Five(12)

Self-care complete, Emma peels a tangerine. She lays the pieces out on a paper plate, alternating raisins in between each segment. Gideon loves symmetry. In the center she places a piece of precut, dinosaur-shaped cheddar. She spends a moment admiring her creation. She really could have been a great mother if she had just had the chance.

She hears a thump from upstairs, then another, and then a series in quick succession. It is a familiar sound, her son throwing himself against the barricaded bedroom door.

“Just a second, darling,” she says to the empty kitchen, like a normal mother.



* * *





She puts the snack on the hallway floor. She unlocks the bolts and says, “Gideon, stop.”

She opens the door carefully. He stands in front of her. The smear of dried blood across his cheek is hers.

“Why did I lock you in?” she asks him, steadily, authoritatively.

“I’m hungry,” he says.

“Answer me, why did I lock you in?” she repeats.

“Because of that,” he says, pointing at her face.

“Because of what? Use words,” she says. She wants him to name it. To say it out loud. Maybe if he hears the words in his own voice, he will feel them. Feel something.

“Because I hit you in the face with a shoe,” he says, matter-of-factly, meeting her gaze directly. She looks back at him. Shame, regret, remorse, none are there. There is something else instead. Something that reminds her of herself and makes her furious. And afraid.

“How do you think that made me feel, Gideon,” she persists, trying to stay level, trying to remember which therapist told her that this was the way to help him exercise empathy.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “How do you feel, Emma?”

She kneels now, to be at his eye level, and gets close to him.

“Touch my face, feel what you did to me,” she says, her voice deep, a rumble of fear and fury beneath its surface. Gideon, sensing he perhaps went too far this time, unsure what she will do, stays still.

“Feel. What. You. Did,” she says, emphasizing each word in a quiet voice, just above a whisper, picking up his hand, putting it to the bloody gash over her eyebrow. She guides his fingers across the wound and down the path of dry blood on her face.

She closes her eyes and winces. He recoils.

“Feel it,” she says quietly, gripping his wrist. “Feel it!” she screams.

When she opens her eyes she sees her son, head turned to the side, eyes turned to the wall, pulling away from her grasp.

“Stop,” he says, his voice cracking.

She drops his hand. “You made a bad choice,” she says, standing up abruptly. “Put these on,” she says, handing him dry pajama bottoms and turning to leave the room.

And then, “I’m sorry.” He apologizes to her back.

She stops.

“I’m sorry, Emma—Mama—that you’re hurt,” he says.

She turns to face him, a tiny shaft of relief cracking through the wall of her chest. Her shoulders drop. She strokes his smooth cheek with the back of her hand, almost gently.

“That’s good, Gideon,” she says.

She helps him change clothes, she changes his bedding. She gets the paper plate of raisins and tangerine segments. She sits on the bedroom floor with him. They pretend the dinosaur is eating the raisins.

When the plate is empty Emma says, “It’s still the middle of the night, we should go back to sleep now, all right?”

“Okay,” he says.

She tucks him in, turns off his lights, and at the bedroom door she remembers to meet him with love. Children like him must be loved, and loved, and loved. That’s what the therapist, the last one or the one before, said. But they did not tell her how to love him. They assumed she knew. She doesn’t.

But she tries “I love you, Gideon” and closes the door.

“Why?” he asks the ceiling, then closes his eyes.



* * *





She taps into the search box, What prevents scarring.

Then, Does vitamin E help scars.

Then, My child stabbed me in the eye with a stiletto, just to see what comes up. Some articles on knife crime, a few angry girlfriends temporarily blinding their cheating boyfriends, a drunken mother assaulting another mother with her shoe over a lost kebab on a night out in Brighton. But no stories with six-year-old boys. No knock-knock jokes.

“C’mon,” Anne says, walking into the kitchen where Emma is sitting. “Let’s fix you up and have a cup of tea.”

“Where’s Gideon?” Emma asks.

“He’s with Ollie giving the dog a bath. Are you sure you won’t go to hospital?”

“But the dog—”

“It’s fine, Emma, he’s safe.”

I’m never safe, Emma says, inside herself, where her sister can’t hear.

She thinks of Anne’s baby girl, napping upstairs.

“The baby, did you lock the door?”

“This is madness, you really should go to hospital—”

“Too many questions, you know that, Anne, after last time. They’re going to get involved. Did you lock the baby’s door?”

“Maybe they should,” Anne says abruptly, slamming her medical kit on the table. “Your sister’s doing your stitches for you in the kitchen, you need help, Emmy, listen to yourself—”