Take It Like a Man

It looked like a couple of cats had been sleeping on my chest and were startled awake, leaving a zigzag of red welts in their wake as they dug in and dismounted. But the animal was a twenty-month old boy in withdrawal. A boy equipped with beaver-like sets of incisors, a quartet on the top and the bottom, perfect for latching on, extracting. And I couldn't give him what he wanted.

Attempts at sleeping Silas in a crib were short-lived. It was just too dangerous. There are two types of cribs: ones he's ejected himself from, resulting in a loud thud of head hitting floor, and ones he's never been in. So we climbed into his big boy bed and under his sheets--bears playing polo--at an early age. I knew it wouldn't hold him, and that he would seek me out in the night as soon as he woke up, but at least he could come and go without the risk of brain damage. Story time consisted of me plunging diligently ahead while he ignored me, opting instead to slip from his sheets to circumnavigate the bed's stuffed mountains of animals on all fours. Even if he wasn't paying any attention, he always protested when I put the book down and reached for the light. If I had a dime for every time I've heard, "One more book, dadda...".

The noisemaker droned on. I put a knee up to protect certain sensitive areas from the incessant wiggling of sharp elbows and knees. Toys, strewn about the floor, slowly revealed themselves in the soft glow of the night light. I hummed a lullaby or two, coaxing him back under the sheets. He alternated between stillness and restlessness. Silas's first haircut wouldn't come until age four, and the cold damp of his tendrilled mane, still wet from bath time, soaked through my t-shirt when he pressed his head to my chest. I hoped against reason that stillness would win out soon, and strategies of extraction played through my mind. It was hard to escape without waking him. Maybe he would fall asleep close to the wall; I would arrange a buffer of pillows and stuffed animals to guard against an accidental exit from the open side of the bed.

But he didn't fall asleep. Silas submarined lower, sinking his head from the crook of my armpit to the depths beneath the polo bears. His hands worked at my shirt, forcing it upward to reveal two red bumps amidst a tangle of fur. He did his best--or his worst--to find the milk that so many times had soothed him to sleep. I nudged him away. He fought me to latch on again. I pried free, not delicately enough to avoid wincing. This must be what it feels like to get tattooed, I thought. He tried once more; I resisted. Now my chest was damp from a mixture of wet curls and tears. So I resolved to lie there and take it, I suppose, like a man.

She left when he was 20 months old and not yet weaned. Each night, for weeks and weeks after she was gone, the last thing I did before I left him, finally sleeping, was fetch my shirt from the floor by his bed and pull it over my head to cover the wounds that never heal.

An angel's smile reveals an assassin's teeth.