Lullabies for Little Criminals

by Heather O'Neill

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Christ, I almost forgot about you in there. I’m sorry. I was only going to leave you in there a second. I just sort of wanted you to cool out.”

  “I think I’m going to go now.”

  “What are you talking about? You can’t go home. You’re going to live here. I’m making dinner now.”

  Alphonse laughed as he helped me up. I went to the bathroom and peeked into the cabinet mirror. I was a mess, but that was nothing new. I never spent any time grooming myself, and as a result, I always looked like a kid that had just fallen off a seesaw. I picked up Alphonse’s hairbrush to try and fix myself up. I had to comb a little dreadlock out of the back of my head because it had been a long while since I’d bothered to even attempt to brush it. I tied my hair in a ponytail on the top of my head. I put on some makeup that he had in a box in his drug cabinet and was always encouraging me to wear. I stepped out of the bathroom feeling like a different kind of person: tougher but empty.

  I sat down on the living room couch and tried to feel right about being there. I tried putting my hands behind my head and then underneath my butt. I tried lying down but sat back up quickly. I even tried sitting upside down with my legs straight up the back of the sofa. I was twitchy, like all my instincts were telling me to get the hell out of there.

  I heard him start singing in the kitchen. Once he told me that if he had one wish in the world, it would be to have a better singing voice. I thought his voice was really good though, or at least that he sang better than anyone else I knew. Now he was singing “Desperado,” which was one of my favorites. That song had a funny way of reminding me of places that I’d never been to, places that I’d seen in the pages of National Geographic, places that I might never actually get to.

  I put my feet up on the coffee table and stared at my running shoes. They looked like the shoes someone would be wearing when they were dragged, murdered, out of a lake. I remembered the story Jules told about how they’d taken his shoes away at the hospital so that he couldn’t escape. That’s when I realized I had my shoes on and they were all I needed to get the hell out of there.

  At the detention center, kids were always making dummies of themselves. This was considered the first essential step to escaping, as it would give you time to get far away from the building before your flight was even detected. This was often the only step kids took. It was a lot less risky than actually trying to sneak out of the building. So everyone labored at their dummies, stuffing nylon stockings full of toilet paper. There was often a shortage of toilet paper because of this activity. There was a half-baked dummy in almost everyone’s room, stored in the closet or under their beds. Staff were always finding and dismantling them.

  Sometimes you would feel staff putting their hand on you in the middle of the night, making sure that you were real and not a pile of clothes masquerading as a human. It made me feel reassured when they walked off satisfied. Yes, it was a real child lying under the covers.

  I called out to Alphonse that I was going to lie down. I walked into his bedroom and quickly tucked some pillows under the cover and positioned them in the shape of a sleeping body. This probably wasn’t even necessary. But it felt symbolic, as if I was leaving part of myself behind. The part of me that had been with Alphonse was fake.

  Even while he was at his best, singing “Desperado,” Alphonse didn’t come close to Xavier. Xavier made me feel happy and intelligent. With Alphonse I was just a jerk with a ponytail who wasn’t going to see or do anything in this world! I put on my fur coat and pushed open the window and crawled right out onto the fire escape. The fire escape was slippery as hell. I held on to the freezing railing and stepped slowly and carefully down to the street.

  As I dropped to the ground and started walking away, I whispered the words to “Desperado” under my breath, just to calm myself down. At first, I didn’t realize I was singing the song, but when I was half a block away, the sound of my voice got louder, and I couldn’t help but hear it. After three blocks, I felt completely rid of Alphonse and I started singing “Desperado” loud enough that passersby turned their heads.

  Since I had no curfew, the night seemed to have entirely different dimensions. It seemed almost as if flight was possible. And if not flight, then at least jumping out of a window.

  I was on the corner of Sherbrooke Street not knowing where to go. It started to snow and I watched the flakes light up like millions of tiny fireflies in the streetlights. Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.

  I experienced a cold shock of freedom. I could go anyplace now and do anything I wanted, which I could do before, I guess, but now there would be no guilty feelings. That’s what I thought, at least. I decided to go and see Xavier, as he had just suddenly become my only friend in the world. I thought he’d help me out. I thought that I could sleep in their garage and Xavier could bring me cream cheese sandwiches.

  I hurried down the street to Xavier’s house. I decided not to knock on their front door. Instead, I crawled over the back fence. I stood under Xavier’s window and started throwing snowballs up at it. I jumped up and down on my tippy toes. That was a kind of prayer that I used to do back then. Finally his window opened and he stuck his head out, looking utterly disoriented.

  “What are you doing there!” he whispered.

  When he whispered, he always whispered louder than he spoke. I gestured angrily for him to come downstairs immediately. He left the window and in a few minutes came out his front door. He had his cat, Roland, in his arms. He said Roland needed some air anyhow. The cat wriggled free and Xavier laughed. He was wearing his seagull pajamas under his winter coat, and he had on his mother’s furry pink boots. He then noticed all the makeup that I had put on.

  “You look pretty,” Xavier said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Really, really, really pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock. What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I’m not allowed to have anybody over after ten o’clock. That’s my mother’s number-one fascistic rule. We can hang out tomorrow, though.”

  “I’m not going to school tomorrow.”

  “Why not? Where are you going?”

  “I can’t go home tonight. My dad locked me out.”

  “What! How could he do that to you? He can’t do that. Call the police.”

  He took both my hands in his hands. I loved so much when he did that. I had seen mothers take their children’s hands like that and ask them what was wrong. Maybe he had learned it from his mother. I was glad that I had come here. He always cheered me up just by making me feel I was a part of his world instead of just my own.

  “I just can’t stay at my house anymore. Can I sleep in your room?”

  “Are you crazy? My mother doesn’t even think we should be left alone in the same room together anymore. She says that things can go too far and that we might not even have control over them ourselves. Can you imagine her talking to me like that? I want us to always, always be together. For the rest of our lives.”

  “Well, can you ask your mother? Otherwise, I’m going to end up sleeping on the street.”

  “What!! Are you crazy!! Are you certifiably mad! I won’t let that happen. I’ll go tell my mother that you’re going to stay here. You’d better wait here, though. In case she says anything stupid and embarrassing.” He scooped up the cat and went back inside.

  I might as well have gone with him, as I could overhear the conversation.

  “What is Baby doing here at this hour?” his mother asked.

  “She’s my girlfriend!”

  “This isn’t right. Does her father know that she’s here?”

&n
bsp; “He doesn’t care where she is. She has to stay here.”

  “I’m going to call her father.”

  “Nooo! You can’t do that. You’re ruining this for me.”

  “You can’t interfere in this, Xavier. I don’t think you should be spending so much time with her either.”

  As I started to walk away, Xavier came running out after me. He had put on his own boots and had a plastic bag in one hand and Roland under the other. His mother came out of the house after him. I tried to wipe my pink lipstick off, but it wasn’t any use. I didn’t like how she was looking at me. The way she looked at me made me feel naked. I felt as if I was stripping at detention all over again.

  Then his father came out. He was wearing his slippers and pajamas but was looking serious as hell, as if the cold couldn’t possibly bother him. He walked over and just picked Xavier up in his arms and carried him inside, as though he was a little kid. And I realized that he was only a little kid, really.

  “Baby, I love you,” Xavier called after me.

  I HEADED BACK TO ST. LOUIS SQUARE. I still had chosen Xavier, even if I might not be allowed to ever see him again. I chose Xavier, but I still had to go back to Alphonse’s so that I could have somewhere to stay that night. I hurried down the street, pulling out my butterfly knife and unfolding the blade. I whispered harshly at the air in front of me.

  “Motherfucker. Don’t mess with me.”

  I didn’t know who I was supposed to be swearing at. I guess I was threatening my own shadow. I couldn’t really hurt anybody but myself. I held out my skinny arms and noticed what a weakling I was. Who in this world was afraid of me?

  I wasn’t paying attention to anything as I walked along. I was trying to have very little to do with reality. This might be a good tactic while you are in heaven but not on earth. I stepped off the sidewalk and slipped on the ice. I splayed across the ground like a handful of change. I scraped my knees and my palms and my chin, and the knife went skittering across the street.

  YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE what a wreck I was when I finally showed up at St. Louis Square, bleeding everywhere. First, I wanted to buy some hash oil. It only cost three bucks, and the dealer who sold it in this park always let me borrow his pipe. Smoking it always made me feel like a fat drug pusher in a cheetah-skin coat I’d seen on the cover of a reggae album. Yes sir! It made me feel spiritual. Maybe I could just find a good bush to sit under and close my eyes and think about birds with long colorful tails that swirled all over the place, like the ones on Chinese tea tins. In St. Louis Square there were always a few adults who called themselves Steppenwolf or Jonathan Livingston Seagull. They would sit next to you and talk about how they were a sort of messiah all night long. That was a good thing, as I had no desire whatsoever to be alone at that moment.

  When I got to the park, I spotted Alphonse right away. He was talking to a drug dealer who was leaning against a skinny tree. Alphonse nodded to me and the drug dealer skittered off. Alphonse walked up to me, with his head tilted to the side. He always did that when he was curious about something. I used to think he was especially handsome when he did that.

  “I don’t know why you’re standing there so calmly. I was looking for you. I am seriously going to kick your ass.” Since he was still stoned, he didn’t sound that threatening.

  “Look, I just feel all freaked out and lonely tonight.”

  “Are you okay, sugar?” he asked me. “Somebody mess with you?”

  “I fell down.”

  “Where the fuck did you go? Did you tell me you were going out?”

  “I said I was going for a walk.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t even remember. How the fuck did you fall right on your face?”

  He laughed and put his arms around me and kissed me on the top of the head.

  “Poor baby,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go home, okay? Let’s get stoned and lie in a hot bath. With some nice-smelling salts. Then we can just cuddle for the rest of the night. But seriously, if you fuck around one more time, I’m going to slap your ass, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said.

  I held on to his hand as we walked up St. Denis Street to his apartment building. It was after midnight and it was okay for us to hold hands and walk down the street as a couple.

  “I’m sorry I locked you in the closet,” he said. “I was just stoned. I’d like you to live with me as long as you want. You don’t even have to work. You’re just a little kid. You need time.”

  He looked at my hand and noticed for the first time that it was scratched. He moved me under a streetlamp and tilted my head up all Greta Garbo–like. He ran his finger under my eye and then along my neck. The side of my neck felt really sore when Alphonse touched it. He had a surprised expression on his face, although those marks were probably from the fight I had had with him.

  “You’re hurt?” he asked.

  I nodded and felt the back of my throat trembling again. Alphonse put his arm around me and we walked quickly to his building. The doors of the lobby seemed like the most inviting doors in the world. Once we got inside, he bent over and picked me up. It was amazing how easily he carried me. It seemed as if he could change the rotation of the earth if he really wanted to.

  Once, when we were alone in his house, Xavier had tried to carry me from the couch to his room. He ended up tripping over the coffee table and knocking my head against a lamp. I knew that Alphonse could pick me up and rock me like a baby. All of a sudden the idea of being with a grown-up man seemed appealing, not scary. In a way, I was a little bit glad that I was going to be unfaithful to Xavier tonight. It was a way to get back at the way his parents had looked at me.

  Alphonse deposited me in his bed and then left me to go to the bathroom. He had put on a record of a French singer that I’d never heard before. I lay listening to her tinny, high-pitched voice. She had the most beautiful voice in the world. She was so sweet. I imagined her on a cobblestone street in a little tiny black dress and the sky filled with white pigeons all around her. I wanted to kiss her.

  “You’ve never done heroin, have you?” Alphonse asked me.

  The minute Alphonse said those words, my guardian angel started humming and circling around me happily. I could feel her there, getting excited. Some guardian angels did a terrible job. They were given work in the poor neighborhoods where none of the others wanted to go. Every delinquent kid had one of these miserable angels who made sure that they made the worst of every situation. These angels loved when people did the wrong thing or took risks. You can’t have that many bad things happen to you without some sort of heavenly design. I had never felt my angel jump so quickly to work as when she heard the word “heroin.” I guess she’d been waiting a while for someone to say it.

  christmas

  1

  I DIDN’T GO HOME THE next day or any day after that. Instead, I stayed with Alphonse and continued to get high. As far as I could tell, it was true that you got hooked the first time you used heroin. I was stoned right down to my bones most of the day.

  When I was stoned, I wasn’t cold or sad. I saw things in a lovely way, where everything was brand-new and meaningless. I found a marble on the ground, and when I held it up in front of me, I noticed that inside there was a tiny horse stuck in a rainstorm. A white pigeon sat next to me and began flawlessly conjugating French verbs. The dead flies on the windowsill were keyholes that had left their doors. I held a cricket in my cupped fist and examined it carefully. I discovered that a cricket was nothing but a safety pin that believed in God.

  As soon as the drugs wore off, the universe went back to being the way it was before. Each time I came down, I made a secret promise to myself that I would feel that way again soon.

  It was amazing how I became a bum so quickly. I went down to the bus station to pick up some cigarette butts off the ground and smoke them. I exhaled swans and white sheep. I stood in the same spot for about five minutes because there was no reason whatsoever to move. I started to laugh. In a way, bein
g a bum was an attempt to feel good. It was about feeling low-down like a dog because they are less complicated than humans.

  I never thought I would end up doing heroin. I don’t think I did it because of Jules. I think we both did it for the same reason, though: because we were both fools who were too fragile to be sad, and because no one was prepared to give us a good enough reason not to do it.

  In any case, I never thought of heroin as a terrible, frightening thing. I remembered how Jules loved me best when he was stoned. That was still my main idea about junk somehow. If there was an alphabet book for little street kids, on the page where it said H is for heroin, there would be a picture of Jules smiling.

  ALPHONSE AND I HAD MOVED OUT of his apartment. We were staying in a hotel on St. Hubert Street, a little street off St. Catherine. There was a row of old and beautiful four-story hotels on this block that were each painted a different color. They could have been some of the most expensive real estate in the city, but their location made them seedy. The street was surrounded on all sides by areas where prostitutes and drug dealers did their business all day long. If you walked along that block at night, you would change colors because of the neon signs over the doors of each hotel. They all had names like the Lily or the Oiseau Bleu. These were names from another time. No one would have the audacity to name a hotel something like that now, as this was the ugliest age of all time. The clerks never asked questions when anyone walked into these hotels. They certainly didn’t have a problem at the Licorne when Alphonse and I moved in with a couple suitcases and a pillowcase filled with my clothes and some paperback books.

  It was right after we moved into that hotel that Alphonse started doing way too much drugs. He lay in bed naked for long hours at a time. I couldn’t get his attention or get him to say anything affectionate to me when he was stoned. Talking to him was like trying to have a conversation with a drowned corpse at the bottom of a pond. He acted completely different than Jules used to when he was high. But then again, Jules had a cheap addiction compared to Alphonse’s. Some people can live with heroin in a sort of on-and-off relationship for years. They can get by on ten or twenty dollars’ worth a day and go through withdrawal eight times a month. Once Jules went through withdrawal while we were at the hot dog restaurant. He was trembling and sweaty for a couple hours, but he managed to read a comic book and drink five glasses of Coke at the same time. Alphonse, on the other hand, needed a hundred dollars a day for junk and couldn’t do without it. I had never seen him go through withdrawal and had no desire to, either.