When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

the garden. This house. It took a long time for me to believe that we live here. Granite countertops. Four bathrooms with claw-foot tubs and stone tiling floor to ceiling. You could live in the closets. The breakfast table is next to the kitchen island. An actual kitchen island. Something I thought existed only in soap operas about rich people. Or in California. In the morning, light pours down from the skylights and through the wall of glass. Like church. Even on a day like today, when it’ll be gray outside, there’ll still be light inside the house. Every morning Johnny eats breakfast looking through those windows at the hundred-year-old trees in the garden. He’s never lived this close to a tree before. I wonder if he misses his old view of the fire escape and the bodega.

And now I’ve broken a window in this beautiful house. My anger has smashed the glass, scared my son, left my baby to cry. My anger permeates every room, sits heavily on every surface, blocks the doorways, thickens the air.

Is this how she felt? A flash of me and my brother hiding under the table while my mother threw dishes at my father. Me covering Frankie’s ears so the crash-bang of the plates wouldn’t scare him. Finding broken pieces everywhere for weeks. A ceramic sliver in my school shoes that cut my foot. We ate off only plastic after that.

I read the books, I watch the shows. I know that words come down on kids like fists and making them afraid all the time is as bad as bruising them. And I remember it, because Ma did it to us, and in the end I’m just like her, but I’m worse, because I know better. When Johnny brought that rocket home from school I tossed it on the counter and I didn’t say, “That’s amazing, darling, isn’t that brilliant!” I didn’t even manage, “That’s real good, kid,” like my dad used to say. Instead I threw it on the counter without a second look and said, “You want pasta for dinner?” And it crushed him. I know because that used to crush me too. I remember how that used to hurt but I did it to him anyway.

When it was just the two of us, when I wasn’t broken, I used to read him a page of Shakespeare and a page of the Bible every night, like the mother in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I never raised my voice to him even though life was much harder then. Even though there was little money and no dad for him. It was simpler. We were happy.

Rocky’s screaming is like torture but I’m paralyzed, with yesterday’s coffee in my hand. Get up, Gigi. Get the baby. How? Step One, stand up. Then what? What’s Step Two? I look over and Johnny’s left the table. I didn’t even notice. I guess he knows how to do it too, what me and Frankie used to do—disappear, become invisible. His inheritance, rage and fear, our family jewels.

Cold morning air descends into the kitchen from the open skylight. The air here is always wet. So heavy you could pick it up and carry it. The baby’s stopped crying. It’s too quiet.

Shit.

Shit.

I start running through the house. Suffocation, crib death, unconscious, dehydrated, drowning, smothered, SIDS, is he on the floor, did I leave him on his back or his front, what’s the right way? Back or front? What if he threw up and he was choking? Where is he? Where is he? “Johnny? Where’s the baby?” I scream as I race upstairs. I turn into Rocky’s room, breathless, panic crashing over me because I’ve done it now, I’ve actually hurt them. Now they’re going to find out about me and take the kids away so I can’t hurt them anymore.

But then my battered heart cracks a little more. Johnny’s standing on the toy box he pushed over to the side of the crib so he could reach over the top and get to the baby. He’s leaning over holding the pacifier for Rocky.

“What’re you doin’, buddy?” I ask him from the doorway. His small voice answers me, “I couldn’t find the milk but I found the dummy so I thought he might want it. He was really crying, Jeej. But he’s alright now. I think he’s hungry.” Johnny uses the whole sleeve of his pajamas to wipe his nose. His voice is breaking; he’s trying to be brave.

“I’m sorry I broke your truck. That was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“I know, Jeej. I won’t tell Harry. I have to get dressed.” My loyal accomplice. He steps off the toy box after checking that Rocky can hold the pacifier in his mouth and turns to go to his room. His bottom lip’s shaking and his eyes are welling up.

“Can we hug it out, buddy?” My voice is breaking too.

“No, thank you, Jeej. I have to get ready for school.” He said it British. Nothing that sounds like me in that sentence. He brushes past me, tears on his face.

I reach for Johnny’s arm and he gets all stiff, struggling against me but not strong enough to pull away. He doesn’t want me to hold him. I don’t blame him. I let him go.

I pick up the baby and kneel down so Johnny can see my face. “I love you, I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

He doesn’t look me in the eye, but looks just to the left, at my ear. Raises his hand to play with my earring, like he always did when he was little. “I know,” he says. He relaxes. He forgives me too easily, melts into my arms, curls into me, still my little boy. He holds his baby brother’s hand.

I hold my boys and cry hot tears.

What-the-fuck-do-I-do-now tears.

Someone-help-me tears.

8:30 a.m.

Eventually I get up off the floor. There’s no choice. Kids make you get up. I took off my holey-crotch jeans and put on my maternity leggings, found Johnny’s knee socks