7 AM
an M7 AU by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Don’t own them, never have, never will. AU is mine but is OPEN to anyone who wants to
play. Came up with this a year ago and just
never finished it until now – better late than never, I guess. ;)
Author's Note: This story won a 2003 award for Best Gen Vignette
I hang up my coat by the kitchen and go through the playroom to use the
sink. Ezra is already here and sitting
in his corner, of course – he’s always here earlier than any of the others, and
once when Gloria was a little late to open the center one morning she found him
sitting on the front steps with his bottle, alone. We didn’t call social services though, how
could we? His mother would just take him
someplace else and none of us want that; we want him here, where we can take
care of him. God knows someone needs
to. Not that he’s dirty or doesn’t have
enough clothes or isn’t getting fed or anything, but it’s just so obvious to
all of us that he needs to be loved. I
don’t know how anyone couldn’t love him, he’s the sweetest, smartest little boy
and so cute he should be on television.
I bend down and ruffle his hair and he blinks up at me but doesn’t
smile. It’s Monday, he won’t be smiling
for a couple of hours yet, so I nudge a few toys within his reach and move on.
Buck runs up and grabs my legs while I’m washing my hands, and when I
ruffle his hair he gives me a grin that fills his whole face. He’s the polar opposite of Ezra; Buck’s
mother loves him so much it just oozes out of him, but she’s a dancer at the
club downtown and they’re so poor it hurts.
She takes Buck with her to work at night and from what we’ve heard all
the other girls look out for him there, then she drops him off here in the morning
so she can go home and sleep. We’re
really not supposed to, but we give him a bath and wash his clothes every
morning before the director gets in; Mary’s nice but kind of stuffy and she
really doesn’t like Missy Wilmington much so we take extra care to make sure
Buck doesn’t catch her eye the wrong way.
I scoop him up and tickle him and get my kiss, he just loves to give
kisses and he won’t rest until he’s kissed everyone in the center at least
once.
The bell on the front door rings and a baby cries, and Buck wiggles like mad to get down; we only have one baby here now
and that’s JD, and for some reason Buck has decided in his three year old mind
that JD belongs to him. “My baby!” he yells
when I put him down and darts off. “Mybabymybabymybaby…”
I can hear Mrs. Dunne laughing and I know she’s just gotten a big Buck
kiss for bringing ‘his’ baby to him. She’s
younger than Missy and really nice, but they’re poor too because her husband
got shipped overseas and he doesn’t send his money home like he’s supposed to
for her and JD. We’re not even sure he’s
ever seen JD, or even if he wants to; his mother lives here in town and we’ve
heard that she won’t even acknowledge Lisa and JD as part of the family. They’re kind of snobs, though, so I think
Lisa is better off not having to deal with them even though it does make things
harder on her raising JD alone.
The bell rings again and I hear Mrs. Larabee saying hello to Lisa. We all really feel sorry for Mrs. Larabee
because her husband is some big shot officer over at the base and he’s as mean
as a pit bull, even to poor little Chris.
He’s the reason Chris is here at all, because Mrs. Larabee doesn’t work
anyplace so she doesn’t need daycare; her husband makes her bring Chris here
every day because he says she pays too much attention to him at home and makes
him spoiled. I go out front to get Chris
and Buck, because I know that Mary will want to talk to Sarah if she can. She’s been trying to get Sarah to do
something about the abuse for ages now, especially since Sarah is pregnant
again. It will be another boy, she
already knows, and the major already decided that they’re going to name the
baby Adam. It makes me shudder to think
what kind of life she’s bringing that poor baby into – I mean, after all, she
can see what the abuse has done to Chris
already.
I peel Buck off JD’s carrier and he pouts – and so does JD, who likes
the attention – and then I hold out my hand for Chris. He won’t take it, but I keep trying
anyway. “Come on, Chris,” I tell
him. “Let’s go play, okay?”
He looks away from me at empty space and gives a little nod, then turns
to look up at his mother like he wants to make sure she’s okay with him
going. She pats the top of his head, and
I can see that his father has been after him with the clippers again; Chris has
pretty blond hair, but his father keeps it so short that in the right light he
looks nearly bald. “Go on, Chris, go
play with your friends. I bet Vin is already in there playing.”
The expression on his little face is way too old for four. “Indians don’t play.”
Her face falls and so does mine, and Mary
frowns. Vin is
Chris’ imaginary friend – the same one he was nodding to a second ago – and he’s
usually more mischievous than anything else…except when he’s an Indian. Vin the Indian only
shows up when things at the Larabee house have been really bad. Chris draws lots of pictures of Vin doing
lots of things, but the only Indian picture we have Mary took and put away
somewhere, for evidence I think; it shows Vin in war paint and feathers with a knife
in one hand and a gun in the other and sharp pointed teeth, and on the ground
by his feet is a brown circle with red scribbles around it and a yellow star
scrawled on top. Three guesses whose
scalp that’s supposed to be. Mary smiles
down at Chris, but I know she’s thinking about that picture too. “Chris, when Vin is
done checking out the playroom could you send him in to talk to me? I like Indians, and I’d really like to talk
to him.”
Chris scowls. “Vin only talk to me.” He taps
the side of his head when he says it, because that’s where he and Vin talk, in his head where his father can’t hear them. “My
friend!”
“Yes, your friend,” she reassures him.
“That’s okay Chris, you can come with him and
tell me what he says, all right? I’ll
have Casey bring you when it’s time.”
He nods once, solemnly, gives his mother another look like he’s making
sure she’s going to be all right without him and then ever so gently pats her
stomach. “Be good or Daddy get mad, Adam. Don’t
be wrong. Daddy will throw you away if
you wrong.”
We all stare at Sarah, who looks at the ground. “The…the doctor says Adam might not be
developing normally. Richard was…very
upset.”
I’m very upset too, and so are Mary and Lisa. I scoop Buck up in my arms and start herding
Chris out of the office, and Lisa follows me with JD in his carrier. I know that Mary is about to get serious with
Sarah again, hopefully this time she’ll get through to her. Throw him away if he’s ‘wrong’, what a
monster!
Chris darts away from me as soon as we hit the playroom and makes a
beeline for Ezra in his corner. I see
that Ezra has picked up one of the toys I gave him and is turning it over and
over in his little hands with a very intense expression on his face. His green eyes snap up when Chris looms over
him menacingly and I get ready to move fast; Chris likes to pick on Ezra,
trying to make him cry, and today I’m not sure how far he’ll go to get what he
wants. But all he does is loom until he
has Ezra’s full attention, and then he demands, “Where Vin, baby?”
Thank goodness Ezra isn’t old enough to process the derogatory sneer in
the word baby, a sneer Chris must have picked up from his father. Ezra blinks at Chris, looks past him…and then
points to empty air across the room; it’s eerie, but Ezra and Buck always seem
to know where Vin is when Chris asks. Chris looks, nods,
and then moves away and Buck squats down in front of Ezra with another big
grin. “Good baby,” he says, and throws
his arms around Ezra to give him a big kiss.
Ezra draws back and looks at him like he’s lost his mind but Buck just
keeps right on grinning. Then he takes
the blue plastic whale out of Ezra’s hands, looks at it, and tosses it
away. “No good,” he says cheerfully,
replacing it with something more brightly colored that has moving parts and
then taking off after Chris. Ezra watches
him go, then looks down at the toy in his hands…and smiles. I smile too; it’s just past seven, and we
usually don’t see Ezra’s first Monday smile until at least ten or eleven.
That thought should make me happy, but instead I suddenly feel like
crying. Gloria comes into the room and
sees me and immediately comes over to me and puts her arm around my
shoulders. “Casey, honey, what’s wrong?”
I can’t answer her, but I look at Ezra exploring his toy and then at
Chris having a silent conversation with Vin across the room and she
figures it out. She looks sad too. “It doesn’t seem right, does it?” she says
softly. “We have to shield Buck and JD’s
good, loving mothers from social services just because they’re struggling to
make ends meet, but these two need someone to help them and we can’t get that
watchful eye to so much as glance their way because their families have money
and connections. But honey,” she lifts
my head up so she can look me in the eye, “the love and care they get from us
makes a lot more difference than you think.
Didn’t I just see Ezra smile and it’s only
I sniff. “I wish he would smile
all the time.”
“Maybe someday he will.” She
gives me a hug. “Look at it this way,
Casey. Where do Ezra and Chris spend
most of their time during the week?”
“With us,” I answer. And then I
get it. “With us,” I say again. “Right here safe with us.”
“Exactly.” She hugs me
again and then gives me a little push. “Now
go on with you and let’s start getting breakfast for these boys – and don’t
forget to set an extra plate out for Vin.”
“I won’t.” And I wouldn’t have
even if she hadn’t said anything – our wild Indian may not be real to us, but
he is to Chris and that’s what matters.
The boys are what matters. And as
I start getting out the waffles and things for breakfast I have to admit that
for