I am just a kid and my family and I are walking to the playground near my elementary school. We are at the top of the hill that overlooks the baseball fields, the volleyball court, the squat one-story school building. Just beyond the school you can see the tops of the jungle gym equipment and the trees that lead to the murky pond nearby. I am walking my dog, who I insisted on bringing with us even though he is poorly behaved, constantly yanking on the leash and chasing imaginary birds. As we round the crest of the field there is a loud crash, the unmistakable sound of metal smashing skin. Suddenly, my mother is running. I can’t remember ever seeing her run before, but now she is bolting towards the noise.
I don’t know what is happening until I see him, a kid of 10 or 11 hopping on one foot from the road to the sidewalk, squealing–I will never forget that noise, bubbled in his throat, a true wail–and collapsing onto the sidewalk outside of the school. He was hit by a car, its rusted bumper imprinted with the image of his slight frame, his leg gushing blood. He is wailing. My mother is running towards him and my father is calling 9-1-1 and my sister and I are confused and upset. We chase after her and she is kneeling next to him, hovering over his ruined leg, trying to stop the bleeding. The woman driving has emerged from the car and holds her face in her hands, their knuckles knotted and purple, and we know it was an accident but we hate her anyway. We hear his wails and we feel her panic but we can’t help ourselves–we hate her.
The ambulance comes and loads him into the back like livestock, like cargo. He is hurt but he is okay. My mother is sweating, her chest heaving jaggedly. We go to the playground and sit down. She has a patch of his blood on her hand and uses a water bottle to wash it off. I am 7 or 8 but I grew up in the city and I am not stupid. “Could she get AIDS?” I think, watching her rub the drying blood from her thumb. “Cancer?” Ok, maybe I am a little bit stupid. I am young but I know I will remember this, the way my mother’s form looked as she lunged and hurled herself toward this bleeding, wailing child. It felt like she was his mother then, too, her tenderness so palpable.
We are quiet for the rest of the evening. My dog doesn’t get why we are all acting so solemn and keeps nudging his nose into my arm. I try to play hopscotch–normally I am so good, I have the balance of a gymnast!–but can barely stand on two feet, let alone one. Every time I move across the board I imagine him hopping across the street, leg trailing blood behind him.
That night, we go to bed without dinner, our appetites suspended. That night we go to bed, but we don’t sleep.
***
At the Ice Cream Festival, Hannah had her first kiss in the trees behind the cafeteria. At the Jump-a-thon, I raised $98 and it seemed like a fortune. One day in autumn, Christopher was alive and then the next day he wasn’t. My dad saw the obituary in The Morning Call and I had to tell my best friend Amanda over the phone. “He is the first person I know who died,” I admitted to her. Amanda told me she had known plenty of people who had died, which made her seem wise.
Christopher was in our class. We used to call him Eeyore because of the slow, amoebic way he navigated the world. But now he wouldn’t be coming to school anymore and we were very sad. The boy who would eventually hold my hand for the first time asked me to go to the funeral with him. He pulled up in a station wagon with his mom in front of my house, but at the last minute my parents wouldn’t let me go. They talked in hushed, clipped tones with his mom and then the station wagon trundled down the road. I had a black dress picked out and everything.
For the rest of elementary school, Christopher’s mother brought our class cupcakes on Christopher’s would-be birthday. She always cried lightly while distributing them. For the first few years after it happened we would all sing “Happy Birthday” to him, but as we grew and our memories of him faded we transitioned to not saying anything at all.
***
Principal Longlegger (née Laudensleger) has called me into his office and I am fidgeting anxiously with the hem of my corduroy skirt. “Eduardo has told me you’ve been calling him Eduardo Retardo,” he says. I’m sure there was a hint of mirth in his eyes, but as a kid I missed it and was terrified: he had only two legs and two arms so why did he always seem so arachnoid? I look up at him slowly, sweetly, channeling all the goodness inside me through my eyes and straight into him. “It won’t happen again, sir.”
I am 8 and I am perfecting lying. It seems like a skill that will come in handy some day. I have heard my mom do it to my dad; I have seen the high school kids do it on Saved by the Bell, which I sometimes watch after school even though I’m not supposed to. It is remarkably easy: I don’t even blink. Words don’t so much fall out of my mouth as shove and angle for their turn: “It won’t happen again.” Principal Longlegger pats me on the head. I scoot back to calligraphy class, where I practice writing my name over and over again, the “J’s” sloping loops, the slanted “a” at the end, neatly winding its way out.
I still think “Eduardo Retardo” is funny. Remind me to tell you about my stupid alter-ego, Slow Ann.