Two Steps Forward – a short story

I wrote this story long ago, when my own children were very young. Though I write mostly books now, I still love this story.

At four-going-on-five, he’s certainly able to sleep alone. Enough people have told me, and I know it’s true, but in the dark I am unable to convince either one of us, and his fears are so real and my need to soothe him undeniable. During the night our bodies share space easily. His firm round rump blunts my sharp edges, and sometimes I can even feel his pulse, a rhythm familiar as a long-forgotten fragrance. The jarring confusion of our day vanishes in the softness of night, where there is no need for words.

When morning comes his damp head turns into my shoulder and his small hand reaches for my breast, and he disappears into silence again, leaving me far behind.

At four-going-on-five, he’s certainly able to sleep alone, but he doesn’t want to. And neither do I.

I recognize something in his clenched muscles, something that, when they ease into sleep, soothes me.

Before I dropped out, I read about a psychology experiment conducted on baby monkeys. They were taken squealing from their mothers and put in bare wire cages, where their echoes bounced shrilly until the babies withdrew into the corners. On one side of each cage was a nipple, surrounded by nothing but cold metal; on the other side was a wire mother-substitute covered with a piece of soft cloth. The babies knew the milk came from the nipples, yet they clung to their wire “mothers” to the point of starvation, while white-coated scientists made notes on clipboards. What, I wondered at the time, was their earth-shattering conclusion?

That baby monkeys would rather be comforted than fed? Who decided it was an either/or proposition? Even then, long before my son was born, I wondered at the stupidity of the human need for evidence.  Then again, I merely imagined the viewpoint of the monkeys. The white-coats, I’m sure, would have chuckled and waved away my concern. No one likes to think himself cruel.

There is something about a silent child that stirs a great discomfort.

When he sits with his plastic blocks, wordless but content, it’s tolerable, and for a short time our demons fade away. But always they return, stalking, growling something only he can hear; then his eyes, swimming and dilated, will search out mine, and without a sound he’ll creep into my lap, trembling, as if these uncertain arms could provide protection. I hold him and wonder, What was it this time? In my mind, I replay my words and actions of the day, the week, the month, but like a faulty videotape, all is fuzz and blur, revealing nothing.

Once, early on, when I still sought a single answer and puzzled endlessly for a simple solution, I shook him. “WHY?” I screamed. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Why won’t you talk?” He wet the bed that night. I haven’t raised my voice since.

It was soon after, though, that I discovered what no one else knew, not even my own white-coats, the harried social workers. Restless and riddled with guilt, I lay awake in the dark one night, wondering which of my many mistakes had scampered squirrel-like into my small son’s brain, until a sound in the next room broke through my thoughts: a voice.  I sat bolt upright, heart hammering, until I recognised it and realised…he was not completely silent.

He still talked in his sleep.

I found him tangled in the sheets, sprawled crossways in the narrow bed, blonde head twitching. “No. I can…  Let me…” He argued stubbornly, as he once did with me.

I lowered myself shakily into a corner of his room, savouring the small sounds of my silent child speaking to someone in another world, scattering the threads of thought that must surely help me lead him back to this world. Of course, none of it made any sense to me.

But the next night I crept into his room after he had fallen asleep, hoping for another glimpse behind the veil of his mind. My legs went numb, my back began to ache, and I was dozing against the wall when the first small hiccuping sob jerked me awake. I crept awkwardly to the bed. His head moved restlessly against the pillow. “I thought…maybe,” he mumbled. I leaned forward, certain that here would be the answers I craved. But the rest was lost. I didn’t want to wake him and watch him shut me out again, but I couldn’t leave. “It’s okay. Mommy’s here,” I murmured, stroking his back lightly, afraid of what my touch might trigger. He shuddered a sigh, and I thought he’d slipped beneath the dream again, and I might as well go back to my own bed, when he said two words, two simple words, as distinct as anything he ever spoke in his short life.

“My Mommy.”

Then he flopped over with satisfaction and sank promptly into a deep sleep. I stood motionless, stunned with gratitude and terror. Then I shifted him over, crawled under the covers, and pulled him close.

In my worst nightmares, I am still the woman I was when he entered my life, first unrecognised, then unwanted, then ignored. Timing, as they say, is everything and so it was that I bore a son. Perhaps I should have followed the advice so earnestly offered me at the time, to give him up. Perhaps it was already too late for him then. In this pain-stripped aftermath, there is no room for pretence, and so I confess it was nothing maternal that prompted my decision. Perverse, stubborn spite was the reason I chose to be my son’s mother. I took him simply because he was mine. The white-coats allowed this, not out of wisdom but from the dark knowledge that a toy fought over is often dropped and broken, or torn apart.

I wish his biggest fears were only nightmares. I wish I could say I loved him from the beginning. But my possessiveness had another source. He was my pawn, my ace, my own evidence. I had to prove my value, show them that I could do something right, that I, I could be a mother. That even I could do a better job than my own parents had. I let his wide, clear gaze and smooth, soft toddler skin convince me to believe my own words. But I should have known that the body remembers everything.

“Gammy and Gammy,” he cried, the last time I slammed their door. So small he was then – how could he possibly remember my rage? I haven’t spoken to them since, but I still feel the sting of their words at odd moments. Nothing hurts as much as truth recognised by unready eyes. “Gammy and Gammy,” he chanted at first, reminding me regularly of one more bridge burned in anger and panic. Gradually he stopped talking about them, and then he stopped talking altogether.

The experts that step in and out of the periphery of our lives watch us with eyes washed of hope, waiting to touch nail-holes before they’ll believe the unbelievable. I still think something happened, some specific event that tipped the scales and made him retreat into the painted backdrop of his mind, but they tell me it’s counter-productive to keep on asking “why?” Maybe for them, I think to myself. They have other cases nipping at their heels.

But I’ll keep asking why for the rest of my life, or until he answers me.

Although they don’t expect me to understand – I can hear it in their flat voices – they tell me how my son’s mind works, what he needs from me. They explain they have a name for that conviction held by young minds that everything revolves around them, is caused by them, or relates to them somehow. Egocentricity. A natural self-centredness.

I nod my head. Selfishness. This concept, at least, I understand. It’s at the root of everything, isn’t it? But this understanding is also the one thing that gives me hope.Its why I’ve decided to allow him to visit them again. Why I huddle on the freezing street, biting my lip as I watch my son disappear through his grandparents’ doorway, hoping that perhaps this thin straw will be the one that pulls him out. It is why, for once, when I return, I will be the silent one. It’s why when the lights fade and the shadows loom, I will clumsily share his small, narrow bed, throwing my poor flesh down as a peace offering to the demons.

I tell myself I’m not giving up; I’m growing up.

Even on days when it seems we’re taking two steps forward and three steps back, I remind myself that at least we’re on the road now.  We’re going somewhere.

I stand there a moment longer, shrugging my too-thin coat up against the biting wind. It’ll be a long walk home, the snow-packed asphalt hard beneath my feet, my dirty grey tracks a map between black and white. I walk, sleet stinging my face like tears.  I wonder if those scientists ever cried, and what happened to those baby monkeys

copyright © 2006 by Roxanne Snopek

All Rights Reserved

published in Half in the Sun, an anthology of Mennonite Writing