She paints a picture for the reader saying that the baby’s hair eke great Co’s Of wool as in sheep leading us to think that the baby might be a Jesus figure. She describes the baby’s eyes as clean, pure because it hasn’t yet seen the evil of the world. The flared nose, as if the baby is mad or out of breathe again symbolizes death. She says kissing-thick lips, shining a light on the more sexual side making it seem like that’s all your lips should be used for. She concludes by saying “the living, breathing silk of black skin”, to express that this baby is living, it is a human, it is taking a breath just like everyone else.
Silk is an expensive fabric, something of worth just like this abyss life. “No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. ” Claudia goes on to describe the baby as a doll, saying that they are nothing alike, dolls are fake in fact worse they are “synthetic”, and they are far from perfect, they have pinched noses, pinched towards the sky like a snooty white girl. But not like this baby, Claudia felt a yearning, a burning for someone to care for this baby to love it and want it to live. Just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls,” she wanted this baby to come into the world to change it, to change how the world dewed black babies, to “counteract’ set off the balance, of the whole universe meaning everybody and the love it had for a doll rather than a living child. Claudia and Fried are only children, so it is obvious that they do not understand certain concepts. Then Claudia says how she didn’t think of the fact that Pectoral wasn’t married and how neither of them dwelled on that fact that the baby’s father was also Piccolo’s father.
No one explained to them that what he did was wrong or that she was young and it wasn’t right or fair what was happening to her therefore it left them not to dwell on those little minor details, not to worry, and not to care about such things. Claudia expresses that the process is incomprehensible to her, which leaves us wondering why the parents aren’t better protecting her from viewing such things in society if she can’t even understand them on her own. Instead since she is only a child she looks toward the bright side by saying “at least she (Pectoral) knew her father”.
But in this case it wasn’t necessarily a good thing for Pectoral and we are left distracted and feeling sorry for Claudia. This distraction gets pointed out in the text because it is represented by a dash that takes place before that line. Claudia goes back to talking about the unborn baby and the “overwhelming hatred for it. ” Its important that the baby is unborn because it emphasizes the fact that it hasn’t done anything wrong yet. It hasn’t had a chance to mess up and for people to hate it yet. It is an innocent child in a womb waiting to enter a world that is so filled with hate that it’s overwhelmed.
Claudia then recalls a memory she had of Mrs.. Overlooked knocking Pectoral down and soothing the pink tears of the frozen doll baby that sounded like the door of their icebox. Pectoral was the one that was knocked down not the frozen fillies doll. Pectoral was the one crying real tears not fake pink “synthetic’ tears like the doll. Pink fake tears that sounded like an ice box most likely squeaky and old, as they rolled down the plastic of the fixed expression of the doll. She also could remember the knuckled eyes, eyes that give you an expression of anger, like that person with those eyes wants to scream and fight.
But those eyes belonged to schoolchildren who gazed at them, as if their eyes had nothing better to do but tell you that they hated you. She tells us that those same eyes now look at pectoral. “Or maybe We didn’t remember; e just knew’ or they don’t have to remember, these images will forever be burned in their heads that they just know it happened without having to recall it. She confesses that they have defended, protected their minds and memory against everything and everyone, not only people but also things.
They started considering speech a code that had to be broken in order for them to understand, along with gestures such as hand movements and movements of the eyes, all had to be analyzed to figure out their deeper meaning and how it related to the conversation being had. This left them to become headstrong, devious and arrogant. Not words you use to describe a child more like a criminal master mind, they were wise beyond their years learning things they shouldn’t have known till their mid-twenties.
Besides nobody paid them any attention, none of the adults cared for watching the children or worrying about rather they were being raised well or not. So who else better to watch them then themselves? Not just attention itself but good attention as if they were studying themselves. Their limits weren’t known to them, but they were only children, children who were not under the stern eye of a parent to tell them what was right or wrong. This thought is interrupted by a dash and followed by a not yet, showing that she is realistic and knows that one day she will have limits.
She tells of their only “handicap” a weakness, a break in their chain. The fact that they were indeed children, therefore they were small. This led people to tell them what to do; to give them orders based on the fact that they were bigger and stronger than them. This sometimes paralyzed their ability to make a difference to grow up faster than they wanted to. But still with confidence, with every ounce Of her being Claudia still fights for what she believes to be right. This confidence is strengthened by itty and pride, pity she has for Pectoral and her unborn baby and pride she has for the color they share.
That two children decided, not an adult or an important figure in society, a child made the decision the make a difference, to change the course and the general direction of the events that would take place. The decision to alter, but in fact boot alter completely 1 80 turn around, a human life. Something so valued and precious, a human life, a baby not even born into the world a world where everyone already hated it and wanted it dead. Those two babies themselves make the decision to do something about it and choose life instead of death.
