Tag
You absolutely point blank refused to take off your oven mitt.
And your hat, after that night. I didn't coax too hard though. I'd let you keep it for one night and then you'd have to let him go in that sense, but even I have a little (really little) human compassion. In fact it really wasn't like you refused to give them to me, more like you couldn't see me in front of you and couldn't hear me asking you for them. You looked just as dead as he had. God, you were one hell of a pathetic sight, just so damn puny and crying literally nonstop for the first twelve hours I knew you.
So I knew it would never mean for you what it meant for me. It couldn't really, since you were asleep the whole time.
One day you'll realize how scared adults are of children, especially teachers who can kill you with one bad example no matter how much they love you. And I'd found you right when you could plummet one of two ways, fall fatherless or fall teacherless and I was afraid I'd have to hold up both fronts. Afraid because I knew I couldn't but when you woke up your eyes wouldn't be dead gray like the crying eyes, wouldn't be wet gray like the wanting eyes; I knew they'd be bright gray, they'd be expecting eyes. I had the cross. I had the secrets. I could let you take off the oven mitt at long last.
So that night at the teeny rural inn I'd found, while you sat outside and I sat at a table with your cold dinner, I was preparing myself to be your teacher. I was forgetting pathetic and planning potential. I was ready to start pulling you down with the rest of us, down- the backwards way to up. I was ready to feed the lies I'd been fed, he'd been fed, and they'd been fed because that's apparently what God wants.
But by 2 A.M. I was more ready than I thought I'd be and the corned beef was dryer than I thought it would be and you hadn't made a noise. So I lumbered over to the door and peeked out into an early-morning dark that should have been late-night.
And I wasn't ready.
The first time you needed me.
The top of your head was getting wet along with the tip of your boots. I never would have guessed, even though it made absolutely all the sense in the world.
The only time.
You'd cried yourself to sleep and slumped over sideways under the building eaves and the top of your head and the tip of your boots were barely over the line between dusty brown and mud.
The first time.
I wondered if you'd ever planned to come back in or if you just felt closer to him outside. Your cheeks were freezing because they'd been wet outside for all of the twelve hours I'd known you.
The first time you needed me, you needed a father.
And I wasn't ready, but when I bent my knees I suddenly knew what my hands were supposed to do and you folded just right as I hefted you up from under your arms and let your head loll onto my shoulder. Your eyes fluttered and you opened your mouth a few times. You were always small for your age.
It's so strange that my fondest memory with you is one you don't remember.
I realized I could be both because they were both the same, a father is a teacher and a teacher can be a father. But this was the only time you'd ever need me to be your father. And maybe, if you'd been awake as I stood in the early-morning dark with the late-night turned early-morning raindrops slipping down the eaves, creating a screen between the world and a sleeping boy, maybe I could have been your father. But it was an old rain, the kind you only find in the country, a fine fading British rain that smelled cold and clean, the type you'd eaten scones in with him in a café with chipping green painted tables and dank big cloth umbrellas.
You kept that father. Maybe he carried you in the inn too.
"Mana…" you whispered. And since I knew you wanted him, with the hat and the oven mitt, I answered,
"I'm here."
But only for that one time, I actually was your father because you said,
"…did he go to heaven?" And I told you my first little black lie (the kind God apparently wants us to tell) and I said,
"Yes."
But he was really carrying you to bed one last time.
Tag.
I was it.