What Were You Thinking, God ?(Barbara Mullen) WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, GOD?

A Short Story

By

Barbara Mullen

Molly’s mother filled the last oatmeal bowl that morning in 1945. Then she tapped her spoon on her coffee cup and threw her slim shoulders back. “Quiet everybody,” she ordered. “I have something to tell you. Next, as casually as giving them the daily Minnesota snowfall report, she announced, “We are expecting another gift from God.”

“Another baby?” sputtered twelve-year-old Molly.

“Yes, that’s right. And I hope we’ll all be happy with this news.”

Molly floppped her head onto the table, her bushy auburn hair hiding her entire face. “Why does God think we need another gift?” she mumbled. “There isn’t enough room in this house for the gifts we’ve already been given.”

“Good Lord, Girl,” growled her tall nineteen-year-old brother Michael. “You don’t have to spout your opinion about everything. I liked you better when you were a little mouse.”

“Me too,” eighteen-year-old Mary said with a disapproving shake of her head. “Dad seems okay with it. He isn’t saying a word. And look at Mom. She’s all smiles.”

Mary’s twin sister Margaret giggled. “She doesn’t have much choice, does she?”

“God might change his mind, ya know,” ten-year-old Johnny reasoned and everybody laughed.

Everybody but Molly, that is, who grumbled, “Geez, Mom. Two more feet to buy shoes for!”

On her way to school, Molly turned the shocking notion of another Callahan in the world around in her mind. What kind of a joke is God playing on us? It’s bad news that there will soon be six Callahan kids and two parents squeezed into a house just right for four normal people. Normal people? That wouldn’t be us anyway, would it? How is Mom supposed to do everything she does now and also take care of a new baby? Our dad was never much help at home and none at all since buying that spirits and wine shop a year ago. Michael doesn’t lift a finger to do his own laundry since becoming a big shot working at Dad’s store every day. In any case, he might be drafted into the army soon. Heck, I guess I think too much. But I can’t seem to make my brain slow down. Nobody else seems that worried. Geez, as if this family wasn’t embarrassing enough already?

Molly tried to grin and sit on her opinions for the next few months while the rest of the family waited anxiously for “God’s miracle” to show up.

“Boy or Girl?” the guesses changed every day.

“I’m going to knit a gorgeous yellow blanket for its bassinette,” Mary offered.

“Dibs on holding the baby before anybody else does,” squealed Margaret.

Molly shook her head in amazement that anything had gotten the twins’ minds off their pompadour hairdos and bright red lipstick and boys they adored. Molly, however, kept her eyes peeled on her mother, at first listening to the early morning upchucking in the bathroom, then watching the day to day expansion of her mom’s belly, and recently, listening to the groans and sighs that accompanied her growing awkwardness.

Molly’s nervous watch over her mom came with daily questioning: Did she need anything? Why doesn’t she take a nap? Would she like a cup of tea? Molly suspected her mom might be thinking she had changed her mind about the baby. But secretly, Molly was hardening her stand to never let herself fall into such a predicament. Her nightly prayers asked God, “Please let my mom live through this horrible mistake.

Then one morning her mother cried out from her bedroom, “My water just broke!”

Johnny bounded from his bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. “Hurry up. Mom just broke her water! What does that mean?”

Mom shouted from her bedroom again. “Somebody call your dad to come with the car. Now!”

Margaret dashed across the kitchen to grab the phone. Mary ran up the stairs hollering, “But it’s not due for two weeks!”

Johnny yanked at Mary’s arm. “You’re dumb. Babies don’t know what week it is.”

“Mary, get him out of here and get Molly to come and help me pack.”

Molly dashed into the bedroom. “I’m already here, Mom. Tell me what you need. I’ll find it and pack it.”

“Start with the new robe and nightgown I bought. And throw that whole drawer of underwear into the suitcase. That’s all I need for ten days in the hospital. My cosmetics bag in the bathroom is ready to go. But first, help me dress. Breaking water at home. This never happened to me before."

This never happened before? Molly’s hands and fingers began to tremble so she could hardly fold the clothes. Oh my God. Something’s wrong. I know it. Please don’t let anything happen to my mom. Why did she go and get pregnant? Maybe she didn’t do it on purpose. Her doctor told her 42 was sort of old for having babies. Forget about that now. Mom is the only thing that matters. My hands won’t stop shaking. Jesus, where’s my dad? If she dies, I’ll never understand God ever again.

“Ohuuuu,” her mother moaned from her bed with her hands gripping her stomach.

Molly ran over to her. “I’m going to call an ambulance now.”

“Not yet. The labor is just starting.”

“You mean it get’s worse? If Dad isn’t here in five minutes, I am going to call the taxi. I’ll go with you. The twins can take care of everything here.”

“Five minutes then.” Her mother thrashed at the pillow while groaning louder this time.

Molly ran to the top of the stairs and yelled, “Margaret call a taxi and tell him to come quick. It’s an emergency now. Mom says Dad can drive to the hospital when he gets here.”

All three girls loaded mom and her suitcase into the cab and Molly leaped into the back seat next to her mom. She slammed the car door behind her and slapped on the lock. Mary banged her fist on the car window and Margaret yelled, “Why does she get to go with you?”

Between more loud moans, as their taxi raced toward the hospital, Molly’s mom spouted orders. “I thought we had two more weeks. I haven’t figured out where to put the baby’s bassinette. It has to be close to me but there’s no space in our bedroom. I guess the only place for the baby is in the room with you girls. Then I’ll be right next door.”

“I’ll think of something,” Molly said, but her mind couldn’t move past saving her mother’s life.

The orderlies met their cab at the hospital emergency door with a wheelchair and pushed her mom toward the nearest elevator. Molly followed them to the second floor where just before her mom was shoved through the delivery room doors. She looked up at Molly and told her, as she was shoved through the swinging doors: “Wait in the lobby downstairs for your dad to arrive. And you stay there.”

Molly wasn’t about to follow those orders. She had no intention of leaving the hall outside the delivery room where she could hear sounds from inside the room and also get a peek inside whenever somebody comes or goes. Sooner than she had time to panic, she heard the first scream from inside the room. And another, and then another. Finally a nurse dashed out opening the double doors long enough for Molly to get a glimpse of her mother on a table with her legs raised up under a sheet.

Listening to louder, more rasping screams that Molly couldn’t believe were coming from her mother, she backed up to the nearest wall and slid down to the floor. She hugged her arms tight around her middle, but a minute later the labor room doors flew open again. Molly leaped to her feet and caught site of a doctor and nurse at the foot of the delivery table. The sheet had been thrown back and in that instant Molly saw a flash of red blood and heard an excruciating shriek that sounded more like an animal than a human being. Cupping her hands to her ears, Molly fell back to the floor again and closed her eyes. When she opened them she saw the shadow shape of her father running toward her from the far end of the hospital corridor.

“Mother of God, Girl,” he said when he reached her. He shoved his hand into his pocket. “Here is fifty cents. Go downstairs and ask a nurse to get you a soda pop and a snack. The doctor is coming out now to talk to me.”

Sometime later, Molly sat alongside the hospital room bed where at last her mom had fallen asleep. Her father, who had been talking with the doctor in the hall, came into the room and told Molly, “You should go home now, Girl, and get some rest.”

Molly got up, stumbled out of the room and dragged herself out to the street. She was half way home before she recalled that the doctor had told her to stop at the hospital nursery to have a look at her newborn brother.

She was bombarded at their front door with questions from her brothers and sisters. She answered each of their questions about the baby by repeating the doctor’s assurances that their mom had indeed lived through this terrible day.

“What about the baby, stupid?” Mary demanded finally.

“Is he beautiful? Does he look like Mary and me?” Margaret asked. “Tell us!”

Molly shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I didn’t see him,” Molly said.

“They wouldn’t let you see him? Is there something wrong with him?”

“Nobody said that. I just forgot to look at him.”

“We should have been there,” Margaret shouted. “Not you. You had to go and jump in the taxi with her. You’re a brat like you’ve always been.”

Mary slapped her hands to her hips. “You’ve never been normal. There’s a screw or two loose in your head.”

Johnny pulled at Molly’s arm. “More than a screw loose. Your brain is oatmeal.”

“I promise you this,” Margaret growled. “You are never coming near that baby. Mary and I are going to take care of him. Period. We’re warning you! Keep your hands off of him.” She grabbed Mary’s arm. “Let’s go to our room.”

Mary snapped back at Molly one more time, “And you can sleep somewhere else tonight, Idiot.”

Exhausted, all Molly wanted was to lay her body down somewhere. At the top of the stairs she remembered that there were some worn out quilts in the little cubbyhole room off the hall. Sometimes she hid in there to be alone or to read books in private. Nobody used it anyway, because, well, the chimney climbed right up on the outside wall of the house covering half of the room’s only little window. At the moment, though, she was happy to crawl into the dark little space and roll up in quilts on the floor.

With nobody speaking to her the next morning, Molly sulked over her dish of Wheaties for a while before getting dressed for school. After school that afternoon, she returned to the half window room, as they called it, to do some serious thinking. Somehow, the second she squatted on the floor an idea came to her. She remembered that her mom had asked her to find a place to park the baby’s bassinet and that made her leap up and run all the way down the stairs to the basement. She dashed over to her dad’s toolbox on a shelf, snatched up a tape measure and snuck back upstairs to the girl’s room to measure her cot.

Safely back in her hideaway, she measured the wall opposite the half window and threw both hands in the air. “Yippee! Four inches longer than my cot!” she yelped. Since the cubbyhole room had no door on it she figured she could easily push the cot into it. So those identical dimwits don’t want me in the room with them, she thought. And also don’t want me touching the baby. And Mom wants the baby near her. HaHa. I know how to solve everybody’s problems.

The next day, Molly grasped Donna’s arm and hustled her over to a table in the corner of the middle school cafeteria. She knew she could count on her friend Donna to help her and also keep her mouth zipped up. “I need you for a secret mission this afternoon,” she whispered to Donna. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Donna’s angel sweet face lit up and she moved closer to Molly. “Is it against the law? Can we get caught?”

“No,” Molly said, but the job won’t make the twins happy.”

“Fabulous! We’re partners!”

Two hours later, first casing the home, they tip-toed up the stairs and into the girl’s room. Each of them grasped separate ends of Molly’s cot, bedding and all, and wheeled it out the door and down the hall. They stopped at the wide entrance to the half window room. “Over here, smack up against the wall,” Molly instructed. Once they’d wiggled it into its allotted space they both flopped onto the cot and laughed uproariously.
“I can’t wait for Mary and Margaret to come home,” Molly squealed.


Mary and Margaret burst into the house about an hour later, ran straight upstairs and stopped dead in their tracks at the entrance to their bedroom. Margaret shrieked, “She’s gone!”

“But where did she put her cot?” Mary shouted.

Margaret howled. “Who cares? In the cellar, I hope.”

“Holy Cow! We got rid of her,” Mary said.

Margaret wiped her hand across her forehead. “I think I know what’s going on. I bet we’re going to get to have the baby in here with us.”

“Yeh! All to ourselves. And we can make sure Princess doesn’t lay a finger on him.”

Sitting on the edge of her cot in her secret hiding place, Molly had heard every word. She mulled it over. Okay, they’re happy. When Mom comes home from the hospital, I’ll tell her how I gave up my own bedroom space for the baby. She glanced around her cubbyhole room. And tomorrow I’m going to fold up the rest of my clothes and pile them over there in the corner.

Their dad’s car turned into the driveway eight days later and all five Callahan brothers and sisters tumbled out of the house, each trying to be first to see Baby Denny dressed in his new blue flannel Dr. Denton pajamas as he lay sleeping in their mom’s arms.

“He looks a little better than the red lobster we saw in the nursery crib,” Michael said.

“Come over here, Johnny,” their dad called. “Have a look. Here’s your little brother. You won’t be the baby in the family anymore. What do you think of that, little man?”

Johnny frowned. “Can you take him back to the hospital if you want to?”
Their dad shook his head no and Johnny whipped around, tore back into the house and slammed the door behind him.


The twins kissed the baby over and over on top of his knit bonnet and then followed mom and baby toward the house. At the front door, Mom stopped and looked back across the front yard. “Where’s Molly?” she asked and then spotted her leaning against a big oak tree in the yard while watching the family event from a distance. Their mom motioned to her. “Molly come join us. Tell me where you put the bassinette.”

Molly ran to catch up with the rest. “Follow me,” she said. “I’ll show you. I wanted to keep it a surprise.”

“Here, Margaret,” their mom said. “Hold Denny for me and try not to wake him.”

Margaret looked over her shoulder, sneered at Molly and said, “Horray, I’ll sit on the sofa with him. I knew you’d ask me to hold him first.”

At the top of the stairs, Molly told her mother to close her eyes while she opened the door to the girls’ room. “Okay, you can look now.”

“Oh my, look what you’ve done.” Their mother gazed at the white satin covered bassinette with flannel bedding made up inside in what used to be Molly’s corner of the room. Alongside the bassinet was a fold-out table stacked with used but freshly washed baby clothes and diapers.

“It’s just right and such a relief to have it all ready,” her mother gasped. “But where are you going to sleep?”

I'm sleeping in the half window room.”

“You can’t sleep in that horrible little hole. I won’t let you.”

“Sure, I can. I’ve been sleeping in there for ten nights now. Just last night I was thinking about ways to fancy it up.”

“Oh, honey, how unselfish of you. I can’t help you with doing anything like that right now. You know your dad is no handyman.” She frowned. “How do the twins feel about these new arrangements?”

“Oh, I think they are as happy as pigs in you know what. I’ve never seen them smile so much. Believe me, my guess is they will guard that baby with their lives.”

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of you. For a twelve-year-old you’ve been such a big help.” She reached her arms around Molly and squeezed her. “If you think you can make that dark little dugout livable, do whatever you want with it.”

“I’m so thankful you didn’t die,” Molly whispered. I stayed right outside the delivery room the whole time. Whenever the door swung open, I looked inside. From the hall I heard every time you let out a scream. At first I saw how your legs were up in the air under the sheet. The next time I got a look I saw there was blood on the sheet so I didn’t look into the room again. In fact, I wanted to run as far away from the hospital as I could. But I couldn’t leave you there alone. I was so scared. I knew every time someone came out of that room they were going to tell me you had died.”

Molly stopped short and laid her head on her mom’s shoulder.

“I didn’t know you heard all that and saw me on the table. I’m so sorry. I told you to wait downstairs in the lobby. Here’s what you don’t understand. There is pain giving birth. That’s true. But it’s normal. Each scream opens the birth canal wider so the baby can come out. The other thing you don’t know is no matter how exhausted a mother is right after giving birth, there is no exhilaration like that moment when the baby is wrapped in a cloth and placed in your arms afterward. There is no fulfillment that can match that. None. In time, you almost forget the pain. I wish I’d been able to tell you this beforehand. I didn’t dream you’d be there seeing and listening. Twelve is too young. Someday I promise you’ll understand what I’m saying.”

I don’t think so. Not now, and maybe never, is what Molly was thinking but didn’t say.

At bedtime, the twins circled Denny’s bassinette ooing and ahing:

Margaret: “Isn’t he beautiful; he’s going to have curly hair, I just know it; and blue eyes like ours.”

Mary: “I can’t wait to hold him when he wakes up in the morning.”

Molly listened to them from her nearby hideaway and, mystified by their silly behavior, pulled the old quilts over her head and fell asleep.

At two a.m., a shrieking noise from the girl’s room awakened every living person in the entire house. The next sound was Mary shouting, “Jasus! Help, what was that?”

“Oh my God, it was the baby!” Margaret cried out. “What’s wrong with him? Maybe he’s choking to death.”

A second later their mother burst into the room. “He’s hungry and wet, for heaven’s sake. I told you he would wake up in the early morning. Next time, and that will be in about two more hours, please pick him up until I get here.”

“Huh?” Margaret sputtered.

Molly leaped up from her cot just in time to glimpse her mother rushing from the twins’ room, her robe flying open and holding the baby to her breast .

Mary groaned, “Have you ever heard such an unholy yelp in all your life? And in the dead of night?”

“Damn,” Mary said. “And from such a teensy mouth?”

“You pick him up in two hours,” Margaret said.

“Why me?” Mary fired back. “You’re being selfish as usual.”

“You’re the one who wanted him in here so bad.”

“So did you.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

Molly crawled back into her cot, all the more grateful for the first personal space she’d had in twelve years.

She woke up the next morning to the sounds of the twins still grumbling and decided her new found haven wasn’t quite private enough. No question, the half window room needed a door. But how would she accomplish that,” she wondered, considering her dad was hopeless as a handyman. And besides he had no time in the evening for anything but his dinner and his drink. And Mom will be bone tired keeping up with the housekeeping and feeding and changing the new baby. No use pretending she concluded. That does it. I’ll have to take care of this job myself.

After school that same day she walked over to Gambles Hardware Store on Main Street to check out the price of doors.

“And what are you going to do with a door, young lady?” asked Mr. Swenson, the Gamble’s store manager.

“I’m going to hang it in the doorway of my bedroom,” Molly said.

“And who’s going to hang this door for you?”

“I want you to tell me how much it would cost to hire someone to do it. But first, how much will the door cost? I have the measurements right here written down in my history notebook.”

“He glanced at the paper and back at Molly. “Do your mom and dad know you plan to do this?”

“My mom said I can fix up the room as long as I do it myself.”

“Okay, I’ll figure the total cost for you. Come over to my desk.”

On the walk home, Molly concluded there was only one way she could earn the $20.00 total for the door and the handyman. And that was to take care of that baby. After school, maybe, so Mom can get out of the house once in a while. Molly figured her mom would like that alright but wasn’t sure she’d trust her with that precious baby. I guess I don’t blame her, Molly admitted. I haven’t gone near it yet. And I don’t like the idea of touching it after the trouble it caused Mom. And besides, I don’t know squat about babies.

Molly’s mother nearly smothered her with hugs when Molly made her offer. “You would give up your after school activities a few afternoons a week?” she asked. “I could come up with maybe $.35 cents an hour. That would help me so much, Molly. I could go to the market by myself and maybe rejoin my bridge club.”

Oh God, now her mom was wiping tears from her eyes and Molly didn’t know what to do so she kept talking. “I’ll pay for hanging my new door. And, after that, I’ll keep on babysitting to buy paint for those cruddy old walls. And then I thought I’d get two orange crates and cover them with a pretty cloth. And after that I’d put up a pole to hang my clothes on. And paste pictures of Natalie Woods and Van Johnson and President Roosevelt on the walls. I’ve given this a lot of thought….”

“Slow down, Molly. One thing at a time. I told you I wouldn’t be able to help you with any of this right now. And by the way, don’t mention the possibility of a picture of FDR on your wall to your father.”

The next afternoon, Molly gazed into the old rocking cradle in the living room and prayed, “Please, God, don’t let me jinx this. I want this baby to be alive in two hours when Mom gets home from her bridge club.”

She bent over the cradle and mumbled to the bundle snuggled up inside it. “This is our first moment together. So here’s the deal. I want you to sleep for two hours. If you won’t do that, just don’t load up your britches with anything but pee. I’ve never changed a diaper in my life. Pee I might be able to handle. But that’s it. If you behave, I’ll feed you that little bottle of milk Mom squeezed out for you before she left. And whatever you do, don’t die on me.”

Molly tossed her book to the floor and shot up from her chair the second the wailing started. Heart racing, she reached into the crib. She slipped one hand under its head, the other under its butt, like her mother had told her to. The screaming let up until she laid him on a towel on the sofa. With her free hand she reached for a folded diaper and then removed the two big safety pins from the one he was wearing. “Only pee, thank you,” she sighed with relief. The baby was still yelling when she closed up the diaper, rewrapped the bundle and carried it out to the kitchen to warm the bottle in a few inches of water in a saucepan.

With the baby cupped in one arm, she returned to the living room. She sank into an overstuffed chair and placed the nipple to its lips. The baby sucked every drop of milk from the bottle and fell back asleep. Relieved, Molly examined his tiny face, the wispy curl on his forehead, round cheeks and look of complete contentment for the first time, and then thought, well I don’t have to put him back in the cradle yet, I guess.

Her mom rushed in from her afternoon out and gushed, “It was wonderful to get out and be with my friends again.” Then she took in a deep breath and asked, “And how did it go for you, Molly?”

“You mean for us? Denny and I got along fine.”

Her mom smiled. “So he has a name now?”

Just then, Margaret and Mary blasted into the living room.
“Where’s Denny?” asked Mary. ”Did he live through the afternoon with Princess?”

“Very well,” Mom said.

“Then I get him when he wakes up.” Margaret said.

“Only for fifteen minutes. Then he’s mine,” Mary declared.

Margaret glared over at her mother. “We have to divide up the time, you know. It isn’t fair for Molly to get him every time you leave the house.”

Their mom laughed. “How nice that you two are suddenly taken with Denny again. Of course, we have to be fair, don’t we? Well good, cause I’m not turning down any offers of help.”


Two months later, Molly led the handyman upstairs and pointed to her doorless room. “There it is, Sir,” she said. “It should fit. I measured the entrance four times before buying the door.”

The handyman raised his eyebrows and asked, “Are you telling me this is going to be your bedroom?”

“Don’t worry. It will be cozy and pretty when I finish with it.”

“And you paid for the door and hanging it yourself?”

“I sure did. With babysitting money.”

He shook his head, then smiled and hung the door. When he finished, Molly asked him, “Sir, could you do me one little favor before you leave?”

“And what’s that?”

“Well, I bought this padlock at Woolworth’s this afternoon and I really need to attach it to the doorknob. It’s not that I have anything worth stealing. But I need real privacy around here.”

He glanced up and down the hall and then bent over the banister for a quick look at the downstairs. “How many people live here?” he asked.

“Too many. Eight now, unfortunately.”

“I see what you mean,” he said. “Give me that padlock.”

“Thanks. If I had a million bucks I would give you that too right now.”

Molly planned her schedule start to finish. Her next project would be a coat of yellow paint on the nasty walls; after that, a pole to hang her clothes on; then an orange crate vanity table. And last of all, she would paste pictures of her most admired famous people in the world on the walls.

In a notebook, she recorded the possible cost of each project and how many babysitting hours it would take pay for it. One after the other, for the next five months, she crossed off each job when it was finished. At last one night she pasted her last picture on to her dazzling yellow walls and then marched downstairs to get her mom. “Time for your first glimpse of paradise,” she announced with a bow.

Upstairs she took the padlock key from her jeans pocket and unlocked her door. “Okay, Mom, cast your eyes on heaven on earth.”

“Oh my God!” her mom gasped as the door swung open. Speechless for a few seconds, she gazed about the little room, clothes neatly hung on a pole in the corner, underneath it, the rest of her belongings folded and piled on a grocery box that Molly had painted lavender. Her mom came to a complete stop in front of two orange crates covered all the way around it with a poufy white organdy skirt, the crates separated by a varnished wooden counter where an imitation ivory hand mirror, brush and comb lay carefully arranged in its center.

“I think I’m going to faint,” her mom said finally. “It’s your fantasy come true, Molly. An artistic creation. No wonder you wanted to work on it night and day. You wanted some privacy so badly, didn’t you?” Molly threw both arms around her mom and twirled her around in the little space between the cot and the vanity. Her mom lowered herself to sit on the cot. “Will you let me contribute at least one thing?” she asked. “I want to make you some pretty curtains.”

“I only need half a curtain,” Molly said.

“What the heck, we’ll cover that stupid chimney with the other half of the curtain and nobody will ever guess what’s behind it,” her mom said and they both burst out laughing.

While her mom was out doing errands the next afternoon, Molly picked up seven-month-old Denny from his crib. He wiggled and smiled as she carried him back to her own room. She locked the door behind them and sat on her cot with Denny in her lap. She tickled his stomach and he gurgled and jerked his head around and gave her a baby giggle. “You know, Denny,” she whispered to him, “I’ve been thinking how the rest of these goofballs will be hanging around here for at least a few more years. After that, Michael no doubt will be in the army. The twins are eighteen now and who knows what the devil will become of them? Johnny is only ten but already he is smarting off about where he’s going to go to college. In the meantime - and this is the honest-to-God truth. I never would have escaped the twins if you hadn’t come along. We’re kind of connected by that forever. We’re a twosome now. And, I owe you a big favor. Being so much younger, you will need someone to protect you. And that will be me. I know how to manage in this nuthouse. Living here is no piece of cake, you see.”

She lifted him above her head and he giggled again. Drool dripped from his mouth onto her face and she pulled him back down and snuggled her face into his neck. "So, don’t you worry about anything, Denny.”

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