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I passed the dingy crib and looked down at the baby, who stared back up at me, and when his eyes fixed on my face, he smiled so wide you’d have thought I was the sun coming out on a cloudy day. Tyson gurgled and kicked his legs, cooing and babbling at me like he was talking to me. No one ever understood that reaction, as it only seemed to happen with me. He never did that with Mom. Or her friends, what ones there were. The doctors, the neighbors. The gruff men that came into our apartment with an air of cold indifference. Ty smiled at none of them. But whenever he saw me, for some reason it set him off, and he would laugh and coo and kick his chubby little legs. If I’d walk away without talking to him, he’d squawk in anger until I came back and rubbed my hands across his cheeks, his little hand grabbing onto my fingers, playing with them like they were the greatest thing in his world.
My hands were cold now so I blew into them so the baby wouldn’t freeze. His eyes lit up as I dropped my hand toward him, and I cupped his face, and that smile—
i thought i could hate you but i can’t i won’t
—came out again, bright and gummy, little teeth starting to poke through. I stroked his cheeks with my thumbs, and he laughed and laughed and laughed, which caused me to snort because there’s nothing like a kid’s laugh to set your own self off. It’s a free sound, a sound that doesn’t carry the weight of the world. We chuckled as we watched each other, and he tried to stick one of my fingers in his mouth, but I hadn’t washed my hands all day so I shook my head and gently pulled it away, and he yelled at me in the way that only an eight-month-old can, his forehead scrunching up, his nose flaring.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” I told him. “Don’t shout at me.”
He did anyways.
“Derrick, that you?” I heard her call out.
“Yeah. I need to use the phone,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t be that easy. If she said something to me the moment I walked into the door, then that meant she wanted something from me.
“In a minute. Come here. I need to talk to you.”
r /> Shit, I thought.
I walked into the kitchen, ignoring her as she clinked the ice cubes in an almost empty glass of Jack. I went to the fridge. An old block of cheese.
Mustard. Beer. Formula. The freezer has a carton of cigarettes. Two ice cube trays, each half-empty.
“I thought you were going to go shopping today,” I sighed, shutting the doors. She said she would, dammit.
“I forgot,” she said, finishing off the glass and getting up to pour another. “I’ll leave some money for you on the counter, and you can go later. Just get what you need. Nothing fancy. We’re not like the Thompsons, you know.” She said this last part with a nasty curl of her lip, her opinion of the Thompson family well displayed. I was used to it and able to ignore it by that point. Otter told me it didn’t matter, that as long as I didn’t believe it, as long as I knew what was real, it would all be okay.
“I need you to do me a favor,” she said, and that was when I knew I was fucked. “I need you to watch the baby.”
“For how long?”
She looked down at her hands, bringing up the left to chew on the thumb nail. “A couple of days.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Joe wants to take me out of town. Just for two days.”
“What about school? I can’t take Tyson to school with me!”
“I’ll write you a note or something,” she said. “Tell them you were sick.
It’ll be like a little vacation for you too!” She smiled at me.
“But—”
“Derrick, can’t you see I need this? This whole baby thing has taken a lot out of me. I just need to get away for a couple of days. I’ll come back, and it’ll be right as rain. You’ll see.”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, out of town.”
“Yeah, but where?”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s none of your business. God, why the hell are you so fucking nosy?”
“I’m not going to watch the stupid baby.”
She laughed, a short harsh bark. “You are because I told you to. I’m leaving—”
