Red Hot Mutha'

Baby V and my mom and I were in line at the Roses in Chestertown. Behind us was a young man, Mexican, a migrant worker who was probably bussed to the shopping center from the nearby farm. He was swarthy, short, couldn't have been more than twenty-one years old. The locals eyed him with suspicion as they often did to anything different in that town. That's when I noticed Baby V smiling. "A beautiful baby", the man said in a heavy accent. Vin continued to smile. The man's thick fingers, well-worked and rough, reached to stroke Vin's soft feet. "What's his name?", he asked. I told him. "Vincent. A nice name." I was used to people going ga-ga over my son. After all, I did every day. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the man untying a necklace from around his neck. A quartz crystal was expertly suspended in an intricate netting of hemp thread, flanked by tiny beads. Two knots supported larger glass beads on either side. He double-knotted the necklace to Vincent's car seat. "This is for- I don't know how to say- for protection." I was overcome with emotion at this gift; a stranger giving something of his own to my baby. I protested at first, but the man insisted. I thanked him, and I was so blown away but the gesture that I instantly forgot all of the spanish I knew. Vincent's tiny hand reached out to touch the crystal. I looked at the man for the last time, and there in the man's eyes was something old beyond his years; a sadness that I could not touch. But my Baby V had, somehow.