I think I know something now that I didn’t know before. I feel it in my bones, it all makes sense now, it clicks…but there is no way of truly knowing if I am right unless somebody decides to confess and I am sure they never will.
It is about my baby niece. I was thinking about her last week. Went by the church where we had her after funeral lunch. I go by there all the time but that day it really got to me. I started to remember.
Later that day I had to take my nephew to the doctor. He and the doctor started talking about cities, which led to talk about Detroit, where my nephew frequently goes with his dad. My nephew told the doctor of a time when he and his brothers and parents went and stayed at the RenCen and their dad bought them huge suckers from a bakery. He said that later that evening his mom hit his dad and his dad hit his mom with one of the suckers so hard it broke into pieces.
See, me and my parents, and anybody else who was not actually witness to the abuse were always made to believe that it was my brother–the boys dad–that was the abusive one, and the boys mom was just the unfortunate victim. No, they were both abusive and she was sometimes the aggressor. Later, there was even evidence that she would hurt herself.
But those two incidents that day, those two remembrances told me something. I remembered my mom telling me that the morning the baby died she heard her crying and then she didn’t. She thought all was well, that mom had gotten up with the baby. But the baby died.
Now I know, yes, mom probably got up with baby but I think she killed her out of frustration. She lost her temper…
I think and I know.
Because…
Of what happened after. What she did to my mom, to my parents.
She was that type of person. The boys have since told me of how she would abuse them. Little by little it comes out.
For so long I denied it but the more I remember the more I know she did it. I truly believe that she was crazy and it didn’t affect her all that much to kill her baby in the heat of the moment. I think she was angry, and I don’t think she wanted any more competition for attention.
The very day the baby died, her mom came home from the hospital and I found her packing up the baby’s stuff–shoving her clothes into a brown paper bag to get rid of. I wondered at it then. Why did she have to get rid of the stuff right away? I thought it was grief. Perhaps it was, but perhaps there was more to it than that…
Jacquelyn's Space 
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