Lullabies for Little Criminals

Baby now lives with Alphonse in a hotel and is addicted to heroin. Staying high keeps her numb to reality: “When I was stoned, I wasn’t cold or sad. I saw things in a lovely way, where everything was brand-new and meaningless” (286). She feels an affinity for heroin because she remembers that Jules always loved her most when he was on it.

Alphonse’s addiction to heroin has overtaken their lives: he makes Baby prostitute herself constantly for drug money, and whenever they’re together he’s high. She hates him, but the little bit of heroin he gives her each day keeps her complacent.

One night, she has sex with Harvey, one of her regular clients. Afterwards, she doesn’t feel like working anymore that night, so she asks him if she can have the money for next time tonight. He agrees, and she decides to take the rest of the night off before she’s supposed to meet Alphonse later. On her way out of the hotel, the woman at the front desk tells her that Jules has been looking for her and that he’s staying at the homeless shelter. Baby feels torn: “It made me sick to my stomach with guilt to think about Jules. I missed him, but I was too afraid to go and see him” (296).

Missing Jules makes her want to get high, so for the first time she uses the money she’s earned to buy her own heroin. She shoots it up in a bathroom stall and immediately realizes it’s the strongest she’s ever had. She suddenly has the urge to see Xavier, so she goes to see him at his piano lesson. He’s elated to see her, too, and they go back to her and Alphonse’s hotel room; in her high state, Baby thinks it should be safe since Alphonse isn’t supposed to be back until later that evening. She and Xavier have sex.

Afterwards, Alphonse shows up unexpectedly. Baby is terrified, not just of what he will do, but because the secret world she shared with Xavier has been exposed to her dark reality. Alphonse beats Xavier, but he escapes. Alphonse takes the heroin that Baby had bought herself, and he shoots all of it. He falls back onto the bed, and in the morning Baby discovers that he’s dead.

Without anywhere else to go, she goes to the homeless shelter to find Jules. The two have a warm reunion, and he says that he wants Baby to live with his cousin, Janine. Janine had always wanted to adopt Baby, but Jules had wanted to keep her to himself. Jules admits that he isn’t fit to raise her, but he encourages her by saying that she can be whatever she wants to be in life. He gives her a “little family of toy mice made out of some sort of real animal fur” (317) as a gift and tells her he loves her.

They take a bus out into the country to meet Janine. On the way, Jules finally tells Baby a true story about her mother. He says that she was killed in a car accident and that he was driving when it happened. Baby had been going through withdrawals from the heroin, but when she hears about her mother it makes her feel better. They finally arrive to meet Janine, and Baby recognizes that her eyes look like her own.