Lullabies for Little Criminals

Jules and Lester pick Baby up from the detention center, and she’s dismayed to find that they’ve moved to such a dilapidated building that only “welfare cases and junkies” inhabit it (200). She feels lonely being back home because she feels estranged from Jules, like he betrayed her by having her sent to the detention center.

She grows attached to her social worker, Corey, but soon she’s assigned a different one, and she feels like a fool for thinking that Corey actually cared about her. She has to go to a new school, which is nicknamed “Bobo Academy” (202) by the local kids; she’s going to be enrolled in “a special program for delinquent kids who weren’t good at school” (202), and this makes her upset because she’s always loved school and been good at it.

One day, Baby runs into Alphonse; it’s the first time she’s seen him since she’s been back from the detention center. He tells her that she belongs to him, and she likes it because she “wanted desperately to belong to someone” (207). She and Alphonse go to an arcade and then back to his house.