"Breaking the Girl"

I once had a girl. Or should I say, she once had me.

We walked Juliet to the kitchen store today at 12^th and Walnut. We wanted to buy a blender small enough to make smoothies just for her. Melissa walked out of Starbucks and handed me an iced red-eye. Juliet reached out her arms, squeezing her little hands, for her coffee, or for one of us to pick her up, or both. When she got neither, she cried.

“I’m worried she thinks she can get whatever she wants whenever she wants.” I said.

“A woman in the mommy-group said they can’t really be disciplined until they’re two,” Melissa said.

“They don’t understand.”

Juliet understands that the light switch turns the lights off, and that fishes make a fishy face. She knows that the cow says moo and the sheep says baa. She’s still not sure what the three singing pigs say.

“She understands ‘no,’” I said.

“But she’s so cute,” Melissa said.

We sat on a stoop. Juliet got distracted by a stuffed bear on the dash of a parked car. She shrieked and pointed at the bear that wasn’t hers. She looked at me, wondering why I hadn’t made it hers yet. She cried.

“She to learn not to cry every time things aren’t exactly like she wants,” I said. “It’s something she should start getting used to. The sooner, the better.”

“She’s just acting the way one year olds act,” Melissa said.

“Do you want to break into that car, or should we just leave?”

It started when we first floated the no more bottle idea. Juliet knew immediately that something was up. Every morning had started with a bottle, and then, suddenly, it didn’t.

“Ba-ba?” Juliet asked.

We put milk in a sippee cup. She threw it. She refused oatmeal, and even cheese. She cried. She was on strike.

We’ve tried four kinds of sippee cups. The last ones had a nipple for a sippee. It was a bottle, only with handles. She understood what it represented, and she didn’t like it. We don’t want to starve her. We love her too much. We triple lock. She understands, and she’s using it against us.

Juliet suddenly stops crying about the bear. A woman walking a dog passes. She points at the jack russel terrier and pants. She looks at us. We roll our eyes. Time to go. Follow the doggie.

“She’s the boss,” Melissa said.

“She’s the queen,” I said.

“I was supposed to be the queen,” Melissa said.

“Ba-ba?” Juliet asked.

Of course.