by Kitty Murphy

Created on: August 01, 2008

I am one year old. Alone in the crib, the wooden slats make an erie pattern on the flowered wallpaper. I look out sideways my head sweaty and turned on my ear, my bottle dripping warm milk into my mouth where it pools inside my cheek. I swallow hungrily. My eyes dart about settling on the lampshade. A muted red light slants through the crib slats, through the darkened air and upon the sheer curtains.

Outside on the fire escape, my father watches. He is slightly drunk and weaves backwards against the railing nearly falling over nearly dropping thirty stories to his death. Why does she have a red light in the baby's room he wonders? Why is everything pink? How will I get in? He tries the sliding glass door silently, gently trying to push it sideways, nothing. He looks. There is a broom stick stuck in the track to keep intruders out. He swears under his breath. An intruder he scoffs sadly and then angrily. It's her that's made me an intruder in my own home. I'll teach her a lesson she won't forget. That baby. She's mine.

He looked at the tiny girl and knew he shouldn't do what he was about to do but once the idea had lodged in his mind this mornign there was no shaking it loose. He would steal his daughter and bring the child to his own mother hiding her there. NO! It wasn't stealing, how could he steal what was already his own?

I look through the pinkish curtains and see the shadow of a man. I'm scared, terrified even. "Mama"! I cry out, my eyes wide now and alarmed! Be quiet, go to sleep she yells at me. I start to whimper softly, the bottle now forgotten soaking the sheet next to and under my ear as the nipple slips from my mouth and drips drips drips. My mouth is open in a silent scream, a tiny "O" that smells like milk. The curtains shift, I see a fist bashing against the door again and again. "Mama! Mama"!

Now I stand, on short chubby legs, my knees nearly buckling in a wild frightened dance, I scream as the banging continues, rattling the bars of my crib the sound of the intruder drowned out by my hysterical calls. Mama hollers back at me, "Stop that banging! Go to sleep!"

The glass shatters. Razor sharp slivers of it fly into my crib and a sharp pain cuts my tiny head just missing my right eye. I am petrified now, jumping up and down in the crib, a hand grabs me roughly tosses me into the air and then grasps me tightly, roughly. It is the shadow from behind the glass. The man!

Finally Mama rushes into the room, grabs the red light and hits the man screaming and hitting, hitting and yelling. He drops me his hands fly up to protect his own face, my arm hurts and hangs limply, I cannot move it but still I manage to crawl under the crib where broken shards make their way into my tiny palms, it hurts.

The shadow is gone, back out into the night onto the fire escape and down the metal stairs. Mama is sobbing, reaching for me she pulls me out by my broken arm but I am too scared to cry anymore. My eyes stare blankly at the red light lying on the floor, the red bulb buring a hole in the humpty dumpty shade. I suck on a bloody thumb. Mama rocks me and cries.

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