Free Soul Survivor by Andrea Leininger, Bruce Leininger

his diaper, took him into the kitchen, and made his breakfast. She chirped and he jabbered, and
     between them it meant feeling good.
    James watched
Sesame Street
while she scrambled his eggs. She sat with him and drank another cup of coffee while he ate. She didn’t eat breakfast—it
     always stoked her appetite and made her too hungry to wait for lunch. But she liked to keep James company, and they talked
     about the day. Today was Friday, grocery shopping day.
    Then, while she washed the dishes, he played with his trucks and planes and blocks in the family room. And she was on the
     phone, calling Bobbi, calling Jen, calling Becky, calling Bruce (who was always too busy and had to get off the phone).
    When the dishes were done and calls were completed, they drove to the Super Kmart, and they were chattering at each other
     in the car: “Did you see the big truck? How many wheels on the big truck?” And the other drivers looked over and did double
     takes at the amount of prattle going on in the car with the grown-up woman at the wheel and a little kid in the backseat.
    There was a devoted efficiency to Andrea’s view of motherhood. It was the result of a kind of lifelong utilitarian vigilance.
     Ever since she was a young woman and on her own—a ballet dancer working three jobs to stay alive in large, expensive cities—there
     had never been enough money or enough time, and so Andrea learned to be tightfisted with her resources, to squeeze the most
     out of every dime and every minute. With James, it meant that she tied lessons and meaning together into every activity. Nothing
     was wasted.
    “Okay, when we go grocery shopping, what do we buy first? We buy the frozen things last because you don’t want them to melt.
     Okay, here’s the cereal; you don’t want to buy this cereal, because it’s too sugary. We need six cans of tuna. Let’s count
     the cans.”
    Up and down the aisles they went, James riding in the rumble seat of the shopping cart, Andrea holding a graduate seminar
     in grocery shopping—“What vegetable is this? How many tomatoes did we get in a pound?”
—
leaving behind a trail of admiring shoppers: “I can’t believe you talk to your child like that.”
    Even outside, where he got a treat for his good behavior, he got a tutorial to go with it. Andrea gave him a quarter for the
     little merry-go-round. She let him hold the quarter. “Who is the president on the quarter?”
    By the time they got home and sorted out the meals for the week and made certain that everything on the list was there, it
     was time to make dinner.

    Jen was due to arrive on Saturday, and Andrea wanted the evening to go smoothly. It would be a hectic weekend. Jen was always
     a firecracker, and there would be plenty to do.
    No one thought about the nightmares. The nightmares had become part of the family routine. It had become just another night.
     James’s room had been redecorated, and his crib had been converted into a daybed, and it was not with dread but a kind of
     philosophical acceptance that Andrea took him down the hall that Friday night to put him to sleep.
    “Three books, that’s all,” James said, as he said every night, holding up three chubby little fingers.
    Three books at nap time and three books at bedtime—that was the deal. She read Dr. Seuss, the Berenstain Bears,
The Three Billy Goats Gruff,
and, of course, classics like
Rumpelstilskin
and
Jack and the Beanstalk.
    She would lie with him in his daybed and read him three improving books, one for each pudgy finger, and then he would go to
     sleep.
    On this night, however, the daybed felt a little cramped, and there was the issue of Andrea’s back, and so they moved to the
     master bedroom—the Dada bed—so that she could stretch her legs and read comfortably.
    Andrea read a Dr. Seuss,
Ten Apples Up On Top!,
and James sat there, listening.
    One apple
    Up on top!
    Two apples
    Up on top!
    Naturally, it was a counting book. Something to teach