Happy Baby (12 page)

“You think the police are your friends?” I ask him. “Is that why you tell them so much?” His eyes are really darting now and his legs are shaking and his thumb is beating the table. Sure, what’s so hard about getting a confession from this kid? Leave him in a small room and wait for him to lose his mind. I stub my cigarette out. I feel almost dizzy, slightly nauseous. My tongue sticks and the roof of my mouth is thick and wet. There’s a sharp pain in the back of my head wrapping itself around my ears like a steel belt and I press my palm against my forehead to relieve the pressure.

“No. I hate the police,” he says.

The third time Zahava was robbed the robbers were caught. The landlady had drilled a wooden plank into the living room floor to keep the patio doors from opening. So they broke the window. It was daytime. The police were waiting for them or the neighbors had been put on alert and were watching. The robbers were ambushed or caught walking away. The police were called and they responded. “They always return,” the police officer told us, standing in a pile of glass in the front room. “Creatures of habit. They catch themselves.”

There were two robbers. An older man, past forty, a career criminal, just out of the can for the third time. And with him a young first-time offender named for a general who led his country against the English. And the child had a gun in his belt.

The burglars were taken to the Twenty-Fourth District police headquarters on Clark Street, a single-floor black metal building responsible for all of Rogers Park. There they were separated. I could trace their steps from the backseat of the car, a sun-filled parking lot shining with blue and white stripes, through the thick steel doors. I know what the room looked like where they sat the younger one and handcuffed his wrist to the loop in the wall. He was sitting on the bench between two desks, his hand raised like he was giving an oath. At one of the desks would be a plainclothes juvenile officer and a typewriter, and at the other a snarling blue jacket with horrendous skin and a tightly clipped brown beard. The bench would have been painted white for no discernible reason and bolted to the wall by two long chains. Next to the plainclothes would be the cell. The door to the cell would be open, offering a view of a clean steel cot and a toilet. And this is where young George Washington would spend the first night of his journey into the whirlwind.

First there would be questions. Legal counsel was not going to be an option. There was no right to remain silent. But maybe he wouldn’t talk for a while. Not until the blue jacket punched his face a couple of times. Or maybe he would talk right away, while the juvenile officer typed. Because he doesn’t care, because he’s sure he’s stronger than them and they can’t do him any harm anyway so what does it matter. He’s wrong about that. So they ask him if he was there all three times the apartment was robbed and he candidly responds yes. And they ask him if he had a gun on him then too. And he says yes. The police officers are nodding encouragement. He’s getting excited. He’s surging with his own invincibility. And then they tell him there were two people sleeping that first time they robbed the apartment. How did he feel about that? He shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t feel anything about that. What if one of them had gotten up? What if they had been discovered robbing the apartment? What then? What would he have done if one of the occupants had come out of the bedroom to see what all of the racket was or to use the bathroom? What then? And George Washington pondered his answer for a moment, growing stronger and nodding his head. The air was rushing into his lungs. He was going to peel the roof from the police station and pull the rest of it to the ground.

“I would have shot them dead,” he replied.

“I’ll go take a look.”

“Don’t bother. Stay here,” she said, holding my hand.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

I think about asking for another cigarette but don’t bother. “The police,” I say. I’m sweating but it’s not hot in this room. “Why did you tell them that?”

“Tell them what?”

“That you were going to shoot us. That you were going to shoot the occupants of the bedroom if they walked out of the room? You threw it all away. Why did you say that?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” I wish there was a window in this room or less light but there isn’t. “It matters,” I say. “They’re going to use that against you. They put it in your report. They told the people that live there you said that. They met them right outside of their building and they said they had caught the robbers and that the youth had a gun and he had intended to use it had they caught him. That means for sure it’s in your paperwork. And the prosecutor is going to present that to the judge. And you are never going to get out. You are never going to go home again. You will be here until you’re eighteen and possibly longer if they can figure a way. Because it’s a different crime now. You’ve elevated the crime. You’re no longer eligible for placement. Who can even imagine what they’re going to call that, the places you’re going to be. They’re going to hold you until you’re eighteen.”

George’s hair and eyebrows come together. He blows air into his cheeks. “Fuck you,” he says.

“Fuck me? Fine. Fuck me. Don’t talk to any more cops. You understand?” I realize that I’m shaking the table so I grip the table harder and shake it as hard as I can. “I don’t care if they smack you with spoons, stick a hook in your penis, or what they threaten you with. You wait. Don’t trust any of them. Not the teachers, not your guardian, or the guards or the lawyers. Definitely not the social workers or anyone who presents themselves to you as your therapist. That’s a setup. They’re out to get you. They fucking hate you.”

He’s crying now. I’m making him cry. “They are out for you. They don’t give a shit about you. You’re just food to them. They’re going to eat you alive. And if a judge asks you, if you even get that chance, which you probably won’t. But if you ever do, if the judge brings you into the courtroom. If a judge asks you if you were really there that first time and if you had a gun then you say no. You hear me? You say no. You say it wasn’t even your gun. You were just carrying it for the other man. The
older
man. You were carrying it for him. It was his gun. Do you get that now?”

He’s sitting upright. Tears are streaming from his hard eyes. The tears keep running, pouring over his cheeks, snot hanging from his nose, water dribbling over his chin, soaking the collar of his shirt, forming small puddles on the table. I sit and I wait. I can’t let the guard see this. I have to be careful. I have to wait and then I have to go. I’ll never make it out again. No one will protect me. I’m going to stand up and ring the bell and leave, let me out let me out, and that’s the last I’m going to see of this place.

The stairs are long and empty. They never search you when you leave. I keep my hands just outside of my pockets. I walk the stairs and pass the guard and his metal detector. A funny thought occurs to me of putting a bomb together while inside and walking right out with it into the hot air and blowing up the rest of the world.

Western is twenty-three hundred west and eleven hundred south. Where I live is far north, east of the train tracks, near the lake and the suburbs, but not quite at either. I’ll have to take three buses to get home. The heat attacks me. The exhaust sticks in thick grey streaks to the sides of white delivery trucks. As I’m walking away from the building my pace is quickening. I’m so afraid. I keep imagining that I was caught, even though I wasn’t. It’s like falling from a window. I’m walking faster, unbuttoning my shirt. Taking my shirt off, popping a button, wiping my face with my shirt. I’m running stripped to the waist. I’m running as fast as I can past the people waiting for a bus and the Payless shoe store. I’ll yell. I’ll get somewhere alone and I’ll yell. I’m moving around the pedestrians, jumping into the gutter and then back onto the pavement.

“Ain’t nobody chasing you,” a man leaning next to a newspaper box yells after me. I stop and turn to look at him. He’s a large man and his sweat has made his striped shirt transparent over his dark belly. He’s laughing, turning a toothpick in his teeth, jingling some keys in his pocket. There’s a wire garbage can nearby. A woman standing in the shade of a thin tree is turned slightly away from me, a smile playing beneath the dew of sweat on her lips.

IT’S 6:30 IN the morning, and Maria is still asleep. I’m awake before the alarm goes off, but I don’t move yet. Her back, with its thick pale scar, is pressed against my chest. I have to be careful when I get up. If I move too quickly, Maria will startle awake and want me to stay, and I can’t miss another day of work. We can’t afford that. I want to get inside her now, but I resist.

Our place is on the north side of Chicago, in an area known alternately as Rogers Park and the Jonquil Jungle. There are thirteen apartments on every floor. We live on the third floor, in a small room with a kitchenette, a half fridge, and one window, but we have our own bathroom. The paint in the hallways is dark red and cracked. The girls that work the sidewalk in front of the bookstore on Howard all live here, five or six to a room. They bring their customers in and out, and their customers come from everywhere. We’ve changed the locks on the door three times.

I raise the window shade to let in a little light and pull on my pants. I boil water in a saucepan, fill my coffee cup, two spoonfuls of instant coffee one spoonful of creamer, and sit at our table. We just moved in here when Maria turned eighteen. My caseworker told me they’re replacing the furniture at the day center, so Maria and I might get a new table and some other stuff this weekend.

Maria sleeps naked on the mattress a few feet away. The blanket has slipped off her shoulder, and her breast is exposed. She looks as if she’s having good dreams. This is rare. Normally the blanket is pulled tight around her shoulders, gripped in bunches. She sleeps with her eyes pressed shut and her mouth wide open, and she talks in her sleep.

I drink my coffee slowly and take one of Maria’s paperbacks off the shelf. I read two sentences, then put it back. She’s always reading. She likes romances. I told her she should write a romance about us, but she said nobody would be interested, because we don’t have nice things. She reads while she’s filling in at the branch library, and she summarizes the stories for me when I get home.

I take one last look at her before leaving to catch the 7:15 train. She’ll wake up soon and call me at work. But now she’s breathing easily.

“Most file clerks don’t stick around,” Ms. King says. “We have a high turnover because of the monotony.” Ms. King wears her thick red hair in a tight ponytail. She has a small mouth and pointy teeth, and she questions the minutes on my timecard every week. She’s thirty years older than me and was once married, but now lives alone in an apartment in Lincoln Park, not far from the zoo.

“You don’t have to worry about me leaving,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m working on benefits for overseas employees. The rows of filing cabinets are endless: half a floor of a building downtown. I work slowly but steadily under the long fluorescents, organizing the folders by location, then specialty, then last name. The file cabinets are in the middle of the building, far from the windows, and are ringed by offices that nobody uses. On each office door there is a nameplate and a white board and a marker for leaving messages. Occasionally, when no one is looking, I’ll write a joke message on someone’s door.

I read through the enormous sums of money, salary, compensation, and per diems the overseas employees receive. They all come from good schools; it says so on their résumés, attached to the files. The receptionists keep plates full of apples on their desks. The advertising firm consults for governments. It has copywriters stationed in China writing political billboard ads.

Ms. King tells me I have a phone call.

“When are you going to be home?” Maria asks.

“You know already. It’s all the way out there by the western suburbs. The brown line stops running after seven. I’ll have to come back through downtown.”

“I never should have encouraged you.”

“You were trying to be supportive. After today I’ll be home every day by six.”

“I’m not going in to work today,” Maria says. “I’m going to see Jackie instead.”

Jackie is Maria’s therapist. When you turn eighteen, as Maria and I both did recently, you lose your status as a ward of the court, but you still have access to social services for a year. If you’re good, the state will even pitch in on your rent.

“Don’t tell her about Gracie, OK?” I say.

“Jackie thinks you should be in therapy too. You’re more messed up than I am.”

“I hope not.”

“I could get in trouble if you get caught,” Maria says. “I could lose my privileges. I need my therapy.”

I can picture her holding the phone against her ear with her shoulder and squeezing her arms together. Ms. King is standing at her desk, watching me.

“Theo?” Maria says.

“Yes?”

“I wish when you left for work that you would tie me up like a pig. You could use the electrical cord. I’d have to wait here for you like that.”

Ms. King brushes past me.

“I want you to hit me so hard I have bruises everywhere,” Maria says. “You don’t hurt me enough.”

“Tell Jackie about that.”

“I can’t. She’ll think I’m a slut.”

“I’ve got to get back to work.”

Maria’s sigh comes through clearly over the phone.

Before I leave work, I finish organizing all the employees in Japan. Ms. King asks me if I would like to contribute to the bagel pool. Everybody pitches in two dollars, and on Fridays we have bagels and cream cheese.

“But I’m a temp,” I tell her.

“But you eat the bagels, don’t you?”

“I’ll have to talk to the agency about that.”

“You know, Theo, you shouldn’t be on the phone so much at work.”

Mr. Gracie is a security guard at the Standard Oil Building. I saw him again for the first time a little over a month ago, while I was walking to the beach on my lunch break. I recognized him immediately. I stopped on the sidewalk, and people had to walk around me.