Day 173 (part 2)

“My dad’s coming today,” he brags to the others. “He’s coming to get me today, at six o’clock. He IS!”

The other kids hear that and stiffen, looking up slowly from their games in the dirt, glaring at him in his nice clothes that look like they’re new�"the sweater and jeans he wore when his dad had taken him to the place with the white barren offices, and the people that were so nice that they scared him�"and his tennis shoes that Mrs. Comer has put through the wash, and are now, more or less, white.

“No he ain’t,” one of them mutters. “You’re a liar.”

“I am not!” he protests hotly. “He’s coming in a hundred and sixty-three minutes, I’m counting, he’s gonna take me back home, and my mom’s coming too, and�"”

“You shut up!” another kid shouts at him, jumping to his feet so fast that Evan stumbles back, alarmed. “You just shut up!”

“Yeah, just leave us alone!” a girl says shrilly, looking like she’s about to cry.

He doesn’t understand. No, they don’t understand. It’s what all of them wanted, wasn’t it? They’d forget their hostilities, their alliances, their rivalries, late at night, sometimes, and talk about things like this…how much they all wished they could go home, or at least go somewhere nice, and safe, if home wasn’t such a good place after all…. Shouldn’t they be happy for him?

“But…my dad’s….”

But they’re all standing up, crowding around him; one of them shoves him, and he would fall if another didn’t catch him. But the one that catches him holds him in place, pinning his arms behind his back.

Someone hits him; he whimpers, trying to pull away, but he’s held fast. Then someone grabs his hair, jerking his head back.

“Your daddy better come rescue you real soon,” he hisses.

And then they’re all around him, all hitting him, blocking out the ground and sky, he can see nothing but their worn-out clothes, hear nothing but their shouts, taste nothing but dirt and blood, smell nothing but their sour sweat…. And the ones that weren’t hitting him were cheering the others on, cheering for his defeat….

He tried to pull away, but when he finally managed it, they simply knocked him to the ground and started kicking him. He could hear himself screaming, feel himself coughing and choking on the dirt they kicked into his mouth, but he was detached from it, no longer in control�"each blow they landed on him felt like hot metal pressed to his skin, and that was all he could feel, all he knew�"

And then it was over; the kids scattered, and someone was lifting him up, brushing him off, with astounding gentleness; he started to cry, deep, aching sobs tearing at him on the way out, with words in them, somewhere, that even he couldn’t understand…. He was scared, and hurt, but relieved, too, for surely it was his mother who had saved him, surely it was she who was leading him inside, wiping his face, tugging off his stiff, filthy clothes, talking to him….

But then she lifted his chin and tilted his head, so she could see what they’d done; and he blinked the tears away and looked at her properly, and saw, to his dismay, not the beautiful, angelic face of his mother, but the round, stern, ugly face of Mrs. Comer, her skin blotchy and red when she wasn’t wearing makeup, marred with dark circles and wrinkles and strange spots.

“Now, now,” she told him, her voice surprisingly soft, and soothing�"she sounded almost like a new person when she wasn’t yelling, and he wondered for a moment what she was really like, when she wasn’t in a bad mood�"but it was too deep a thought for his eight-year-old mind to handle, so he let it slide away. “Don’t cry, now, it’s all right, okay? You’re not hurt that bad. Come on, you’re too grown up to cry now, you’re almost a young man, and men don’t cry. Calm down, now…. Listen, now, honey, they’re going to stay outside, and you’re going to wait inside for your daddy, so they’re not going to bother you anymore. You won’t have to go near them ever again. And you’re going home really soon. Does that sound good?”

He nods, looking up, distracted from his own misery. “What�"what time is it�"?” he demands, looking around in desperation for a clock.

How many times had he asked her that? And how many times had she yelled at him, or swatted at him like a bothersome fly, because she had no patience for his urgent need to keep track of the exact hours and minutes? It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, because now, the most important time, she answered him right away with the exact time: 3:35. So there were one hundred and forty-five minutes left….

“Now, go take a bath, scrub really good, and I’ll wash your clothes for you. Then you’ll be all clean when your dad comes. Okay?”

“Okay,” he murmurs, soothed, accepting with bewilderment the affectionate way she runs her fingers through his hair. Then he runs away from her, escaping the persistent confusion, the myriad of questions that he doesn’t know how to ask.

Once he can no longer see her or hear her, he forgets all about it�"just as once she had brought him inside, he forgot all about the gang of children trying to tear him apart, the clouds of dirt, the shouting…he even forgot about the pain.

Such is the miracle of the very young, their minds so empty that nothing sticks, and nothing bothers them, at least not for long. But because of this, he does not think again of Mrs. Comer’s strange behavior, does not wonder about it…and so does not understand just what effect it had on her, hearing him cry for his mother when she knew that he had none.