Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

  “I…I’m going,” she said, and turned around and grabbed the door handle, but she couldn’t open the door because she didn’t know you have to press it all the way down hard.

  “Here…I’ll…” Daddy stretched his hand out to open the door for her, and his arm touched against her pointy boob circles. He tried to open the door, but Ricky’s mom was standing right in front of it, so they both had to move backward and they bumped into each other. When Daddy got the door opened, Ricky’s mom walked down the front steps from our porch. I walked closer to the door to stand next to Daddy. We watched how Ricky’s mom took little steps like the walkway was slippery from the rain and it was hard for her to walk on it. Then she turned on the sidewalk and walked down our road toward where her house is, and she didn’t turn around once.

  [ 14 ]

  Where Did You Go?

  MOMMY GOT CHANGED into a different person at the hospital. She came home after three sleeps and she looked different and acted different, too. Mommy always looks pretty, even in the mornings when she first wakes up. She has long brown hair that’s very straight and shiny, and it’s the same color as mine. We also have the same eyes—hazel. That’s like a few colors mixed together, like a brownish green, and I like that me and Mommy are the only ones in the family who have the same hair color and eyes. Mommy says I have the same temperament as her, too, that means when you act the same, and I think she’s right about that. We both don’t like when there’s all the fighting. I know that because sometimes when Mommy has a fight with Andy or Daddy she cries, so I know it makes her sad. Mommy says we’re both people pleasers—that’s when you want other people around you to feel good.

  With Andy, a lot of people say he’s the perfect mix in between Mommy and Daddy, but I think he looks like Daddy. Same hair color—blond—and same tallness, they’re both really good at sports, and I think they also have the same temperament, because Daddy can get the bad temper sometimes, too, and that’s probably why Andy has it.

  When Mommy came home from the hospital, her hair was all mixed up in the back and not straight and shiny. She walked in the house, and Mimi walked next to her. It looked like she had to hold Mommy up or she was going to fall down. Mommy walked very slow like she was very tired, even though Daddy said all she did was sleep at the hospital. So that’s why we couldn’t go see her, because she wouldn’t be awake anyway.

  Before Mimi brought Mommy in the house, Daddy said I had to give her some space and I wasn’t allowed to bother her right away and I thought that that wasn’t fair because I didn’t see her for three sleeps and I really missed her. But when she came in and looked all changed, I felt shy around her, so I did what Daddy said—gave her space.

  Mommy had the same clothes on from when we went to the hospital to find Andy, and they didn’t look pretty. Usually Mommy has on pretty clothes, even when she’s not doing anything special. The really fancy clothes from her old job she doesn’t wear anymore, except when her and Daddy have date night. I like to help her pick out her outfit from the fancy clothes section in her closet, and Mommy says I have good taste. Her old job was in the city, like Daddy’s, but in a different office where she made commercials for TV, but she stopped working there after she had me and Andy. Now her job is being a mom and doing laundry and cooking dinner and stuff.

  Mimi helped Mommy sit down on the couch, and it looked like Mommy was a little kid who doesn’t know how to do stuff on her own. It made me feel sad that Mommy was looking like that with her hair all mixed up and acting like a little kid, so I decided to go sit next to her, even though I still had my shy feeling, too. I didn’t look at Daddy because he was probably going to get mad that I wasn’t giving Mommy her space.

  When I sat down, Mommy turned her head very slowly and looked at me, and maybe she didn’t see me earlier, when she first came in, because now she looked surprised. She pulled me on her lap and put her face in my neck. Her chest moved like she was crying, and I could feel her hot, fast breaths on my neck. The breaths tickled, but I didn’t move. I let Mommy hug me tight, even though she smelled different, like the hand sanitizer we have at school.

  I saw a Band-Aid on the inside of Mommy’s elbow where she had the see-through string going in at the hospital, and I wanted to ask her if it hurt. I said, “Mommy?” and Mommy took her face out of my neck and then I was mad at myself that I did that because now my neck felt cold. Mommy looked at me, but her eyes weren’t looking at my eyes, but sort of over them, maybe at my forehead. “Mommy?” I said again, and this time I put both of my hands on her face and put my face close to hers. It was like she was still sleeping, but with her eyes opened, and I wanted to wake her up gently. But then Mommy put her arms around her belly all of a sudden and leaned backward on the couch and made a long sound like Ooooohhhhh!

  I let go of her face and I scooched off her lap because the sound scared me and it was probably my fault she was making it, because I didn’t give her her space.

  “Honey, give Mommy some time, OK?” Mimi said with a very quiet voice, and she put her hand on my arm. “She needs to rest.”

  “Come on, bud, let’s leave Mommy for a bit and let her settle in,” Daddy said, and he came over to the couch to take my hand and pull me off the couch. I snatched my arm away and ran upstairs. I stood in my room for a while and I was breathing fast. I was listening if Daddy was coming up behind me, but he didn’t come. It gave me a mad feeling that I was upstairs all by myself and all the grown-ups were downstairs and no one even cared about that. My eyes got the tingly feeling like right before tears come out. I didn’t want to start crying, so I did the squeeze-away trick fast, and right away the tingling feeling went away and the tears got stopped from coming out.

  I like having my own peace in my room, but now I didn’t have a good feeling. It was a lonely feeling. Lonely is not the same thing as alone. Me and Mommy noticed that together at bedtime one day. I called her back in my room and told her I was feeling alone, but Mommy said I wasn’t alone because she was right downstairs, so we realized my feeling was lonely, not alone. Lonely is when you want to be with someone instead, and it’s a sad feeling. Alone doesn’t have to be bad, because you can feel good when you’re alone. We decided we both like that sometimes, to be alone. My room used to be for alone, not lonely.

  I decided to go in the hideout, because there I was alone but not lonely for some reason. It was starting to get cozy inside the hideout. I had my Buzz flashlight, and I brought in some pillows from the closet in the hallway that has a bunch of extra blankets and pillows, and no one ever uses them, so no one was going to notice that I took them. And Miss Russell’s charm, I left that in the corner of the hideout. Every time I came inside, I picked it up and rubbed the wing between my fingers a few times, and I thought it was really nice that Miss Russell gave me her favorite charm, because it made me feel good when I rubbed it. Of course, Clancy was there, too. I moved him in between the hideout and the bed for sleeping, back and forth. I picked him up and sat down on the sleeping bag with a pillow in my back against the wall and started chewing Clancy’s ear, the right one, not the left, because I already chewed the left too much, and Mommy says it’s going to fall off any day now.

  Andy always tries to take Clancy from me to throw him in the garbage because he says he stinks so bad. I try to find different hiding places for Clancy so Andy can’t take him from me, and then sometimes at bedtime I forget where I left him and we have to look all over for him so I can go to sleep. I thought about how now I don’t have to hide Clancy anymore, and he is going to be safe now, safe from Andy.

  I wondered how Grandma could know that Andy went to heaven, or his soul, because she said only good people go to heaven. Andy wasn’t really a good person a lot of times. He was mostly trying to be mean to me and make Mommy upset. He did the same things over and over again that made her upset, so it must have been on purpose, because otherwise why didn’t he just stop it?

&n
bsp; Now Andy couldn’t be mean to me anymore and he couldn’t make Mommy upset anymore. Right now Mommy was sad and in shock because Andy died from the gunman. But after she started to feel better from that she wouldn’t have to be upset all the time anymore.

  Uncle Chip definitely went to heaven, I knew that, because he was always nice to everyone. But Andy? Grandma said the souls of bad people went somewhere else, and I didn’t know where, but if Andy went there instead of heaven, then he would be with all the bad guys now, like the gunman, and that would probably be very scary. I closed my eyes and tried to find a picture of Andy in my brain. I could see his face for a short while, but it was hard to get it to hold still. “Did you go up to heaven, or where did you go?” my brain said to Andy’s face. Andy’s face disappeared. “Anyway, I hope you did.”

  [ 15 ]

  Walking Blind

  “CAN I HAVE SCREEN TIME?” I put my cereal bowl in the sink. “Can I watch a show?”

  “Hmmhmm…” Daddy didn’t look up from his phone, and that sounded like it was a yes, at least not a no, so I went in the family room and turned on the TV. The news came on right away, and the sound was still all the way down. I was going to switch to on demand to see if there was a new Phineas and Ferb, but then a picture came on the news, and on top of the picture there were words that said “McKinley Killer.” I was like frozen and couldn’t move at all. I stared and stared because the picture was of Charlie’s son.

  I knew it was Charlie’s son right away. I recognized him from Charlie’s thirty-years party last year in school. Charlie’s wife, her name is Mary like my aunt, and son, I didn’t know his name, came to the party. His wife was really friendly and called us “Charlie’s angels” and said we were so cute, and no wonder Charlie talked about us all the time. Charlie’s son didn’t say anything at the party. He just stood there next to Charlie and looked at us in a mean way, like he was mad. His face looked exactly the same as Charlie’s, only not so old. They looked the same except that his son didn’t smile and Charlie always smiles. Charlie’s mouth went up on the sides and his son’s mouth went down, they were the same and opposites.

  Charlie’s son didn’t even smile when Mommy talked to him. She said she couldn’t believe the size of him, and did he remember that she babysat him when she was done with college and he was three or four then? He didn’t smile and he didn’t say anything back. Charlie’s wife answered instead and said of course he remembered, and that Mommy was his favorite babysitter, right?

  I wanted to hear what the news was saying about Charlie’s son, but I didn’t want to turn up the sound because I didn’t want Daddy to know I was watching the news and tell me to turn it off. So I kept looking at the news without the sound. The picture stayed up for a long time, and then instead of “McKinley Killer” it said “Charles Ranalez Jr.,” so that must be his name, because Charlie’s last name is Ranalez. That’s what his name tag says: CHARLIE RANALEZ. Then the picture changed and a new one came on. It was a picture of Charlie, smiling, and it looked like the same picture that was on the big screen in the auditorium when we had his party.

  I really wanted to hear what they were saying about Charlie, so I turned the volume up a tiny bit. The picture of Charlie went away, and a man from the news came on with a microphone. He was standing in front of my school and was talking to a woman I saw at pickup before, I think she’s Enrique’s grandma.

  “What was your reaction when you found out that the shooter was Charles Ranalez Jr., son of McKinley’s very own security guard, Charlie Ranalez?” the newsman said into the microphone, and then he pointed the microphone at Enrique’s grandma’s mouth.

  “I just couldn’t believe it. No one can believe it,” Enrique’s grandma said, and she looked very sad and kept shaking her head no. “I mean, Charlie really is the sweetest guy, you know, and we all love him to death. I mean, not to death…I shouldn’t have said it like that. But he loved the kids, you know, like they were his own. He’s seen generations grow up at this school. My son went here and now my grandson….Charlie was always friendly and helpful….I just can’t believe his son could have done such a thing.”

  The newsman looked right at me through the TV and said, “Few can appreciate the irony that the school’s very own security guard’s son is responsible for killing fifteen children and four staff in cold blood, before being shot and killed himself by the police. Eyewitnesses tell us his father pleaded with his son to stop shooting, but to no avail….”

  “Oh!” It was like a tiny little mouse sound, and it made me get goose bumps, because all I did was stare at the TV, and then all of a sudden that sound was right behind me. I turned around and I found out the sound came from Mommy’s mouth. Earlier she wasn’t downstairs, but now she was standing behind the couch where I was sitting, and she was also staring at the TV.

  Daddy came in from the kitchen and snatched the remote out of my hand and turned the TV off. “What the hell are you doing, Zach?” Daddy was looking at me like he was really mad.

  “You said I could watch TV.” My voice sounded like I was about to start crying.

  Mommy didn’t say anything, she just stared at the TV even though nothing was on anymore, but it looked like she didn’t notice that.

  “Daddy? Did you know Charlie’s son was the gunman? In the news they said—”

  “Not. Now. Zach.”

  I could feel Daddy’s breath in my face because he got so close to me. He made his eyes very small and he yelled those words at me, but he didn’t open his teeth when he yelled, so it wasn’t loud yelling, but scary yelling, and I got all hot and my stomach felt bad.

  In New York City I saw a blind person once, a man, and I didn’t know he was blind at first, and he had a really cute dog. I asked Mommy if I could pet him, and Mommy said no, because it’s a special helper dog and you’re not allowed to pet helper dogs, they have to help blind or sick people, and if you pet them, then they can’t do their job. And I thought it was really cool that the dog could tell the blind man where to go, and the man followed the dog everywhere, even across the street. The streets in New York City are really busy and dangerous, and I’m not allowed to cross without holding hands.

  The way Mommy walked back to the kitchen with Daddy looked like how the blind man walked with the helper dog, like Daddy was the dog and Mommy couldn’t see anything, so Daddy had to lead the way. I waited until tears were definitely not coming in my eyes anymore, and then I went in the kitchen after them. Only Daddy was there.

  “Where’s Mommy?” I asked.

  “Upstairs. I had to give her medicine to calm her down. She was really upset. She’s going to sleep now.” I could tell Daddy was still mad at me, and that made new tears almost come out of my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. I was going to watch a show and then the news was on, and I—” I wasn’t finished talking yet, but Daddy started talking anyway.

  “You shouldn’t be watching the news. It’s not for you, you know that. And it’s not helpful for Mommy to be seeing these things. She just came home from the hospital, and at this rate we will have to take her right back. You don’t want that, do you?”

  I didn’t want that, but I couldn’t say anything, so I just shook my head no. I didn’t want Mommy to go back to the hospital. I wanted the shock to be over so she could be like her normal self, not walking like a blind person or only sleeping all the time. I kept shaking my head no, and I didn’t stop shaking it until Daddy said, “OK, take it easy, Zach. This is hard for all of us, OK? Can you please find something to do for a while? Mimi will be back later, so then you guys can do something, OK?”

  “OK. But, Daddy? Did Charlie get hurt from his son?”

  “What? No, Charlie didn’t get hurt at all.” The way Daddy said that it sounded like he was mad about that.

  I went upstairs and saw the door to Mommy and Daddy’s room was open, so I went to the door to see if Mommy
was OK. She was in her bed, but she wasn’t sleeping, she was lying on her side with her eyes open. When she saw me, she took out her arms from under the covers and stretched them out to me and I went over to her and lay down next to her. Mommy held me tight. We lay there for a long time and we didn’t talk. It felt good with just me and Mommy, and it was quiet. All I heard was Mommy’s breathing.

  I turned around a little bit to see her face and I wanted to say sorry I made her upset, but her eyes were closed now. I watched her face for a little while. I could feel her chest go up and down, and I didn’t move at all. Then I whispered, “I’m sorry, Mommy,” and I got out of her tight hug and off her bed and tippy-toed back away from the bed and out of the room. The door made a little squeaky sound. I looked back at Mommy, but she kept sleeping.

  Then all I could think about was getting to my hideout. I closed the closet door all the way and found the flashlight in the dark and turned it on. I picked up Clancy and chewed his ear, and I didn’t stop chewing for a long time. Clancy got wet all over from my spit.

  [ 16 ]

  Red Juice Spill

  I WAS SUPPOSED TO SLEEP in my bed because now Mommy was home, but I got scared again at bedtime, and then Mommy told Daddy to put my mattress next to their bed on the floor. She lay down in her bed, and I lay down on the mattress and Mommy held my hand, and that was good for me to go to sleep like that. We forgot to do our song, and when I remembered, it looked like Mommy was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake her up. So I sang it very quiet by myself again, for me and Clancy.

  I woke up the next morning because I was shivering. I noticed my whole mattress was really cold and wet all over, and my PJ pants were wet and my PJ shirt on one side and I didn’t get why everything was wet. But then I knew why: I peed when I was asleep! I peed in my bed like a baby!