Free Black Fridays by Michael Sears

stonewalling, one fact leaped out at me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it earlier.
    “The Kid is here? Where? I want to see him.”
    The Kid. My son had resisted almost every other name we had called him. “Jason” was my name, it seemed, and it confused and angered him when we tried to call him that. “Junior” was worse. Angie had called him “Boo,” but she called almost everyone that at one time or another. “Kid” stuck.
    Mamma made a show of looking at her watch. “He’s napping now, but I expect him to be up sometime soon. It’s no good waking him. What they say about sleeping dogs? You know. The boy can be a terror when he gets woked.”
    “I want to see him. I won’t wake him up, but I really need to see my boy.” I had tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, but I was begging.
    Mamma gave a sigh. “All right. But if you wake that boy, let it be on your head. You don’t know what you are asking, young man.”
    The last room on the front of the house had a hook and eye holding the door shut. Mamma quietly flicked it open. I felt a flash of sudden fury. I wanted to know why my son was being locked in like some nasty pet, but Mamma raised a finger to her lips and shook her head. She pushed the door open slowly and I looked into the darkened room.
    Despite the dark curtains and the lack of air-conditioning, the temperature in the room was almost pleasant. A fan hummed in one corner. The furniture was a bevy of hulking shapes in the dark, but the faint light from the hallway fell on the single bed against the far wall. On a wrinkled
Star Wars
sheet, the top sheet kicked off and bunched around his ankles, lay my son. Angie’s son, because there was no denying her genetic influence. The Kid looked like a miniature replica of his mother. He was beautiful. The round baby face and wispy few strands of platinum hair that I remembered had been transmuted into a delicate, elfin-featured oval, framed by waves of strawberry blond. I wanted to rush in and wrap him in my arms and beg him to forgive me for ever being away from him. Mamma felt my urgency and laid a hand on my arm. She shook her head and pulled the door closed. I swallowed hard and nodded. I could wait.
    I followed her back to the porch.
    “Sit. Sit.”
    “Mamma, why in hell do you keep the boy locked in? What is that about?”
    She winced at my profanity, but not the question. She took my hand. “Oh, Young Jason. Your boy hurts himself. He leaps, he jumps. He thinks he’s flying. If I don’t watch him every minute, he will break an arm, a leg, or his back.”
    Which all sounded to me like things every five-year-old boy tried. I gritted my teeth.
    “And right now,” she continued, “you’re thinking it’s normal. It’s normal for little boys to do things like that, and I won’t say you’re wrong. Only you don’t know your boy. What he does is not normal, and if I don’t keep one hand on him all day, he will find some way to put himself in the hospital.”
    She sat holding my hand and staring into my eyes. The years between us shrank. She wasn’t just my mother-in-law, ex or not. She wanted me to know she was my friend and she understood. I took a breath and a sob escaped, surprising us both.
    “All right, I’m okay. Thank you. You’re right, I don’t know. I’ve read some things—books and articles when I could get them, while I was away. But you’re right. I don’t know.” I had read enough, knew enough, to know that I really didn’t know anything. But I was sure I knew better than some. I would have to bide my time, watch, and decide what to do later.
    “I say prayers for that boy every day,” she said.
    While I don’t believe in the same deity, I recognize that prayers can perform miracles. Sometimes the only miracle is the comfort it gives to the one doing the praying—but that can be enough.
    “I know. Thank you for that, Mamma.”
    “I pray for you and my daughter, too. I thought you could be so