a piece I wrote the last time the kid was in the hospital
Electronic hasps divide day from night. Impossibly pink and patronizing. The receptionist assures me that nothing is out of the ordinary.
She doesn’t have the black eye and the welt.
I sit in the mock living room till I can go back. The pallid man with a widow’s peak and prominent cuspids tells me he has again lost his job and his apartment and asks how I’m doing. Dear God, tell me that wasn’t some kind of pick-up line.
“No ring, I see.” (Eew, it was.)
“What monster gave you that shiner?”
“My little boy not even chest high.”
Osteoporosis in a lab coat escorts me in. Past the rooms of people intoning the twelve steps like somber monks chanting Dies Irae. Plaques of platitudes like the Stations of the Cross. Past the misnamed “quiet room” with the urine-stained corner and the Plexiglas porthole.
This is where the werewolves are kept.
My child has been in here. Did he also mark it as his territory?
And with a clatter of crayons there he is.
Mama! I want to come home, Mama.
I know, Baby
I want to come home!
I know, Baby.
Please, Mama. I’ll be good. I’m ready to come home.
Lip service to the mental health gods. The glint in his eye tells me the moon is waxing gibbous. The wrinkle between my eyebrows asks for the floor.
What will you do when he is six foot two?
Motion is seconded and ratified by the dark circles under my eyes.
I want you home when the doctor says…
Groundswell of rage. Mouth frothing. You wish I was dead! Ah, the silver bullet.
Visiting hours are over and I pry little fingers from my bruised and bitten wrist.
The heave and sweep of sobs or screams escape from me soundless on leather wings as sigh after sigh after sigh.