Izzy plummets down our driveway toward the busy road, ringing the new tricycle bell he earned with good behavior, hot pink with a silver cat’s face on it. He must have turned down the forbidden driveway by mistake, mesmerized by that shimmering image. He gazes at the bell while accelerating, smiling, drawn in by the smoothness of the metal. At two and a half, he is impulsive, mischievous, and blissfully ignorant of his body’s fragility.
I sprint down the hill and grab him with my right arm, panting, hoist the bike in my left and start the slow, uphill trudge back to our house.
“I was just playing, mommy,” he says, suddenly contemplative. He’s trying to discern whether he’s in trouble. “I was only playing.”
But drivers like to barrel down this road with radios and speaker phones blaring, unaware of the intentions of children, uncaring of the nearby river and reservoir, the nesting birds, the crossing peepers. The 30 mile an hour speed sign seems more of a challenge than a rebuke.
Days earlier, from the top of the hill, I’d heard a long scraping, an impossibly loud “pop,” a shattering of glass. A small, run-down sedan had got clipped by an Amazon delivery truck in the intersection at the base of our driveway, and spun head-first into the metal road barrier. My husband was home that day, and in the time it took me to walk down the hill and cross the street, he had already been to the scene of the accident, called an ambulance, and retrieved an ice pack and a bottle of water from the house. He passed these off to me and went about the man business of slowing and directing traffic, while the delivery driver photographed the damage to his truck.
“You speak any Spanish?” the deliveryman asked me. “She doesn’t understand English.”
I approached the front seat of the sedan, where a young woman sat bleeding from the face, her hands shaking violently. I told her my name and handed her the ice pack, told her an ambulance was on its way.
“Mi esposo llamó a los paramédicos,” I said. “La ambulancia. Van a ayudarte.”
But my classroom Spanish couldn’t conjure the words that were needed, and truthfully, I wasn’t sure what was coming would help her. Or if the help she’d receive might set in motion something far worse. An empty baby seat had slid sideways in the back of the car, faded and full of crumbs, as they all are.
“Gracias a Dios tu bebé no está en el coche,” I said, useless. The woman held the ice pack to her face, shivering.
After about ten minutes an ambulance and a police car arrived, sirens blaring. Another man rolled up in a regular car and hopped out in plain clothes, off-duty but in charge, smoking a cigar. Then they all went about deciding what must happen next while the cigar burned down and filled the air. I stood with my hand on the woman’s back as long as I could before the paramedics moved in and lifted her onto a gurney.
And then she was gone. On my slow walk up the driveway I watched the ambulance hang a left and whisk her away. Down the road in the opposite direction, I imagined Izzy’s daycare, where he was likely playing with a puzzle or jangling a tambourine, sharing a snack with friends. And the woman’s child? The woman’s child was somewhere else entirely, a critical and as-of-yet ignorant player in this unfolding drama.
Perhaps that night the child would hold her mother on the couch, demanding stories of the new bandages while grandma cooked their favorite dishes. Or perhaps that night would bring something altogether different, the first of many inexplicable bedtimes without mommy.
Perhaps this, perhaps that; paralysis descends as a blank stare, a spinning mind. All the while others keep it moving, the productive unafflicted, those clear, efficient, and prolific folk who lock away those who must be locked away, shame them for their mere existence, and leave their children drifting, shocked, sick, invisibilized, terrorized. It’s children who generally believe in fairness, and will spend their time trying to figure out what they must have done wrong to deserve this punishment. Tricycles with new bells will fade as they commit further to this task.
Home alone with Izzy, I latch all the hooks so he can’t get out. He runs around looking for “mongoose eggs,” the little plastic balls from his sister’s Lego set, special coins, sparkly stickers that have drifted between our couch cushions and inside the cracks of the old wood floor. He likes to hunt and collect them, and then brings them to me for inspection.
I give them all a careful look and say things like, “Oooh, this is an extra special egg.” Or, “This one has double magic; you can tell by the way it shines.” He listens carefully and takes my assessments to heart, gingerly transporting the newly anointed mongoose eggs to a little canvass earring bag long since dumped and stolen from my dresser.
I go into the bedroom where I can still hear him rustling around no matter where he is in the house. There is “stuff” that needs to be done in here, I’m sure, although I can’t seem to remember what any of it is. Surely there’s a drawer to organize, or a pile of old bills to file away. And then, suddenly, a motion out the window snaps me to attention. It’s Izzy – outrageously -- running down the lawn toward the road. He must have shimmied his body under the six-inch gap of the porch fence when he couldn’t pop the lock. I just happen to spot him while I’m standing there, wondering whether to fold the laundry or write another letter to my congressman, or read my book or check the news, or chop the broccoli or send some emails, or map the distance, once more, between our well and the old metals factory down the road.
And while I’m immobilized my son sneaks and shimmies, clear in his purpose, his belly full and family close unlike so many his size and age around the world. Bold as he is in daytime play, Izzy still grabs my neck at night so I won't leave the bed until he’s fast asleep. Just as I’m sure it’s safe to get up, a tiny move from me and his fingers still contract, leave little red half-moons in my skin, add to the intimate mosaic of scratches and scars familiar to anyone who’s ever cared deeply for a child.
I’m out the door in a flash, running across the yard. This time I quiet my steps as I approach and yell in his ear, to scare him just a little, so he’ll finally learn he can’t run off whenever he feels like it. I must get him to understand the road is dangerous, that our time together is precious and not to be squandered. I yank his shoulders from behind so he gasps.
“But I found them!” he cries. “The mongoose eggs, mommy!” Now sobbing, he holds out a handful of rocks to show me. “I got mongoose eggs!”
“OK, ok,” I say, softening my tone. “It’s all ok. Let’s add them to your collection.”
But Izzy looks at me with a new expression, and I worry I’ve ruined the game for good. He’s received some kind of message, but I’m not sure it’s the one I intended.
The sun is starting to set on our little hill, and night will follow suit, falling incrementally across the earth. Minute by minute I imagine little hands reaching out for mommy’s necks, longitudinally reaching, like a Rockette’s kick line of longing children, more as the earth spins, dropping one by one as their eyes open to the weight of the new day.
I stop walking, pull my baby close and try to hold this body, this moment. Impossible, of course. I think of all the mothers who have lost even the chance to try, and I resolve to fight harder for them, for all of us, while we still can. I kiss Izzy’s wet cheeks and carry him up the hill once more, the taste of a child’s tears on my tongue.
