Bespectacled,
gray-haired, and with a mother’s concerned expression from the right, I feel
eyes watching. I crane my neck casually to exchange glances with the woman, who
cannot help but focus on the child and show her dismay. She utters her
question, then quickly looks away, making her posture more casual.
"Don't
worry about him," I politely assure the well-intentioned lady sitting
beside my wife and me, who has asked if my child is sick. From his fit of coughing,
it's a logical conclusion. "It's a new thing he does."
Ezra continues to cough, his face
turning red from the forced expulsions, solicitations of parental attentions.
The woman casts a semi-judgmental
glance in my direction, a look filled with contempt for me passing off my son's
"ailment" for anything less than the plague. His cheeks continue to
redden from the forced labor of making himself cough. This child already knows
how to work an audience.
"When did he start doing
that?" I turn to my wife, asking in a hushed whisper, not indicating my
discomfort.
"I don't know," she
replies, "A couple of days ago?"
"It's awful," I say,
looking at Ezra, two of his fingers being chewed on, massaging his sore gums,
angered by the intrusion of colonizer incisors or bicuspids which are
attempting to surface and make his mouth home. He lifts his left eyebrow, the
same one I lift. I know exactly what this means; I invented this move, the
brow-raise. It is an act of betrayal of my face, a teller of tales and secrets
that the rest of my face is complicit in withholding, a treason against my quiet
contempt. It’s my middle finger. The
little shit is trying to tell me he knows that I know it is all part of his
plan, a plan for attention, when he feels as though he is not receiving enough.
Picking up my spoon, I turn to my cookie
dough ice cream. I wrap my fingers around it, similar to the way I am now
wrapped around his finger, small as it may be. Before I can lift the spoon to
my mouth, I’m jolted by the hacking that ensues with an "Ack! Ack! Acka!
Acka ack ack!"
"Ezra!" My wife quips,
half-concerned, half-amused, choking down a laugh. The woman to my right casts
another disapproving glare. I wave my spoon dismissively in her direction,
letting the ice cream slip downward onto my shirtfront.
Amazed at the development of my son,
I am also half-terrified. If he is this master of mischief at five months, what
does my future hold? Already I get the cold glare of women of children my age
which are often endearing, or like today, overtly judging. I hear echoes of my
father, his words like an icy blast to my face, prophetical in their Greek
mythology way, "Your children will be your punishment." Perhaps Ezra
will always have a way of embarrassing me in public. I can say, if following
the profundity of my father's axiom, it would be just desserts.
Grocery stores were my favorite place
to wreak havoc. Otherwise an unassuming child, I made my mom parade on egg
shells at grocery stores, a land of opportunity for my mischief. My agile
fingers would peel the colorful wrappers of the candy in the bulk candy aisle,
littering the floor with the carcasses of would-be-sold candies. My particular
victims were usually the small treats that resembled strawberries, their
plasticky shells discarded like fallen leave from a tree down the aisles as my
reckless hands peeled them, one by one, just because I could. Down the canned
goods aisle, I sought my next victim.
At
seven, I had decided that no one should eat any meat from a can. I imagined the
surface of the unrecognizable meat products, indistinguishable from one
another, devoid of any real meat characteristics: gray in color with a slimy,
gelatinous coating resembling, what I imagine, lines our sinus cavities. The
Spam cans were my favorite. It is no conincidence that junk mail we do not want
to open, messages that come from questionable and unknown origins, are named
after a meat product so similarly sourced. No meat should ever take that shape,
a rectangular prism of purported flesh, and I had decided to protect my fellow
grocery shoppers from any exposure to such questionable products. Me, the
seven-year-old processed meat vigilante.
One by one, lifting the can quietly
from the shelf, I'd hold them up, examining each one as though it were
different from another. With diligence and precision, I would manage to get one
tiny finger between the top lid of the can and the tab designed for its
opening. Wedging my digit further, carefully, cautiously, stealthily, I would
pry, ever so gently, the tab from the top of the can. Making sure not to
puncture the lid not only out of fear of leaving evidence, but for allowing any
of the foul odor out from the deceased meat's aluminum tomb, I pull upward. By
the time my mother was ready for the next aisle, I had celebrated, quietly, the
fact that at least ten cans of Spam would not be making it to the homes of
shoppers who needed me to protect them.
It
wasn't until laundry time came that my mother would realize the destruction I
had caused, the acts of service, in my mind, which I had committed. In my
pockets were the strangely hoarded artifacts, the evidence of the little
crimes, silver and flat; I had so proudly severed from their purpose. My mother
wouldn't know how to respond verbally. On my dresser, I’d find my casualties of
war displayed when I got home from school that day, indicating that my mom knew
what I had done, but carrying none of the severity of a verbal admonishment. My
mother: the accomplice. Secretly, I think she found it funny, or she was too
embarrassed to admit to the fact that my acts of derision were committed
unbeknownst to her, right beneath her otherwise-watchful, mother hawk’s eyes.
Ezra coughs again. The sound pierces
my ears and wakes me joltingly from my momentary nostalgia. Looking up, I again
meet eyes with the woman next to us who stands up and walks away, shooting
daggers again in my direction. I know my eyebrow is deceiving me as our eyes
meet. I look at my son who smirks at me, a mirror image of my younger self. I
reach down in my pocket and almost feel the tabs of ghosts of Spam cans past.
