He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  “He belong to the lady down the hall,” Disco Girl said. “She ask me to watch her baby. He be with us a couple of days.”

  “Where did the mother go?” Cosgrove said.

  “Socializing,” Disco Girl said.

  “Do you have any children of your own?” Cosgrove said.

  “Seven,” Agnes said.

  “I got three babies,” Disco Girl added.

  “Three children at your age?” Cosgrove said.

  “More than that soon. That’s what we do, me and my mother. We make babies.” She took a wallet from the front pocket of her jeans and yanked a yellow slip of paper from it. “This my pay stub from my last job. I worked at Burger King. See? Forty dollar for workin’ five, six hour a day. I got tired makin’ hamburgers. I came home here and made babies.”

  “Where is your husband?” Cosgrove said.

  “Which one?”

  “You had a child and you were not married to the man?” Cosgrove said.

  “Wha’?”

  “Blasphemy! You don’t make babies like they are hamburgers,” Cosgrove said. “God in his wisdom allows you to carry a baby. But you don’t make a baby.”

  “I don’t make no baby?” Disco Girl said.

  “Never!”

  “You say I don’t make no baby?”

  “No.”

  She left the room and just as quickly bulled her way back in with her arms filled with manila envelopes. “All my business. My official records.” She began to look inside one envelope that was particularly bulging.

  “You little man tellin’ me I don’t make no baby?”

  “God makes babies.”

  She pulled a picture of a black baby out of the envelope.

  “This be my youngest son, Kuaran,” she said. “He be black.”

  Cosgrove, who had no idea of what to say, went to the basics. “Where is the father of the child?”

  “Lives way down on Tenth Street.”

  She pulled another picture out. “This be my next son. You know his name? He be Junior José. His father’s Spanish. See the baby? Don’t he look Spanish? I make me a Spanish baby!”

  Cosgrove spoke calmly, for he was forming a vision. “Where is the father of that child?”

  “Father’s name be José Ríos. He work in a gas station on Southern Boulevard.”

  Now Disco Girl, with a huge smile, pulled out another picture. She clapped it to her bosom. “Now guess what else I be makin’’?”

  Cosgrove said nothing.

  Disco Girl flashed a picture of a small dark baby girl with Oriental eyes.

  “Chinee baby!”

  The mother cackled.

  “Made me a Chinee baby,” Disco Girl said.

  “She sure do,” the mother said. “I call the baby ‘Mi Ma.’”

  Disco Girl laughed uproariously. “Her name be Latasha Yee. That’s her father’s name. Yee.”

  “You simply go around and make babies?” Cosgrove said incredulously.

  Disco Girl chortled. “You know what I make next time?”

  Cosgrove was unable to answer.

  “White baby!”

  Everybody in the room shrieked wildly and Cosgrove, smiling, waited for the noise to subside. He said that he realized that of course they were lying to him. Disco Girl took this as a challenge.

  “I make one with you.”

  The mention of the greatest of sins, the tempting of a priest, even the slightest banter about a matter of such gravity, caused Cosgrove to seek some way out of the conversation. For he had no way to turn this upside down and say how marvelous it was. Therefore, he asked, “Where are the babies? I’d love to see them.”

  “They got taken away.”

  “By whom?”

  “The BCW come last June.”

  “What’s the BCW?”

  “You don’t know BCW? Bureau of Child Welfare. You never heard of that? The BCW come in here and they say my little girl was sexually abused. They take her to Cumberland Hospital and they shove Q-Tips and all up her and they say she sexually abused.”

  Cosgrove held himself together and said nothing.

  Agnes shook her head. “I catch her playin’ with herself. Any scratches and that they find inside, I say she do that to herself.”

  Cosgrove said quietly, “I think these things are best said in the secrecy of the confessional.”

  “No secret,” Disco Girl said. “The BCW say it right out loud.”

  “They come in here with the cops and they call my nephew a faggot,” Agnes said. The young man in the corner was running his fingers through his hair.

  “Then they take all the kids,” Disco Girl said.

  “They take my youngest daughter, too,” Mother Agnes said. “She the only one I had at home. They took her and they would’ve took Baby Rock except he don’t live here now. He got his own place to live. There was no reason be takin’ the one baby I had here except when they take away a child for sexual abuse, they take all the other children out of the house.”

  “How many children did you say you had?” Cosgrove asked her.

  “Seven. One got killed. He got stabbed to death on Washington and Myrtle. They didn’t find the murderer yet.”

  “He got stabbed thirty-two times front and back. It was on the radio,” Disco Girl said.

  While Cosgrove found he was much more comfortable dealing with murder and he asked many questions about this, including the present state of the investigation, he reminded himself that he had an issue to discuss with them that was far more important. “Where is your husband?” Cosgrove asked.

  Mother Agnes took a drag on her cigarette. “Men don’t be stayin’ around. They can’t get good jobs, so they be usin’ that as an excuse to run away from their own child. They got to be makin’ a baby. Make them feel strong. But they don’t want to stay and help the woman with the baby. I sure do know that. I was with four different men and had babies with all of them. First thing they do, they wait till you turn around to fix the baby and then they be runnin’.”

  “How old could you be to have all these children?” Cosgrove asked.

  “Thirty-four,” Agnes said.

  “And you’re a grandmother?”

  “Sure am. I be makin’ babies since I be sixteen goin’ on seventeen. When I was workin’ at the man’s hardware store on Fulton Street, he say to me that I’m too stupid to make change right. I went home from that man’s store and made me a baby.”

  “At sixteen? You didn’t know what you were doing,” Cosgrove said.

  “Sure did.”

  Disco Girl clapped her hands. “We all know that. I knew when I was eleven. Had an abortion when I was fourteen.”

  “I don’t like abortions,” her mother said.

  “Thank God! That is the worst sin. The murder of a baby! A baby is human from the moment the sperm reaches the egg.” He patted Agnes on the shoulder. “You give me hope.”

  Agnes nodded. “I told her, Disco Girl, don’t you be havin’ no more abortions. You be havin’ all the babies you want. I don’t want to hear nothin’ about abortions.”

  “So I be havin’ babies,” Disco Girl said. “I waited to have a baby until I was fifteen. That’s a long time. From eleven to fifteen waitin’ to have a baby. Then one day the teacher in school say to me, ‘You can’t take typin’. You too dumb even to spell right on a typewriter.’ I went home and never did go back there. Then I read in the supermarket paper that comes out with all the great stories in it that if a lady don’t have a baby by a certain age, she gonna be deformed by havin’ the baby. I read that and I say, Disco Girl’s not gonna be deformed. Disco Girl gonna have herself a baby right now. And I did.”

  “And you don’t practice any birth control,” Cosgrove said.

  “Wha’?”

  Now Cosgrove leaped in with his vision. “To give an anchor,” he said, voice rising, “a solid base. A cornerstone.” He made a fist and shook it. “To do this, and allow a whole community to see your example, I think that we
should have everybody here who has children get married on the same day that the boy here gets married.”

  “You mean Baby Rock? Why him? He got no babies of his own.”

  “I found this … urchin! … sleeping with a young woman of perhaps childbearing age.”

  “You mean Baby Rock fuck some girl?”

  Cosgrove could not answer.

  “Make it sound like he strangle somebody. They sure don’t put you in jail for that. Fuckin’ some little lady ain’t like stranglin’ somebody.”

  Baby Rock giggled.

  “What good marryin’ gonna do us at dinnertime?” Mother Agnes said. “We get more food if we get married? The social worker don’t say that.”

  “To be perfectly truthful with you, it’s the soul I worry about. But, dear God, if there is an ounce of sanity in this universe, somebody will hear God and take care of you, I should certainly think.”

  “Food don’t think,” Mother Agnes said. “Food be makin’ you growlin’ when you ain’t got it.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “We sittin’ here hungry and you want Baby Rock get married, too?”

  “Yes. Think of it. You and your two children, Disco Girl, Baby Rock. Three of you married at the same time. Think of the message that will give to this entire community.”

  “You get the food and get all our babies back from the BCW and for sure we get married for you,” Mother Agnes said.

  “Of course,” Cosgrove said. He jumped to his feet. “I’ll be at this first off tomorrow.” He was elated, and also apprehensive as he saw that Great Big had his hand on Disco Girl’s behind. Cosgrove decreed that it was time to leave. Disco Girl said she would escort them all out of the building, which Cosgrove appreciated, but with wariness. He walked between Great Big and Disco Girl.

  Disco Girl walked them down the hall and looked in a door that was partly open. “Excuse me, Lydia, can you buy chicken wings?”

  Inside, Lydia sat in a blue robe and snowboots. She had a white wool hat pulled down to her eyes. She sat on a broken couch that had originally been used in an office someplace. A yellow sheet covered the window. On her lap was a baby about two years old. Lydia’s middle showed a bulge; she was obviously pregnant.

  “Chicken wings?” Lydia said. “All I have is change.”

  “Where you keep it?” Disco Girl said.

  “In the envelope with the papers in the closet.”

  Disco Girl opened the closet door and reached up. She took change out of an envelope. “We got about sixty-five cents. I was thinkin’ of goin’ out and buyin’ three dollars’ worth.”

  “What kind of chicken?” Lydia said.

  “Chicken that you fry,” Disco Girl said.

  “We’re going to have to wait,” Lydia said. “I called the New Opportunity Hot Line and they said somebody was coming over here anyway so they would stop off here. Leave us a few cans of something, I suppose.” She yawned and patted her baby.

  “What time did they say they’d come?” Disco Girl asked.

  “Anytime now,” Lydia said. “My son is outside waiting for them.”

  “Let me see,” Cosgrove said, smiling, “you have a wee one here, a son outside, and —”

  “And one right here,” Lydia said, patting her middle.

  “And no food,” Cosgrove said. “Is your husband out looking?”

  “Husband?”

  “The father of the children.”

  Lydia looked at him in wonderment. “I’m nineteen now. I had my first baby when I was fourteen. The father is Carl Sutton. He was seventeen. He’s away in the Army someplace now. I met him at hip-hop parties. The fast life. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had a baby. His name is Dwayne Edward Reed. He has my mother’s maiden name. I was using my father’s name then and my mother said I was too young to give the baby a name so she had the baby use her name. That’s why my first child is named Dwayne Edward Reed and my name is Lydia Moore. This is my daughter Yolanda.” She patted the sleeping baby in her lap.

  “I didn’t want her. I wanted to do something about her. But then it was too late so I had her. Her father is Leon Smith. I don’t know where he is. He’s home someplace, I guess. I didn’t want Yolanda because my social worker had me going to school and I was doing very well. You might not believe this, but I was doing very well in languages. But I had this baby and I thought that would be it and I would just try and make it through with my two children. And then look what happens to me.”

  “What happens is that you have been living an essentially immoral life,” Cosgrove said. “You have been fornicating. The only thing you can say for yourself is that you have not used abortion or birth control.”

  “I sure haven’t,” she said. “Because this baby here —” she patted her middle — “is one I really want.”

  “You planned an illegitimate baby?” Cosgrove said. “That was very foolish of you because if you gave it such sufficient reflection and full consent of the will, then there is damnable gravity to the sin.”

  “I just wanted the baby. They wouldn’t let me go to school, so I decided I better do something big.”

  “Make her a baby!” Disco Girl shouted.

  “Third year in high school, I left the day before I had my daughter, this one here, Yolanda, and I came right back to school the next week and I passed everything. My social worker said that if I didn’t have any more babies I could go to a college and he would get welfare to pay for day care. So I worked hard all through the last year in school. I took tests and I did very well. One day I went on the BMT to Brooklyn College. They saw my marks there. I was very good in languages. French, Spanish. I thought Brooklyn College would be great for me. It was only one subway token each way. I could save my money and get to school. So then I got a letter. They said I couldn’t go.”

  “What was the reason?” Cosgrove said.

  “Because of my babies.”

  “They would not give you a chance to redeem yourself because of your illegitimate children? Was that an order from the bishop?”

  “Bishop? Bishop doesn’t run that school. I got an order from the state DSS.” Lydia handed the baby to Disco Girl and went to an old dresser and opened the top drawer. Papers were crammed into it and she went through envelopes and folded papers and wrinkled mimeographed forms until she pulled out a letter. “The man in the registrar’s office at the college told me that he would get welfare to pay for day care for my children. He said the welfare should pay double. They were not only helping my children but I was going to go to school and get out of what they call the cycle of dependency. I remember I was so happy. I could get to Brooklyn College for one token each way. Two dollars a day. It was hard. Ten dollars a week, maybe I’d walk home Fridays. That was all right. Then look. Last April, I get this letter.”

  She handed it to Cosgrove. The letter said:

  Under Section 131-a (6) (d) of the New York State Social Services Law, day care in a day-care center, in a family home or in an approved “in-home day care” is provided if the homemaker is receiving occupational training. As attendance at a four-year institution that grants degrees is not the prescribed occupational training, you are not entitled to day care for your children while you attend classes at Brooklyn College. This is, we must stress, a New York State Social Services Law and is not a college regulation.

  The regulation states that if you attend a full-time college, you have relinquished your role as the primary caretaker of the children and are no longer a full-time parent. Therefore, your children, rather than being eligible for day care, should be placed in a foster home program. As previously you stated that you are unable to attend classes at Brooklyn College because of your need for day care, we suggest to you that you enroll in a school that gives occupational training and thus enables you to be eligible for day-care benefits.

  A four-year course at Brooklyn College, with a romance language major, simply is not occupational training. It is our feeling that you should seek enrollment at the Institu
te of Human Resources, where there are many courses for Hospital Dieticians, Nursing Care Specialists, and Teacher’s Aides. You then would be covered under the New York State Social Services Law as one undergoing approved occupational training and thus your children could be placed in day care, and funded for such, while you go on to a richly satisfying career. Thank you very much for thinking of Brooklyn College.

  Lydia sighed and got up. “When I got that letter, I saw they had a law against me attempting to make anything out of my life. So I said, ‘Well, let me just make something that no law can stop me from making. Let me make it all by myself.’”

  “You didn’t make that by yourself,” Cosgrove said. “You committed a sin against the Sixth Commandment by fornicating with a man.”

  “Any man can help you start,” Lydia said. “But I make the baby. Where is it such a sin for me to make a baby?”

  “Without a man to whom you are married in the eyes of God?”

  “Never mind the father.”

  “Where is this man?”

  “Supposed to be home with his wife and children. But he thinks a video game store is his real address.”

  She stood up and proudly showed her bulging midsection. “Wherever the father is, we sure know where the baby is. This is the real human resources administration.”

  “You are using some clerical error as the reason for committing sin,” Cosgrove said.

  “It’s no error. It’s the law. They don’t help you through school unless you promise to become only a beautician or a fry cook in a hospital.”

  “But these are only temporal matters. The Lord said that the poor always shall be with us. It is sin that is the eternal matter. Because of some temporal matter, some grubby school or some such, you decided to go out and risk your soul for all eternity and defied God.”