Orphans

42

42 He starts to walk and so do I—same gait, same pace, and same arm swing, which is terribly freaky and terribly cool all at once. I follow him from a distance, scared he will notice me, or just know that something he is part of, or once part of, is near, soon to be reaching out and wanting to connect, or is it re-connect? As I walk through my neighborhood and along streets I know so well—every turn a memory of some activity with Joey or Shalla, dropping Joey off at school or shopping at Bao—I wonder what my Terrax sees or feels? Can he know that Joey once tripped on the neverrepaired crack in the alley up the street? That he fell to his knees and let out a little cry and then continued on only for us to notice several blocks later how profusely his knee was bleeding and the only way we could distract him after he noticed the blood was to tell him that from this day forward that alley would forever be known as Boo-Boo Alley? If he does know about that, what does it mean to him? Is it like a file he can access at the moment he needs that information to make a joke or reminisce? Or does he actually feel something? Can he recall the texture of Joey’s blood on his fingers? Blood that is his, mine, his, or the fear and awesome responsibility that comes from something even as harmless as a skinned knee that you didn’t prevent from occurring, because it makes you wonder what else you will fail to prevent and how there are some things you cannot prevent? Cancer or black helicopters, or the endless array of things that can befall any of us at B E N TA N Z E R 149 any time, even when you want to protect your child more than anything in the world? Can he know that fear and how irrational and paralyzing it is? Or differently, when he is helping Joey bathe or drying him off or just tucking him in and he sees the little moonshaped scar on his knee and the stubborn ridge of pinkish scar tissue that never quite goes way, does he have near piercing moments of nostalgia? Flashing back to Joey at three, at two and in Shalla’s belly and how incredibly wonderful those ages seem when you are in the middle of them and how you just can’t visualize how anything can be better than what you’re in the middle of until you reach the next age and the next phase and then you cannot believe you ever felt the way you once did? Does he know that, and can he feel any of it? Because I can and more profoundly at that with every step. I’m so lost in these thoughts that I nearly walk into a flash mob forming on the sidewalk before me, a group of black-clad kids, coming together, taunting the black helicopters , the Corporation and the ways of the world they have found themselves part of and subjected to: a world with no work and no promise of a better future. I swerve to avoid the flash mob as the black helicopter swoops in and in doing so find that I have drifted much closer to my Terrax than I thought I should. With this realization there is also an immediate sense of panic and confusion and all the things that come with it—the sweat trickling down my back and collecting at the base of my spine and behind my knees; the dry mouth, all cotton and paste; and my head suddenly pounding, a metronome of thumps and collisions. I am starting to spin into an abyss where I know there O R P H A N S 150 is no return, because that abyss isn’t one where I will talk to my Terrax and try to learn from him. That fantasy has been just that, fantasy, but more too. It’s been a smokescreen because I don’t want to learn from him—I want him to go away, to leave my memories and my family alone. I want him to stop moving toward my home, and Shalla and Joey who are waiting there, even if they know it isn...