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It\u2019s night.\u00a0 They\u2019re in a chapel that isn\u2019t a chapel.\u00a0 It\u2019s just like the dream she\u2019s been dreaming for a long time now. \u00a0But this isn\u2019t a dream.\u00a0 It\u2019s as real as their kissing a moment ago, the two of them — she in her lavender hair up against the wall in the alley behind the club her boyfriend\u2019s brother manages, her boyfriend in his new bomber jacket up against her and both of them laughing.\u00a0 Santi bit her lip just a little.\u00a0 She can still taste the blood, but it\u2019s nothing.\u00a0 It made them laugh.\u00a0 You have two drinks and that\u2019s what happens.\u00a0 You laugh.<\/p>\n
When they heard the baby crying, they stopped, looked up and down the alley and couldn\u2019t figure it out.\u00a0 No apartments, just an alley in the Warehouse District where the clubs are.\u00a0 She took Santi\u2019s hand, the way she would at a scary movie, and they walked down the alley away from the club\u2019s back door, slowly, quietly and listening.\u00a0 The baby kept crying.\u00a0 When they reached the building where the sound was coming from, they stopped.<\/p>\n
It was just another warehouse, but the lock had been cut with bolt cutters, and it was — they were sure of it — a baby crying.\u00a0 Were its parents hiding in the building, here without documents, and they couldn\u2019t stop its crying?\u00a0 It didn\u2019t sound like that.\u00a0 It sounded like someone had left the baby alone.\u00a0 How she knew this, Lily wasn\u2019t sure — maybe her nieces when they were babies — but her boyfriend had to be thinking the same because, instead of saying, \u201cNone of our business, Lily,\u201d he slid the big door open.\u00a0 For a moment, the crying stopped.\u00a0 Then it began again, and they walked carefully into the darkness until their eyes adjusted and they saw what shouldn\u2019t have been there.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like a little church, but not a church.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t any stained-glass windows, but in the light of dozens of candles — ones that have been burning a long time, some just melty puddles of wax — you can see an altar, just like a little chapel\u2019s, an old metal cross on a stand, little glass cups full of something like wine, a flat piece of cold stone, and on it, without a blanket, a baby twisting and crying.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to see in the candle light, but the baby looks big to Lily — not newborn, a year at least — but that doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 It\u2019s on its back, naked, arms and legs turning in the dim light, and it\u2019s crying the way all babies do.<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t want to step closer, or does she?\u00a0 Santi takes a step himself, so she does too, and, with her hand in his again, they walk toward it. \u00a0In the flickering candle light, they\u2019ll be able to see the baby, the altar, better, and they do — and it\u2019s terrible.<\/p>\n
The baby is bleeding from its mouth, from the palms of its hands, and from the top of its naked feet.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a weird painting, Lily thinks, but it\u2019s moving.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a painting, and you can smell the blood\u2014 — that smell you don\u2019t forget even when the blood is just your own.<\/p>\n
At first you think it\u2019s drool or spit-up.\u00a0 Babies do that, but there\u2019s so much, and, if you look closely, you know it\u2019s blood.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t black like paint.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t clear like water. \u00a0Even in the yellow candlelight you can tell it\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n
The baby\u2019s hands, making the funny arm movements babies make, have smeared the blood all over its little chest.<\/p>\n
She looks at her boyfriend and he looks back.\u00a0 What\u2019s Santi thinking?\u00a0 Is he thinking the same thing she\u2019s thinking?\u00a0 Is he thinking:<\/p>\n
The baby is bleeding.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going to stop.\u00a0 It\u2019s been bleeding a long long time, and it never dies.\u00a0 It always has enough blood.\u00a0 It\u2019s bleeding forever, and it\u2019s bleeding not because someone cut it, but because it was born this way, to bleed and not stop, world without end\u2026..<\/em><\/p>\n She can tell by his eyes, which are staring at her as if he\u2019s listening, as if he\u2019s hearing what she\u2019s thinking, too:<\/p>\n When was he born<\/em>?<\/p>\n A thousand years ago, Lily. \u00a0Can\u2019t you feel it?<\/em><\/p>\n He\u2019s a mistake, isn\u2019t he.\u00a0 He shouldn\u2019t have been born at all\u2026.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n But he\u2019s here, Lily. \u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s in this warehouse.\u00a0 Why?<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know. \u00a0We\u2019ll never know, Santi.\u00a0 Maybe this is a dream.\u00a0 Maybe in this dream we put him here and we forgot we did?<\/em><\/p>\n You don\u2019t really think that.<\/em><\/p>\n No, I don\u2019t\u2026.\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t have anyone except us now. \u00a0We found him, so he has us, right<\/em>?<\/p>\n At that moment, the universe lurching like thunder, Lily remembers the baby — <\/em>the one whose body she never saw, the one that bleeds forever in her dreams, that came out of her body and wasn\u2019t Santi\u2019s.\u00a0 Before<\/em> Santi.\u00a0 The father, no older than her, denying it. \u00a0But it was hers<\/em>, her baby, so she can\u2019t forget it.<\/p>\n But that baby was different.\u00a0 It was born dead.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember a baby like this,\u201d she announces, and the words — spoken now out loud, and loudly, over the baby\u2019s crying — make them both jump, hurt her throat, make Santi blink as if stinging his eyes.\u00a0 \u201cI know you don\u2019t want to hear this, Santi, but before us<\/em>\u2026. \u201c<\/p>\n When she finishes, he doesn\u2019t run, he doesn\u2019t take a step back, doesn\u2019t hate her.\u00a0 None of the things she was afraid of.\u00a0 He stands there touching her arm gently as she stops talking, and together they listen to the baby crying in the candle-lit corner of the big, dark warehouse.<\/p>\n When she steps toward the baby, to pick it up, he doesn\u2019t stop her.\u00a0 But when the baby screams even louder in her arms, as if she\u2019s hurting it, as if it it doesn\u2019t want to be touched by anyone, he makes her put it back down on the stone and takes her hand.\u00a0 In an eerie voice — as if he understands something that she doesn\u2019t quite yet — he says, \u201cHe isn\u2019t ours to take.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got to leave him here.\u201d\u00a0 Then he leads her back to the club where no one can see the blood on her in the dim lighting, and where, if he guards the bathroom door, she can clean the blood from her face where she kissed the baby, not wanting to let it go.<\/p>\n Years later, she will remember that this night — this night and what she told\u00a0Santi in that warehouse — was their beginning, hers and Santi\u2019s, all these years together, three children now, even if later that night, when they went back, they couldn\u2019t find the big door with the cut lock, couldn\u2019t hear the baby\u2019s crying even though they returned every night for a week to the alley, couldn\u2019t find out why there had been those little cups by the altar full of something that also glistened red in the candlelight, something that might help you live forever.<\/p>\n Where\u2019s the baby now?<\/em> she will wonder.\u00a0 Where\u2019s my baby now?<\/em><\/p>\n