“Hush, your father is sleeping. You musn’t wake him,” Momma says, her voice as soft as the long-thistled broom across the rough brick of our front step. “You can do that, can’t you, Danny, baby?”
She’s right— I can do that. Momma is always right. I know she’s always right because when the orange sunset burns low over the tops of the blue and pink couches under the window in the living room that Momma calls pastel toile, it’s then that Pa wakes from his long sleep, kisses her on the cheek, gathers me in his big arms and he tells me a secret. He tells me Momma knows everything.
I play softer, barely allowing the plastic bumpers of my Speedzees cars to gently clack together. I’m on a fireman rescue mission, but the shouts of the girl in the building are too loud, so I tell her to hush too, trying to imitate the way Momma had said it.
I put my firetruck down and push it across the worn rug, sitting on my bum with my knees bent under me so that I sit like an ungainly sack of potatoes.
A moment later, Momma is softly calling me again.
“Danny, baby, get up. It’s time for your bedtime.”
Her voice is tired and set low, like when she tells me she loves me or wishes me goodnight. It’s strange. We never used to have to be quiet when the sun was out and all; shining through the veranda windows all buttery-yellow, flooding the space with light. But I know this is important.
More important than my games or toys.
More important than Momma’s washing or ironing or the cooking that she doesn’t do in the daytime anymore.
Out of anything in our little house with honeysuckles climbing the fence, with pastel toile furniture in our livingroom and a long white sidewalk out our front door with perfect parallel cracks like neat impressions in a stick of butter, keeping Pa asleep after he’s worked hard is the most important.
I stand, letting the toys drop as they are, a perfect picture of dashing green army men warring against the hulking monstrosity of the dollhouse.
I spare them a second glance before I leave the room, wondering when my baby sister will come home so that I can play with her next, help guide the story of the toys. She doesn’t know how to play quite properly yet, always seems to forget you’re supposed to tell a story with the toys, have a bad guy and a good guy, play Cowboys and Indians, or have a treasure hunt. Instead she just tries to line them all up, matching colors with colors or from smallest to largest. Besides, she can’t grip the plastic toys with her clumsy toddler fingers either so I hold them for her and make them dance with silly noises to get a scream of laughter from her. That’s fun.
The nebulous voice of my mother is the trail that I follow until my searching hands can tangle in the fabric of her long skirt. My Momma is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her hair is brown and gold and long when she lets it go in the evenings and I think her a queen.
It’s down now, long thick blond strands tangled like twists in a bale of hay. Momma turns and runs her hands along my head, leaning down, and her eyes remind me of MeeMaw’s red lacquered wood stairwell, the wood of the steps knotted in places like whorlish shapes of indistinct owls and frost and sunken murky knots of wood that looked exactly like faces. Momma’s eyes now remind me of the eyes I’d seen in the wood.
She tells me, “Danny, you’re a sweet boy, to come when you’re called.”
I push myself into her embrace and she hums, gathering me up, up, up into her arms, carrying me like I’m little. I giggle, grabbing around her neck.
She shushes me, looking behind her, down the hall where Pa is sleeping.
We climb the carpeted stairs, and I smile to myself. Momma carrying me is like chocolate cake, like running away before I get gobbled up, like climbing up on my bed and jumping up and down when Momma’s not looking, like everything that is more fun because it’s forbidden. I kick my legs and they swing free.
I change my mind. Momma carrying me is like flying.
“Read me a book, Momma?” I ask, excited for the good things about bedtime. “Please?” I remember my manners.
“Bathtime first, honey.” Her voice answers, still rough somehow, and I remember how her eyes had been like wood. I reach searching hands up and feel water on her cheek.
Momma sets me down and I am confused until I see I’m in the bathroom and everything in the bathroom is wet. I look for my bath toys as I hear the spigot turned with a squeak and water rushes out in a roar.
Freezing, I remember that we are supposed to be quiet. Crouching with my action man that I hadn’t been supposed to have brought to the bath but had been allowed anyway, I look up. Momma isn’t looking right now, leaning over the tub and feeling the water with her hand. I suppose it must be alright this time, if she isn’t telling me to shush.
Relief floods me and I grab her skirt and watch the water fill the tub. I wasn’t fond of getting wet and I remember that MeeMaw said that when I was a baby I would scream for hours when set in any amount of water. But somehow, Momma made bathing fun. She let me bring my toys like my action-man, even though Pa had said they aren’t meant to get wet, and she even played stories with me sometimes.
The memory of her blowing water bubbles has me excited to get in the water already and I start to tug at my shirt, struggling against the cloth that suddenly seems thick and difficult to manage.
“Baby, no, no.” Momma says, grabbing my arm and tugging.
My head shoots up.
“Don’t worry about that tonight, ‘kay?” She smiles, “Your toy is getting in the bath like he is, isn’t he?”
She drops my action-man into the tub and he sinks like stone to the bottom of the still-filling body of water.
She waits for my answer.
My forehead wrinkles and I nod my head slowly. It makes sense.
“Go on, baby, get in.”
I pull myself to the thick rim of the tub, to the place where the old baby bath seat for my little sister is discarded. Distracted, I tug my mom’s skirts and point. “Where’s Emma?”
She pulls me away, impatient and I feel a pang for disappointing her. I climb into the tub.
It feels all weird and wrong to be in the bathtub in my day-clothes. I get wet, fast, like the water wants to gobble up every dry bit of me. The clothes twist uncomfortably around me, making it difficult to lift my arms or even move my legs.
Unable to bear it, I twist to Momma, feeling the ickiness of the sensation fill me from head to toe. The water and my clothes swish in the water with my movement and I hate it. I feel my chin start to tremble.
Before I can say another word, I see something stranger than I think I ever have before in my life. Momma is making breakfast in the bathroom.
She’s got the toaster, all silver metal and sleek lines and long coiling cord, sitting beside the sink where Momma usually does her makeup. I stare as she shoves the cord end into the outlet and turns to me, the toaster in hand.
“Momma, are we going to make breakfast for my bath-toys?” I wonder, excited. Momma always comes up with the best ideas for my toys and makes bathtime really fun. I’m so excited I forget to be quiet.
Momma’s looking at me and she’s holding the toaster the way I do with my favorite toys, all cradled like Emma would hold her baby-doll. Momma doesn’t have a baby-doll, though, not anymore.
“Yes, Danny.” Momma says, “But first, I want you to close your eyes real tight. You can do that for me?”
A little disappointed I try to tamp it down and do as she says. My eyes are squeezed shut in an instant and I know she’s right ahead. Will there be a surprise for me?
The next moment, there’s a sound that’s louder than thunder.
I slam my hands over my ears and my eyes snap open.
Momma. Pa. Standing in the bathroom, hugging.
It’s so unusual that I jump to my feet.
They really are hugging, my Momma tucked against Pa. Pa’s face is toward me and his eyes aren’t sleepy at all, they are wide and white in the corners. I don’t believe what I see but it almost looks like Pa’s scared. The toaster is on the ground, on its side at their feet.
I realize that something is wrong then because I see Momma’s shoulders shaking.
There’s a sinking sensation through my body and I start to cry. We weren’t supposed to wake Pa up and now he is sure to be mad at me. I hate it even though I know it’s my fault. I was being too loud.
Rachel Barron is a writer from the foothills of North Carolina. Growing up on a rural blueberry farm, she learned to enjoy the solitary comforts of reading. It was not until the summer after high school that she started writing, hoping to create stories that would enchant readers as much as the books from her childhood had. She believes that the most important (and the hardest) part of writing is staying true to yourself.