Free The Mother by Yvvette Edwards

night. Ryan wasn’t a tough guy, a macho man in the making, he was soft and gentle and feely. Wherever he was in the house, Sheba would invariably be close by because she was guaranteed his time, attention, and affection. Even though he is no longer here, she still sleeps in his room, and sometimes I think she is the only living creature who remembers him with the same intensity that I do.
    There was a day, about a fortnight after the event, when I had some laundry on the kitchen floor that I had finally sorted into piles after weeks of inactivity. I had run out of soap powder and walked to the corner shop to pick up some more. When I returned, Sheba was lying on one of the piles of washing. There was a pair of Ryan’s boxer shorts in that pileand she was rubbing the side of her face into the crotch and purring as blissfully as if it were catnip. I just sat down on the floor beside her and cried as I watched. I could understand it so completely, the way his absence amplified her need to connect with him, even if it was only through inhaling his scent; in fact, I was jealous. Propriety stopped me, but I wanted to do it too, lie on the floor, push her out of the way, rub my face into his pants in her place, deeply inhale.
    Those were mad weeks. All I could think about was connecting with him. I read his schoolbooks, every word of every essay and answer and sentence he wrote, searching for his essence. I listened to the same boog-a-boog house music I’d spent years asking him to turn down, please! I watched the programs he’d loved that I had told him were polluting his mind, spent time in his room, sat at his desk, lay on his bed, pored over his image in photographs. I even went up into the attic, brought down boxes of memorabilia; an envelope containing every baby tooth he ever lost, bar one which he swallowed accidentally and cried because he worried his carelessness had cost him the hard cash the tooth fairy would have left for it (it didn’t, still earned him in its absence two pounds); fingered the blue baby band placed on his wrist within an hour of birth, the wretched dried stump of his umbilical cord and peg, all the things I had collected that I imagined I would one day present to him, maybe when he was twenty-one or when he had a child of his own, or that he might discover in the attic after I had died, never dreamed I would need these worthless precious items so badly, that they would be all I had left of him, all I had left, otherwise I would have collected more, videoed every moment, recorded every word, bubble-wrapped every item he ever touched ifI’d thought for a second that he would be taken from me so early and they would be all I’d have to console me for the rest of my life.
    I want my son. Want him so badly it hurts. Remembering him is not enough. Being in his room is not enough. Catching his scent is not enough. I want my son.
    Lloydie returns earlier than he did last night and cooks. It is easier to eat the dinner he has prepared on trays on our laps in the living room rather than at the kitchen table, so we can both stare at the TV screen as though deeply immersed, taking the pressure off the silence between us and creating the appearance of being a normal married couple spending a regular evening at home.
    I am angry with myself for wanting more from Lloydie, not because it is unreasonable to want more from him under the circumstances, but because my expectations are unfair. He cannot speak of feelings, never has been able to. It’s part of his psyche. His father was a hard man, brutal with Lloydie and his sister. Their mother died when he was six and he grew up with a man who clothed and fed and disciplined them, nothing more. He never had a mother cuddle him when he was ten or twelve or twenty, never spoke while he was growing up with his father about feelings or emotions or life. One of the first things he told me when we were courting was that when he had children he