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.”Gloria decided to ask anyway.Venita was at Mary Kate’s when Gloria came by.She had Miguel with her, hanging from her hip.Though Gloria spoke to Mary Kate, Venita jumped in.“I’ll keep him.Can I keep him?” She reached for the baby and he went to her.“See, he like me, with his pretty self.Girl, you got you a pretty baby.He a angel.”“He’s no angel,” Gloria said.“You’ll see that.”“You mind, Kate, if I keep him?” Venita asked, and before Mary Kate could answer, she turned to Gloria.“I know you ain’t asked me, but I want to keep him.I’ll do it for free.”“Gloria, I think you should let Venita keep your baby.If the truth be told, I can’t really take him on, and she good with kids.She love them.”Venita’s morning son began coming the next week.The first morning, Venita tried to sit and hold him, but he was eight months, too big for that.He climbed out of her lap and slid off the couch.He explored her living room and kitchen, and Venita was amazed that he kept finding things.She thought her house was clean, but suddenly he would be chewing, and when she pried his mouth open, she would find a tiny pebble, a grain of rice, a button.Venita told Gloria about Miguel’s ability to find things when Gloria unexpectedly picked up the baby herself one afternoon.“I told you he wasn’t an angel,” Gloria said.“Yeah he is, and he fast.You got to watch him like a hawk.I don’t let him get into nothing.Where your husband?”“He didn’t wake up.I hope it wasn’t a problem, me getting here later,” Gloria said.“It wasn’t no problem.Don’t feel like ya’ll got to rush to come get him.”Gloria did not fully understand what Venita had said.For, though Orlando was supposed to pick up Miguel at noon, sometimes he would come before then, as early as nine or ten, cutting short his morning’s sleep to spend extra time with the baby.Venita did not go to Mary Kate’s house when she was watching Miguel.She did not want to share the little time she had to spend with him.Miguel was too busy exploring his new world to pay much attention to the woman who had mistaken him for an angel.But Venita did not notice.She was content to follow him through the living room and kitchen, snatching danger from his hands until he began slowing down.Miguel seemed to have a clock in his stomach.He knew he had a ten o’clock bottle.Sometimes, before Venita took it from the refrigerator he was there trying to open the door.This was the only time Miguel would let Venita hold him.She would sit on the couch, rocking back and forth, pressing him to her breast, playing with his curly hair, singing to him.She had tried singing “Mockingbird,” but she wasn’t sure of the words.“If that diamond ring don’t shine, Mama going to buy you a bottle of wine.A bottle of wine? That can’t be right,” she had said.“What mama would buy her baby a bottle of wine?” She could not think of anything to rhyme with “shine,” so she sang “This Old Man” and “Old MacDonald.”Mary Kate did not say anything, but she missed Venita, wanted her to come over for starch and gossip.She would look out the window of the back door, lifting the curtain.“Who you looking for?” Dorene had asked her one day when she had come home for lunch.“Nobody,” Mary Kate had told her.“I was just looking.”“She coveting that child,” Mary Kate told Samuel one day.The morning before Thanksgiving, Orlando picked up Miguel at Venita’s at ten, took the baby home, and then lay on the couch while Miguel played with blocks.Though Orlando had had a short nap, he was exhausted.The long bus rides, the staying up nights, the work, and the cold were all wearing on him.Orlando’s eyes closed.Miguel crawled away from the blocks and headed for the kitchen.He stopped along the way to put a piece of string in his mouth.In the kitchen, he opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out two cans of food.Behind them was a bag of beans.They were fava beans.The plastic bag was torn open and the beans had spilled onto the shelf.Miguel sat before the cabinet and picked up one of the tan, pebblelike beans.Gathering beans in both hands, he stuffed his mouth until it could hold no more.Then he swallowed
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