—I CAN’T GO FOR THAT

 

 

Boy in the Window

 

The boy’s window was more than a window. So many hours a day, a night, he’d stare through it, the glass shield that separated him from the other world, the real one lurking outside.

He was always erring, doing one thing or another wrong, and so his mother would lock him inside saying, “You’re lucky I don’t beat you instead.”

And in a way, he did feel fortunate to be sequestered and not having to deal with his mother’s anger, her lunacy. Since his dad left, his mother had become a kind of demon human, flinging words like jackknives, shouting in molten fire.

Outside his door he watched hawks soar, piercing the sky like crosses. He watched crimson-bellied robins pounce along the rug of dirt and weed grass that was their lawn. At night he counted stars and gave each a new name, kids’ names, his imaginary friends, and once they were identified in this way, he was able to have chats and to laugh at jokes that others might not find funny.

Sometimes the window reflected his face back to him, and he would look away as if the image was a menace or predator. He spoke through it instead. He created stories about a boy who becomes a man, buys a sword and slices through every enemy he encounters, making not only himself safe, but the world at large. 

On the last night he is locked in his room, he hears his mother, later, in the hall convulsing like a slayed dragon. He runs to the door, listens, pounds on it, screaming, “Mom, open up! Mom!”

And then there’s the sound of her body collapsing on the floor. Sound of choking. Of gasping. Writhing. Then nothing.

The boy pulls out a dresser drawer, goes to the window and tells it he’s sorry. He swings and swings, some wood shards winging off, until at last the glass breaks and the rest of it is easily cracked off, the night air pooling around him like chilly ghosts.

He’s smart enough to wrap his body in blankets as he climbs over the edge, smart enough to invent wings that lift him through the night, high up into the sky, where his friends, the stars, stand up and applaud, even as he’s only halfway there.