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The following is a work in progress and was inspired by two year old Joey Baptiso, The Burned Baby , who died a slow death at the hands of his mother. I never met Joey until he arrived in the emergency room many hours after his spirit left his charred body. Like many other abuse cases, the story of this unknown little boy from Phoenix Arizona never made the national news. Joey has been embedded in my heart and mind for almost eleven years. It is still very difficult to write, to read and to remember that day, but I promised him his death would not be in vain.
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The Burned Baby
For Joey by Candy Porett Born Nov. 22, 1989 Died 'sometime' during memorial day week-end 1992 He must have had a beautiful smile.... Lids covered the innocence in his eyes. His long ebony lashes, now singed, reached for sallow cheeks, drained to the color of so many tenement walls. Beneath thin layers of stiff discolored gauze, little heels oozed viscous pink, through black crust and putrid flesh. Sliding his shorts off gently, as if he might still agonize, a belt of saved skin, starked against the blistered red of his belly. My gloved hand brushed a crispness. Chills moved my hair. Joey's tiny penis and scrotum were charred, like meat forgotten on a picnic grill. And no one wept by his side, wailing his death of torture. Nor were they there , begging their god for a reason , but instead maybe pleading for the grace of forgiveness. |
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