Happy Baby

by Stephen Elliott

  “Maria knows me best,” I say, shoving my hands into my pockets. He drops my card onto the ground and looks the other way. I bend down to pick it up, smelling the leather of his black boots, my nose practically running over the laces. He shifts his foot slightly on the lower rail, the chair-rung squeals, and I close my eyes.

  I wade into the bar, which holds only a little more light than the outside. Buzzing neon signs hang on the windows and the walls, accompanying the incessant ringing of the poker machines, of which there are three. I look above the bobbing heads, trying to spot Maria.

  “Are you or aren’t you,” the bartender asks. She’s beefy and blond and I take her right away for the owner of the place.

  “I am,” I tell her. “I’ll have a Budweiser.” I push her my five dollars and she places a bottle in front of me. So now I have a weapon. I leave seventy-five cents on the bar and walk back near the bathrooms and the pool table, where Maria is sitting mostly alone, not far from the dartboard. And it seems to me for a minute like she wants to get hit by the dart and that’s why she’s sitting there. But she isn’t available, and people obviously know that. And she sits in front of a glass of clear liquid. And there’s a tiny lamp on the bar. And she’s reading by it.

  “Anything interesting?” I ask. She turns the book down and looks up at me, her face a mixture of embarrassment and surprise. It’s one in the morning. Years have passed.

  “You’re making a mistake coming here.”

  “Of course I am.” I pull my hand from the bar and wipe the residue on my pants. “Time waits for no man,” I say, trying to make a joke. “My father used to say that.” I drink my beer down quickly. For courage. I take in her dark cheeks. Maria has round features, round sad eyes, a round face. She used to tell me she looked like a housecleaner, which simply isn’t true. I think she looks like a schoolteacher.

  “I’m just shocked,” she says. “Wow.” My throat feels tight and I wonder how I’m going to breathe. “Wow,” shaking her head. After a bit Maria says, “I’m working at the library again.”

  “I’m still working at the same place,” I say. “But I took a break to work in a restaurant once.” I feel my body bending toward her.

  “That advertising company or whatever?”

  “Yeah.”

  We don’t say anything for a little while, and then a few guys behind us knock a pitcher of beer off a table and Joe comes storming back. “What the fuck’s going on?” But he’s talking to the guys that spilled the beer. One of the beer signs makes a quick, piercing sound and shuts off.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “What’s it like? It’s wonderful,” she responds. “I still see Nadia. I’m not allowed to have guy friends. You know, he gets jealous easy, which I like. I have to tell him everything I do and everywhere I go.” I nod. Wait for her to continue. “He tucks me in at night, makes sure I brush my teeth in the morning. He does these things for me. It’s hard to explain. We have an entire setup in the basement. And he’s nice to me, though I suppose he’ll beat me around quite a bit tonight. But he really is nice. It’s better than the alternative. I was going to kill myself.” She puts her hand on the bar and turns it over so I can see her wrist. We both stare at her wrist together. It’s like a one-way map.

  “It’s kind of a funny compulsion, huh?” And I feel that warmth of nostalgia. The red neon is backlighting her hair, the tiny yellow light surrounding her cheeks.

  I lift my hand, intent on pushing her hair back. “Don’t,” she says.

  “You don’t have to be with that guy,” I say. “There’s other things.”

  Maria laughs a little bit and raises her hand as if she was going to touch my cheek. “You’re a hero now?”

  “I went to visit Petey. He’s not going to walk again.”

  Maria looks down into her drink. I signal for another one and I’m sure the bartender sees but she ignores me. “There was a restraining order out,” Maria says quietly. “He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near me. The police ruled it self-defense.”

  “That was hardly self-defense.”

  “We haven’t seen each other in years and this is what you want to talk about.”

  “Maybe I want to talk about you leaving after you said you never would,” I say.

  Maria looks at me like I’m a stray dog with rabies. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t you remember? We all promised.”

  “We were a group of kids when we said that. And we didn’t mean it. That was before Petey was following me to the grocery store. And you gave away all of our money. And before Tom overdosed and died and Larry went to jail. And Cateyes died because nobody bothered to check. No wonder his eyesight kept getting worse—it was cancer. All those promises are shit. The group homes,” she says. She says group homesquietly and with such contempt that it rings right through my bones. “Who could blame anybody for wanting to forget?”

  When I feel Joe’s fingers pinching my neck I swing my bottle at him, which is about the bravest thing I’ve ever done, but I miss. He catches the bottle in his hand and casually dumps it into the trash. He pulls me through the bar and the patrons make way for us and the bartender wipes out her glasses and doesn’t even pretend to look up. Joe pushes me into the parking lot, under the phosphorescence. I stumble, nearly fall, catch myself with my hands on the asphalt. I turn, raising my arm, and expect to get hit but he’s standing ten feet behind me at his post at the door.

  “Get out of here,” he says.

  The parking lot is empty. “You can’t do what you did,” I say.

  “Leave us alone, jackass. We’re happy. Don’t try to interrupt us.” He’s not afraid of me at all. I brush my pants and feel where the gravel has cut my hands. Joe is buttoning his shirt. He doesn’t think I’m going to do anything, and I realize that he’s right. The night out here, on the edge of nowhere, nothing but the sounds of a taxi making the rounds. Everybody is either in the bar or home asleep. In the whole world it’s just me and Joe.

  My wife sleeps quietly in the bed. The room is full of her breathing. Then she moves, exposing her pale ankles. She’s questioned her decisions before. Sometimes she says that maybe being a lawyer wasn’t the best idea for her. I pull the belt from my pants and place it on the dresser. Take my shirt off, my pants. Stand naked, watching my wife. I pick my belt off the dresser. I watch her movements. Watch her wake up. Her small eyes opening slowly. The way she looks at me. Naked, with a belt in my hand, in front of her.

  “I want you to tie this belt around my neck,” I say, the belt hanging limply over my hand. “And drag me around with it like a leash. I want you to choke me. I want you to spit on me. I want you to slap me and call me names.”

  A wave of panic crosses Zahava’s face and then leaves. “What are you talking about? Turn on the light.”

  “Please,” I say.

  Zahava considers my words. “I have to be in court tomorrow. Come here.” She slides down to the end of the bed. I hand her the belt and stand in front of her, turning around, pressing my fingers into the wall. I hold my breath and then the belt whips across my back. I feel the sting and my mind goes blank for a second, the warmth of pain covering me as my breath returns.

  “It’s OK,” she says, rubbing her hand over where she’s just hit me, tracing the welt with her finger. Then the belt lands again, then again. My back burns. She hits me five times and then she stops. She pinches a bit of my lower back and twists.

  “Ow. Ow.”

  “Now let’s go to sleep, sweetness.” She’s touching me, her hands at my waist.

  I sit down on the floor and Zahava sighs. She slips from her blanket and her feet are on either side of me and I place my head in her lap, my arms around her waist.

  “What’s happening to you, Theo? You know?” She’s awake now, as calm as a lawyer. “You’re not acting like yourself. I know you like these things. So what? People need different things.” She pauses. Zahava has a sour smell. “People need their attorneys to be o
n time and to be rested as well. Don’t be selfish. Please.” I press my face into her pubic hair. She keeps saying things like, “What happened tonight? Did something happen?” But it’s like she’s talking through water and I can’t hear a word she’s saying. And I’m thinking about where the highways will take me.

  “Why do you cheat on me?” I ask.

  “Hey,” she says. “Hey.” Now she is really pulling my hair, trying to get me out of her, jerking my head back and forth. “We’ve been through this before.” She’s looking me square in the eyes. “Just stop it.” I keep my mouth shut.

  “Please,” I say quietly, rolling my bottom lip over.

  She lets go of me and I drift back between her legs. The smell of Zahava’s legs, her thighs against my cheeks. How she smells inside. She’s so thin I can feel the bones in her legs. I feel the pressure of her fingers against my scalp. “Enough, Theo.” She’s trying to pull me up and I’m resisting, pushing my face further against her vagina. “You’re selfish. You know? You never think of anyone else.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GETTING IN GETTING OUT

  THERE’S A LARGE woman in front of me in a white dress with dark flowers. She smells like baby powder and she’s holding the hand of a small girl whose red hair is scattered across her shoulders to make her look like a doll. The two of them are not related. It’s early in the morning and it’s a thick, slow line and nobody in it is in a hurry. The girl tries to say something and the lady reaches down and brushes her lips with her index finger.

  At the edge of the table I empty my pockets into a Tupperware dish, step through the metal detector with my hands out and my palms open. The police officer nods, slides my belongings across a barren steel table, a set of keys and a wallet with a chain that attaches to my belt loop. I’m too young to be a parent, too old to be in trouble. I pour my things from the dish into my hand.

  I walk past the courtrooms where the children are tried for crimes committed across the city. Things like robbing parking meters or throwing other children from rooftops. The yellow benches outside the courtrooms are filled today with juveniles waiting for their verdicts. The kids are not allowed in the actual courtroom unless the judge summons them with a question. The violent offenders and the run risks are cuffed to a chair in one-person rooms known as hotboxes.

  In the basement there’s a cafeteria with eight grey tables, wire chairs, and a vending machine that sells hot chocolate, coffee, and chicken soup from the same spout. I buy a coffee and sit down where someone has left a newspaper. I read about the heat wave and what the newly elected mayor of Chicago plans to do about it. It’s the hottest summer on record and people are dying everywhere. Across from me three officers are taking a break. They sit in front of three empty cups. They think I’m on their side. I place my hand over the mayor’s face. I run through the plan in my head.

  In the years since I’ve been here they’ve placed art along the walls of the lower floors. Cityscapes and still-lifes, all of them dirty-looking in cheap metal frames. There’s an escalator, and then wider, black, polished stairs leading to the second floor. The top three floors of Western house the jail, a brutal place, always overcrowded and understaffed. Children are supposed to be shipped from here to St. Charles within three months. It doesn’t always work that way. Paperwork gets lost. If the parent doesn’t show up to collect the child there are proceedings for the child to be made a ward of the court. The state takes custody. A placement has to be found. The placements are run by private agencies like the Jewish Children’s Bureau or the Catholic Charities or the Children’s Home and Aid Society, who may or may not want the kid the state is offering. The state allocates the same funds, $31 per day per child, whether the child is in a group home, a shelter, or a mental hospital. There are children who spend years in here.

  I come to a large door and adjust my tie against my reflection. Inside there’s another door, and then another, and the intake for the jail and the administrative offices, where the secretary sits in front to greet and vet visitors. The secretary, years ago, was a beautiful Hispanic woman named Camilla who took everyone’s name into a green binder as they were admitted. I never spoke to Camilla but I remember her. Everybody does. She was removed for having an affair with one of the inmates—someone’s dream come true. He was seventeen years old, being tried as an adult. It was his last good time. I was twelve then and knew only what I heard in the lunch hall. They were caught in a broom closet with her skirt up around her waist. But there are other places to have sex in Western, unused offices, of course the showers. The doors to the rooms don’t have windows and are locked from the outside and it’s two to four boys for every room, so opportunity exists there as well.

  Camilla is a nice memory for me, though I didn’t know her at all. I just remember her red skirt, and the short pointy heels on her shoes, and where her skirt stopped and her legs began.

  I thought about her every day I was inside and by the time I got out she was gone.

  “I’m here to see George Washington.” I almost want to laugh. I’m asking about a young black house-robber named for the founder of our country. It’s no wonder you like to steal, I’ll tell him, you’re on every quarter.

  “What’s your relation?” the lady asks. She’s not pretty, like Camilla, this one. She has wiry black and white hair, piled on her head like a dead nest. She looks dead. She’s old and salty. A safe bet, I suppose, a dead woman.

  “Caseworker,” I tell her. She looks at me skeptically. I’m dressed in black pants and a button-down shirt, my clothes stuck to my skin from the heat outside. “DCFS,” I say, to show I know the lingo, speak the language. State not charity. DCFS as opposed to Board of Ed, or HHS or federal, which would be ridiculous but you never know. As opposed to guardian ad litem, for which I would have to be a lawyer. And I’m obviously not family. DCFS is easy enough. Department of Children and Family Services and the family-first policy. Caseworkers change all the time. I went through twelve caseworkers before I was eighteen and didn’t know who was looking after me. Most of them I never met. I’d just see their name on a piece of paper or they’d call to cancel an appointment.

  “They’re in the yard now,” she says. She must have taken this job to pass the time after retiring, because she was bored. She wanted to spend her final years in a penal institution helping to punish bad children. I wait in front of her, behind the long brown partition. I don’t want her to think I’m going to leave and I don’t want her to think I have all day. I’ve thought all my actions through. And I’ve thought that I could fail. I’ve imagined them finding me out, coming to me from the sides and behind with a net, pulling a mask over my head, zipping it from the back, taping my hands to my skull, cinching the net around me, and dragging me along the linoleum floors back into a locked white room with a view of the freeway, and leaving me there. Forgetting me again, this time forever. So I wait, tapping my finger lightly on the countertop.

  She buzzes the glass door next to her and I grip onto the handle and click inside. The air is like a television tuned to static. I follow her past cubicles, each divided with six-foot-high walls of fabric. Some of the cubicles are empty and others contain people sitting at computers entering data or talking into the phone. This is the administrative heart of the detention center but it isn’t necessary. All you need in a jail is inmates and guards. You barely need guards.

  ***

  I’m left in a fluorescent room with a table and two chairs, a large ashtray, and a stand with magazines piled across the top of it. I place my notebook on the table and a pencil next to it. Caseworkers always do this. There’s always a notebook. I place my hands behind my head and try to relax.

  The first time my girlfriend was robbed was three months ago. We had only just started dating. I met her at the restaurant where we work. I have a hard time sleeping and she doesn’t like to sleep until morning. She’s in law school at Loyola and she waits tables. I had picked up a second job cashiering at the restaurant to keep me
busy at night and because of some trouble I was having. That’s where I met Zahava.

  When she was robbed that time, we were in her bed with the covers off and we heard a sound from outside and she wondered what it was and I said I was sure it was just the cat. When we came out of the room, a few hours later, we were still naked and the bicycle was missing and Zahava’s Guatemalan backpack was in the middle of the floor, the front pocket open, her tip money gone. She shook her head and pulled a Lenny Kravitz album from its sleeve. and lowered the needle onto the vinyl. She would have to get another bicycle. She zipped her bag and placed it on the couch. She turned to me and smiled. Easy come, easy go.

  I pick up one of the Men’s Journals. There’s a picture of a man on the cover wearing sky blue shorts and no shirt and he appears to be running up a mountain. He looks healthy and content. His skin is smooth, his chin and cheeks perfect.

  I read through the magazine while I’m waiting. It could be a while. There’s a whole system of doors and elevators to be negotiated in bringing a child down to the second floor. I read what foods I should eat if I’m going to have a pretty stomach. I learn how to improve my biceps by doing exercises with weights and tucking my elbows tightly beneath my ribs. And I learn that it drives women crazy if you pull on their clitoris gently with your thumb and your forefinger and then blow on it.

  When I’m done with the magazine George Washington is in front of me with a guard. The guard doesn’t introduce himself. The guard says he’s going to lock the door and that I have to ring a bell next to the table to be let out. When I ring the bell someone will come and take George Washington back to the third floor, but it might take a few minutes.

  “You’re not my caseworker,” George Washington says to me as the guard is leaving.

  “I am now. Sit down,” I tell George. “Let’s get to know each other.”

  He’s a small kid. Scrappy. He has a muscular face but skin like a baby. They’ve given him the haircut, his scalp covered in short, black fuzz. The door clicks and latches and George is looking at me, considering his options. Maybe there is something he could use as a weapon: a piece of metal to be quickly sharpened, a dull, heavy object. He could take me hostage, tell the police that he’ll kill me if they don’t let him out. They wouldn’t deal with him, and when the standoff was over we would both be headed back to jail.