When Moths Fall Asleep

3.0 - giving

"Rise and shine, Little Man. I made pancakes."

His mother's coaxing voice wormed into Dewey's dreams, sweet and intruding all at once. He felt her warm palm on his back, shaking him into wakefulness.

The room felt thin with frost, the windows sealed tight with the stuff. He could feel it on the tip of his nose and the apples of his cheeks and in his toes, under the three pairs of socks Mama had outfitted him with last night.

But through the unpleasantness something tantalizing and promising rang a bell in his head. "Mama!" He cried, twisting around to look at her. She leaned over the bed, her eyes still creased with sleep. Her hair hung down, casting shadows over her cheeks. Dewey grabbed her hands and yanked her onto the bed with him. It shook and she grunted, falling in beside him. Dewey grinned and took her face between his hands to make sure she was listening. "It's Christmas!"

"I know," Mama muttered. Her eyes were already drifting shut again. "That's why I made pancakes."

"Wake up!" Dewey demanded. He slapped her cheeks with short, snappy pats until she finally cracked her eyes open again and smiled at him. "Presents!" he cried.

Mama patted her stomach, inviting him to lay on top of her like he often did when they took their daily nap together after daycare was over. He climbed onto her stomach, feeling under her shirt for her belly button. He liked to line up the two little indents as though the spaces would connect them like a zipper. Having done this, he laid his head on her chest and put his arms around her stomach. She felt warm and, as he had noticed weeks before, bonier every day. He could feel her ribs jousting against his and the bones in her wrists were sharp and mean.

"You know, there are other good things about Christmas besides the presents," said Mama. "Like good food and pretty lights."

Dewey nodded because he knew Mama didn't like him to disagree with her too early in the morning.

"And you get to spend time with your family, too." She pinched his cheeks, scrunching up her nose in a funny face that usually meant she was making fun of something. Dewey giggled and pinched her cheeks back. They were as cold as his own, but downy soft like little pillows sewn into the rest of her thin, bony body.

She was right, he thought. He liked having Mama here in his bed this morning instead of rushing around to help Dad find his clothes and stuff her feet into tall shoes and yank her hair into a strict bun on the back of her head. He liked her better calm and still like she was now, hair splayed behind her on the pillow.

He thought Mama was probably the prettiest woman in the world. Granted, Dewey didn't see very many women, but whenever he did see them, he always found himself thinking that they just weren't as beautiful as his Mama was. The women at the daycare, Mrs. Shannon and Mrs. Donna, they were too floppy and pale and bleach-haired to be pretty. They put so much makeup on their faces that when Dewey let them hold him in their laps, he could reach up and scrape off an entire row of foundation and eyeshadow and lipstick with just one scrape of his fingernail. Mama didn't do that, and he thought she was only tenfold prettier for it.

But as much as he liked having Mama home, the thought of presents under the Christmas tree excited him beyond belief. There was one in particular that he couldn't stop thinking about: a big box with a red bow on top, his name scrawled on the reindeer wrapping paper in sharpie. He knew, almost for sure, what was inside.

Weeks ago, Mama had taken him into a shop with her to find him some new socks for the winter season. In the store, they had bouncy balls and candy bars and all sorts of dolls in stuffed animals. They had walked by so many wonderful toys, Dewey silent and awed in the cart while Mama stared straight ahead, unwilling to make eye contact with the Barbies and the smiley face frisbees, until suddenly, Dewey had cried out, "Bear!"

He smiled just thinking about it: the perfect little bear, soft as moss and brown as melted chocolate, a sweet smile on his thin lips and a poofy red bow tied around his neck. He could imagine it sitting in the box, then on his bed, then beside him in the car on his way to daycare. How wonderful it would be to have a companion in those long, dull days where the other children were so preoccupied and cruel. He and his bear, they were going to be the best of friends.

"Let's go have some breakfast, okay?" said Mama. "We wouldn't want to keep your father waiting."

The two of them heaved out of bed and Mama tucked her feet into the red slippers she had knitted for herself last week. She was working on a pair for Dewey, too; his were going to be blue. Dewey held her hand and followed her out of the room, thinking about how warm his feet were going to be -- he wouldn't even need all the slippery layers of socks anymore!

Sure enough, his father was already at the counter, tapping his fingers against the plastic with a tight smile on his face. "Merry Christmas, Buddy," he said, bending down to give Dewey's hair a ruffle.

Dewey grinned and cried in response, "Merry Christmas!" The apartment remained dark and secluded as ever, but Dewey saw it today through a distorted lens of young Christmas Magic. The sad, false tree (hardly taller than he was) became a stately thing, magnificent in the way that its plastic needles shone in the yellow light. The crinkled ice lining the windows was whimsical now, and the frost nipping at his nose charmed him.

Mama lifted him onto the bench beside his father, warning him not to tip himself over. She brought over the plate of blueberry pancakes and three paper plates. Mama leaned against the counter to eat because the only stool left was beside Dad, and Dewey knew she didn't like sitting next to him very much. They ate in what could have been silence, if it hadn't been for Dewey counting loudly each blueberry in each pancake and exclaiming in delighted surprise when he bit into one that he hadn't seen before.

As soon as they had finished, Dewey dropped his fork and pronounced once again, "Presents!"

His parents looked at each other. Mama was doing something with her eyes, but Dewey didn't know what it meant.

Finally, his father sighed and said, "Sure thing, Bud."

Dewey nearly jumped off the stool but his mother, anticipating his reaction, caught him on the way down. The moment his feet hit the floor, Dewey felt his mind pulling him toward the tree. He rocketed across their tiny living room, tossing himself onto the floor next to his box. Behind him, his parents looked at each other again, each equally disappointed in the other, but Dewey didn't see.

"That's from your father and me," Mama said.

Before she'd finished her sentence, Dewey had his fingernails under the bow, then under the wrapping paper, then under the lid. He tossed the top away and ripped into the tissue paper like a vulture attacking a carcass and --

"Do you like them? I thought they would look nice on you."

Mama held one of the shirts up to Dewey's chest, stripes and three buttons coming down from a starchy, tagged collar. Walmart, it said. Dewey said thank you, but the cold turned bothersome again and the tree looked ugly and pathetic to him. The day after Christmas, he asked his mother to take it down even though she wanted to leave it up until the new year.