The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence, rape, mental illness, child sexual abuse, suicidal ideation and self-harm, substance use, graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, illness, and death.

“The angel baby doesn’t look like a ghost. She doesn’t float and she isn’t pale and she doesn’t wear a white dress. She’s half rotted away, and she doesn’t talk.”

This passage from the collection’s first story describes the dead “angel baby” that appears in the narrator’s apartment. Calling the ghost an “angel baby” brings to mind a pure, wholesome creature, but this expectation is contrasted against the visceral, rotting reality of the corpse. The repetition of negations—”doesn’t” and “isn’t”—highlights how the reality of Angelita’s grotesque physical decay contrasts with expectations of how an “angel baby” might look. This passage is also the only part of the story narrated in the present tense. The shift from past to present tense when the narrator describes Angelita indicates that the baby is still there with her as she tells the story, foreshadowing the ending, when the narrator realizes she is stuck with the ghost.

“To save them from the shock, when we went out together—or rather, when she followed me out and I had no choice but to let her—I used a kind of backpack to carry her (it’s gross to see her walk—she’s so little, it’s unnatural). I also bought her a bandage to use as a mask, the kind burn victims use to cover their scars. Now when people see her, they’re disgusted, but they also feel compassion and pity. They see a very sick or injured baby, but not a dead baby.”

The narrator describes the combination of revulsion and pity that Angelita inspires in the few others who can see her. This passage highlights the grotesque elements of Angelita’s appearance, particularly her ability to walk even though she is the size of a three-month-old baby, and it is these deviations from the normal and expected that make her so unsettling.