Lullabies for Little Criminals

Jules’s paranoid and violent behavior stops Baby from having many friends, since everyone in the neighborhood thinks he’s crazy and they all know he’s her dad. She tries to befriend a girl at school named Lauren, but one day, Lauren comes over for dinner, and Jules drinks too much and starts yelling at Baby in front of her. He says, “You’re a lazy bitch. You try and talk to me like that to impress your friends. You want to look down on me! That’s not how I was fucking raised” (99). Lauren runs out the door. At school the next day, Lauren has clearly told everyone about what happened, because everyone makes fun of her for having a crazy dad.

Jules is at a store, and Baby decides to go to the community center—a place that gives kids a safe and constructive place to hang out rather than getting into trouble on the streets. James, the adult overseer, welcomes Baby into the group, and she feels right at home. Many of the kids are from foster homes or homeless, and they are “the most nonjudgmental kids I’d ever met. They seemed to accept everyone, even me” (104).

The group begins making costumes for a Halloween parade, and this gives Baby something positive to focus on. However, one day a boy named Theo appears, and the group goes crazy yelling at him to leave. Apparently, Theo used to come to the center, but he was kicked out for hitting another kid in the mouth with a hockey stick. Baby remembers hanging out with him once at the swimming pool, and she didn’t think he was such a bad kid.

Theo starts waiting outside the community center every day to harass the kids as the leave. One day, Baby is by herself, and Theo comes up to her. She thinks he’s going to hurt her, but instead they sit down and read a comic together. Theo’s mom comes out of the apartment complex behind them, and it’s clear that she has a mental illness and he’s ashamed of her.

One day, Baby is on her way to the community center, but Theo intersects her and begs her to come to the pool with him. She does, but he ends up getting kicked out for cursing at the other kids. Baby leaves with him, and they go to a park. They sit inside a cement tunnel, and he tells her outlandish stories that remind her of her dad.

Suddenly, Theo’s mom appears at the park. She’s holding a plate of spaghetti and yelling at him. He goes over to her, and she starts punching him and pulling his hair; he just lets her do it. 

Jules is stressed about money and he’s always yelling at Baby. One day, he sends her on a long grocery errand, and when she comes back, he’s torn up her bedroom and her favorite doll—the one that came from her mother: “That doll had been like a miracle to me. It had reminded me that I’d been loved by a mother” (119). Without the doll, she feels worthless, and she’s horribly angry with Jules. She leaves and roams the streets before running into Theo’s mother. She’s being sweet and makes conversation with Baby. She gives Baby a big hug, and Baby accepts it because she’s feeling desperate for affection, although she feels guilty for liking it because she’s such a despicable mother.

One day, Theo finds Baby walking home from the community center. He calls her a snob and twists her arm behind her back: “[…] I felt my shoulder pop. […] My arm was in a new freakish position” (124). He calls her a bitch and runs away, and she manages to get to the front steps of her apartment before fainting. She goes to the hospital for a dislocated arm and comes home with pain pills. All the kids at the center are jealous of her pain medication. 

One day, Baby comes home from the community center with glitter in her hair, and Jules is upset. He bans her from going back, which means she won’t get to participate in the parade. This crushes her. She runs out of the apartment, crying, and sits down on a bench. Theo sits down beside her and comforts her: he puts his arm around her and tells her that everything will be okay.

He tells her that he’s been through worse, and he lifts up his shirt to show her the scars on his back. He says, “I got these when I was a little baby. My mom whipped me with a telephone cord and then poured salt in my cuts. She did that right before she had to go to the hospital. I had to go live in a group home for awhile” (130). Baby suddenly feels very intimate with Theo, as if she can trust him because he trusted her with such a tragic secret.

Lauren walks by them and says something rude to Baby. Theo runs into his apartment and comes back with a kitchen knife. He plots to stab Lauren when she gets out of church, but he gets bored and decides they should go to Lauren’s house instead. Once inside her house, they destroy everything in sight, and Theo steals a comforter to give to his mother.

Lauren talks about how her house was ransacked at school, but no one ever suspects Baby or Theo. Shortly afterwards, Theo is sent away to a foster home because his mom has another breakdown. Baby is sad because she had considered him to be her boyfriend.