When Moths Fall Asleep

5 - Forgetting

Dewey didn't like to talk at lunch. They didn't have very long -- just twenty minutes -- and he knew that Mama wanted him to finish all his food. Every day she asked, "Did you eat everything?" and of course, he always nodded yes, but on the days where it wasn't true, he didn't like the way the lying felt in the pit of his stomach.

No one ever said anything very interesting, anyway. Dewey listened on the edges of conversations: my dad's a police officer, he could arrest you; did you know that if you eat too many carrots you turn orange?; I bet I can hold my breath longer than you. The most interesting thing he'd ever heard at his lunch table was that Carly's fish had died and her brother washed it down the drain before she got to say goodbye.

Kindergarten wasn't very different from daycare. The only thing that changed was, now they had to write letters and sometimes say the names of numbers on the chalkboard. Dewey didn't like that part of the day -- everyone else seemed to know each little symbol as easily as switching between colors in a box of crayons. "Has your mom taught you about letters and numbers?" his teacher Mrs. Cae had asked the first time Dewey broke into tears over his frustration about the numbers. He had shaken his head. When did Mama have time to talk about something so seemingly trivial as little pencil scratches on paper?

When they had time together, they talked about important things. They talked about what made the earth round and why sometimes the best people ended up with crummiest lives. They would talk about why adults could be cranky sometimes and why kids couldn't always say exactly what they meant. They talked about things that Dewey needed to hear about. He couldn't imagine why these markings on the chalkboard, on the posters, on the paper were things that he needed.

Every morning while Dewey combed his hair and put on his clothes, he could hear Mama in the kitchen making his lunch. They didn't have very much food around, but she would never let him buy at school. She said the money in the apartment was "Rob's money" so she couldn't give it to him, but the food was all of their food, so he could have that.

Dewey always knew what to expect in his lunch: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a little bottle of water with a pretty red apple, so smooth and round that he believed it had been shaped by millions of years of pressure and gravity, just like earth. Even though the sandwich was usually on hardened bread and the water tasted zincy with age, he liked knowing that she had made it for him. He liked the apple especially, the sweetness tanging against his lips like a gentle kiss to say, Everything is alright.

But today, there wasn't an apple. Dewey dismantled his lunchbox again and again, but the empty gray space kept glaring up like a pair of steely, impatient eyes. Dewey put down the sandwich and the water. He didn't want it without the apple. How could she have forgotten? Did she really care so little, so little that she couldn't even be bothered to get his lunch right?

Sometimes, Mama said, she had to pretend she didn't care about him. Like when they were in line at the grocery store and threw a tantrum because he wanted something, a toy or candy, maybe. Mama said she knew how he felt -- if it was up to her, she would let him have everything he wanted. But she couldn't do that, she said, because then the people in the store would think that she was raising a spoiled brat.

There were other times, more serious times, like when she was in Rob's room. Dewey slept on the fold out couch most nights, and Mama slept on the big bed with Rob. They were loud some nights, but others were silent. It didn't matter, though. Dewey still wasn't allowed in. Some nights, he would forget and after a nightmare he would stumble in and tap Mama on the shoulder. Rob slept light, and he would wake the moment Mama moved. Then, Mama had to pretend to be mad. She had to say, Get out, Dewey! Go back to your bed!

Dewey didn't like it when Mama used that voice, but he knew that she had to.

The apple felt sort of like that, a sharp gash and then, maybe, a sprinkle of understanding. He only felt sicker, though. Why had she done it? Why did she keep pretending?

Today hadn't been a good day. During rug time while Mrs. Cae was reading a story, Alex had started to talk to him and when Dewey responded, the teacher had glared over her glasses and said, "Dewey" in a sharp way that made his heart race and his eyes well with tears.

Dewey felt his eyes wetting again now, imagining his mother in the kitchen, her hand reaching for the fruit bowl when -- Ah! Time to kiss Rob goodbye, tell him he looked handsome, straighten his collar. And suddenly, the clock is sneaking up and it's time to go. She closes the lunch box and they rush out the door.

No one around him saw -- and if they did, they didn't react -- when Dewey slammed the box shut and put his hands over it as though demons were wailing from inside. Dewey put his head between his hands and tried not to cry.

Something else bad had happened today, too. Well, maybe it wasn't so much bad as it was strange. Mikey, a boy with very smooth hair who wore lots of khaki pants and polo shirts, had come up to him at recess with a bit of meanness in the arch of his brow. He had dirt on his shirt, and Dewey couldn't help but think about how upset Mama would be if he dirtied up a shirt that nice.

Mikey had looked him over, eyes skeptical is if he couldn't believe such a pitiful person was allowed to exist. His eyes made Dewey want to shrink back into himself, disappear. He didn't. "Hi, Dewey," said the boy. Dewey had tried to slip away, but Mikey followed him. "I saw a lady with you yesterday? At pick up time?" Dewey just nodded. Mama came to pick him up every day even though they didn't have a car and took him home on the bus. They would sit together and Dewey talked while she listened. Mikey didn't care, though. He had a smirk on his face. "Is she your mom?" he asked.

Dewey had shrugged. "So what?"

Mikey's smirk turned toxic, so thickly menacing that his face seemed to warp into someone uglier, someone older and crueler. "So," he said, "She cleans my house. Your mom's my maid!"

She's not your anything, he'd wanted to snap, but the tone of his words so disarmed him that he failed to say anything at all before he turned on his shiny black heel and walked away.