Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia

When You Lose a Child

498 LISTEN HERE WHEN You LOSE A CHILD from Snake Dreams (1994) At the shopping mall at Christmas, in a sheet cold hospital bed, or just to age, it doesn't matter when or where: first your breath will stop and you will think you are going to die. Your head and face will pound like someone pummeling you with years, and though you have been here a hundred times, you will not know where you are. You will gather your wits like deputies and say, we will find him, he isn't really gone. There, peeking in the toy store window, there, by the fountain, standing with those shoppers, moving quick as deer through red and coated crowds, his hair, his clothes, his face. You will imagine that someone else has him, some other kind mother, perhaps, some criminal, you will picture him grown to manhood without you. You report that he is missing: there was a small boy, they tell you, by himself, in those same clothes. Your senses are as sharp now as they will ever be. Your eyes could see the scar on his chin in Africa, you could hear his voice calling you BARBARA PRESNELL 499 from Mars, and if even one hair of his arm brushed yours, you would know it. Then ifyou are lucky you will see him, squatting by the trains, staring down at the trains, and just like that, he will show you how they go round and round and tell you again and again how he loves them. But maybe he will not be there, and not in the toy store, not waiting on the sidewalk, not today, not this week, this month, this year. Still you search in the faces of children, you will reach for his hand as you walk, in the hollow night you will hear him cry, in your dreams, he will sleep against you, his body pressed to you, his perfect curve from now on the perfect curve of you. ...