Surrender

by Kristi Ferguson

He learned if he could make Mom laugh, everything would be okay.

He relied on that certainty when she discovered him sneaking to the corner store, first for candy, then for beer and cigarettes. He used it when he was months behind on child support after the first unplanned pregnancy, before the DNA results came back and the baby turned out not to be his. It was there again when he admitted to the second baby, which was his, after Mom received a midnight Facebook message from the pregnant ex-girlfriend, telling her everything. 

He tried it on the nights he came home later than the end of his midnight shift, on the mornings he didn’t make it out of bed for his day job, on the afternoons he came home early without a job. When he had to tell Mom he didn’t have the fifty bucks she’d loaned him for his new boots, the two hundred for his bike, the several hundred she’d been sending, once a month, as child support, that money he’d sworn to pay back.

Somehow, he made Mom laugh after she opened the envelopes that the bank sent, the ones with his name printed in black type and final notice stamped over them in red ink. Forget about those, he told her, I don’t even know what those are. Till more came and she called the bank and asked and told him, you can’t just keep ignoring this.

He had to try hard to make her laugh the weekend after she first asked about the powdery baggies, but when her laughter finally came it filled up the house and made everything okay for a while, for so long he thought she would smile at him forever. That was why the day she confronted him, when she showed him the needles she found by his bed, he’d been in such shock, he hadn’t been able to say a word.

That was years away though. Today, he is six years old and has spent too long ignoring Mom’s clean up your toys and get into bed now. He is trying to run but he can’t get away. Mom catches up his bony, green-veined arm and flings him over her lap, raises her heavy hand high into the air.

Before it can land, he stops begging and protesting. He swallows his sobs, stretches out his arms and legs, makes his body across her lap stiff as an acrylic doll. He screams, I surrender!

The room stops. His brothers and sisters stare, too scared to move, they wait for the anger to flash in Mom’s eyes, for her lips to narrow to a line and speak harsh words in a loud voice, for the blows to multiply. Instead, Mom’s hand weakens. She sets it to her forehead, then over her open mouth. Her body shakes. She laughs till tears run down her face.

Kristi Ferguson is a researcher and writer. Originally from Brazil, she currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Daily Drunk, Litro Magazine, BULL, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter @KFergusonWrites.