Olivia Thomson
Mother
Blood. It is almost brown, crusting on his soft fingers, and all she can think is how it's not the first time.
She is sure now; she recognises these stiff shoulders and this low-hanging head he presents with from November 23rd when he'd come home late from school and barrelled into her in his rush to get to his bedroom, and from November 29th when he'd avoided her eyes and claimed to have fallen from his bike, though his clothes had not been dirty nor his bike dinged. She'd cleaned him up and kissed his forehead (because he's twelve and it's a leisure to still be allowed to), made over-enthusiastic conversation about dinner instead, and she thinks now that she should’ve pushed harder for the truth.
What kind of mother is she to have neglected reality so willingly? To have not intervened? To have chosen “fish and potatoes tonight!” over “how did this fall cause a split lip clean of sidewalk gravel”?
Today she’d been in the kitchen, icing sugar cookies shaped like snowflakes and chopping chicken for a casserole—the dish had barely begun heating in the oven when the call had come, and she’d answered with a bowl of cookie dough tucked into the crook of her arm. “Hello?”
There had been no greeting. “This is Sheila at Clifton Heights, ma’am. Princ—”
Her stomach had clenched violently. “Oh, God, what happened?” (She wonders now if, somewhere in the haze of her mind, she had already known).
“Principal Mayhew has requested a meeting with Noah’s mother—”
His mother. She’d steeled herself, shaken off the irritation.
“—regarding an altercation that has taken place. Mrs Baker is on her way to collect you. Good day, Ms Keating.”
A dull click, then nothing. She'd wanted to throw the phone and scream, but the honk of a car horn had had her racing for the coat stand and the front door instead.
She still is not sure when she'd dropped the mixing bowl.
The passenger door had closed mere seconds before Mrs Nettie Baker had surged the car halfway down the block. “I'm so sorry about this, Ida.” Her stormy expression would have been terrifying had it not reflected Ida’s own inner rage. “It's those b******s in administration, spouting some rubbish about misplacement of contact information—took their sweet time looking more like. I swear, Ida, corrupt gang of ingrates, especially that Sheila woman. Can't be saying that mind, oh no!” She'd let out a bitter bark of laughter. “No mouthing off, not if the girls are to be sent to bed with full bellies every night! Terrible, Ida, bloody terrible. You should get the union involved.”
“Is he alright?” Ida had murmured, staring at Nettie hard, a sting coming to her eyes. “My boy, is he…”
At once, Nettie’s grumbling voice had softened. “He's alright, Ida. Little worse for wear, but alright. The nurse checked him over an hour ago.”
Ida had frozen at that, and Nettie had rocketed through a red light, fury sweeping back over her face.
When he'd looked up, surely roused by the sound of heels approaching along the corridor, she hadn't been able to stop the startled cry of anguish which had ripped from her throat. She'd fallen to her knees in front of his body and reached with shaking hands to touch his grazed cheek, his slumped shoulders, to find any bruised inch and ease the pain. “Oh, Noah,” she'd whispered, voice untrustworthy for anything beyond his name. His eyes had flicked from the floor to the opposite wall, before settling on his hands.
Ida takes his hands now, and her fingers, dark as the dried blood, squeeze reassuringly.
The office of Principal Mayhew is almost inviting— the man himself, however, greets her with a clinical frown and a throwaway gesture of a hand towards the seat in front of his desk, a chair which is uncomfortable and hardly capable of supporting a human being much taller than a foot with its thin legs. Her own legs, more thick than thin and intrusive on these pale, pale walls, stick to the plastic in the office heat, but she pays little mind, more interested in why the man insists on reading Noah’s profile as if he were unaware of the boy’s presence on the other side of the door.
He looks up then. “Ms Keating,” he begins, having cleared his throat and adopted an authoritative posture, hands clasped, back straight. “You've been summoned because, of course, young Noah was involved in a fist fight earlier today, quite an aggressive one too.”
Ida senses an accusation, though of what she isn't certain. “My boy would never take to violence, Mr Mayhew,” she promises firmly. “He just wouldn't. It's quite impossible to imagine, really.”
“Well I'm afraid he did today,” and his eyes are almost condescending. “A number of students actually named Noah as the initiator.”
She swears the ground is shaking. “No,” she snaps, stuffing her trembling hands between her thighs and pressing her lips together hard in a bid to calm herself. “No, he's a good boy! He'd never hurt another child!”
His unmoved face makes her blood boil, as does his absolute ignorance. “Ms Keating, we also contacted you because we at the school are aware of Noah’s…unique situation.”
“I'm sorry?”
He gestures to her like it's obvious. “His situation,” he repeats, tone higher, indicative of disbelief.
She refuses to give an inch. “Forgive me, I don't follow you.”
A small victory can be found in the way he resigns to her with a sigh. “What I mean to say is that we know Noah’s parents have never been present.”
Any small sense of satisfaction she feels dies a short death, but she pushes the sting aside and does what she's so used to—defence. “Noah doesn't have parents. Just a mother, and you're looking at her.”
“Of course,” he smiles tightly, weakly. “However, we feel his lack of—” he ponders his next words for a second “—appropriate role models, shall we say, has—”
“Pardon me,” Ida interrupts, because those were not the right words. “What exactly makes for an appropriate role model?”
“Well, association for one.” At her blank stare he elaborates, quite emphatically. “You know, Ms Keating, lions with lions! Frogs with frogs!”
The image elicits a gnawing at her guts and she makes no effort to hide how disgusted she is. He's blind to her distress. “Noah lacks the influence of those like him, Ms Keating, to put it simply.”
“Oh I doubt that,” she drawls, tiring of his poor attempts at indirectness. “Ninety percent of the folks in this neighbourhood are white.”
“Ms Keating, we don't mean to offend, but we feel that had he the influence of his real mother—”
“I'm his mother.”
“Legally speaking, yes, Ms Keating.”
She snaps, jerking to her feet. “No, Mr Mayhew. No. A mother isn't a mother because of biology or legality or skin. If she feeds her child and keeps a clean shirt on his back and a roof over his head, soothes his fevers and tells him that he is not any less of a human being because of his associations with us coloured folks, then she is his goddamned mother, and not mismatched flesh nor a piece of paper can say differently.”
She walks to the door, sparing a glance over her shoulder, pleased at the dumbfounded look on his face. “I'll be taking my son home now. Good day, Mr Mayhew.”
“I'm sorry, Mom,” Noah mumbles that night, as they clean cookie dough off the kitchen floor. Ida's heart breaks and tears leak from her eyes; she draws him tight against her and whispers words of safety, as if they can protect him.
(1299)