Twenty
Careena
“Come on, Gladys.” I kneel before the two-year-old, begging her to smile for the picture. “It’s your birthday. You’re a pretty princess. Don’t you want your grandma in Arizona to see you?”
“No!” Gladys stones her princess hat down. Her mussed blonde hair shakes as she cries, “I don’t want no more pictures.”
“Any more pictures,” her mother—a tall, professional woman with brown hair and green eyes—folds her arms over her chest. “Careena, I heard you work wonders with kids.” She shoots her chin in Gladys the Menace’s direction as if to say, do something.
I clear my throat. I’m not a baby whisperer. I put ‘good with kids’ on my résumé, but the children I worked with at summer camp responded to shouting and threats of bodily harm. If I dared to try those techniques on this w
