Lullabies for Little Criminals

1. One day, Baby overhears Isabelle talking to a social worker about how wild Baby is. Still, Isabelle believes Baby isn’t as wild as Rodney, a boy who needs psychiatric help. Baby brings this up the next times she sees Isabelle, and Isabelle says she has to make Baby sound pathetic in order to get things from the social worker. She gives Baby a toy pony that the social worker left her.

Soon, Baby is surprised to hear that Jules is coming back to take her again. Jules arrives in his friend Lester’s car, and Baby is embarrassed because she doesn’t want Jules to know she’s begun to fit in at the foster home. Baby struggles to adjust to the idea of going back to a permanent home. On the drive back, Jules comments that Baby looks healthy and that he’s surprised how long her hair is.

Baby is surprised to learn that after Jules got out of the hospital, he went to live in a new apartment for a couple months. He reassures her that he just had to take care of a few things, including lining up a job for when his disability pay runs out. He promises he thought of her the whole time.

2. Jules’s new apartment is a small one on Napoleon Street. Baby is happy to be back in Montreal and does things she used to enjoy like going to the local record store. Jules buys a gun off a friend for 10 dollars but doesn’t know where to find bullets. He keeps it in the elastic waistband of his pants, and one day it slips and bruises his toe. Incidents like this worry Baby.

For his 27th birthday, Jules decides to get his first tattoo. Baby worries he’ll get AIDS from a needle, but Jules says she worries too much. He gets a big tattoo on his chest and starts walking around wearing a jacket but no shirt to show it off. One day cops stop him for making people uncomfortable, and they find heroin in his pocket. They take him away in their car.

3. Baby knew that Jules was back on heroin and would get arrested eventually. He didn’t do jail time, which wasn’t common for heroin in Montreal at the time. Still, he has to spend a month at a rehabilitation facility. During this time, Baby goes to live with their neighbor, Mary, a nurse who sometimes babysits Baby. Jules promises he’ll be back for her in a month. The whole time, Baby misses Jules and regrets any mean things she said or did to him.

4. Mary has two sons: Johnny is 18 and Felix is Baby’s age. Felix has a bad reputation at school, and teachers don’t like him. Still, he is nice to Baby and compliments a story she writes for class. Felix does strange things like wearing a sling to school when his arm isn’t injured. He makes Mary check his hair for lice every night.

5. Baby fears people will make fun of her for staying with Mary, Johnny, and Felix, but they’re actually impressed because they think Johnny is cool. Although Johnny is attractive, Baby likes him least because he is the only one who doesn’t seem happy to have her in their house. He torments Baby at home, including one day by forcing her to dance with him, flinging her around the room until he accidentally makes her chip a tooth.

6. Mary takes Baby and Felix to the rehabilitation center where Jules is staying. Baby notices how skinny Jules seems now. He explains to Baby how at rehab certain patients can’t have shoes, to prevent them from escaping. Jules says it’s difficult to stay off drugs in rehab because a dealer named Norman comes to sell drugs by the gate, although Jules doesn’t have money to buy them.

Just then, Jules’s friend Oliver comes over to talk with Baby and Jules. Oliver says that he’s heard from some of the other people in the rehab facility that once the drugs are out of your system, some people start to see angels. Jules and Oliver both wish they could believe in God but aren’t religious. Baby gets jealous of how well Oliver seems to know Jules. She is even more disappointed when she hears that Jules is going to stay at the rehab center for an additional month as a volunteer. As Baby leaves, she almost wishes she was on drugs too, since Oliver and Jules seem happier.

7. Baby remains determined to develop a drug addiction, so she can hang out with Jules the way Oliver does. She thinks that Jules’s drug-using friends all seem nice. The problem is Baby is only 12 and doesn’t know anyone who sells drugs. One day, while Baby is washing her hands in the bathroom, Johnny bursts in to treat a cut he accidentally gave himself with a knife. On an impulse, Baby asks Johnny if he can get her magic mushrooms.

Johnny says Baby is too young for shrooms. He says she’d have to dress different to do drugs. He puts his fingers on her legs and pushes up her skirt, then starts to kiss her. Then he starts to tickle her and teases her that she’s in love with him. He undresses and takes a shower, telling Baby to leave. She wishes she were older.

After Baby has been with Mary for about a month, Mary starts dating a man named Jean-Michel. He’s a Black man that Baby recognizes from around town, where he’s always sitting on a bench near a payphone. She assumed he was a “bum” or a “hobo,” but she eventually decides to stop using those words because they have such a stigma.

Felix talks about Jean-Michel to Baby a lot, unsure how to feel. One day, Jean-Michel tells Mary he has to hide out at her place because a loan shark is after him for 20 dollars he borrowed. Baby asks Jean-Michel about where he lives and whether they should go pick up some things for him. He mentions a building but says they shouldn’t go, because he lives with his mother and doesn’t want any strangers to startle her. Baby can’t tell if he’s lying or not.

Baby likes talking with Jean-Michel because he’s the closest thing she has to Jules. She asks him if he’s ever been in rehab, and he says that because his mind is “his own worst enemy,” it’s like he’s in constant rehab. One day, Baby sees Jean-Michel in front of the liquor store talking to a homeless man. The other man leaves. Baby asks Jean-Michel if he can get her magic mushrooms. He agrees, in exchange for five dollars.

8. One night, Mary goes out with Jean-Michel, leaving Felix and Baby alone. Felix wishes his real dad was still around. He decides to call a teenage help hotline and explains that his mother went out with her boyfriend, leaving him alone—he worries they’ll have such a good time they’ll never come back. The person on the line tries to comfort him and encourages him to write things in a journal. Baby is surprised that Felix is so honest with the hotline, which has different people answer each time. Baby offers her magic mushrooms to cheer Felix up.

At first, Baby feels nothing. Felix gets bored and goes to his room. Soon after, however, the mushrooms kick in for Baby. She goes into Felix’s room and they both feel nauseous. They lie together in bed until everything is calm again. She feels numb and realizes how Jules must feel.