The baby walks along the sidewalk outside my window and cries and cries, guttural, back of the throat roars that will leave his throat sore and raw in the morning, faint scar from his attempt to get his mother to pick him up and carry him home. She wears cutoff jeans, a floppy straw hat, has an Indian print bag over her shoulder, and carries her flip flops in one hand. I can pick you up, she says, but you have to stop that. Keep walking, says the father. She turns and walks again, the baby roars, outraged, and I wonder how much of what she said to him he can possibly understand. Like people who trail their dogs away from a bad encounter at the park, saying in cooing, coaxing voices, “Bruno, you can’t just jump on people like that, you have to listen.”
Category: Sketches