“No.”
“Well then how you evah expect them to respect you if you don’t fight back? An’ look at yo’ pants. I cain’t go out an’
buy you new clothes every time you a coward.”
9 1
Wa l t e r M o s l e y
The whine in Elton’s voice made it seem as if he was pleading with Thomas, begging him not to make him treat him like a coward.
Thomas didn’t want to talk about his day at school or the bullies that beat him. He didn’t want new pants or respect.
Elton brought home pizza, but Thomas had already eaten tuna on slightly moldy whole-wheat bread with Miracle Whip and a glass of Tang.
He got away from his angry father as soon as he could, going out to his bedroom porch. He moved around on the mattress until none of his bruises or scrapes hurt. He had to breathe through his mouth because his nose was stuffy from the swelling, but he didn’t mind. In a short while he was asleep.
And in that rest he finally found what he’d been looking for all the days since his mother had died next to him in the bed.
He was hunkered down in a room that he’d never been in before. There was no furniture at all, no paintings on the white walls or carpeting on the dusty, dark wood floor. There was a doorway with no door in it that revealed nothing but an outer hallway and a real door that Thomas knew somehow opened onto a closet. He was squatting in the middle of the room, but he didn’t know how he got there.
“I’m just sittin’ here,” he said aloud to himself.
Very slowly, the closet door opened. And then Branwyn stuck her head out, smiling at her son. He stayed perfectly still and silent so as not to scare her away. She moved her head around, looking to see if there was anyone else there.
“You alone?” she asked.
She came out of the closet wearing her white slip and the cream-colored satin slippers that Dr. Nolan had bought her in Chinatown.
9 2
F o r t u n a t e S o n
Smiling broadly, she knelt down in front of her son and ran her fingertips along his brow.
“What have they done to you, baby?” she asked.
Thomas began crying again, as he had in Mr. Meyers’s room. Branwyn sat in the dust and took him on her lap. They rocked there in the middle of the floor, both crying in separate sadness and combined joy. After a long time the mother lifted her boy’s chin and looked deeply into his eyes.
“The birds and crickets and hornets and spiders have all been telling me that they see you looking for me.”
Thomas nodded and kissed her hand.
“You don’t have to look so far, honey,” she said. “I’m right here in your heart whenever you want me. Just whisper my name and then listen and I will be there.”
Thomas raised his head to kiss his mother’s lips and came awake in the bed kissing the air.
It was late in the night. The house was dark. The neighborhood was dark. And two sociable frogs were talking about their day.
Thomas took their calls for proof that his mother had been there and that she would always be there with him — inside, where no one could ever take her away again.
“N o I w i l l not walk you to school,” Elton told him the next morning.
They were sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast.
Thomas was eating Frosted Flakes and toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. Elton had instant coffee while he smoked a menthol cigarette.
9 3
Wa l t e r M o s l e y
“It’s not that I don’t have the time neither,” Thomas’s father continued. “I could walk ya if I wanted to, but you got to learn to stand up for yo’self.”
Slowly, Thomas made his way toward the front of the house.
“Tommy,” his father said before he entered the long hallway that led from the kitchen to the front room.
“Yes, Dad?”
“Come here.”
Thomas obeyed. He walked up to his father’s chair and stood before him, looking down at the floor.
“Look at me.”
Thomas raised his head, afraid for a moment that his father was going to hit him.
Elton did reach out, but it was only to put a hand on his boy’s shoulder.
