More Smiles Soon
My arms wrapped around her yoga-ball-sized belly. The tips of my fingers barely reached her hips. I could feel her chin rubbing against the nest of my squirrely curls. I pulled away and met her calming eyes with an “I love you!!”, shot her fiancé a double-handed high-five, and raced my siblings down the sidewalk towards Eastlake Elementary School. When I arrived in Mrs. Bowlen’s first-grade class, I plopped down, playing with the lead of my mechanical pencil as she explained how to read an analog clock. With the squinting of one eye, I imagined pinching the hour hand and circling it around to noon–my favorite part of the day. The class lined up by the door in alphabetical order. As we marched single file, I waited for Mrs. Bowlen to look elsewhere so I could sneak forward and sit next to the kid who packed Lunchables and Cosmic Brownies. Seated on the raggedy, wooden-spoon benches, I opened my lunch box to see my daily note,
“More smiles soon <3—Mom.”
More smiles soon? My heart began to race. These notes were never anything more than a reminder of her love with quirky jokes she read online. But this note felt special, as if there was a present awaiting me at home. My mind floated away from me as I missed open nets in recess. What could it be? When the final bell rang, I wasted no time waiting for my younger sister or brother. I followed the path my mom had carefully taught me to get to her house. When I arrived, panting like a dog from the run, I saw my dad parked in my mom’s steep hill driveway.
“What are you doing here?” I asked with an eyebrow raised. He lives down the block, and I switched houses only on Sundays, never during the week.
He responded with, “Hop-in buddy. Change of plans. Y’all are staying with me tonight.” I anxiously climbed into the tall, musty, gray Yukon, stained with my ICEE mishaps and soccer-cleat mud. Then, we waited in silence as my siblings caught up. Mom taught me not to complain, but I couldn’t help it.
“Mom was supposed to give me a present today,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You will be able to see it tomorrow, buddy, I promise.”
My suspicions were true, my mom did get me a present. It was just beyond that dark blue door, I just had to wait. And so my life turned into a waiting game, day after day, with one player: me. I went to school, enduring the same dull pattern of class, lunch, play, class. When I returned to my father’s house each day, he would let out a choking sigh. “I know, buddy. Soon.”
And so on for two weeks.
Then I woke up to the usual knock on my bedroom door. The light stung my eyes. Groggy, I heard him whisper across the room, “Hey, time to get up. Let’s go see your mom.”
I wiped the drool off of my chin and steamrolled my feet through the cheap synthetic leather of my tennis shoes without bothering to untie them, too frantic to even remember socks. We drove down the street. I had the car door swinging open before he could switch the gears. I jiggled the blue door open and rushed to my mom. I interlaced my fingers behind her back. My brother and sister joined in as she let out a breathless sob.
“I missed you, little ones.” I could hear the crispy rasp. It was like she had lost her voice, but was trying to find it for us.
My eyes wandered up, trying to understand, scanning her face for hints, but I was so young. Even though her warmth kept me blanketed in her arms, her cracked ruby lips shivered. I watched as she bit her tongue, sucking her bottom lip like a pacifier, swallowing words like antidepressants. My eyes became more frantic as I noticed the zapped color of her ghostly cheeks, the rings of rubbed raw skin under her nose, the puffiness of her freckled eyelids, and the bits of clustered makeup trying to cover it all up. Then, my eyes met hers. They were a crystalized topaz blue. I could feel the missing pieces were there, hiding behind the glassy wall of tears refusing to fall. She pulled me closer, but I felt further as our gaze broke. I didn’t know this then, but her eyes would be the place where I would have to find my answers. All I knew then was that she wouldn’t let us go despite the pain of the thirteen stitches underneath her thin, overstretched shirt. She wouldn’t let me go.
Minutes passed as my mind shifted to why I was here, what I had been waiting for—my present. I buckled my knees and slipped the headlock. On the L-shaped couch? No. Is the kitchen table there just for decoration? Not there either. My bed! I flew up the stairs, only to walk back down with the heavy creaks. Nothing. There was no present. Ugh. As I was finishing the last couple of steps, I could see over the broad shoulders of my mom’s fiancé. Someone had left the door, which was barred and closed for the last eight months, open, just enough for me to get my first glimpse. The walls were baby blue, sports balls were hung up as decoration, and a wooden crate was dismantled on the floor. It seemed clean, almost prepared, but messy. Her fiancé noticed tensely, and he and his tight-fitting shirt, giving him the frame of a bodyguard, closed the white freshly painted door.
The next day—the first time I had ever missed school—my grandma forced me to dress up fashionably, the oppressive collar tugging at my neck, the jeans eating away at my breath, the black, shiny shoes rubbing the backs of my heels. We scrunched into a big black limousine. The end of my mom’s dark dress rested on my lap. The sirens ahead broke the heavy silence, which was trapping the air inside the dark interior. I peered through the tint, watching the cars around us stop in their place. My mom engulfed my hand with hers, pulling me away from the window and hushing my curious mind. When we arrived, the driver opened the door. The sky was blending into a thick gray. I felt out of place, unsure of where I was. I lingered, keeping a tight grip on my mom’s left hand, the ring digging into the gaps of my fingers.
The bermuda grass blanketed the square field. As my mom methodically took each step, the dirty green prairie gently rested below her wedged heels. She seemed to be weighed down, her feet leaving deep impressions ahead of me. I followed carelessly behind her; imagining myself an astronaut, dodging the jagged moon rocks, carved with names and dates I wasn’t old enough to read, launching strides, landing into the deepened prints ahead of me. Our group, scattered with familiar and unfamiliar faces, lined up in an understood order which superseded Mrs. Bowlen’s Alphabetical. We all gathered under a black tent as it began to rain. I sat next to my cousin, whom I did not get to see often because he lived far away. Rainwater leaking through the tent started to slowly trickle down my head, and it made the gel in my hair cry down my face. I sat in silence, my legs bouncing, as I realized how much more water was sliding down the cheeks of the older people beneath the tent, especially my mom.
Every week that year, like clock signaling lunch-time, my mom took me to what I came to understand was a cemetery. I would no longer jump into my mom’s footprints as I did the first time. Instead, I’d stain the field with my own impressions. The blades of bermuda grass wrinkled into the crevices of my sneakers and followed me everywhere I went, sticking out of the side like whiskers. When we got to our spot, I reached for her left hand, barren of a ring. We brought our eyes up to read, “Zachary.”
A couple months ago, I entered my mom’s office at her new house, trying to find batteries for my Xbox controller. On the bottom shelf, behind yearbooks of my life, was a tattered box labeled with scotch tape. I checked again to make sure I was home alone, and came back to pull the cardboard box out, pushing away the books without thought. I sat down, legs criss-crossed like I was a little kid again, and put the lid on the tile next to me. A thick picture book sealed with dust sat at the bottom, covered in mementos I didn’t know the meaning of – a brand new teddy bear, a used pacifier, a little, unwashed hat, a hinged black velvet ring box. I reached for the book, desperate to know. Pictures. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures filled the holes in my memory. They told a story I knew but never talked about. My mom’s first date with a man since my father, and the hundreds of dates that followed, with each subsequent picture highlighting their experience of love. They bought my childhood home together, grinning in front of it like they knew their future. Months later, the bump formed on her stomach, and glee radiated from each photo. They blocked out a room that was designated for all of our extra stuff to become Zachary’s. They painted the walls a baby blue, decorated it in a sports theme, and built a sturdy, warm, brown crib. I flipped faster, wanting to know what happens next, weaving the story together without words. She got bigger and bigger until there was a picture of that note, “More smiles soon ❤ – Mom.” My present. The tone of the story changes, the pictures become more abrupt, more shaky. I flip. Her water breaks. I flip. C-section. I flip and I flip through two weeks of Zachary on machines, trapped in a glass box, wearing a little hat, cuddling two teddy bears, one of which is in this box, and one of which is my dog’s favorite toy, and a pacifier. I flip. Zachary flatlines. I flip. The funeral. I flip. Her fiancé is gone. I flip. My mom stays. I hear the garage open as I quickly replace the items back in the box, close the picture book for good, and wipe my tears away to be strong, just like my mom.
Today, I reflect on that box of lost memories. The pictures of the tubes stuffed through Zachary’s pea-sized nose and the tangle of his limp body fighting to come home. I wonder if she would have had the chance to hold him in her arms like she had always done for me, if her warmth would have made his heartbeat steady too. I wonder if she could have made him smile the way she made me smile, if his eyes would have opened to be a dark blue like the door of our forgotten house. I wonder if he heard her I love yous, her banging on the glass window that separated her from him, or her tears splashing against the tiled hospital floor.
I stand before the ripple effects of this, baby brother. The lost memory of him I search for in dusty picture books. His story is lost inside a family who cannot bring themselves to talk about him, to remember him. Sometimes, I create a world with him in it, teaching him how to kick a soccer ball in a straight line, making fun of him crushing on a girl, spreading the gel through his spiky hair, and fighting over things like who gets the front seat of the car. I would show him my love with words, showing him it is okay to talk to me.
I say aloud, with no one listening, “More smiles soon, Zachary.”
Hayden Duke is a junior at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, where he is triple majoring in History, Leadership, and Analytical Writing. He is currently focusing on studying the juvenile justice system in Nashville and plans to attend law school in Boston after graduation. Outside of classes, he enjoys spending time with their girlfriend.
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