Guest Blogger: Jeffrey Ford

Baby Hand
by Jeffrey Ford

When he was 21, Thomas Burger's right hand began to swell. He couldn't remember having injured it. He didn't know that it was pregnant. Over the course of the next six months, the world looked on in astonishment and Thomas in horror as his cuticles, knuckles and palm gradually grew into a baby. In one of its earliest stages it had gills and a tail. Its eyes were huge and black, and at night Thomas would see them gleaming in the moonlight. It was a nightmarish time for him, and there was great pain involved. Once it became evident to the doctors that the hand was becoming a child, instead of curing it, they threw their efforts into nurturing it. The child that was evolving from his hand became the focus of intense media scrutiny. There were endless photo shoots, and Thomas felt that he had become a useless appendage to the baby; the only thing anyone cared about.

Eventually, the child grew into herself, and Thomas was pressed into learning how to change her and dress her with his left hand. He was clumsy with the bottle, and kept forgetting to hold his arm up, sometimes swinging her around when walking or in conversation, trying to make a point. The doctors told him to name it. He didn't have the courage to tell the world he wanted it cut off. His silence prompted the doctors to tell him he would call it Baby Ingrid. He said nothing and struggled through the mid-night feedings and changings. The qualities of its excrement pointed more toward what he thought than what he'd eaten. At night, as he sat in a wicker rocker in a dark room, singing lullabies, if he happened to catch a glimpse of her face at the very moment she finally fell asleep, he would see a brief smile, sweet but tinged with an undeniable arrogance. The expression always made him laugh. "You're shrewd," he thought, and it delighted him.

Thomas became more deeply devoted to his charge with each passing month. It was right around the time Baby Ingrid said her first word, "Tobo," meaning "Thomas," that he realized people were willing to pay large amounts of money for, as they put it, Baby Hand, to appear in person. So Thomas bought a Studebaker with a big trunk for Ingrid's toys and wardrobe. After a few minor crashes, he learned how to drive left handed, and they went on the road. They performed for sell out crowds across the country. There wasn't much to their show. Basically people wanted to see precisely where Baby Ingrid's back joined Thomas's wrist. He'd call on select members of the audience, who would mount the stage, get a close look at the miraculous appendage, and then testify to its authenticity for the rest of the audience. They loved it. After only a few years, though, due to so much testimony to the fact at their shows, the public came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was, in fact, real and simply accepted it.

As interest began to wane in Baby Hand, Ingrid, not an actual child, though no large than she'd been as a baby, had proven herself to be verbally brilliant. She could converse with the ease and grace of someone four times her age. She and Thomas came up with a comedy act in which she was the smart one and he the fool. They changed the name of their act from Baby Hand to Tobo and Baby Ingrid. Their early work was undistinguished, mostly one liners. For instance, after some foolish harranguing from him, she might say, "Get off my back." It wasn't much of a joke, but the slight humor in conjunction with the always startling sight of a man with a baby right hand made for a lurid joculairty that tickled the spine. They became well known and even appeared on radio.

Thomas had never even considered the possibility, but when Ingrid went from being a child to a young woman, still, mind you, only the size of a baby, the moral outrage concerning the fact that she was attached to a man swelled to proportions nearly beyond the level of wonder her birth had produced. A Federal prosecutor was assigned to build a case for the separation of Baby Ingrid from the invidious Thomas Burger. For him, things unfolded like in a dream that went from ludicrous to insane. He was arrested and put on trial for endangering the life of a minor. By the time his day in court came, he could see the writing on the wall. When questioned, he said nothing. Ingrid spoke up for him, but, as it said in the major newspapers, "Her advocacy lacked vigor, her tribute damned for lack of detail."

When they separated Thomas and Ingrid, a hacksaw blade was used. There could be no anesthetic as it might adversely affect her. Radio commentators were smug when discussing the difference between Burger's courtroom silence and the screams that were reported to have come from him during the removal operation. They took him off as close to her spine as possible, so that all that was left of his wrist was a small bump in the middle of her back. Her skin healed over the incision as did his over the stub on his right arm. She was given a mansion-like doll house and a trust fund. He was fitted for a metal hook. Thomas Burger was not incarcerated after the trial and operation, but he was cast off by society. He eventually committed suicide by sticking the tip of his hook in a wall socket.

Ingrid went off to live on her own, and for a while the papers followed her life. Stories about her diminutive shoes and hats, tours of her miniature mansion, gossip as to the eligible bachelors she was seen with, ran every day for six months in the papers. She was interviewed on the radio quite regularly, prompting many to imitate her small, high voice. Then, she suddenly went missing. Gone seemingly without a trace. Search parties were launched. The police and F.B.I suspected foul play and put some of their most astute investigators on the case. All leads pointed to a certain Carl Obenwat, a local plumber who had been called to the mansion to fix a pipe in the basement. Obenwat was arrested, questioned, and his home was searched more than once but the authorities could never get enough tangible evidence to make a conviction stick. Oberwat was released and threatened to sue both state and federal governments unless high officials publicly exonerated him of any crime. This they did, but the question remained, "What happened to Ingrid?"

Ten years ago, after Carl Oberwat's death, his old house was raised to make way for a new development. Workmen digging up the old concrete basement floor found a grave. In it were the bones of a male right hand the size of a baby.