. Food shop for the week

4. Call Mom

I had started the day preparing for a lumpectomy to be performed on Monday. I did my meditations and relaxation visualizations but was still a bundle of nerves. I didn't know what the doctors might find in my lymph nodes which might indicate the spread of breast cancer. So, that morning, I focused on taking one step at a time. With this attitude, I believed I had a chance at long-term survival.

What I was about to encounter became a reminder of how plans can change in an instant. Already at 8:55 a.m., a humid 80 degrees made the Edison, New Jersey, morning feel ten degrees hotter. The emerging of seventeen-year cicadas clicking their wings, traffic, and lawnmowers muted under a sky-blue backdrop. A mewling cry caught my attention. It stood in the foreground of my perception, not quite clear, but present enough to warrant further investigation.

Curious, I turned my attention to the direction of the trash can. I became aware of the boys walking towards me from my left. Across the parking lot on my right side, a jogger approached. In slow-motion detail, I realized he had on ridiculously tight-fitting navy-blue rayon shorts so small they showed his tiny package. He noticed the ruckus and came over.

Simultaneously, the four of us reached the trash can. Peering in, the jogger's knees buckled as he sank to the ground, the wind suddenly knocked out of him. I expected to find a baby raccoon, kitten, or squirrel that had become trapped in search of food. What I saw instead made my heart drop in fear, so that for a nanosecond I couldn’t move. My vision didn’t match with perception and reality, like a funhouse mirror.

A whimpering cry emanated from a balled-up bloody shirt. There, at the bottom of the trash can, was an infant, tossed amongst the debris, with the umbilical cord still attached. Seconds passed as we all registered what we were seeing. I froze, rooted to the spot. The jogger regained his balance and stood up while I urged my brain to refocus and act. Then, together, we tried lifting the top of the waste receptacle. But we would need help from a rescue squad, because the top wouldn’t budge.

I turned to the boys with a controlled urgency and told them, "Get help from the librarians! Pound on the door until they open up! NOW!"

While the boys ran to the library door, I looked at the trash can, trying to figure a way to take the top off. Like airport recycling bins, it would prove difficult to extract something thrown in. The vents pushed inward so the design prevented vandalism. The jogger and I each took turns trying to get into the can. We positioned ourselves to reach in blindly towards the front, then our hips on the side, neither times with success. Our arms were too short to reach her. It seemed the seconds passing were hours. I felt the helplessness of time ticking by and the danger of possibly losing the soul amongst the garbage. Someone had thrown a baby away on this beautiful summer morning.

I felt an energetic connection to this child. I wanted to comfort her but couldn’t physically reach her. She needed tenderness after entering the world with cruelty, having not been properly fed, clothed, or held. I started a silent prayer as we waited for help to arrive, and that the Creator would also have mercy on me. I was tied to this child, our souls intertwined in our fight for life. Somehow the universe placed us both here at this moment in time for us to meet, bond, and live.

My heart dipped and sank, then seized with disbelief. I held my breath for an indeterminate amount of time. It seemed that I had ceased breathing to breathe life into her.

The baby's cries diminished into a whimper, then to a low moan. Was she dying?

I could see the afterbirth dried about her torso and her head full of dark straight hair. Her skin was a creamy sunflower color that showed through the blood and white caked placenta on her face.

The seconds ticked by without the sound of sirens. I glanced over and realized that the librarians either hadn’t heard the boys or were ignoring them.

With a whoosh, I started to breathe again. My feet moved, my voice came back, and I ran towards the library door that remained closed to the boys. Together, we shouted and pounded on the glass of the door. We finally got the librarians’ attention, told them what we had found out front of the library, and someone finally called for help. Some of us paced around the can: “Do you hear her?” we asked each other. “Can you tell if she’s moving?”

Some of us went silent with eyes wide and shallow breathing, praying for help.

Finally, the sound of the siren grew near. The rescue squad truck pulled into the lot. Our small crowd backed away from the can as the firemen used a tool that created the leverage needed to lift the top. We watched as the baby, now limp but alive, was attended to by the paramedics. They started an IV for liquids, wrapped her in a warming blanket, and gave oxygen. By now the crowd drew surrounding neighbors, and someone called the press. The paramedics reported that the baby was physically okay, even though she suffered from oxygen deprivation and exposure. Her lungs were clear, and her heart was strong.

Later, I named her Angelita. I wanted to humanize her so that she was not labeled “infant found in trash can” by the press. She exemplified the qualities I hoped to transfer to myself at that moment: enduring through pain, calling out for help, and holding on. It was her light that shone bright that day, and she became my beacon of hope. Though I faced poor odds against a rapidly spreading Stage IV breast cancer, I felt in my heart that I would survive. That both of us would survive together.

After the paramedics left, somehow the jogger continued his run. The librarians, the two boys, and I went inside the library. We stood around full of adrenaline, not sure what to do with the leftover energy from the trauma. My body started a low tremble, trying to release what I had just witnessed. The librarians went to the circulation desk, busying themselves with opening, and the boys remained silent, milling about the lobby without direction. I knew the media would arrive soon to ask questions. I didn’t want to take part in the questioning because I was in a state of distress. Eventually, my flight response kicked in, so I drove home thinking of the person who could listen and understand my trauma. My Grandmom.

I felt a sense of drowning, just under the surface, trying to break free of the constant replay of events. When I got home, I felt like a stranger in my house. I had just left an hour before, but home offered no comfort. My dog was present and loving, but I couldn’t greet her. My focus was getting to the black phone on the wall, dialing the numbers I knew by rote, and finding relief from the mountain of pain in my spirit. I carried all that I had witnessed like a trunk full of clothes newly strapped to my back.

Suddenly, I transferred all of the rage I felt about my cancer diagnosis onto the mother who abandoned this beautiful child. The rage rose within me, creating a trail of searing anger that pooled into a charcoal burn in the pit of my stomach. I cursed her; in my mind I formulated who she was and why she did it.

I wanted to vent, to hurt the person who did this, and judge her as unworthy. As trash.

"Grandmom!" I yelled into the phone. “I just saw a baby in, the trash in front of the North Edison Library.” I panted, out of breath. “I couldn't figure out the sound coming from the trash can. When I looked in there she was. I couldn’t make sense of it!”

My shoulder and neck muscles constricted as I paced from the kitchen to the living room. My feet continued to move across the floor as the buildup of energy forced its way through my body.

By now I was out of breath and mind, and back into pure trauma.

I couldn’t wait for Grandmom to reply, so I continued.

"I just saw a baby thrown away in the trash at the library! Why would someone do this to a newborn baby?"

My grandmother was trying to interject. “Hold on, slow down.”

I spoke over her, unable to stop the words wailing from my mouth.

"Who would have a baby, carry for nine months, and then put her in the trash?”

I shouted questions there were no answers for, questions I wanted to release from the tightness from the muscles in my lower back, forcing me to sit at the kitchen table. My dog sat quietly at my feet, her eyes meeting mine with a matching sadness and confusion.

“How can this mother live with herself?"

"What if I had returned those books an hour later? She may have died—”

I couldn't finish my sentence. I kept flashing back to the baby, alone, dehydrated and hot, laying among the Dixie Cups, Mountain Dew cans, and rotting pizza scraps crawling with ants.

Grandmom listened quietly and patiently until I was done. I could feel her presence, hear her breathing between the breaks in my voice, which eventually turned into hitched gasps for air.

"Shirley," she said, "Listen to what I tell you, and listen to what you can do now."

My head hurt, my stomach churned, the muscles across my chest tightly knotted, and I felt frozen. Frozen in time, back at the library.

"Put your energy into a prayer for the baby. She needs your prayers for her life right now.”

“But Grandmom.”

I was trapped in that moment of discovery, suddenly understanding the value of mercy.

Grandmom cut off my protests by forcing me to focus on the present and let go of the near past.

"What has happened, has happened. It cannot be changed or undone. But you can pray for her health and life,” Grandmom responded calmly. "Don't damn the mother. We don't know who she is or what she is dealing with. If you can’t forgive right now, don't damn her."

Grandmom wisdom.

I felt my heart quiet.

Saying a prayer for the baby and focusing on a positive future was something I could do. Angelita whispered for attention on that Saturday morning in June. She cried for her life; she was a survivor, I the witness. I was put there when she needed me to be a part of the miracle to save her. Saving her was also the beginning of my own miracle, a set of lessons I’d learn about cancer, a cycle of powerlessness, surrender, and love. Now, I was ready to begin the journey.

Shirley Edmondson is a memoirist and spoken-word poet, performing in New York City and Santa Fe. Originally from New Jersey, she has been a featured writer in Zora’s Journal: Breast Cancer Memoirs by Lesbians of Color. She is also published in One Albuquerque: One Hundred Poets, winner of the 2023 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award. A writer whose observations are humorous and reflective, Edmondson facilitates workshops on a variety of topics.

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