by Amy Piers
“Dallas, today is a very special day. For taking care of yourself, your body and others, I am awarding you your one-hundredth star,” Zoe beams, pinning the star to the chart. I can hardly believe it! We are finally going to Discovery Country—a place I have wanted to go for my entire life and I have never been allowed. Our special day is really, actually going to happen! I jump up and hug Zoe (with my arms) and say thank you a hundred times.
“You worked very hard for this opportunity, Buddy. You should be really proud of your effort,” Zoe says, just like a thing grown-ups say to other kids that aren’t me.
“When can we go? Now? Can we go now?” I beg. “Pllleeeeeaassseee?!”
“Not today, sorry Bud. We can’t leave Cinnamon alone; he’s too little,” she explains. “We can go next week on Friday. We’ll get him a babysitter.”
“Dogsitter,” I correct Zoe because he’s not a person baby.
#
[I see you.]
Halloween is on Monday, so we are making all kinds of creepy crawly things today. Of course, I have an educational agenda behind everything that I’m presenting as random fun. There’s plenty of cutting, tracing, threading, and play dough manipulation for extending his fine motor skills. He’s classifying objects according to their attributes, making patterns and performing simple math. Right now he’s writing a description of a play dough monster, all with best guess spelling (e.g. “The mnstr hav fr iz, it is gren, it is skry” = “The monster has four eyes, it is green, it is scary”).
Dallas suddenly stops and looks at a Halloween themed book we borrowed from the library. He opens the pages and fixates on a cartoon ghost which is evidently a child with a sheet over their head.
“Maybe ghosts are real,” he whispers, touching the illustration with his index finger. I decide not to comment, and soon enough Dallas goes back to sticking googly eyes on cardboard.
[I see red.]
If ghosts are real, Grey is mad at me. If ghosts aren’t real, I have to go into the sky to talk to Grey, but that’s too high for me. If I dress up as a ghost for Halloween, he might recognize me, and we can jump on the trampoline together.
[I see you.]
3:20pm
Another wildly inconsistent time for Dallas’s mother to arrive home, throwing her baby at me like a European Gypsy. I am starting to feel too old for this odd hybrid between being a nanny and being an educator, when in fact, I’m neither. I’m a Behavior Specialist, and a badass one at that. I hurriedly walk to the bus stop while Dallas yells goodbye to me through the fence—I’m stoked to be done for the day.
3:32pm
A kid on the bus is flipping his shit, and I’m judging his Mom so hard. For Pete’s sake—if you’re feeding your kid cola and blue candy, how can you expect any better behavior out of him? He reaches out and hits his mother, as she sits there and takes it. He kicks her shin and screams, “I HATE YOU!”
My mind flashes back to the days at school when Dallas would say that to me. There’s a knot in my stomach as I remember the exhaustion, the bruises and tears that meant one thing then, and something completely different now the dust has settled. I lift up the sleeve of my jacket to see the scar from where he stabbed me with a pencil. Although it’s shiny, pink and healed, this scar is stuck with me forever.
4:00pm
I arrive at the mall and head to the electronics store. If we’re going to a theme park, there’s something I need to buy first. I ascend the escalators, as the bright lights and ambient noise begin to drive me crazy. Reaching into my bag, I extract some headphones, which are tangled to hell and back. I take a minute to bring this chaos into order when I hear something out of the ordinary.
“Zoe!” a voice calls. Turning around, I spot Ezra waving and running towards me. In my mind, Ezra will always be a lanky eleven-year-old nerd with glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose. Yet, before me is a breathless, man-sized man—sans glasses, plus chest hair. Somehow in public, he seems even more grown-up than he does at our house, and against my better judgment, he's really growing on me.
“Oh, hey Ezra.”
“I saw you from where I was sitting at the coffee shop, and thought, what are the chances? Two malls in this entire city, and there you are,” he laughs nervously, then smiles. I’m not about small talk, and I get the sense it’s not Ezra’s forte either.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“A quick pit stop before heading home to Santa Cruz. It’s my last visit to San Francisco before I move up, so I was just checking the classifieds for apartments.”
“You know rent is astronomical here, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You know it’s impossible to find anything bigger than a shoebox, right?”
“You sound like you’re trying to talk me out of moving,” Ezra speculates.
I laugh, “I’m just trying to keep you realistic.”
“And… off your couch?” he adds.
“You saw straight through me,” I smile.
“I like your couch,” he laughs. I avert eye contact, trying not to let him see that I’m smiling. I think he knows the awkward direction in which he has steered the conversation. He looks at me and says, “April Fools!”
“Ezra, it’s October 28,” I reply, confusedly.
“Therein lies the joke,” he laughs. We both begin to giggle until we can’t stop. When he’s not so nervous, Ezra is a giant goofball.
“Well, you can always buy a tent,” I reason. “Living on the streets is all the rage here in San Francisco.”
The conversation dries up, and I wonder if he's judged me for making light of the homelessness epidemic. Now we're standing there awkwardly trying to think of things to say to one another; the cogs in our minds are grinding overtime, yet to no apparent avail. It doesn’t seem appropriate to part ways yet, so I further rack my brain for some common ground.
“How’s—”
“Well—”
We both speak at the same time and stop. Ezra giggles and I push my bangs out of my face.
“How’s the homeschooling?” he says.
“It’s going really well, actually. The kid is doing really well.”
I start to wonder why I can’t come up with any descriptors other than ‘really well.'
“You must have the patience of a saint,” he exhales, shaking his head.
“Yeah, Saint Augustine. He was, like, a really shitty Saint,” I stumble, awkwardly. If I had a dollar for every time someone said that I had the patience of a saint, I would have at least ten dollars by now. I realize I’ve completely forgotten how to have an adult conversation; I’ve been stranded on Planet Dallas for far too long. Ezra laughs for the hundredth time, and I half expect him to walk away now that he realizes I’m not the smart, confident woman he thought I was. I figured the antidote for his unwelcome advances was to show him simply the 'real me.' For some strange reason, he stays here, complete with a sweet, goofy smile on his face.
“You want to grab some coffee?” he asks. I choke (not literally, thank God).
“Like… now?” I sputter like a middle schooler who can’t stop saying like. Also, he was just at a coffee shop, which leads me to believe that this guy has a caffeine problem.
“Sure—I mean—unless you have something else to do?” Ezra remarks, nervously.
“Actually,” I confess, starting to chicken out.
“We can meet up another time if you like?” he calmly maintains. “I’ll be living in my street tent in a week. We can share a can of beans on the sidewalk or something.”
Relieved that he wasn't upset by my tent joke, I laugh by uncomfortably puffing air out of my nose at a rapid pace. That's not even a real laugh, so now I'm worried that I'm acting condescendingly. Going from one offense to the next, I see my insecurities spiraling out of control, and I try to remember that I am a strong, independent, badass woman.
“Actually, I was going to say that I was on my way to the Gadget Emporium,” I recover. “I need t
o pick up something. Want to come with me?”
“Sure,” he says enthusiastically, as we walk to another escalator. “Aren’t malls the worst?”
I giggle, “The worst. Especially the lighting and the smells—I swear I picked up Sensory Processing Disorder from these kids.”
He looks confused, “I think I have that—but I wasn’t aware it was contagious. Hey, you’re the expert!”
I have noticed that when I’m with a child who has sensitivities to certain sensory input, I begin to pre-empt what kinds of lights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes will invoke a meltdown. Subsequently, these things begin to make me anxious by association, and after years of fearing the sound of coffee grinders and dreading fluorescent lighting, I am a nervous wreck at the mall.
“Only by proxy,” I catch myself talking shop.
“I want to know what we’re buying at the electronics store,” Ezra questions, as we walk into the gadget wonderland. I walk him over to one of the display cases and point to the item in need.
“A GPS tracker for kids?” he asks. I nod, then he continues, “What are you, like, keeping someone under house arrest?”
(I wish there was a tasteful way to say yes.)
“I’m taking a six-year-old to Discovery Country next Friday,” I mumble, with a furrowed brow. Why did I do this to myself?
“Say no more,” he agrees, as he throws his hands up in the air. “It looks like a watch.”
“That’s the point,” I admit, “Otherwise he’ll take it off.”
The salesperson approaches and notices my eye on something.
“Lost your kid?” he quips. Haha, very amusing, I forgot to laugh. The struggle is real, ass hat.
“Well, I’m planning to take him to an amusement park next week, and I want to prepare in advance,” I explain politely. “I don’t want one with short distance connectivity; I need something with real-time GPS. Also, I want one that looks like a watch.”
The salesperson looks at Ezra and chuckles, “So the kid takes after his mother?”
“Yeah, she’s a wild one,” he lies. “Our little guy is just a chip off his old mother’s block.”
I shoot Ezra a death stare, as he smiles widely back at me. Calling me old? I’ve only got twenty-six candles on the cake, kid. Then, for some reason, I play along. (Why am I smiling?)
“How old’s the boy?” the salesperson asks.
“Six and a half,” I inform, “The half totally matters at this age.”
“You guys look very young to be parents of a child in grade school,” the salesperson judges.
Ezra looks him up and down, before saying, “I don’t think our family planning is any of your business, sir.”
He’s killing me, seriously, this guy is a character. One of those characters you love to hate. I quickly point to the device that I’m after, and state, “He’s all about dogs these days, so I think this brand will be best. I’d like the brown dog style, please.”
“Of course. We also have a red one in that style,” the salesperson obliviously suggests.
“Not red,” I assert, “We’re just coming out of a red phase and have no intention to return.”
“OK, so let me walk you through the features. We have a GPS tracker that works in real-time, which sounded like a strong priority for your family. There’s also an alarm if he takes it off. This links to an app on your phone that will alert you when he’s outside a set boundary, as well as give him the option of pressing a panic button,” he continues. “When you give it to him, explain that—”
“Oh, no. We’re not going to tell him it’s anything more than a watch,” I interrupt.
“This one doesn’t have the capacity to make phone calls—is that OK?” he asks.
Ezra threads his arm through mine and rests on the glass counter. My heart beats a little too fast, and I hope he can’t see my face turning red. Part of me wants to run out the door, the other part of me loves pretending to be his lady. Ugh, pull yourself together, Zoe! He’s Julia’s little brother. Liking him would make my living situation even more problematic than it is now. Julia always complains that I am not making enough time to hang out with her—imagine if she knew I was spending my spare time with her brother.
“That’s fine,” I hurry. “We’ll take it.”
The salesperson processes my purchase at the register, while Ezra makes the most of pretending to be my significant other. He holds my hand and points out the highest rated baby monitors, monologuing about the benefits of digital video versus digital audio. As we walk out of the store, I shrug him off with a half smile.
“OK, joke’s over,” I remark. “You’re creeping me out.”
Ezra laughs, “I want to take you out to dinner. Not with Julia—just me and you.”
“I’m super busy at the moment,” I start, as he interrupts.
“Well, once I’m settled in San Francisco things might have slowed down for you,” Ezra shrugs. ‘Slowing down’ is virtually impossible when it comes to Dallas.
“Who knows?” I add, “Try me when you’re back.
“I’ll see you soon,” he smiles. We look at each other, then look away.
I’m keenly aware that the best moments of life usually start out as the most awkward. Vulnerability hits me like a ton of bricks, feeling as if someone just pulled my pants around my ankles. In an instant, I reach down and pull them back up. If I was fast enough, nobody has to see that I was exposed. Nobody has to see that for a moment, I let my guard down. I am a confident, self-sufficient, badass female—I don’t need to be swooning over a twenty-three year old at the mall. If, by chance, this becomes something of a ‘best’ moment in my life, we’re still trudging through the awkward stage. I have a feeling it’ll be awkward for a while yet.
“Well, I gotta go,” I lie, weaseling my way out of this insane situation.
“I’ll call you,” he promises.
I walk away from Ezra with a smile on my face, yet mortified that I might have a small, tiny crush on Julia’s little brother. This isn’t an optimal time for crushes—I’ve got a job to do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Scare, or Be Scared
[I see red.]
Today is Halloween, and I am dressing up as a ghost when we go trick-or-treating with Mommy in one hour (long hand on the twelve, short hand on the five). Ghosts are made of see-through. They aren’t people, but instead, they are what’s leftover when a person dies. At least, that’s what I think they are.
“Mommy,” I say, but she’s not listening. “Mom. MOM. MOMMY. Mom-”
“Yes! Seriously, stop. How would you like it if I said, ‘Dallas! Dallas! DALLAS!’ so many times?” she growls. Actually, I would love it if Mommy said that.
“Mom!”
“YES, what do you want to tell me?”
“What are ghosts made of?”
She rolls her eyes back into her head and breathes out of her nose.
“Enough with the ghosts!” Mom says, then goes back to looking at her phone.
“Mom!”
“What?!” she yells, this time with a very angry face.
“Are ghosts real?”
“For God’s sake, Dallas. Ghosts are not real. I’m not going to talk to you again until you can think of something different to say.”
I think for a minute. Mommies are supposed to always tell kids the truth, so ghosts must be fake. I try to think if she ever lied to me before, and I remember the day she said that we didn’t have ice cream, but we did. That was a lie. I wonder—are there different kinds of lies? Are some lies badder than others? Can there be good lies?
“Mom!”
“WHAT?”
“Is Grey a—”
Mom stops me before I finish what I’m trying to say. She yells, “STOP!”
“Let me finish!” I yell in her face.
“I know what you’re going to say, and the answer is no. Grey is not a ghost. Grey is not an angel. Grey is not with us or watching us. Grey may or may not be in heave
n, depending on whether or not heaven exists. Grey is dead.”
Mommy gets up from the table and goes into her bedroom. She starts the water running in the shower, and I hear her sniffing tears back into her nose, and trying to cry quietly. I wonder how long she will cry in the shower? I hope it’s not more than one hour. Then Aurora cries and Mom stops the water. She wraps up in a towel and picks up the baby.
“Where’s your costume?” she yells.
“In my room,” I say.
“You’re almost seven,” she sniffs. “Put it on yourself. I need to help the baby.”
Mommy sets Aurora down on the floor and gets a Bumble Bee costume from her room. When she gets back, she yells at me because I didn’t get my outfit on yet.
“I swear to God, Dallas—if you don’t get ready immediately, we’re not going. Aurora doesn’t care if we stay home, and neither do I.”
I run away into my room and grab the blue sheet from my tent. I cut two eye holes with scissors and feel bad because I’m ruining Grey’s bedsheet.
“Sorry Grey,” I whisper.
I put the ghost outfit on and wait for Mom in the living room. The stupid baby looks at me and cries, holding her arms out to stupid Mom so she’ll pick her up.
“You just don’t know when to quit!” Mom yells. “You’re not wearing that.”
“No!” I yell. “I’m a ghost.”
“Dallas! Take that off!” she screams.
“It’s my Halloween costume!” I scream back. “I made it!”
“You have a thousand dress up outfits, and you have to go and make a new one? Give me that sheet. I’m throwing it out,” she says, grabbing at my ghost outfit. It’s hard to see through the eye holes, but I run back to my room and slam the door. I hide under the bed and listen to Mommy yelling at me, deciding if I deserve to go out trick-or-treating tonight.
“Unless you change into a different costume, I can’t take you trick-or-treating. It’s your choice.”