Baby Hater

by C.V. Hunt

people there made me want to vomit and my soul felt like it had cancer any time I had to be near those types of people. I’d considered assaulting an infant there a few times, but I always talked myself out of it, knowing I would be too chicken shit and paranoid to return afterward and enjoy a movie.

  The day of the meeting I parked behind the movie theater near the back exit. I was five minutes early, but wanted to scope out the place to make sure everything was still as it had always been. There were tons of other storefronts housing small, posh businesses and they relocated frequently. The foot traffic was light because of the cold.

  I pulled on a knit hat and gloves, unsure of how long I would be sitting outside. I kept my head down and walked past the meeting point. The fountain was off due to the weather, but the structure was tall enough without the gushing water to obstruct the view of the bench from the box office. An elderly woman in a gaudy, over-sized fur coat sat at one end of the bench and watched me until I disappeared around the fountain. I ignored her as I passed.

  I approached the box office and read the scrolling marquee. I noticed a movie I had forgotten about was playing. I bought a ticket for the show. It began in two and half hours. I sat on the bench, opposite the old hag, and pocketed my ticket.

  The old woman checked her watch and said, “One minute to spare. I figured you’d be late. You young people have no consideration for punctuality.”

  I guffawed and shook my head. I looked around at the few people milling about. Most of them hurried from one store to another, trying to escape the icy wind.

  “I don’t think it would’ve mattered if I was an hour late,” I said. “It’s so fucking cold I’d be surprised if anyone would be stupid enough to take their baby outside.”

  She said, “Such language.”

  I sighed. “Am I really going to get a lesson on morals from someone who punches infants?”

  She let out a small, dry laugh. She eyed two teen girls who scuttled by. Her thin lips warped into a grimace as she observed them.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Prudence,” she said.

  I laughed.

  She glared at me and crossed her arms. “Does my name amuse you?”

  “Yeah,” I managed in between laughs.

  “I imagine you have an original name,” she said. “It’s probably Brittney but it’s spelled with five ‘T’s and an ‘I’ on the end.”

  “That’s the generation being born,” I said. “Everyone thinks their baby is special and needs a unique name. My name’s not important.” I laid my arm on the back of the bench casually. “Before I send you back into retirement I have to ask: why’ve you been screwing up my gig? Everything was going smooth until you showed up. You’ve really thrown a wrench in things. Wouldn’t it be best to leave this to the professional? I mean, I am faster and stronger than you.”

  She appraised me for a second and gave me a friendly smile. “Girly, you have no idea what you’re doing. I’m seventy-two years-old. I’ve been slapping kids around my whole life. I was the oldest of nine siblings and my parents both worked two jobs to keep food on the table. I was the second mother in my childhood home and in charge of disciplining my own siblings. Once I was old enough, I got married to get away from screaming kids.”

  Prudence stopped talking when a man in a business suit marched by with his shoulders hunched against the cold.

  She continued with her story. “As much as I loved my husband I didn’t want to have children. I’d had enough of being a mother for my parents. But those were different times. Birth control was discouraged. And women sure as heck didn’t say they didn’t want children. I tried putting it off as long as I could but ended up having five children to satisfy my husband.”

  A woman carrying a preschool sized child hurried up to the box office. We both eyed her but knew the rules applied to children under the age of one.

  Prudence leaned toward me and said, “My kids were unruly brats and back then spanking was acceptable. I whipped their behinds when they did something wrong.” She leaned back to her original spot. “But then they grew up. You’d think it would have been my chance to enjoy a little peace and quiet for once with no children.” She shook her head. “No. My children started having babies right away. And they brought their ungrateful brats to my house for free babysitting. By that time spanking was frowned upon and I wasn’t allowed to correct them.” She sighed heavily. “Kids these days have an overwhelming sense of entitlement. I’m certain if their parents would’ve given them a good wallop now and again when they whined about not having the latest technological gadget they might’ve had a chance of growing up to be decent human beings. Can you image what the next generation is going to be like? A whole generation raised by entitled jerks and they have entertainment at their fingertips with those expensive iPad things. They post every little idiotic thought on the interweb for a bunch of other idiots to validate them and tell them they’re intelligent. The world is falling apart. And I’ve been deprived of correcting the mess for close to twenty-five years. I know what I’m doing isn’t going to fix anything, but at least I’ll die knowing I’ve gotten a little revenge on the generation that’s ruining society.”

  A group of people trickled out of the theater. Most of them were teenagers and they moved on to a couple of the restaurants nearby. The girls were lumped into groups and complained about the temperature while thumbing away at their smart phones. The boys were in groups of twos and talking and joking loudly, probably to draw the attention of the girls. There were a few young couples, a smattering of lone people in their thirties, but no infants. The movie theater was a terrible choice. No one brought an infant to a movie. And if they did, they deserved to be punched in the face.

  “This is a terrible place to find a baby,” I said.

  “It’ll happen,” she said.

  I buried my hands deep into my pockets, trying to keep them warm. The bench was so cold it made my butt feel numb.

  She said, “What’s your story?”

  I recalled my failed marriages and the husbands who couldn’t accept my infertility. I told her about how I was doing it for all the women who felt the way I did. She listened to me without interruption and constantly looked around, waiting for someone to show up with a baby. I was in the middle of recalling every punch and staring at a group of teenage girls in the coffee shop across the way when our target appeared.

  10

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Prudence stopped moving her head around listlessly. I didn’t think anything of it and kept recounting each of my attacks. Prudence stood up abruptly and took off in a jog. I was so engrossed in my story that my first thought was that it was rude of her to leave in the middle of a conversation. Then I saw the stroller.

  An elderly woman slowly pushed a stroller down the walk in between the stores and restaurants. She seemed to be having difficulties walking and didn’t take notice of Prudence running toward her. I assumed the elderly woman was the infant’s grandmother.

  I bolted off the bench and chased after Prudence.

  My plan was to pass her and punch the baby first since I was younger and faster. But as if she’d sensed I was almost on her, she threw off her fur coat to reveal her costume underneath. Her coat landed directly in front of me and I tripped over it. I didn’t have time to throw out my hands to catch myself and I took the brunt of the fall on my right elbow. An electric current shot through my arm when my funny bone made contact with the pavement. I couldn’t stay on the ground. I got back to my feet quickly and saw Prudence closing in on the baby.

  I sprinted toward her, trying to make a fist with my right hand, but the blow my elbow had taken kept me from clenching my fingers. Each time I tried to make a fist excruciating pain ran through my arm. I was going to have to throw the punch left-handed.

  The elderly woman spotted Prudence, stopped walking, and began shouting at her. She knew what was going to happen. At this point I had no sympathy for anyone dumb enoug
h to bring a baby out in public knowing there was a serial baby puncher still on the loose. And who in their right mind would take a child out in this type of weather? This woman was dumb and if the baby was related to her it was going to grow up and have about as much common sense as she did.

  The grandmother said, “Oh no you don’t! Oh no you don’t!” She was shuffling as quickly as her frail body would move to protect the baby. She screamed, “Police! Police!”

  I didn’t see anyone else on the walkway and I pushed myself to catch up with Prudence. I slammed into her twenty feet from the stroller. We both hit the ground hard. Prudence’s dentures flew out of her mouth on contact and clattered across the concrete. I groped at her with my painful and useless right arm to keep her on the ground. I tried to get up.

  The grandmother yelled, “Yeah, kick her old withered ass!”

  It occurred to me the grandmother thought I was a Good Samaritan and had stopped the Baby Hater. As I tried to scramble away from Prudence she grabbed my ankle and I went down again. I reached back to pry her boney fingers off my ankle. She pulled herself toward me and head-butted me.

  I saw a flash of red and my vision became disoriented. I felt dizzy as I tried to get to my feet. I gave up and began to crawl toward the stroller. The stupid grandmother still stood in front of the stroller