The Kid Thief

A short story

     I stole the first kid in 1977, right after I turned 17.  It was the year after my brother Darry died.  The kid was a boy, maybe six months old, left alone in his stroller while his mother tried on clothes in a department store in downtown Houston.  A child stealing a child.  I didn’t keep him long.  We wandered around the mall for a while, me pretending that he was mine and him just enjoying the scenery.  Then I rolled him back inside the store and took off.  Just long enough for the store manager and mother to be frantic, it seemed, from the hubbub I heard over in the ladies’ department.

     My friends got a thrill from pocketing cheap jewelry and makeup from Nelson’s Drug Store, but it never sounded like much of a rush to me, not like stealing babies.  When I stole babies, I didn’t have to be stealthy, just innocent-looking.  It was harder to take a baby like it belonged with you, like you were its babysitter or a cousin.  There couldn’t be any hesitation or someone would get suspicious. 

     With most of them, I lifted them right out of their strollers and held them for a little while.  Their pudgy little hands would curl into my hair, and I would breathe in that smell of powder and milk.   

     With that first kid, I didn’t even plan it.  He was just there.  He didn’t look much like Darry, that’s what I noticed first.  He had darker hair and his skin had a yellow cast to it, not like Darry’s pale pinkish skin and red hair.  My brother looked like me, my mom said, when I was a baby.  Angelic is the word she used, when she was still using words like that.  After Darry was gone, she just kind of stopped talking, all but the necessary words that don’t mean anything, except “Stay away.” 

     I never picked a kid because it did or didn’t look like Darry, only because of the opportunity.  I’ve taken a Chinese kid, black kids, once I even took a little retarded kid.  I’d take them from shopping malls, grocery stores, or playgrounds.  As long as they were alone and I had an easy escape route, off we’d go.  I always took them back.  Not because I didn’t know what to do with them �" being Darry’s older sister had taught me few things about taking care of babies.  I took them back because I didn’t think I deserved them.  If I didn’t deserve Darry, then why did I deserve some other kid? 

         Once I saw a picture, I thought it was of Darry, but it had ‘Carly, 1962’ written on the back, so I knew how much we looked alike as babies.  I don’t know if Mom was right, if angelic described us.  I guess all babies are angelic, though, until they have time to grow up and find the ugly parts of themselves.  I was fifteen when Darry was born - fifteen years worth of getting ugly.     

     My little brother, Darry.  That’s how I talked about him before.  Now, I didn’t really know how to say that he was dead, so I just didn’t talk about him at all.  Mom’s pastor came over a couple of times a week right after the accident, but I just sat there twirling a strand of hair and looking out the window.  I couldn’t even say he was “dead,” how was I supposed to talk to a stranger about what happened to Darry?  My friends at school, they were the worst.  All the questions and pity and sudden silences when I walked up.  So I got rid of them.  Like the kids I didn’t keep, I just left them in a doorway and walked away fast.  I got all new friends, ones that didn’t ask questions. 

     Some of those new friends had drugs that helped me forget about how it was my fault Darry died - if I’d been paying attention, if I hadn’t been on the phone, if I’d heard him shaking the bottle of aspirin.  Or maybe I did hear it and thought it was just one of his toys that rattled.  I had gone over that day so many times that I could no longer remember what was real and what wasn’t.  The one part I remembered clearly was the one part I wanted most to forget �" Darry’s little hands clenched and his face turning redder while he tried to breathe, and me with my fingers in his mouth trying to get the cap of the bottle out of his throat. 

    

     At home, my mom rarely left her bedroom, and would stand stricken when she did venture out and came across a toy or a photo or anything that reminded her of Darry.  That was when Mom still noticed things.  She told me I looked like a junkie, like a walking skeleton, and then her eyes would glisten and look panicky, and she would leave the room, as if she forgot what she had been saying.  I could see myself in the mirror; she didn’t have to tell me.  I had always been thin, but I’d turned hunched and gaunt, and flinched when anyone spoke to me, like I was expecting a kick in the belly.  Even my hair had gotten sick �" I normally flung it around and flaunted it in front of those girls at school with bad bleach jobs or that humdrum mousy color.  My hair used to be my favorite feature, all glossy and a rich, deep red.  Just like Darry’s.  Now, when I showered, I had to clean the drain out from all the hair that was falling out.  And what wasn’t falling out was dry and dead-looking.

     Dad was always working, and even when he was home he was like a shadow.  I spent most of my time at home sitting on the couch, reading and chewing on the ends of my hair.  I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep �" eventually I couldn’t do much of anything but wade through each day with the help of whatever drug I’d taken.  Speed, if I could get it, was my drug of choice.  Then bennies or grass to make me sleep.  I kept my stash in a bottle with a child-proof cap, not that it did any good now.     

     When I stole that first kid, the world opened up into a big burst of energy and color, like I woke up on the inside of a kaleidoscope. Stealing kids was like another drug, one that gave me a few minutes of thinking everything could go back to the way it was, that I could fix things.  And then the drug would wear off and I’d be just Carly, with the stringy hair and bad skin and clothes that hung shapelessly off a too-skinny, too-short body, carrying someone else’s little brother or sister in my arms. 

    

     Jameson’s Grocery is where they caught us, finally.  A little baby girl and I snuck away from her mother while she was digging for mixed vegetables in the freezer section.  We were in the baby food aisle, looking at jars of pureed peas and carrots.

     “What about peaches, baby, do you like peaches?” I asked her.  Her eyes were half-closed and drowsy from being all bundled up in one of those infant snowsuits that have a hood and attached mittens.  It was pink.  That’s how I knew she was a girl.  I hiked her up on my hip a little and picked up a jar of peaches.  The thinner I got, the heavier the babies seemed.

     I put the peaches back on the shelf.  That’s when I noticed the security guard at the end of the aisle.  He was about fifty, with a paunch, and had a pack of Marlboro’s sticking out of his shirt pocket.  I knew I could outrun him, but I didn’t think I could do it and carry the kid at the same time. 

     He started walking toward me, saying something into the radio clipped to his collar.  I looked toward the other end of the aisle, and saw the store manager coming from that direction.  So we sat down, right there on the floor in the middle of the baby food aisle.  I propped her on my knees and let her hold onto my fingers, and we waited.

     “Whatcha got there, hon?” the security guard said.  “Why don’t you give her to me? Her momma’s real worried about her.”

     He was speaking softly, I guess to not panic the other shoppers, but maybe to keep me from panicking, too.

     “What’s her name?” I asked them, my voice cracking a little.

     “Well, I’m not sure, honey,” he said, motioning toward the store manager, “but I’ll find out if you let Ed here give her back to her mother.”

     I raised my hands a little, the baby still hanging on to my fingers, to let the store manager know he could take her.  He put his hands under the baby’s arms and lifted her away from me.  It felt cold, that little spot where she’d been snuggled into me.  Her fingers held onto mine until we were out of reach of each other.  It must have frightened her, since her eyes opened and she started whimpering.  The store manager hurried away with her, leaving me alone with the out-of-shape security guard.

     He sat down next to me.  “Why don’t you tell me your name, honey?”

     “Carly.”

     “Carly, what’s your last name?”

     I just sat there, looking across the aisle at the bottom row.  Canisters of baby formula, extra stock of what was on the shelves at eye-level.  I started counting the number of letters on each label.  E-N-F-A-M-I-L.  Seven letters.  S-I-M-I-L-A-C.  Seven letters again.

     “It’s pretty serious, taking a baby, you know that, don’t you?”

      “Yeah.”  I couldn’t look at his face, so I looked at his uniform.  “Roy” was printed neatly on his nametag.

     “Why don’t we get up and go talk about it in the office?”

     “Sure.”  I didn’t seem to have the energy now to get up.

     Roy stood, his knees straining and popping, and offered me his hand.  I took it and let him haul me up from the floor.  He put one hand on my shoulder and steered me to the back of the store, between displays of Wheat Thins and Cheez-its, past the cold section where they kept the seafood, and into his office.

     “We’ve already called the police, Carly.  They should be here soon.”

     I looked around the room.  It was small, like it had once been a storage closet that got converted into an office.  There was a metal desk, and a couple of chairs in front of it, some bulletins tacked to a corkboard, and a calendar on one of the walls.  Roy motioned to one of the chairs. “Sit down, please.”

     I half expected him to cuff me to the chair, though I don’t think he had a pair of handcuffs.  I didn’t see anything hanging from his belt, just a cell phone and a flashlight. 

     Roy sat down in the chair behind the desk, leaned back and crossed his hands across his belly.  “So, Carly, why don’t you tell me why you took that little baby?”

     “Where is she, back with the mother?”

     “That’s right, Carly, she is back with her mother.  Isn’t that where she should be?”

     “I dunno.  Maybe.”  I didn’t mean to sound sullen, but I didn’t have the answers to the questions he was asking me.

     “How old are you, Carly?”

     “Nineteen.”

     Roy sighed and leaned forward to pull a pen from the mug on his desk. He opened a drawer and took out a form, one of those jobs that has white, yellow, and pink copies. 

     “This is an incident report, Carly.  I have to fill it out for the police, but I’ll need you to tell me who you are and where you live.”

     I nodded, wanting to cooperate now.

     “Carly Jenkins.  479 El Dorado Court.  Parents are Dwight and Pamela.”

     “You want I should call your parents now, Carly?”

     I thought about Darry, about my parents, and shook my head no.  Roy sat down the pen and looked at me.  “You know they will find out eventually, don’t you?”

     I closed my eyes and thought about the dull look in my mother’s eyes, and said, “Yes.  I know.  But not yet.  Please.”

     Roy filled out the rest of the form, the pen scratching on the page as he described what had happened in his own words.  He paused once in a while, read over what he’d written, and added a little more.  When he was done, he signed and dated the bottom, then said, “You’ll get a chance to tell the officers what happened when they take you to the station, Carly.” 

     “I don’t know any more what happened.”

     Roy looked at me and his eyes softened a little.  “You didn’t hurt anybody, hon, so you’ve got that going for you.  Just tell the truth when they ask you questions.”

    

     The rest of the day is a blur.  I remember the cops showing up and putting me into the back of their cruiser.  This time I did get handcuffed.  I kept looking at all the silver things �" the handcuffs as they put them on me, their shiny buttons, their badges.  It seemed like I had cotton in my ears, from the muffled way everything sounded to me. 

     At the station I was kept in a room, and interviewed by a couple of men, then a woman.  She wanted me to call her “doctor.”  I saw my parents there - my mother hadn’t even bothered to brush her hair before coming to the police station.

     The cops were using the words “kidnapping” and “abduction.”  I explained to them how I always took the babies back.  This made them stop talking for a moment, then ask me gently, “How many babies, Carly?”

     I told them that I didn’t remember, that I didn’t take them for very long, sometimes the mother didn’t even notice. 

     “Did you take them all back, Carly, all of them?” asked the lady doctor.

     “Yeah.  I guess.  I mean, yeah, I did.  I didn’t keep any of them, if that’s what you mean.”

     The lady doctor left, then, and I heard her in the hallway talking to my parents.  I heard Darry’s name, and my mother talking about how I didn’t eat much anymore, didn’t spend time with my old friends.  I put my head down on the table and tried to clear the fog in my head.

 

     That was six months ago.  My parents come to visit me every weekend.  I didn’t go to jail, not exactly.  I’m in the place where the lady doctor works, what they call a Rehabilitation Facility, but I know it’s just a nice name for where they lock up people like me.  Mom wears makeup when she and Dad come for visits.  She brings me new pajamas and then fusses around my room.  My father brings me books and toffees and talks about baseball.  They hold hands when they leave.   

     I wish I minded this place, sometimes.  I wish I wanted to get out.  But I have a nice view of the woods from the window in my room, and the nurses let me go visit the younger kids whenever I want.  It’s a part of my therapy, the lady doctor tells me.  What kind of therapy it is, I don’t know, since I still sneak them away for walks, or back to my room for naps.  When I tell her about this, she doesn’t say anything, just scribbles something on her notepad, then smiles and asks me another question about Darry.