The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

As a girl, the unnamed female narrator had an “obsession” with digging and loved exploring the softened ground of the backyard after a storm. One day, she unearthed a number of small bones. Her father suspected they were chicken bones, but her grandmother shrieked in horror when she saw them. She claimed that the bones belonged to one of her siblings who had died when she was still a baby. The grandmother calls her “Angelita,” which means “little angel,” since the baby had died an innocent, before she could commit any sins. She also tells the narrator she could hear the baby crying every time it rained.

Eventually, the narrator’s grandmother died, and the family sold the house. The narrator forgot all about the bones until the “angel baby” appeared in her apartment one stormy night, 10 years later. The angel baby “doesn’t float” and “isn’t pale” like a ghost; rather, “[s]he’s half rotted away, and she doesn’t talk” (6). Terrified, the narrator tries to wring the baby’s neck, but nothing happens. As she looks at the baby more closely, she sees that she is dressed in a tattered pink shroud and the remains of cardboard wings. This is exactly what her grandmother told her they had buried Angelita in.