Lullabies for Little Criminals

“If I’d had parents who were adults, I probably would never have been called Baby. The little stores on St. Catherine Street I made Jules walk me past always had gold necklaces with pendants that said ‘Baby.’ My heart skipped a beat whenever I heard it in a song. I loved how people got confused when Jules and I had to explain how it wasn’t just a nickname. It was an ironic name. It didn’t mean you were innocent at all. It meant you were cool and gorgeous. I was only a kid, but I was looking forward to being a lady with that name.”

Here, Baby explains the origins of her name. She says that it’s a result of her parents being young when they had her. Jules is still a young father, and he’s never matured into his role. Baby takes pride in her name because she imagines the new meaning it will take when she becomes a woman, but she admits that she’s currently just a child. This fact becomes clearer as the novel progresses, and Baby is forced to make adult decisions from a child’s vantage point. Her name represents the fact that she’s still just a baby, even when she’s taking adult actions.

“I wasn’t sure whether or not she was joking, so I laughed loudly and briefly. My laugh sounded different than usual, as if I were laughing in a room with no furniture. I was still uncomfortable with the idea of sex. When I first heard of French kissing, I thought it was something that only mental patients and the kids who failed grade four would do when they grew up.”

Before this moment, Marika told Baby how she’s been having sex with men for money. Baby doesn’t know how to respond, so she laughs awkwardly. This reveals how the environment around her is constantly trying to rip her from childhood and make her grow up before her time. It also shows how she doesn’t have any good role models in her life. Her dad is absent most of the time, and Marika, a girl who Baby used to consider a friend, is now doing things that she doesn’t want to be part of.