He was born with the [light of god] in his eyes. Born in the caul blue until his first breath, but calm as the midwife had ever seen. They said a newborn’s eyes can’t focus, can’t parse the flood of visual information, but when the mother looked into her child’s face [ ], and she began to cry while the baby stayed peaceful, regarding. A tender child, soft and loving, crying only when parted from his beloved Mama, who once, it is true, shouted at him in sheer exhaustion, go to sleep, you fucking monster!!! She was all day and all night with the boy, because his father worked long stretches; later the marriage ended and she kept a roof over their head with nurse’s pay. But she loved the boy, loved his big ears and the gap between
his teeth: two imperfections that brought into relief the startling beauty of his face: the little mouth a deep pink, the tips of the cupid’s bow finely pointed, almost impetuous; his wide-set eyes the burnt gold-brown of summer grass; round cheeks that flushed with emotion, growing keen, foxlike into boyhood, but never losing the beauty, the clarity of those shining eyes. The ways he kept silent, and seemed to go [ ] in his own mind. He was well-liked at school, long, lanky, good at sports, and made friends with all the girls, who knotted friendship bracelets for him out of embroidery floss in the colors he said he liked: blue, for the sky; brown, for the mountains; green, for the trees; and white, for the clouds. The mother was always peering into the face of her child, wondering, worrying: what will you be? He answered, a scientist, [an angel], a cowboy, a dad. [an angel]? said the mother, frowning a little. People can’t be [angels]. He had said it seriously, not childishly, but blushed under her correction. Began going for walks alone, coming home with his pockets stuffed with apples. Where did you get these? He said just on the other side of the park. But no apples grew there. The apples were so red they were almost black, but the bitten flesh was paper-white, with a ghostly ring of pink around the pips, and very sweet. His body grew long and thin and he lost an interest in school and material things. His eyes looked far away. He left home and [began walking]. His mother called the police, therapists, and doctors. No one knew where her boy was, couldn’t find him, didn’t know why he’d left, if it was her fault, if he would return, if there was anything she could do to get him back, to help him. She knew her boy was somewhere in the world, but she did not know where. Her mind was always racing through the things that could befall a dark-skinned boy in the shape of a man. If she sent out a line in her mind to him, she could feel him living. But she was not sure she could trust that feeling, if it were not just the false, anxious confidence that death had befallen him, but in reverse. All she wanted was to know, but she could not know anything.
_____
She made holes in her evening, sitting out on her back deck, in all weathers, not knowing. And thinking about [the light of god] in his eyes when he was born. At the time she had thought all newborns looked that way, blinking for the first time in air, breathing air and moving their limbs through it. But later she had seen other children and known this was not the case.
_____
An investigator brought him home, but he did not want to be brought. He was very thin and his feet were blistered and bruised, his bones shone through his skin. She could not have him committed: the hospital seemed a more brutal world than the one outside it. He stayed in her home, sleeping for hours in his narrow childhood bed. Washed: gaunt: god-lit: she couldn’t reach him. She couldn’t reach him, but he loved her, and sat patiently on the bed.
Where did you go?
To the mountains.
What mountains?
He was silent.
Can you tell me why you have to leave?
I just know . . .
What do you know?
And he began to cry like a boy, I can’t say, Mama.
She hugged him. She packed a bag for him: cash, protein bars and water, a phone, apples, remembering how she had packed his lunches for school. How she had sometimes hated, when he was small, watching him walk away from her, around the corner away from her, into the classroom, in that little line of children, away; I am teaching you to leave me, she was thinking in those moments of irrational hatred, and teaching myself how to be left. I just know [that I have to go back]. She knew it too. She held him, and then watched him go.
