Train Shorts: “Yoshua”

This series is dedicated to all the time I spend on public transportation and the stories I write while I’m there.

He felt like a stranger in her hands, this body from land too hot for her liking. His petite body, bundled in thick wool and down feather garments that swallowed him, shivered beneath the protection of her palms and Maddie wondered if it was because of the crisp, unfamiliar Saginaw air, or because he, too, was confused by these stranger’s arms. Standing there with nowhere to go but inside; nothing to feel but newness.

The bulk of his things had already been delivered on Friday evening, so the only thing in his hands two days later was a black plastic bag with a Rubik’s cube, a composition note book, a pen, a tooth brush and a pack of white briefs they’d just picked up from Walmart. She could hear him fiddling with the flimsy handle below her chin. In the time they’d been standing on the patio, five minutes masquerading as an eternity, he had only looked up at her once. She sneezed and the child at her hip flinched, peered up with curious, glossy eyes to see her nose twitch. Then, as if content that she was alright, returned his gaze to the stretch of white lawn out in front of them and the snowflakes speckling the sky. To the jeep in the driveway that hadn’t yet been dug out and freed and the unpaved walkway, decorated with a new set of footprints. There was hardly any time for her to shovel. There was too much to prepare. Papers. Rooms. Emotions.

—

For seven years, she had been alone in that house on Barker Way, unsure of when she’d be willing to share the space that held her captive. It was voluntary captivity, though. Maddie enjoyed the company of her own thoughts, and books, and the pitter-patter of rainwater against the roof, and the light that collected in pools beneath the bay windows she saved up for. And the snow. When he was kicking from inside her, threatening the nest she built up for herself, although there was a spare room beside hers where she kept her photographs, memories of the ones who no longer could tell her they loved her, she knew she could not yet make room for him.

After he saw the sky beyond his mother’s womb, no wailing, just looking around, she trembled as the tears fell. The distance she already felt from him hurt her. There was love, but it was still hollow. It was as if she had failed before she even began. He deserved someone who was ready. And when she drew her signature on the adoption paperwork a week later—and shook hands with his new family underneath the table over her eventual return—she promised that one day her heart would be ready.

—

Seven winters had passed and the boy who was quiet when she first met him, a pruny little damp thing, had grown into an admirer of silence just like she was. Yes, he was hers. The boy was quiet, but his eyes carried what felt like chapters behind them. She was told by the family in Florida, a frail couple with skin the color of truffles that baked cookies, planted vegetables and fished on the water with Yoshua — they agreed to keep his name — that they shone often. Sometimes because he held tears he was too scared to let fall, and other times because he held the world in them, full of wonder and imagination beyond the puerile.

She could not help but stare down at this child as he took everything in. His skin, poreless like her own, with a sheen like polished obsidian, had yet to be dimpled or puckered by the coming of manhood. His hair was cropped close to his head in the back, with tufts and twirls of locs determining their own path at the top.

He had not spoken more than two words since they had gotten into the car that morning, together for the first time, but those mutterings had been light, soft, innocent, pensive. She did not want to taint him, and longed to know the contents of his mind, his fears, his stories, this little boy of hers.

Of hers. Of hers. The words sounded strange in her own head, forced and unfamiliar, but she hoped that they would soon soften, spread over their lives like warmed margarine.

“Mmm-mm…?” Mother was not native to his tongue yet, nor was son to her own, but she let go of his shoulders and took his hands in hers. Little brown fingers squeezed back instinctively. “Okay, let’s go inside,” and she led him out of the snow, through the doorway, and in ways she wouldn’t have thought to imagine, deeper into the hollow space tucked behind her breastbone. The place where Yoshua had always belonged.