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“That’s it! I can’t take it anymore!” Hitoka cried in exasperation as she grabbed all the stuffed animals and toys sitting around her and flung them in all directions. Several lit up with lights and sounds, so when they struck the carpeted floor they began to flash different colors and blare happy tunes or animal noises. Her daughter Etsuko, who she had been trying to entertain for the past half an hour now, just stared blankly at her with round brown eyes.
Hitoka flopped onto her side beside the bassinet, tears of frustration brimming in her eyes and a petulant pout on her lips. She hugged a little giraffe stuffed animal to her chest as she curled into herself. A failure . Hitoka was an utter failure as a mother. She grabbed the collar of her cotton pajama shirt to pull it halfway up her face as the tears began to flow and snot began to dribble from her nose. She couldn’t hold it back; she began to weep bitterly on the nursery floor.
“I can’t do this anymore, Sho. I’m losing my mind! Call my mom up and tell her she’s a liar. Motherhood is not the greatest joy of life!” she lamented when she heard the wood of the hallway floor creak, indicating that her husband Shouyou had come to see what was the matter.
“ Honey, ” Shouyou said as he walked up behind her, and she frowned at the laughter in his voice. He put his sock-clad foot on her hip and used it to roll her over; she flopped onto her back with a huff, prompting him to chuckle again. He looked down at her with a playful smirk as he asked, “Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic? You’re just trying to make her laugh.”
Hitoka didn’t think it was that dramatic. Up until now, Etsuko had been a dream , the most perfect baby in the entire history of babies. She wasn’t fussy, picky, or any of the other nightmarish things Hitoka had read about in the books or heard about in the Lamaze classes. While part of that was definitely due to her daughter’s natural disposition, Hitoka had liked to think that it was also partially due to her aptitude as a mother. She tried so very hard, after all. And it had been going so well up until now—now, the complete and utter downfall of Hitoka’s ability.
What kind of mother couldn’t make their baby laugh, for crying out loud?
Oh, she was horrid , she must be. Why else would her darling little daughter refuse to let out even the smallest giggle? She was definitely old enough to. Hitoka had looked it up over and over again just to be sure. But no! Hitoka couldn’t get her daughter to laugh in the slightest! She’d tried everything—toys, songs, little piggies, peek-a-boo, funny faces, dances. Etsuko just watched her with a blank stare, not even giving Hitoka the benefit of a smile.
The realization hit her again like a freight train. Her bottom lip wobbled as she stared tearily up at Shouyou, and then, she began to full-on bawl.
“My baby hates meeeeeeeeeeee!” she howled in anguish. She writhed back and forth against the carpet, not able to move that much since Shouyou still had his foot planted on her hip.
“Hitoka,” Shouyou said again. He snorted with laughter when his wife ignored him in favor of continuing to wallow in self-pity with all the angst of a Victorian dowager. “Hitoka,” he tried again, her name distorting as he began to chuckle. Ugh, she could make him laugh, but not her daughter? The shame!
“Hitokaaaaaaaa,” Shouyou drawled while rolling her fully onto her back so he could straddle her. He clapped his palms against her cheeks, squishing them until her lips puckered like a gasping fish. His voice finally pierced the gloomy veil of her lament and stopped her sobs short in her chest. She just gawked at him, eyes owlish and a little drool leaking from the corner of her pursed lips.
“You good now?” he smiled good-humoredly at her.
Hitoka blinked slowly, then nodded. Yeah. Yeah, she was good. As good as she could be when—
Shouyou seemed to sense that she was starting up that train of thought again, for he gave her cheeks another firm squeeze.
“Hitoka, stop it. Your ability as a mother is definitely not determined by whether or not you can make our daughter laugh.”
“Ish not?” she asked doubtfully.
Shouyou smiled warmly, then leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. He relaxed his grip on her face just a little bit, which allowed Hitoka to pinch her face into a frown once more. The statement really didn’t seem believable, but laying on the floor bawling her eyes out wouldn’t exactly make Etsuko laugh, either. Or maybe it would. Maybe she was a little sadist.
Hitoka pulled away from Shouyou so she could sit up and peer curiously into the bassinet. Nope. Etsuko blinked back at her with that wide-eyed, open-mouthed gape that only babies could have, then looked down to begin messing with the lacy hem of her dress. Hitoka jutted her bottom lip out in a sour pout, while Etsuko just cooed in contentment. Hitoka never thought she would find her daughter’s ability to entertain herself irritating, yet there she was.
Shouyou caught Hitoka this time when she tried to dramatically splay herself across the floor.
“Shouyou, help me!” she pleaded desperately, her hand twisting into the fabric of his tee-shirt while she lay miserably in his arms. Damsel in distress was the perfect term to describe her current state because she was distressed . “What have I not thought of? Surely there must be something that will make her laugh! I need it! I’ll die if I don’t hear her sweet little baby giggle soon!”
She flopped back with a dramatic huff, back arching and head falling back so her hair brushed against the carpet. Shouyou laughed, then used the arm he had slung around her lower back to push her back into a sitting position. Hitoka very much wanted to be boneless and mope around, but her husband wasn’t having it. So she settled for slumping there cross-legged, all hunched shoulders and pouty mouth.
“Well,” Shouyou hummed while pushing himself to his feet, “we can always try what made me laugh for the first time.”
Hitoka latched herself onto his leg like a spider monkey and beamed up at him with gleaming eyes.
“What is it? What is it?”
“You’re not gonna like iiiiiit…” he chuckled ominously, pulling his cellphone out of his back pocket and typing something.
Hitoka shimmied up his leg until she too was standing, plastered to his side so she could lean over and try to peek at his screen. Shouyou held it out of view with a tut, smirking at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Hey, do you wanna hear Etsuko laugh or not?” he asked.
“I do!” she insisted. She then frowned when she considered Shouyou’s odd warning. “But what are you about to show her? Why won’t I like it?” she demanded. She started jumping for the phone, but Shouyou towered over her even though he was shorter than most men. He easily held it high above her head while he walked away from her, head craned back to see while he continued to fiddle with the phone. Hitoka grabbed onto the back of his shirt and dug in her heels with a whine, but only succeeded in stretching the fabric and being dragged after him. “Shouyouuuuuuu!”
“Relax, it’s kid-friendly. Probably,” Shouyou joked. He’d walked a small circle around the room and was now back at the bassinet.
“‘Probably’?” Hitoka simpered as she wrapped her arms around his broad body and pressed her cheek into the middle of his shoulder blades. She looked down at Etsuko, who was smiling pleasantly while ogling her beloved parents. Hitoka sniffed as pure, fierce love welled up inside of her, ballooning her heart until it felt like she was going to burst. Etsuko had the most darling little smile. Hitoka had always imagined her laugh would be ten times sweeter.
She sniffed petulantly, then turned to bury her face into Shouyou’s back.
“Fine…” she permitted reluctantly. As soon as she felt Shouyou move, she turned her head back to look at Etsuko. This was probably going to be mortifying, but like hell she was going to miss her baby’s first laugh.
Shouyou tapped his phone screen, and the air was filled with… with rap music?
“Is… Is this Portuguese rap music?” Hitoka cried incredulously.
“Uh-huh,” Shouyou chirped while he bobbed his head to the beat. He began to rap along to the song—an impressive feat considering how fast this guy was spitting bars and in another language to boot—and bopped over to the front of the bassinet. Hitoka was still clutching on to him, and she was so stupefied by the strange turn of events that she just shuffled along with him. Shouyou wiggled his hips and tossed his arms around to the beat, bumping Hitoka this way and that as she peered around his wide bulk to observe her daughter.
Etsuko watched her father with wide, mesmerized eyes. Then, when Shouyou leaned over the bassinet to giddily rap the words to her, she did it.
She laughed.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, it’s so beautiful!” Hitoka exclaimed in a mixture of delight and wonder. “That’s what your mom did to make you laugh, Shouyou? Rap music?”
“It was an accident, actually,” Shouyou explained. After rapping another verse, he grinned at his wife, “Mom was trying to change the radio station in the car and it got stuck on a Japanese rap station for a few seconds. And apparently I started laughing so hard that I started screaming and several strangers walked over to see if I wasn’t, you know, being murdered.”
Oh, it was so ridiculous and so cute at the same time, just like this. When Shouyou started rapping along to the song again, Etsuko squealed and stuck out her chubby arms to wildly wave them around in glee. It wasn’t long until she was laughing rapturously, borderline screaming as she kicked her legs and flopped her arms and smiled so, so, so big.
“Ohhhh, you beautiful little weirdo!” Hitoka laughed, the tears pouring from her eyes dripping down to splash onto her daughter’s rosy cheeks when she leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head. She rested her hands on Etsuko’s head as she straightened up to gasp, “Oh, how am I going to explain this to my mother?”
“Who cares? She likes it, doesn’t she?” Shouyou snickered. He made a face at Etsuko and then danced in a circle, pausing to twerk playfully against Hitoka’s hip.
And bless Etsuko’s heart, she got a real kick out of that. The hysterical shriek that exploded from her lungs probably had all the dogs in the neighborhood barking, but it just made Hitoka feel all the more joyful. Hitoka pushed her goofy husband away with a laugh, then bent over again so she could scoop Etsuko out of the bassinet.
“I love you so, so, so much,” she cooed, holding her daughter up so she could nuzzle her little nose with her own. “Even if you’re forcing me to learn how to rap.”
Etsuko had no idea what Hitoka was saying, but that didn’t matter. She knew that she was in the presence of an inordinate amount of love—and so her eyes gleamed while she reached up to clumsily caress her mother’s face, her smile full of enough joy to fill the world ten times over.
And that was the only affirmation Hitoka would ever need that she was a good mom.