The Baby

The soft cries of a child was enough to make my flesh crawl. Never had I wanted so much to kill something as easily as I could have in that moment. Billie Joe and I had never wanted such a thing in our lives; we were just kids fooling around. The slick feeling of blood around my legs made me want to hurl as Billie Joe picked up the newborn by its foot.
“Clean yourself off, Daisy,” he barked, shaking the kid slightly as it cried. I followed his orders, wiping away the blood with the towels from Mama’s fresh load of laundry. They smelled like lavender stuffed into a basket of cotton, although that was probably what it really was, anyway.
Changing into my clean, yellow dress, I spread my stained hands onto my now empty belly, suppressing the ache that still held there. I snatched a little cloth bag from my cherry-red plastic chair and wrapped it around the child’s head, then the body. It didn’t really occur to me that what I was doing was wrong, only that it needed to be done. I just wanted the thing out of my house, out of my life. I was a young girl, my future bright. I didn’t need a little baby to suckle every two hours while I stayed home and felt ashamed of myself.
Satisfied, I grasped the bag tightly in my arms, muffling the little shrieks of the ball of flesh inside the bag. When we walked outside, the air was dry and cold and it almost made me pant. Billie Joe didn’t say a thing, which I didn’t really mind, cause I knew he’d be talking about how we probably could’ve just given the infant to Mrs. Amalon up near the general store. But we both knew that it wouldn’t work, ‘cause people would be asking her where that kid came from and why he had blue eyes like the oldest McAllister boy.
The baby had gone quiet, and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. What I didn’t know was that the weight I held had shifted to Billy Joe, who looked particularly somber in that moment. As we made our way out to the guard rails of Tallahatchie Bridge, he looked at me like I wasn’t Daisy anymore… like I was some criminal, and he was the victim. The look faded quickly as we stared at each other for a few moments, and I tried not to take any offense. I handed Billie Joe the bag.

When I heard Billie Joe had jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge, I didn’t feel like crying. Maybe it’s because I had finally rid myself of the other baby screaming in my ear, and maybe it’s because now Billie has to deal with the first one.