THE BABY

Dianna walked on to Mott Street and immediately felt the humidity in her nose. The hot, humid air was heavy even with blue skies. Smelly wifts of the city during August sent sweat down her back as she walked by the tourists and piles of big black plastic garbage bags.

A lady sat on on the ground outside of Transfiguration Church, on a big cardboard box, not a normal sight. Covered in a black outfit with something that looked like a hood, she looked like the girl in the famous National Geographic cover from Afghanistan. She had no shoes and had dirty feet and somewhat of a dirty face. They locked eyes and she felt it creepy that this lady begging looked at her, held her glance and starred in to her eyes. Just then the woman shuddered and made this odd jerking movement, like she was about to throw up, but instead of throwing up, she lurched to the left and began foaming at the mouth. Her eyes rolled forward, then backward up in to her head and she thrust a bag in to Dianna's arms. Only it wasn't a bag, it was a baby. A six month old baby, no maybe eight, who knows, it was small. Maybe a girl.

Without skipping a beat, Dianna walked on, carrying the baby in her arms. She held it tight, God knows why. When she lifted the baby upright against her right shoulder, to her surprise the baby held her tight back against her neck. She walked in to a noodle shop, sat down and ordered noodles (with beef, babies need beef). She did this just as if it were an ordinary day and she walked in to a restaurant with her daughter. The waitress smiled at her daughter and played with her and said what a lucky lady she was to have such a pretty daughter. "Yes" Dianna replied, "what a pretty daughter". Dianna fed the baby the soup, not knowing where her feelings were coming from or why she swept this baby off the street and walked in to this noodle shop. The baby had no teeth but gummed the noodles with no emotion, which made Dianna want to feed her more.

Her husband smiled and said, "Who's this baby?" and she said she was baby-sitting for a lady at Church, which wasn't a lie, but yes, it was. So what if the lady at church was a stranger who threw her baby at Dianna. Wasn't this her baby now? After all, the lady threw the baby at me Dianna thought.

Dianna brought the baby out for a walk, or was it more that Dianna needed the walk? Needed the air? When she held the baby the baby held her back. She liked that feeling, she craved that feeling. She smiled. The tighter she held the baby, the tighter the baby held her back. The nosy woman next store asked whose baby this was, and to her surprise Dianna replied, "mine". Then, "none of your business", then "I'm baby-sitting for a lady at church".

She walked back to church to see if the lady was still there but got sick to her stomach when she saw police and ambulance surrounding the block. She hyper-ventilated, and ran across the street but didn't see the blue car round the corner and boom. She floated in to the air with the baby in her arms. As she landed on the corner of Mott and Bowery her head banged in to the bank window and the force of the blow flung the baby out of her arms. She blacked out and never woke up. A man walking by picked the baby up and walked towards the police. When he held the baby upright, tight in his arms, the baby held him tight in return around his neck.