Benediction

It was September, and my sisters had just learned to count by threes. From the warm wooden stairs outside my mother’s kitchen, I could hear them stumbling over their twenty-sevens and thirty-nines. When they called me to come join them, Martha was already covering her eyes, her belly pressed firmly against the old oak tree, while Meg and Gracie scattered to the far corners of our backyard. I leapt from the staircase, bracing my knees for a bumbling sprint, but not before my mother tugged me towards her. She had darted to my side as quickly as I had sprung to my feet. Muttering something about the girls’ new saddle shoes, she brushed the soot from my trousers with clean, rough hands. She pulled me in close by my collar and, with her breath wet in my ear, whispered.

“There’s a new pile of leaves behind the shed on the right. I don’t think your sisters have found it yet, but be quiet.”

I stood for a moment, static, and let her words tickle the pink tips of my ears. Then with a shove, she led me to the tall St. Augustine grass. My legs bolted for the shed as I hollered something only a younger brother would say about how my sisters had gotten a head-start.

“And Nicholas!” she shouted over my complaining.

I turned my head towards her, my feet still moving.

“Tell the girls to watch where they step with those shoes!” I heard her, but never did tell my sisters. I knew they’d heard her too, and I didn’t like being my mother’s messenger-boy except to tell them dinner was ready.

Within seconds, Gracie was beneath the porch (it was her go-to hiding spot, and while this was well known even among the neighborhood kids, she always went back to the space under the stairs at least once a game). She would sometimes let me hide with her there, but more often than not, screeched and whined about how she’d been there first. Meg, being the oldest, had long since found the best hiding-spots, which sometimes lead to a draw—one of us shouting “We give up! You won again!” and Meg appearing from behind the swingset, insisting she’d been there all along. We all knew better, but also knew she’d never tell where she was actually hiding. Martha was often stuck with being it, not because we liked her any less, but because she was a slow counter, and hadn’t yet learned how Meg would rig “Tinker Tailor”.

Racing across the yard, I could feel my breath get heavy and cold in my chest. My feet kept moving, fumbling over thick patches of grass and mud. As Martha neared one-hundred-and-two, I turned behind the snow-grey shed and panicked. There was no pile of leaves, only a narrow bundle of long pointed garden tools that, no matter how I arranged them, wouldn’t do as a hiding spot. For a split-second, I wondered if Meg had already found the pile and cleared it from behind the shed as to prevent anyone from using it again, but when I heard Martha groan “Ready or not, here I come”, I knew I’d have to keep moving regardless.

My first thought was to wedge myself between the closest pair of huckleberry shrubs, but Martha had already made her way towards the warped little tree that framed the bushes. So with careful feet, I crept out from behind the shed and stepped into the open field of our backyard. With my sister’s head buried in a fountain of white huckleberry flowers and her back turned towards me, I had three options: the tree house whose floorboards were rotting and cold from the late summer rain (which, had it not scared mother so severely that she made us swear not to go up there, would’ve been a good choice considering Martha’s fear of heights), the space between the sliding board and its ladder that only Gracie and me could still fit into, and behind the old backdoor that stood propped beneath the kitchen windowsill.

I knew almost immediately the tree house was out of the running. Despite how often I’d tried, I could never bring myself to climb past the third rung that clung to the old oak bark, whether it was because I feared falling or the way my mother’s voice shook when she was disappointed with me—I could never tell which scared me more. Either way, one of them kept my feet planted firmly on the ground.

Had it not been for the way my sister’s feet pointed towards the swingset, I might have leapt for the place beneath the sliding board. But as it was, I was a particularly cautious hide-and-seek player, and I couldn’t risk Martha finding me first. Without any other options, I scrambled for the door, hanging stiff and alone by the window. It took me twenty-four strides, long enough to be an old man’s, to reach the space behind the door. By the time I was safely out of sight, Martha had found Gracie, who bragged about how long she’d stayed hidden, even in her spot under the porch. Dragging her feet through the muddy grass, Martha muttered something about always having to be it, and Gracie laughed in a sharp staccato.

Beneath my sisters’ clamor, I could hear a soft cooing from the kitchen. The sound was slow and muted from my shelter between the wall and the door. For a moment, I held my breath, sucking my belly into my ribcage and listening. In the silence, my mother’s voice vibrated clear and familiar. But as I slipped away from my hiding-spot, I could hear another—lower and fuller—countering hers.

The voice wasn’t very loud at all, but something about the long harsh o’s that filled the room made my stomach turn itself over. Slapping my fingers to the windowsill, I pulled my arms further and further away from my feet until my chin reached the frame. In the shallow kitchen light, I could see the outline of my mother’s dress swooshing back and forth, and across from her a tall shadow. It took me a moment before I realized the man leaning against my kitchen counter was Mr. Walker, but his black circle glasses gave him away. Mr. Walker worked at the market on Sunday afternoons, and always brought mother a newspaper in the evening. He didn’t have any kids, but sometimes he’d bring his nieces to church, and they’d sing in the choir with Gracie and Martha. Mother had even invited Mr. Walker to stay for dinner once or twice when the weather was bad or Meg had decided to eat dinner with her school friends. I didn’t mind having him at the dinner table (he usually brought dessert with him), but the way he stood across from my mother, with ankles crossed and back arched, made my cheeks hot.

When mother tugged him closer to her, I knew I should look away. She smiled and pressed her mouth to his ear, whispering something that made him laugh—not too loud, slowly and to himself. My mother smoothed the creases of his shirt the same way she did mine in the mornings before resting her arms on his shoulders. All of the sudden, my throat burned. I could hear my breathing speed up, and wondered if mother would notice from inside the kitchen. I thought I might even laugh or pretend to stub my toe on the doorframe so that mother might hear me, come outside and brush the soot from my trousers, and tell Mr. Walker it was time to go home. But when she took him by the hand and pulled him towards the dining room, I knew he’d be spending the afternoon here.

I didn’t leave my place beneath the windowsill for a long time, but when I did, I was much older. My legs felt stiff as I dragged them away from the warped wooden door. Ducking out from under the windowsill, I could see my sisters’ silhouettes in a sharp triangle at the other end of the yard. Slowly, I pulled myself through the grass towards the tall oak tree. It took me seventy-two steps, dwarfed and clumsy in the early autumn heat, to meet them. Martha and Gracie were seated at Meg’s feet, bobbing their heads as if in genuflection. The heat that had settled in my cheeks spread to my belly until it groaned. I tried to focus my eyes on the drooping white bell flowers that lined Gracie’s braids, but my vision was achy and blurred.

“You’ve started a new game,” I said, my voice small and fragile in my throat.

Meg looked at me carefully, as if she could tell my head was heavy and hollow all at once, but ignored it. “We couldn’t find you,” she said. “You didn’t come when we gave up.” I meant to say something about Mr. Walker in the kitchen, to tell Meg how close he stood to mother and the way she used the voice she’d reserved just for me, but Gracie leapt to her feet, dancing a gawky box-step and laughed. “Nicky, you can be the papa!”

“We’re playing house,” Martha said.

I couldn’t tell if the ground was sinking or if I’d gotten smaller. My sisters’ voices bounced off each other, swallowing the yard in their dialogue. I didn’t move my legs, but could feel my knees starting to shake as Gracie and Martha argued over who’d play the baby. By the time they’d decided Martha would be the nanny and Gracie the little girl, my back was arched over into a crooked ‘C’ and my stomach twisted into taut sailors’ knots. Meg roared over the ringing in my ears, “He doesn’t have to play if he doesn’t want to. We can go ask the Calbert kids.” Gracie and Martha didn’t object. Instead they stood patiently on their tip toes, bouncing on the balls of their feet, and ready to run in whichever direction Meg pointed.

“Martha, go asked momma if we can play with the Calbert kids.” Meg’s voice boomed even in the hollowness of our backyard. Martha leapt towards the house, swaying her arms to the heavy pitter-patter of her footsteps. I kept my eyes down, staring at the mudstains on my sisters’ shoes, but I could hear Martha swing open the screen door and call for my mother before it slammed shut behind her.

“Mother’s busy,” I said, but none of them heard me.

Gracie had gone back to practicing her three times-tables and Meg sat in the wet grass with a pen and paper, checking her work with a clicking tongue. When they got to one-hundred-and-seventeen, and the numbers were too big for Gracie to count or Meg to do the math, there was a silence. From the kitchen I could hear my mother tell Martha to go play outside and that dinner would be ready within the hour: a quiet benediction for the masses.