Only Child(15)

The really big difference between me and Andy about our rooms is that I really like my room, but Andy doesn’t like his. He doesn’t go in it very much, except for sleeping and when he needs to take a time-away. Andy needs to take time-aways a lot when he gets his bad temper, and then he’s supposed to go in his room to calm down. It’s not a punishment, it’s so he can learn to handle his big feelings. That’s what the doctor said, his name is Dr. Byrne, and Andy has to go talk to him every week even though he doesn’t want to. He has to because of his ODD—that’s the thing Andy has that makes him have the bad temper.

When Andy gets his bad temper, it’s scary. I got pretty good at telling when he’s about to get it, and then I try to get away from him. I don’t even want to look at him then because of how it makes his face look. His whole face gets red and his eyes get big and he starts to yell really loud. It’s hard to understand what he’s even saying because it sounds like one long word with no breaks in between, and a lot of spit comes on his lips and chin.

Sometimes when Andy has to go to his room for a time-away, Mommy has to stand in front of his door because Andy tries to come out and he pulls the door from the inside and he does his loud yelling. Mommy has to pull the door from the outside to keep it closed, and it takes Andy a long time to calm down and stop pulling and yelling. Or Andy tricks Mommy and runs out through the bathroom and in my room. One time he did that, and I saw Mommy go in Andy’s room. She sat down on his reading chair that’s way too small for her and she put her head on her knees, and it looked like she was crying. I got mad at Andy because he made Mommy sad like that.

I’m in my room all the time because it’s quiet, and sometimes I want my own peace. I come back out when the fighting is over, so it’s like I skipped it. I like to play with my cars and firehouse and trucks. I have a ton of trucks, all different kinds of construction trucks, fire trucks, tow trucks….Every night before I go to bed I line them up straight in front of the bookshelves and say good night to all of them. This morning I played with my trucks for a little bit before the bus, so now they were not in a straight line and that bothered me. I stared at them, all mixed up, and I thought about how they needed to be fixed, but I didn’t do it.

I went over to my window instead and looked outside. It was very dark, and the streetlamp in front of our house was making a round light ball in the dark air. Inside the light ball I could see raindrops falling. All the houses on our road have a streetlamp in front of them, on the grass in between the road and the sidewalk, and they were making a long row of round light balls with raindrops falling inside. They kind of looked like yellow eyeballs with lots of tears in them, and I got a feeling like they were staring at me. Creepy.

I sat down on my bed. My whole self felt tired, and my feet were still very cold. I tried to take my socks off and they were still wet a little, so pulling them off was too hard. I started to miss Mommy a lot, and I wished she was home so she could help me take my socks off and get ready for bed. I felt like I was going to cry, but I tried not to because Daddy said we had to be strong now for Mommy.

I squeezed my nose hard and I picked up Clancy—that’s my stuffed giraffe I got from the Bronx Zoo when I was two. He’s my favorite stuffed animal, and I always need him for bedtime. I can’t go to sleep if I don’t have him.

After a while Daddy came in my room. “Let’s get you to bed, bud. We have to try and get some sleep. It’s the best thing we can do right now. The next few days are going to be really tough and we need our strength, OK?” Daddy pulled the racecar sheets up. I got in my bed with my clothes on instead of my PJs, and that’s gross because earlier I peed in my underwear, but it was dried now. And I didn’t even brush my teeth.

“Daddy?” I asked. “Can you tell me a story?”

Daddy rubbed his hands over his whole face and it made a scratching sound on his chin. He looked very tired. “Probably not tonight, bud,” he said. “I…I don’t think I can…think of stories, not tonight.”

“Then I can you tell one tonight instead. It’s going to be about the emerald tree boa I saw yesterday,” I told Daddy.

“It’s very late. So not tonight,” Daddy said, and he leaned over to give me a hug. I thought about how that was the only part of today that was the same as yesterday—that I didn’t get to tell Daddy about the snakes.

“I’ll be down the hall, OK?” Daddy said, but then he didn’t get up to go, he stayed with his arms around me tight for a long time. I felt like I wanted to sing mine and Mommy’s good-night song for Daddy.

I started to sing in a very quiet voice, and it was hard to do because Daddy’s one arm was on top of my chest and it was heavy. I could feel his breath going in and out fast right next to my ear and it tickled, but I didn’t move. I sang the whole song all the way through to the end: “And I’ll love you always. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”





[ 10 ]


    Handshakes


THE NEXT MORNING I woke up and I was in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, and I didn’t know why I was in here. It was quiet and I could hear rain outside plopping against the window—plop, plop, plop—and then the plops started to sound like POPs, and it made me remember the gunman, and then everything from yesterday and from last night came back in my head. And then it made sense, because I never get to sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, only last night, because I got so scared.