• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 308 0

are in the middle, with an alcove for a dining room in between. It is an apartment for two people to be separated in. I didn’t like it. But my mother was so excited the day we moved in, I knew better than to say anything. My grandmother had helped her pick the apartment out. Maybe she thought its layout seemed good for a single woman and her child: we’d each have so much privacy. My grandmother’s cleaning lady was there to help us unpack; she still comes here once a week and uses the same cleaning products she uses at my grandmother’s, so our apartments smell the same. The day we moved in was the first time I was aware that my mother and I felt differently about the same thing: I was sad and she was excited. “You’ll be so close to your new school,” she said, squeezing my shoulders.

The afternoon after my first day of third grade, my mother came to pick me up. I’d calmed down, having mostly forgotten about what I’d seen that morning. Everyone else was picked up by their mothers too, or, if their mothers worked, by a nanny. But after we got home, after I’d watched TV and paged through the chapter book the teacher had promised we’d read soon, I began to have the same sensation that had gripped me that morning. There was something about me that was different—something I didn’t quite understand, something that made me nervous. The pages of the book seemed to stick together, and the words looked so big, and it seemed impossible that I would ever know what the letters meant when they were strung together. And I was a good reader—I’d been reading books more difficult than this all summer. I didn’t want to face the next morning at school, because what if the next morning, all the fathers would be there again and I’d have to be different again.

I had to tell my mother why I couldn’t go back. So I slid off my bed and walked across the apartment toward my mother’s bedroom. I still wasn’t used to what a long walk it was; we’d only been living here a couple of weeks. My mother’s door was closed, but I opened it without knocking; I’d never had to be bashful about going into Mom’s room at Grandma’s house. The lights were out and Mom was lying on her side, turned away from me. But she was above the covers and fully dressed, so I supposed she was awake.

“Mommy?”

She rolled over and flicked on the light next to the bed. Her eyes were very red, and her hair was frizzled.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

I climbed onto the bed and snuggled next to her. She still wears the same perfume. Sometimes, when I smell it, it takes me right back to her bed, to the pillowcases that smelled like her.

“I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow.”

Her face became alert, and I was relieved. I was worried that she’d tell me I had to go, but instead she looked genuinely concerned, like this was a grown-up problem.

“Did someone say something mean to you? Did the teacher say something?”

“No.” Why would my nice new teacher have said anything?

I could feel her body relaxing next to mine; could feel her arms around me becoming less stiff, her fingers loosening their grip on me. She brushed the hair out of my face. “Then what’s the matter, sweetheart?” And now it didn’t sound like she thought my problem was grown-up enough. I tried to explain.

“I’m different from the other kids.”

“Everybody’s different, sweetie,” she said, and even at that age, I knew she was patronizing me. I had to make her understand that I couldn’t go back.

“How come we don’t have a daddy like everyone else?” I knew, by then, that my father was dead and what it meant to be dead, but that didn’t explain why I didn’t have a father.

My mother’s arms became stiff again. Her face went white, and her hands held my arms so tight that it hurt—later I would see red marks where her fingernails had been. I don’t think she meant to hurt me; I don’t think she had control over her muscles at that moment.

I was terrified. My question had upset my mother like nothing I’d ever done. Worse than when I spilled cranberry juice on the sofa; worse than when I had knots in my hair that she had to untangle.