Only Child(23)

With Andy, a lot of people say he’s the perfect mix in between Mommy and Daddy, but I think he looks like Daddy. Same hair color—blond—and same tallness, they’re both really good at sports, and I think they also have the same temperament, because Daddy can get the bad temper sometimes, too, and that’s probably why Andy has it.

When Mommy came home from the hospital, her hair was all mixed up in the back and not straight and shiny. She walked in the house, and Mimi walked next to her. It looked like she had to hold Mommy up or she was going to fall down. Mommy walked very slow like she was very tired, even though Daddy said all she did was sleep at the hospital. So that’s why we couldn’t go see her, because she wouldn’t be awake anyway.

Before Mimi brought Mommy in the house, Daddy said I had to give her some space and I wasn’t allowed to bother her right away and I thought that that wasn’t fair because I didn’t see her for three sleeps and I really missed her. But when she came in and looked all changed, I felt shy around her, so I did what Daddy said—gave her space.

Mommy had the same clothes on from when we went to the hospital to find Andy, and they didn’t look pretty. Usually Mommy has on pretty clothes, even when she’s not doing anything special. The really fancy clothes from her old job she doesn’t wear anymore, except when her and Daddy have date night. I like to help her pick out her outfit from the fancy clothes section in her closet, and Mommy says I have good taste. Her old job was in the city, like Daddy’s, but in a different office where she made commercials for TV, but she stopped working there after she had me and Andy. Now her job is being a mom and doing laundry and cooking dinner and stuff.

Mimi helped Mommy sit down on the couch, and it looked like Mommy was a little kid who doesn’t know how to do stuff on her own. It made me feel sad that Mommy was looking like that with her hair all mixed up and acting like a little kid, so I decided to go sit next to her, even though I still had my shy feeling, too. I didn’t look at Daddy because he was probably going to get mad that I wasn’t giving Mommy her space.

When I sat down, Mommy turned her head very slowly and looked at me, and maybe she didn’t see me earlier, when she first came in, because now she looked surprised. She pulled me on her lap and put her face in my neck. Her chest moved like she was crying, and I could feel her hot, fast breaths on my neck. The breaths tickled, but I didn’t move. I let Mommy hug me tight, even though she smelled different, like the hand sanitizer we have at school.

I saw a Band-Aid on the inside of Mommy’s elbow where she had the see-through string going in at the hospital, and I wanted to ask her if it hurt. I said, “Mommy?” and Mommy took her face out of my neck and then I was mad at myself that I did that because now my neck felt cold. Mommy looked at me, but her eyes weren’t looking at my eyes, but sort of over them, maybe at my forehead. “Mommy?” I said again, and this time I put both of my hands on her face and put my face close to hers. It was like she was still sleeping, but with her eyes opened, and I wanted to wake her up gently. But then Mommy put her arms around her belly all of a sudden and leaned backward on the couch and made a long sound like Ooooohhhhh!

I let go of her face and I scooched off her lap because the sound scared me and it was probably my fault she was making it, because I didn’t give her her space.

“Honey, give Mommy some time, OK?” Mimi said with a very quiet voice, and she put her hand on my arm. “She needs to rest.”

“Come on, bud, let’s leave Mommy for a bit and let her settle in,” Daddy said, and he came over to the couch to take my hand and pull me off the couch. I snatched my arm away and ran upstairs. I stood in my room for a while and I was breathing fast. I was listening if Daddy was coming up behind me, but he didn’t come. It gave me a mad feeling that I was upstairs all by myself and all the grown-ups were downstairs and no one even cared about that. My eyes got the tingly feeling like right before tears come out. I didn’t want to start crying, so I did the squeeze-away trick fast, and right away the tingling feeling went away and the tears got stopped from coming out.

I like having my own peace in my room, but now I didn’t have a good feeling. It was a lonely feeling. Lonely is not the same thing as alone. Me and Mommy noticed that together at bedtime one day. I called her back in my room and told her I was feeling alone, but Mommy said I wasn’t alone because she was right downstairs, so we realized my feeling was lonely, not alone. Lonely is when you want to be with someone instead, and it’s a sad feeling. Alone doesn’t have to be bad, because you can feel good when you’re alone. We decided we both like that sometimes, to be alone. My room used to be for alone, not lonely.

I decided to go in the hideout, because there I was alone but not lonely for some reason. It was starting to get cozy inside the hideout. I had my Buzz flashlight, and I brought in some pillows from the closet in the hallway that has a bunch of extra blankets and pillows, and no one ever uses them, so no one was going to notice that I took them. And Miss Russell’s charm, I left that in the corner of the hideout. Every time I came inside, I picked it up and rubbed the wing between my fingers a few times, and I thought it was really nice that Miss Russell gave me her favorite charm, because it made me feel good when I rubbed it. Of course, Clancy was there, too. I moved him in between the hideout and the bed for sleeping, back and forth. I picked him up and sat down on the sleeping bag with a pillow in my back against the wall and started chewing Clancy’s ear, the right one, not the left, because I already chewed the left too much, and Mommy says it’s going to fall off any day now.