Christening

Ruth looked across the cluttered living room to the baby's mother, her best friend, Sarah. "Well, you've got to name him something-"

"I've got the last name." Sarah laughed as she steadied the pipe against her dry lips and put the flame to its end. She inhaled deeply, her eyes widening to a size to which they were accustomed to enlarging several times a day, her lungs clenching the smoke as tight and long as she could stand the searing, massaging pain, her brain a 30-second orgasm of crack. When she finally exhaled, she dropped the pipe and lighter on the tiny glass table in front of her and lay back. "He is a cute little fucker, ain't he?"

"He's a fucking doll baby, girl."

"Well, I had a name all picked out-"

"For a fucking girl-"

"They told me it was a girl-"

"How can fucking doctors be so wrong-"

"They couldn't see his dick. It's so-"

"He's nothing like your brother then-"

"His father-" Sarah cleared her throat.

"Whatever-"

"Anyway, they said that happens a lot, when he grows up, it'll be normal." Sarah nodded towards her son, who was couched in the crook of Ruth’s right arm. "It looks like he's finished-"

Ruth pulled the steel mesh nipple - the only they could find that the child couldn't bite through - from the boy's slender lips, which continued to pucker in and out furiously, and held up the bottle. "Yep. What's that, number fucking five today?"

"Uh huh-"

"And it's only noon o' fucking clock-" Ruth laid the child on his back on a small, tattered square of fabric next to the tiny table between her and Sarah, the little thing's legs kicking like two meaty hydraulic pumps.

"What can I say? My boy likes to eat. Just like his father." Sarah winked and put her hand between her legs witha a laugh. "Ouch. These fucking stitches hurt my pussy-"

"And your work-"

"Fucking tell me about it. Darryl'll never let me hear the end of it-"

"Fuck Darryl. That nigger's lucky he's alive after what he did-"

"Yeah, you would have done a lot-"

"I can tell you this much, I wouldn't have fucking let him walk out of here without paying me what's mine-"

"Shut up. You don't understand-"

"I do. You're a dumb, scared white bitch-"

"Shut the fuck up-" Sarah's voice was almost a screech.

"Whatever-" Ruth sighed and leaned back into the threadbare leather of the loveseat. "So what are you gonna name him?"

Sarah looked up into the air. "Mark-"

"Mark of the beast?"

"Shut up, bitch-"

"Mark the Apostle?"

"No, bitch." Sarah righted herself and looked into Ruth's yellowed eyes. "After my favorite actor, Mark Hamill-"

"No fucking way-"

"Way-"

Ruth shrugged. "Fucking awesome."

Sarah leaned forward and grabbed the pipe. Then dropped it. She pushed herself back into her broken rocking chair, her eyes fixed on the floor and glued open. "What the fuck?"

Ruth looked down and yelped, pulling her feet up under her.

The baby, his back a lush, wrinkled shade of red, was on his hands and knees, his mouth around the wooden leg of the miniature coffee table, gnawing recklessly.

"Mark!"

The infant's bald head swung around to his mother, his eyes narrowed and full of blood, smearing the blue of his irises. With all the effort in his sinewy body, he pulled himself up the table leg to his feet, legs bowed and trembling. Then darted teeth-first at the shadowy space that was his mother's much-used crotch.