A Neighborhood Baby

Some nights when his mother’s asleep, Tony goes out into his low income, central urban neighborhood, wanting to talk with his father. He’s been told his daddy is the moon. Tony is two years old.

This is the world of Kevin Sampsell’s unique, heartfelt, hilarious and brave novel Baby in the Night, narrated by Anthony Volcano Ventura.

Sampsell is fully involved in Tony’s perspective, imagining how a two year old (the book goes until age five) will interpret what he sees, given limited experience with the world and its contents, trying to make sense with a limited vocabulary. The narration, from Tony, isn’t baby talk. Tony complains sometimes how his mouth won’t say what he wants it to. Here’s one example, where Tony’s with his mom at the thrift store where she works and there’s a piano:

“I remember the first time someone played a song on it and it scared me because I thought it was a table. I didn’t know that some tables were also things that made music. There was a sign by the piano that said No Billy Joel, and I got sad for Billy Joel because he wasn’t allowed to play it.”

How Sampsell presents what Tony says—besides giving us insights into how we ourselves can re-see the familiar—lets us understand what’s actually going on, like in a couple encounters between Tony’s mom and her boyfriend for a while Ben, as their relationship progresses.

What Tony tells us is often fun, often poignant, and maybe this is what goes on in young children’s minds. Who knows or remembers? Here’s another example (though there are dozens): Tony’s out on the street at night, one arm in a cast, looking at his reflection:

“I imagined a whole story happening in the window-mirror: A pig jumps at me, flying through the air, and my superpower arm points and turns it into a potato. And then I karate chop it and turn it into potato chips and eat it.”

Tony doesn’t judge. An overflowing dumpster is as natural as a tree, more common in his ‘hood. He makes friends with other nocturnals in his neighborhood, including La-La and Dylan. Dylan tells his story later in the book as, toward the end, Tony’s mother also does, talking about her earlier life. Sampsell somehow creates a sense of community among the characters, and we can see the humanity that Tony just assumes is universal.

That’s part of the subtle craft of this story telling. We can see the poverty and dangers of where Tony lives, but he doesn’t. At age four Tony takes his five year old friend Tater out to the night streets:

“Tater had never seen anyone sleep on a sidewalk at night before. . . . People coughed and moaned more when they were in the alley, and it smelled pretty bad in there, mostly from garbage cans and throw-up.

“‘Do you ever get scared out here?’ Tater asked,

“‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘But I’m used to it.’”

We see what Tony sees, and can’t help making our own judgments. As the novel went on, I couldn’t help worrying what might happen to Tony. He is helped by friends and, in a fine moment of magical realism, a giant dog. While Tony isn’t harmed in his nights on the street, a friend of his is killed, almost in front of him. But Tony is reassured that his friend’s just sleeping— one of many moments in this book where Sampsell provides a powerful empathic/emotional balance.

Maybe it helps to see this as a fable and not insist that Tony should have been taken to a safe foster home. Baby in the Night shows us an actual world most of us don’t know, as seen through eyes and mind we probably once had. Genius invention/creativity, widespread and humble compassion, plus writing so smooth and crisp you’re excited about and involved in seeing the world as Tony Volcano does. “Is there a word for believing in magic no one else can see?” (Tony at 12, the preface.) And there is a writer—Kevin Sampsell—who shows us what this word and its world could be.