Sweet Boy

      The road hummed underneath my tires as they burned up the road. Finding a clear spot on the shoulder, I pulled over, my eyes no longer able to view past the tears blurring my vision. My chest ached and I screamed with the force of my breaking sobs, his little screams echoing through my head, playing in movie-like fashion against my closed lids, I remembered…

           We were laughing before I told him I had to go to work. His blue, little boy eyes shining brightly up at me dulled with such suddenness, my heart skipped abnormally in my chest.

           “Please, don’t go.” His voice, immature and breaking with the force of his plea. I watched as two tears slid down his face, a slow race of gravity.

           “Sweet boy, I have to go to work, my love,” I tell him, a small smile playing on my lips to reassure this child beside me. I knew I failed as his chest heaved as he tried to swallow back his emotions and something else…fear? I didn’t know. Not then. Hindsight being twenty/twenty, I now know. Sometimes I wish I could surround myself in the ignorance of that moment forever. Just so as to not know the pain that would follow me after this moment for the next nearly ten years.

           “No,” he wailed on a choked sob as he wrapped his tiny arms around me, climbing me, locking his hold around me. “Please, don’t go.” I wrapped my arms around him, his tiny frame engulfed within my embrace, as I held him so tightly. The magnitude of his cries in that moment lead me to wonder if he knew something I didn’t. Over the past several years he and I had many of these outings. A day away from his home life. For him to have fun. For me to watch him blossom for a few hours into the laughing little boy that always seemed to be repressed otherwise. “Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.” He tightens his grip around me. I feel tears and saliva and snot on my neck and shirt where his faced is pressed, but that isn’t what my mind focuses on in that moment.

           His fingers. His tiny, little fingers, clutching at my back. His fingers constantly moving from open palmed to closed fist, his little palm gathering the cotton material of my t-shirt as he does so. Don’t leave me those words echo in my head to the point where there is only this mantra. His continuing cries for me to don’t leave me cut at my very heartstrings and as I try my hardest now not to cry, I hold him that much tighter.

           I set him on his feet and I noticed the woman raising him standing by the door, keeping her distance. Watching. Looking back I think she watched because she enjoyed his pain. Enjoyed the pain, of seeing him in such a state, her sadistic smile carefully hidden. Ignoring time and all else around me save the eleven-year-old boy standing in front of me, I said to him, “I want you to listen to me, now, baby. Okay? Listen to me. I love you.” With gentle fingers I wiped his tear stained and swollen face. If I’m honest now as I sit here and part this unto you, dear reader, I have to admit that I needed a moment to gather myself. I saw that unknown fear clear as the summer Texas sky above us. His eyes are the same color as that summer Texas sky, only in this moment a hurricane had rolled through, clouding the laughter that had been only an hour ago. “I will never leave you, my sweet baby.” My voice cracked as I pushed the tears away. This is a conversation we’ve had before, only the circumstances were different.

We sat on a clear night, just the two of us, listening to the sounds of the nightly symphony of crickets, frogs, and the occasional hoot-owl. Conversation had been fleeting, each of us enjoying the sounds of the night and each other’s company. We cuddled together on the hammock, slightly swinging as my feet rocked us. He was tucked into the crook of my arm and he smiled as I kissed his temple. “I love you.”

I smiled then, my heart filling. He smiled back as I told him I love him, nuzzling into the side of his cheek. He giggled and I couldn’t be happier in that moment.

“Can…can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” I answered him, my fingers sweeping through his hair as we rocked.

“Are you going to leave me one day, too?”

My heart broke. “No. No, I’m never going to leave you. Not really. When I go home, I always come back. And I’ll always come back. You will always have me, my sweet boy.”

“Everyone leaves me.”

I almost didn’t hear him, he said it so quietly. But I did. I hugged him then, placing another gentle kiss alone his hairline. “I will never leave you.”

“I wish I could come live with you. I know you would take care of me. And I know you wouldn’t yell at me all the time. Why can’t I come live with you?”

“I wish so, too, my love.”

“Don’t go. Don’t go to work. Please, stay with me. Please. Please. Please, stay with me.” His tears were raining harder now, his face scrunched up as hard sobs built up from his bowels.

“How about I come back on Friday and we spend all day together again, okay? I don’t have to work then, so it’ll be just you and me, okay? I have to go to work now, though, baby. But I will never leave you. Not like that.” I kissed his tears away and with an I love you stood and began making my way down the driveway to the car. When I stood the woman I used to call ‘friend’ came to stand behind him, her hands on his shoulders in a possessive way I didn’t translate until it was far too late.

I turn as I hear a NO! shouted in his little voice, and stomping, tiny feet sprinting towards me. I lift him into my arms, catching him in mid-air and pulling him into my chest. His screaming pleading almost broke me as I held him that much closer. After the span of more than fifty accelerated heartbeats, I set him back on his feet. He lets me go this time, resignation on his face even as his tears continue to spill.

           “I will see you soon, baby boy. Okay? I promise, I’ll see you soon.”

           That was the last time I saw him. My sweet boy.

           For seven, long years I searched. For seven, long years I buried the pain of seeing any blonde haired blue eyed little boy…as each one had his face.

           Until the day came where he found me. Until the day of December 4^th of 2019, when I was finally able to hold him in my arms again. Until I was finally able to bring him home where he belongs.