Free Following Ezra by Tom Fields-Meyer

the lunar capsule onto the surface of the moon. Eyes wide with awe and trepidation, he paces through the room, weaving among the children and scanning the shelves, examining the books, the bins of blocks and stuffed animals, and surveying the floor, with its cushions and beanbag chairs. With hands planted on his ears, he makes his way to a place on the rug, where the children are gathering in a circle and he sits down, with Dawn just behind him.
    “Let’s all welcome Ezra,” says one of the teachers.
    Ezra doesn’t look up, except occasionally, to check on the green dinosaur and make sure it’s not going to attack.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The Boy Who Shouted
    We learn to live with a child who rarely chooses to converse. Then we begin to encounter a new challenge: Ezra starts communicating.
    Shawn and I have grown accustomed to the spacey stares, the questions ignored or mindlessly repeated, and the way Ezra flees any attempt to engage him. We hope and dream for the day our son will begin to open up, to show an interest in reaching out to the world. What we haven’t anticipated is what that will mean.
    One Saturday morning, I get the answer.
    It happens when Ezra is seven, in our neighborhood, which is heavily populated by observant Jews who walk to synagogue on the Sabbath. On any given Saturday morning, a steady stream of pedestrians—nicely dressed, men in yarmulkes, women in long skirts—passes by on the sidewalk in front of our home. We’re not Orthodox, but we do observe the Sabbath, and most Saturday mornings, we walk to our synagogue, a little more than a mile away. One Shabbat, I am leaving the house with our three sons at the very moment a neighbor is walking by. Ezra has never met Charlie—I don’t know him well myself—but my son immediately notices something about him.
    “Why are you so fat ?” he asks.
    Embarrassed, I pretend I didn’t hear, and then begin trying to manufacture some small talk about something— anything —when Ezra interrupts me, undeterred.
    “How did you get so fat ?” he asks.
    Eight thirty on a Saturday morning, and I already have a mess to clean up.
    Charlie, a gentle, pleasant man who is indeed on the rotund side, pauses, flummoxed, to contemplate an answer. “I dunno,” he says, forcing a smile and patting his belly like a department store Santa. “I . . . I guess I just always liked eating when I was a kid.”
    Despite my eagerness to flee—preferably to another continent or planet—Charlie is walking the same direction we are. As we stroll past the first few houses, I make every effort to wedge my body between Charlie and Ezra, trying to distract Charlie and head off disaster with idle conversation about the weather, the news headlines, Charlie’s children—anything. When it appears that Ezra is about to open his mouth, I shoot him a stern look. Too subtle a hint, apparently, for Ezra.
    “Homer Simpson is fat,” Ezra says, keeping up his chatter at a volume loud enough to be heard in neighboring states. “Homer Simpson eats a lot of doughnuts.”
    “Huh?” asks Charlie.
    “Ezra!” I plead. “Stop!”
    “Elephants are fat. Hippos are fat. Pandas are a little bit fat.”
    I stop, kneel on one knee, firmly grab my son’s narrow shoulders, draw my face as close as I can to his, and say two words.
    “Just . . . stop !”
    Ami and Noam are behind us, and I can see Ami rolling his eyes and shaking his head. We keep walking, and I try to converse with Charlie, letting the three boys fall behind by a few feet. I hear Ezra continue his chatter—diligently injecting the word fat every few seconds—and I desperately endeavor to keep up a conversation with Charlie so he won’t hear. After two blocks of this, Charlie is turning onto a side street. Lying, I tell him we are headed in a different direction, and we say good-bye and continue walking—until Charlie disappears from view and I tell Ezra to sit down on the sidewalk while the other boys wait a few feet