I CAN HEAR A BABY CRYING. I curve my way down Wessex, pulling my raincoat tighter around my body. My face is dotted with rain, and every few minutes I have to lick the water from my lips to keep it from running down my chin. The crying gets louder the closer I get to the eating house. My steps slow as I lift my head to catch its direction. It’s not at all unusual to hear an infant wailing in the Bone. The people here are conditioned to concentrate on survival rather than happiness. Parents let their babies cry while they bicker and yell; a single, ragged mother lets her baby cry so she can catch a few hours of sleep. Grandmothers let their grandchildren cry because a little crying never hurt no one. But the crying that I hear is not that of an unhappy baby; it’s the cry of a child in pain; frantic and high-pitched, it’s almost a scream. Mo.
I can hear the asphalt beneath my shoes, the shush shush of the rain, and the humming of cars on the nearby highway. I try to concentrate on those sounds—sounds that are my business. But something is whispering to me; it’s a cacophony of heart, lungs, and mind, topped by the anguished screams of a baby.
I follow the cries to the crack house. Not to the door, but to a window where I can see yellow light escaping from between the drapes. I know that Mo is beneath my feet, cooking meth in the basement. That’s what he does at night. Meth which he does not use, but sells, which is probably the smartest way to go about it. Except his baby is upstairs screaming, and he can’t hear him. Maybe the baby hurt himself … Maybe…
I press my gaze between the curtains; the sliver of space doesn’t afford me much of a look around the room. I can see a bed, and for a moment I feel relief. Little Mo is not alone. His mother is kneeling among the rustled sheets, her narrow back to me, a long braid trailing down her back. Her name is Vola. She is slender and exotic, Polynesian, Mo once told me. She is always screaming at Mo, and Mo is always screaming at her. Sometimes they take their screaming to the street; Vola always has the car keys in her hand as she threatens to leave Mo for good. Mo throws her clothes on the lawn in armfuls: yellows and purples fluttering onto the weed-stricken lawn, like confetti. He screams to get the fuck out of here, and that she’s a fucking slut, and that she’s going to fucking get hers if she tries to leave him. Her response is always silence. It seems more profound than Mo’s yelling, like she’s better than his cheap, slovenly used swear words. And Mo seems to get her message, because after that he starts to yell ‘What? You think you’re better than me, you bitch? Get out of here.’ Sometimes she leaves for a while. Goes to stay with her mother in Seattle. But the next week her car is back, and they’re groping each other in the driveway—his hand up her shirt, her grinding into him with such force it looks like she’s trying to wrestle him to the ground.
Vola is not from the Bone. You can tell. Mo met her at a bar in Seattle. None of us really know her, and she has no desire to know any of us. I tilt my head to get a better look at the bed. My breath is frosting the window. I wipe away the condensation carefully, and then steeple all ten fingers against the glass to steady myself as I lean in. Mo is playing music from the basement. It rattles the windows, but even that is not enough to drown out the cries of the baby. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s…
At first I don’t understand what I am seeing. My brain takes a moment to catch up—sluggish, processing through thick confusion. And my view, so obstructed! I could be wrong. Then everything goes too fast: my breathing, my heart, my thoughts. All jumbled, slamming into each other ‘til I feel dizzy.
Vola’s head is bent over something. I watch as she lifts her hand again, and again, and again. She’s hitting something. A pillow, I tell myself. She had a fight with Mo, and she’s hitting a pillow. I’ve done that, exacting revenge on a pillow in the name of a school bully or my mother. Beating and beating until my knuckles were tender and my anger felt dry. But I know it’s not true, because I can’t see the baby through the slats in his crib. Vola leans back suddenly, and I can see Little Mo. He’s lying on his stomach, his head lifted, his face red from the screaming, wet from his tears. He cries so hard that he exhausts himself and stops crying, resting his head on its side and closing his eyes, his little back moving up and down as he takes big, gasping breaths.
As soon as his eyes close, Vola reaches out a hand and pinches him on the leg so hard, I flinch. His head rears up, and he starts again, his face shiny and swollen. I am frozen. I watch as Vola lifts a pillow and slams it into his head. His face bounces off the sheet, and he jerks up, his belly carrying the weight as his head and feet lift. He is shaking, and she is so calm. I don’t understand. I feel as if I am missing something, but there is nothing to miss. I am witness to something sinister. As soon as Little Mo has recovered from the pillow, Vola slaps him again, this time with so much force he rolls onto his back.
I can’t … I can’t…