Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard (story books for 5 year olds txt) 📕

✴

ONE NIGHT I fell asleep reading on the couch and I heard my parents come in the front door after arguing. They walked into the living room, and I didn’t open my eyes. I sensed them above me. My mother said she’d take me to my bedroom, but my father told her that he’d do it. He lifted me, my cheek against the coarse fabric of his shirt, my arm hanging. I could have opened my eyes and said I’d walk, but in his gentleness, I knew he wanted to carry me. I breathed the odors in his shirt, pine sap and coffee, gasoline and sweat, but I didn’t drift asleep in this safety. I felt angry to be this little boy.

After he’d closed the door, I turned on my lamp and read. It was the only way to feel calm.

The next day, at my new school in the city, I jostled through the morning crowd, kids turning and saying, “Hey, watch it!” I fell asleep in class. I forgot my homework. When kids talked about the presents Santa had brought them, I said Santa didn’t exist. “Only babies believe in Santa,” I told them. “Get over it.”

A girl began to cry. I heard someone say he hated the new kid.

During recess, I explored the sprawling grounds. I despised everyone. I couldn’t talk to others without wanting to hurt their feelings. As I turned the corner, five boys appeared before me.

“Hey, it’s the new kid,” Tom said. He was in my class, tall and blond, his bangs neatly brushed back.

The kids formed a half circle and began closing in.

Years ago, when I started first grade, my father had given me talks about fighting, as if I weren’t heading off to elementary school but to become a mercenary. He’d warned me never to show fear and said that I should terrify my enemies.

“Fuck you, dog-shit-faced cocksuckers!” I howled.

The boys backed away, but Tom broke from them, ran forward, and kicked me in the balls. I dropped to my knees, the air gusting from my lungs.

“Run!” he shouted to his friends. “This kid’s crazy!”

They raced off while I held myself, waiting for my body to work.

Back in class, Jamil approached me. He was fast and known as a good fighter, and that morning, near the school entrance, I’d seen him push down another boy, fart in his face, and speed off.

“I don’t believe in Christmas either,” he told me. “It’s a bunch of crap. Do you want to be friends? We can beat up Tom after school.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s beat him up.”

As he passed the information through class that I was challenging Tom to a fight in the alley between two brick buildings, I could hear myself describing the victory to my father. But an hour later, walking into the alley, I began to tremble.

Tom was with his friends, their shirts rumpled, wet with the interminable winter drizzle. Rain beaded along Jamil’s hair as he stood at my side, saying, “Go! You take him!”

Tom shoved me in the chest. I got him in a headlock. We stumbled against the wall, the bricks rasping our clothes like sandpaper.

His friends tried to jump in, but Jamil blocked them. He kept slapping them in the face, dancing from side to side as if guarding a volleyball net.

“What’s wrong, pussy?” he shouted. “Tom can’t fight for himself?”

Tom popped out of the headlock. From behind me, he tried to dig his fingers into my eyes. I rammed him backward into the bricks. I threw my body against him again and again until his head struck the wall with a wooden sound.

I spun and punched him. He just stared, his nostrils too large and dark. Blood began to drip from one of them. His eyes teared up. He ducked and grabbed his backpack and ran. He disappeared down the alley, his jacket flapping.

I had blood on my lip from one of his fingernails.

I hurried to the pickup zone. My brother was on the sidewalk. His eyes went to mine and then, like a switch, dropped to my mouth.

“What happened?”

“I got in a fight.”

Kids gathered around, pushing between us. They told him about it, speaking quickly, pointing here and there.

My mother’s brown van swerved from the traffic and pulled to the curb. I got in, and she reached across the space between the front seats and took hold of my chin.

“Are you fighting?”

Her blue eyes glared at my cut.

“I had to.”

“Fighting is wrong. You don’t fight. You talk to people. And if you can’t resolve the problem through talking, you tell your teacher. You tell the principal. You tell me. Do you understand?”

I just sat. It was pointless to argue. What she was saying would ruin me at school. I’d have to fight constantly.

My brother spoke from the seat behind us.

“Everyone said that Jamil helped you.”

“What?” she asked.

“It’s not true,” I shouted. “He just made sure no one else hit me.”

I tried to meet her gaze but felt blinded—sunlight flashing on seawater.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want you to fight again, but André is going to ask what happened. When he does, don’t tell him that you got help. He’s not going to like that.”

✴

MY FATHER WAS so busy with his shops that we hadn’t seen much of him, but that night he was taking my brother, my sister, and me to dinner. By the time he picked us up, my mother had already left for one of her meetings. My father hardly spoke, not even in the restaurant. He called for coffee and then noticed my lip.

“Did you win?” he asked, his eyes suddenly still.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You did?”

I nodded, trying to hide my anger. The story was almost perfect. The confrontation in the alley, the kids gathered, the rain falling along the narrow slice of sky. As far as fifth-graders went, Tom was a bruiser. But with my brother sitting across from me, I couldn’t tell it right.

“What was it