Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott Page B

got out she was gone.
    “I’m here to see George Washington.” I almost want to laugh. I’m asking about a young black house-robber named for the founder of our country.
It’s no wonder you like to steal
, I’ll tell him,
you’re on every quarter
.
    “What’s your relation?” the lady asks. She’s not pretty, like Camilla, this one. She has wiry black and white hair, piled on her head like a dead nest. She looks dead. She’s old and salty. A safe bet, I suppose, a dead woman.
    “Caseworker,” I tell her. She looks at me skeptically. I’m dressed in black pants and a button-down shirt, my clothes stuck to my skin from the heat outside. “DCFS,” I say, to show I know the lingo, speak the language. State not charity. DCFS as opposed to Board of Ed, or HHS or federal, which would be ridiculous but you never know. As opposed to guardian
ad litem
, for which I would have to be a lawyer. And I’m obviously not family. DCFS is easy enough. Department of Children and Family Services and the family-first policy. Caseworkers change all the time. I went through twelve caseworkers before I was eighteen and didn’t know who was looking after me. Most of them I never met. I’d just see their name on a piece of paper or they’d call to cancel an appointment.
    “They’re in the yard now,” she says. She must have taken this job to pass the time after retiring, because she was bored. She wanted to spend her final years in a penal institution helping to punish bad children. I wait in front of her, behind the long brown partition. I don’t want her to think I’m going to leave and I don’t want her to think I have all day. I’ve thought all my actions through. And I’ve thought that I could fail. I’ve imagined them finding me out, coming to me from the sides and behind with a net, pulling a mask over my head, zipping it from the back, taping my hands to my skull, cinching the net around me, and dragging me along the linoleum floors back into a locked white room with a view of the freeway, and leaving me there. Forgetting me again, this time forever. So I wait, tapping my finger lightly on the countertop.
    She buzzes the glass door next to her and I grip onto the handle and click inside. The air is like a television tuned to static. I follow her past cubicles, each divided with six-foot-high walls of fabric. Some of the cubicles are empty and others contain people sitting at computers entering data or talking into the phone. This is the administrative heart of the detention center but it isn’t necessary. All you need in a jail is inmates and guards. You barely need guards.
    ***
     
    I’m left in a fluorescent room with a table and two chairs, a large ashtray, and a stand with magazines piled across the top of it. I place my notebook on the table and a pencil next to it. Caseworkers always do this. There’s always a notebook. I place my hands behind my head and try to relax.
    The first time my girlfriend was robbed was three months ago. We had only just started dating. I met her at the restaurant where we work. I have a hard time sleeping and she doesn’t like to sleep until morning. She’s in law school at Loyola and she waits tables. I had picked up a second job cashiering at the restaurant to keep me busy at night and because of some trouble I was having. That’s where I met Zahava.
    When she was robbed that time, we were in her bed with the covers off and we heard a sound from outside and she wondered what it was and I said I was sure it was just the cat. When we came out of the room, a few hours later, we were still naked and the bicycle was missing and Zahava’s Guatemalan backpack was in the middle of the floor, the front pocket open, her tip money gone. She shook her head and pulled a Lenny Kravitz album from its sleeve. and lowered the needle onto the vinyl. She would have to get another bicycle. She zipped her bag and placed it on the couch. She turned to me and smiled. Easy come, easy go.
    I pick