Only Child(30)

“…I wanted to let you know that is a resource readily available to all affected families.” That was Mr. Stanley talking. “And not just affected families—I mean, everyone was affected obviously, all the children who were at the school and had to live through that…terrifying experience. But for Zach—he lived through it himself AND lost his brother…I can’t imagine…he must be struggling.”

Then Mommy said something, but I couldn’t hear, and Mr. Stanley said, “Yes. Well, every child responds differently, of course. And the signs of any post-traumatic complications don’t necessarily have to manifest themselves right away, I believe.”

Mommy said something again, and it was too quiet again, so I moved down one step to hear if Mommy was saying something about me. “He is having nightmares, but that’s probably normal….” I felt the red juice spill starting to happen, because I didn’t want Mommy to tell Mr. Stanley about how I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed.

“Well, thank you for letting us know. We do also have a very good family therapist, Andy’s…so that’s always an option, too,” Daddy said.

“That’s great, very good,” Mr. Stanley said, and then it sounded like they were going to be done talking soon and come out of the living room, so I went upstairs fast before they could see me.

After Mr. Stanley left, Mommy got really tired and lay down on her bed again. I lay down with her, Mommy wanted me to, and she held me really tight and said, “Zach, my little, sweet Zachie,” and “What are we going to do?” And she cried and cried until the whole pillow was wet, and her hair and my hair, and more and more tears were coming. Lying that close to Mommy and her sadness put a big lump in my throat that hurt bad when I tried to swallow. It hurt my whole neck and all the way up to my ears. It didn’t make me feel good to be so close to Mommy’s sadness, but I still stayed because Mommy didn’t want me to leave.

Daddy came and lay down on the other side of the bed, so I was in the middle, and he watched Mommy cry. He put his arm around us for a little while, and I wondered if that made him have a lump in his throat, too, to be so close to Mommy’s sadness. After a while Daddy patted Mommy’s head and mine and got back up and left.





[ 19 ]


    Waking Up


I DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT’S CALLED a wake if it’s for someone who isn’t going to be awake ever again. I was five at Uncle Chip’s wake and it was the first time I saw a real-life dead person, because at the wake Uncle Chip’s casket was in the front of the wake room and the lid was open. Uncle Chip was lying inside there, and he looked like regular. He had his eyes closed and it was like he was sleeping. I didn’t want to go close to the casket, but the whole time we were in the wake room, which was a long time because there were two wakes, on two days in a row, I kept looking at Uncle Chip.

I thought maybe he wasn’t really dead, or maybe he was making a joke, because Uncle Chip always used to make jokes and I thought maybe he was waiting for the perfect moment to sit up in the casket and scare us. A lot of people went to his casket and sat in front of it on their knees and touched his hands, which were folded on his chest and I wondered if he died with his hands like that, and I wondered what his hands felt like and if they were cold or what. That would have been the perfect time to sit up, and it would have scared the poop out of the people sitting in front of the casket. But Uncle Chip never sat up and he never moved, and at the funeral at the church, the lid of the casket was closed.

After breakfast Daddy helped me put on my black suit. Well, it wasn’t my suit, it was Andy’s, the one he had on at Uncle Chip’s wake and funeral. I thought it was kind of funny I was going to wear Andy’s wake suit at Andy’s wake. Not funny like you want to laugh, but strange funny. When Uncle Chip died, Mommy took me and Andy to the mall to buy us suits because we didn’t have any, and you have to wear a suit when somebody dies, and it has to be black, because when you wear something black it shows you’re sad. So black also is a color for sad, but I picked gray for sad on my feelings pages and black for scared. The black suit matched my scared feeling about going to the wake. Andy made a fuss when we went shopping for a suit because he didn’t want to wear one, but I liked it. I looked like Daddy when he goes to work.

First I tried on my suit from when Uncle Chip died, but it was too small and I couldn’t even button my pants. So Daddy got Andy’s suit from his closet, and I got worried that he would see my hideout, but then it didn’t look like he did because he didn’t say anything about it when he came back with Andy’s suit. He held up the jacket and I put it on. You couldn’t see my hands because the sleeves were too long.

“Daddy, the sleeves are annoying me,” I said, because my hands kept getting stuck in the sleeves, and I had to put my arms all the way in the air to get them out. Andy’s a lot taller than me because he’s three and a half years older, and also he’s really tall for his age. I’m not. I’m regular tall.

“Sorry, bud, it’s going to have to do,” Daddy said, and that was a surprise, because Daddy always wants us to be dressed nice. “We’re not going out looking like hoboes,” that’s what he says to us, and he makes us go change and put on more handsome clothes.

I didn’t know why we couldn’t go to the mall and buy a new suit for me. The long sleeves were really bothering me, and my stomach was starting to bother me, too.