“She cursed that baby—” “Her thirteenth, I heard, and who can blame her—” “You can’t blame her for thinking it, but doing—” “Who among us—” “I wouldn’t—” “That’s you, though, isn’t it?” “You’re better than us?” “You think she’s…
I grew up with tales of the Jersey Devil. Camping with my fellow Girl Scouts, we kept each other up at night with campfire stories of the monster of the pine barrens, a twisted creature with hooves, wings, and a terrifying cry, who snatched children off rooftops and was seemingly immortal. As a young adult, I regaled friends who’d moved to New Jersey with stories of the creature that was well documented throughout the places we frequented: Camden, Philadelphia, and across South Jersey. I pulled up old newspaper articles with tales of sightings, and showed off my knowledge of Mother Leeds, who’d cursed her thirteenthborn with the famous line: “Let the devil take this one.”
Later, working in Atlantic City, I overheard a colleague explain the story. “It was probably a disabled baby,” he said. “It’s honestly pretty messed up.”
This likely truth had never occurred to me, but then I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and so comes this story. How had the history evolved, and what role did the community rumor mill play in turning a personal experience into an enduring urban legend? I focused on those gossips for this piece. There’s some humor in here, interpersonal squabbles we can all recognize, and brief references to darker realities that aren’t spoken of. When I reread the piece, I keep lingering on the longest physical line, which references stillborn or infant deaths, as well as something concerning about Mr. Leeds. I want to leave the specifics of that concern up to the reader. Regardless of anything else, Mrs. Leeds’s life would not have been an easy one, and the cruelty of her community is unfortunately predictable and long-lasting.
The number of speakers in the story is intentionally unclear, and I’m going for a sensation of lots of people talking at once, cutting each other off, some bickering back and forth, and varied moments of stunned silence, hushed tones, and dissenting voices shut down. I picture it as a mixed-gender group, primarily women, out in some public place, perhaps outside a shop or in a town square. Their language reveals as much about themselves as it does the setting and circumstance, and when Mrs. Leeds is briefly on the scene, her voice is not heard. I’m curious about what she might have said to them, or what her eldest (I imagine a daughter) would do at the end of the piece as well. I hope readers find meaning in filling in the gaps.
CATHERINE BUCK lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Rutgers University–Camden and was a member of the Tin House YA Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Bending Genres, Vestal Review, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2024. Find her @catherinebuck.bsky.social.
