Fullepub 
Chapter 44
44
We left earlier than I’d planned for some reason. It was just one of those rare smooth days when nobody made a mess of their clothes at breakfast, and Violet let me brush her hair without a fuss. So I didn’t have to yell things you aren’t supposed to yell. Hurry up! I’m out of patience! The morning was distinctly peaceful.
The three of us were rarely alone together on a weekday, but Violet’s school was closed for the day. I wanted to stop for tea on the way to the park. The owner of the coffee shop, Joe, talked to Violet like he always did while I stirred honey into my tea. He helped me get the stroller down the two big steps before he waved good-bye, and we walked to the corner, the fresh winter wind on our faces.
We stood at the intersection we crossed almost every day. I knew every crack in the sidewalk. I could close my eyes and see the graffiti tags on the redbrick building on the northwest side.
We waited for the light to change, Sam in his stroller watching for buses, Violet and I standing quietly. I reached for her hand, ready for our usual tug-of-war, but today there seemed no reason to argue.
“Careful near the road,” I’d said instead, one hand resting on the stroller. Sam’s arms reached toward Violet. He wanted out. I picked up my tea from the cup holder and brought it to my lips. Still too hot to sip, but the steam warmed my face. Violet looked up at me while we waited, and I thought she might ask me a question. When can we cross? Can I go back for a doughnut? I blew on my tea again as she watched me. I put it back in the holder, and then I touched Sam’s head in the stroller, a little reminder that I was there, behind him, that I knew he wanted out. I looked down at Violet. And then I lifted the cup to my lips again.
Her pink mittens left her pockets and they reached for me. She yanked my elbow with both of her hands. So swiftly, so forcibly, that the hot liquid scalded my face. I dropped the cup and gasped as I looked down. And then I screamed: “Violet! Look what you did!”
As those words were coming out of my mouth, as I was clutching my burning skin with both hands, Sam’s stroller rolled onto the road.
I will never forget her eyes in that moment—I couldn’t look away from them. But I knew what happened as soon as I heard it.
• • •The stroller was twisted by the impact.
Sam was still strapped into the seat when he died.
There was no time for him to think of me, or to wonder where I was.
I thought right away of the navy-striped overalls I’d dressed him in that morning. That Benny was in the stroller, too. That I would have to take Benny home without him. And then I wondered how I would get Benny out of the mess, out of that stroller, because Sam would need him that night to fall asleep.
I stared in disbelief at the curb in the middle of the chaos around me—the slight slope of cement and then a groove where the sidewalk met the asphalt—how had it not stopped him? The ice had melted in the warmth of the day before. The sidewalk was dry. Why hadn’t the wheels slowed when they hit the groove? I usually had to shove it over the curb when we crossed, didn’t I? Didn’t I usually have to shove it?
I couldn’t breathe. I stared at Violet. I had seen her pink mittens reach for the stroller when I let go. I had seen her mittens on the handle before the stroller hit the road. I closed my eyes. Pink wool, black rubber handle. I shook my head vigorously at the thought.
• • •I have no memory of what happened next or how we got to the hospital. I don’t remember seeing him or touching him. I hope I pulled him out of his straps and held him on the cold asphalt. I hope I kissed him over and over.
But I think maybe I just stood there. On that curb, staring at the groove.
• • •A mother was driving the SUV with her two kids in the back, the same ages as ours. She went straight through the green light, as she had every right to, as she’d probably done three thousand times before. The two cars coming the other way slammed on their brakes when they saw the stroller, but she didn’t have time. She didn’t even brake. I’ve always wondered what thoughts had been occupying her mind when it happened. If she was singing songs with her kids or answering their trail of questions. Maybe looking in the rearview mirror, smiling at her baby. Maybe she was daydreaming, thinking about how much she’d rather be anywhere else but in that car, listening to her kids scream.
• • •I wish it hurt more. I wish I could still feel it like it happened today. Sometimes I have moments when the pain is gone and I think, My God, I’m dead inside. I’ve died with him. I used to spend every minute of every day staring at his things, willing the pain to flood back. I sobbed because it didn’t hurt enough. And then days later the pain would swell again and the world would become a little more alive in ways I loathed. I would smell banana bread from the house next door and it would paralyze me—that I could smell, that my glands would salivate, that someone on the other side of the wall was having the sort of morning that allowed her to bake banana bread for her children. I had been numb—the cruel lack of pain had been numbness. Later on, I would pray for the numbness to return. Even though I found satisfaction in the pain, I knew I wouldn’t survive it.
• • •When you met us at the hospital, you pulled Violet in close and held her head to your chest. And then you looked up at me, and you opened your mouth to speak, but nothing came out. We stared at each other and then we cried. Violet wiggled free of your arms and then you came to me. I folded down to the ground and leaned into your legs.
Violet watched us quietly. She came over and put her hand on my head.
“Sammy’s stroller slipped out of Mom’s hands and got hit by a car.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know,” you said.
I couldn’t look at either of you.
The police came back and wanted to talk to you, to explain everything they’d already explained to me. That the driver wouldn’t be charged, that we’d need to make some decisions about our baby’s body. And his organs. They thought three of them would be viable for transplants in other babies, for mothers who had done a better job at keeping their children alive than I had. A nurse gave me a pill to calm me down.
I took Violet down the hall to the water cooler. As she overflowed the cone cup I threw up in a garbage pail full of discarded latex gloves and medical packaging. I listened to you sob down the hall, through the heavy glass door that separated us from the rest of the waiting area. Violet watched me and shifted her weight between her feet. She wouldn’t dare speak to me. I knew she desperately needed to pee, but I wanted to let her wet herself. I watched the denim turn from light to dark as the wetness spread. I didn’t say a thing and neither did she.
I had spoken to the police with the tone of ordering at a drive-through window: My daughter yanked my arm. I was burned by the hot tea. I let go of the stroller. And then she pushed it onto the road.
Anything else, ma’am?
No, that’s all.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to protect her with a lie. They’d asked me to repeat myself a few times, probably looking for signs of shock, inconsistencies. Maybe they found some. I don’t know. I don’t know what they told you when I was gone. But when I got back, the officer crouched down and put his hand on Violet’s little shoulder, and said to her, “Accidents happen, okay, Violet? Accidents happen and it’s nobody’s fault. Mom did nothing wrong.”
“Listen to him, Blythe. You did nothing wrong.” You repeated this to me and held me.
“I think she pushed him,” I said to you quietly as you dabbed ointment on my burned skin. I couldn’t feel a thing. “I think she pushed him into the road. I told the police.”
“Shhh.” Like I was a baby. “Don’t say that. Okay? Don’t say that.”
“I saw her pink mittens on the handle of the stroller.”
“Blythe. Don’t do this. It was an accident. A terrible accident.”
“It must have been pushed. It wouldn’t have rolled over that groove.”
You looked at the police officer and shook your head, wiping the tears from your face. You cleared your throat. The officer’s pale, chapped lips puckered. He nodded at you, an acknowledgment of some sort. The irrational mother. The incapable woman. Look—I have to put her ointment on. I have to shush her.
Violet pretended not to hear what I’d said. She drew flowers on a whiteboard next to a diagram of organs that someone had drawn when I wasn’t there, maybe for my husband to understand what parts of my son they wanted. The diagram looked like a map of the Great Lakes. The police officer said he’d give us time in the room by ourselves.
You repeated it again to me slowly once he left, your voice cracking: “Blythe, it was an accident. Just a terrible accident.”
I was in this alone.
• • •On our way to the park the weekend before, Violet had asked me a question at that very same corner, one she already knew the answer to.
“Do the cars only stop when the light is red?”
“You know that, you just turned seven! You know cars stop at all red lights. And a yellow light means be cautious because it’s turning red soon. That’s why it’s dangerous to cross the road unless the cars are completely stopped at the red light.” She had nodded.
I thought about how curious she was becoming about the world around her. I wondered if we should start teaching her about maps. We could walk the neighborhood and look for street names and directions. How fun that might be for us to do together.
As I sat in the family room of the emergency department, I thought about that question over and over.
You took Violet home, but I couldn’t leave. My son’s body was still in that building.
Under a sheet? In the basement? On one of those trays that slide into the wall like an oven rack? Was my baby on an oven rack, and was he cold? I didn’t know where they put him, but we weren’t allowed to see him. Benny was in a plastic bag on my lap, his white tail stained.
