The Bed Book of Short Stories

Goodnight, Sleep Tight

288 Goodnight, Sleep Tight Joanne Hichens ‘It’s time to wean Luke from our bed, Angela,’ Paul says. ‘Move him into his own room. We’ve got to do something. Reclaim our space. Good time to do it now, with things so up in the air with the move.’ You know how it is with children when they share their parents’ bed, they start off sleeping parallel, straight like a ruler next to you, dead to the world. Then at what stage does it start, the gradual repositioning? So you wake up with kiddy toes digging into your midriff, or you’re head-butted as your child thrashes through some unquiet moment. Not a nightmare, of course. What is there to be afraid of, with your mom and dad lying right there flanking you on either side? And if our Luke was ever restless, I would soothe him, stroke his back and comfort him till he drifted off to dreamland again. This is after all, what a mother does. A mother protects her child and keeps him safe. That’s why we moved in the first place. We’ve been in our security estate haven one week now. There’re good schools nearby, there’s a sense of community, a sense of camaraderie about the place. Here Luke can play in the garden. This isn’t Lagunya or the Cape Flats where you have to keep your child in your sights one hundred percent of the time in case he gets snatched from the front stoep by a tik-head rapist. And with crime the way it is, the way we lived in Observatory up the line was hardly better, with our dog, and Paul with his gun, saying ‘let them come’, and me on the lookout every night from the top floor of our Victorian semi, checking constantly our garage hadn’t been bust into, checking no skollie was ripping copper pipes from our walls, peering into the street at prostitutes and scum drug dealers plying their respective trades. ‘I hear you, Paul. I know it’s time. Tonight we start.’ In our new condo that smells of fresh paint and varnish, Luke and I hunker down in his bed, reading, my boy lying in the crook of my arm, 289 till I dog-ear the page and put the paperback on the bedside table. He sits up and hugs me, light shining through his shell-shaped ears that’ll make a plastic surgeon decent money some day when we pay to have them pinned back. The luminous pink blush of blood there, the life I gave him. Luke grabs my hand, ‘Read more, Mom.’ All I can think is how many pages of What Bumosaur Is That? can a mother endure? What I want to do is frisbee the book of butts and farts right out the open window. I pull the duvet under his chin. ‘No, Luke, it’s time for shut-eye.’ I switch off the bedside light, and kiss Luke nighty-night, still trying to extricate myself from the skinny arms grappling with me, Luke grumbling all the while, ‘Mom don’t go, don’t go, I want to sleep in our bed!’ Keeping calm, all the time keeping calm, I say, ‘Luke, this is your bed now.’ ‘When I go to big school, Mom, then I’ll sleep in my own bed!’ ‘Of course you will, Luke. But you’re gonna try it out tonight.’ Parenting books insist you set strong boundaries from the start, experts give advice on how to get your new-born sleeping in his own cot in three nights, but I’d never been one for letting my kid cry for hours on end. But now I snap. ‘You’re five years old, Luke. You’ve gotta sleep in your own bed.’ ‘Please, Mom, lie with me one last minute? Please?’ So I do. I sigh. I can’t help it, blowing hot and cold. Trying to cherish my son in the soft glow of the night lamp, feeling him burrow close, sneaking his small hands under my tee shirt, when what I really want is to get to Desperate Housewives. Damp, chubby fingers clutch at my love-handle flesh like a baby baboon holding on for dear life to his mother. Then Luke starts rolling his index finger in my navel and I’m thinking, why d’you do this, Luke? This early exploration of orifices? Is this a...