Throwback Thursday: ‘Babies for Sale’ by Amy Fant

Alice turns towards the shop, hoping Ralph has put out new babies that morning — fresh ones. Babies wrapped in polka-dotted blankies, their little faces pinkened and new-baby smelling. Alice thinks through names: if she buys a boy, she’ll have to decide between Ronnie, after her father, or Herbert, after the old grey horse she used to ride around her garden as a girl. Herb for short — Herbie, Herbinator, little H. But if it is a girl. Well. If it’s a girl, there is only one name Alice is absolutely sure of. It is, and has always been, Stella.
  
The thought of Stella quickens Alice’s step, her baby pram empty. It is outfitted in yellow blankets with tiny flowers and a small, fat teddy bear. Alice can see it:  Stella’s chubby little arms like stacked marshmallows, a full head of fine baby hair. Since she first saw the sign for babies on the brick wall of Ralph’s store three days ago, she has dreamt of her: little baby Stella, and toddler Stella, and long-legged teenager Stella who never fights with her mother.
  
“Do I get to choose?” Alice asks Ralph. It is Saturday and it is bright.
        
“Choose what?” He looks past her, watching little girls in expensive dresses pulling down dolls from his shelves.
  
“The baby. Do I get to pick her out?”
  
“You can see what we have,” Ralph responds, his arm waving at the width of his store, still not looking at her. “No special orders.”
  
“It doesn’t have to be a girl,” Alice says, following Ralph to the end of the counter, where he straightens a rack of accessories: bonnets and little purses for the dolls. And tinier dolls, so, Alice assumes, the baby dolls can have their own little baby dolls.