Two Bags of Cheerios

It’s been five years since you’ve seen your kids and six weeks since you could forget. Everyone says you’re doing great, they’re so proud, this time is different.

Yes, it is. Because the longer you go without using, the worse the grief gets.

I want to visit their school. Say goodbye.

Your sponsor’s eyebrows go up. You’re not supposed to have contact.

Well, I’m not seeing them up close, just from a distance.

Rationalization, she says flatly, as if reading a street sign.

People need rituals to mourn, you explain. Like lighting a candle or bringing flowers to a grave.

It’s a school, she says. Not a church. And not a cemetery.

Good sponsors lack the capacity for metaphor.

***

During that last year you had with them, you picked the boy up every day from kindergarten. You waited for the bell to ring under the yellow awning of an oak tree, holding his little sister’s hand. One bag of Cheerios for her to munch on, another to give the boy when he burst through the double doors, skipping, and carrying his latest piece of artwork. You remember easel paper, half his size, filled with bold strokes of color.

With the oak trees bare, you have a clear view to the double doors. Above, high windows reflect the November light, clean like water. They are in there somewhere—your children—right now.

Now, five years later, you sit outside a pizza shop, looking across the street at the brick school, your hair stuffed under a baseball cap, brim pulled down. You are grateful for November, a month that scours the world down to the essential, green lawns to a brown hide. With the oak trees bare, you have a clear view to the double doors. Above, high windows reflect the November light, clean like water. They are in there somewhere—your children—right now.

The dismissal bell ripples. In the pause that follows, you are suspended, your every sense heightened. You smell garlic on the breeze. You feel the wisps of hair lift on the back of your neck. It reminds you of waiting for a hit to take, how still the world becomes in the interim between misery and relief. And then…

The first children straggle out, alone or in pairs, fanning in different directions. The walkers. A minute or so later… the rush. There’s no containing it when the doors swing open. The noise spills first—yelling and laughing—and then a hectic bobbing of colored backpacks and jackets. Where are they?

You promised yourself you wouldn’t cross the road, but you must get closer. You must see. Craning your neck, praying please, please. As the confusion of color starts to form into lines by the buses, you spot them.

Your children.

The girl has dark curly hair, pulled high on her head in a ponytail. She is small, too small for a six-year-old—is that your fault?—yet she is a starling, electrified. She flits around the edges of the bus line, darting in and out, hands talking dramatically, crackling, sparking.

The boy is tall, slightly overweight. You identify him by his uneven shoulders, scoliosis. He moves slowly, a few paces behind his peers, hands dug into his pockets, gray hoodie over his head. No one talks to him. The bus line stops. He stops too, keeping the same careful distance.

One minute, two minutes at most.

Stay, stay.

The girl climbs into the bus first, waving goodbye. Then the boy. He takes the seat behind the driver, while everyone else moves to the back.

The diesel engine starts up. Pain rises in your chest, catching in your throat. You swallow it back down. That’s just the love, you tell yourself, trying to get out. Trying to go with them.

***

After—and there is a long, hard after— you sit on the bench, alone in a way you weren’t when you first sat down.

Of course, your mind goes to the bathtub. Where else would it go? You remember turning on the tap, the shriek of the old pipes.

Of course, your mind goes to the bathtub. Where else would it go? You remember turning on the tap, the shriek of the old pipes. You remember lowering her skinny body into the water. And then. . . nothing. You woke up on the bathroom floor, water everywhere, EMS hovering over you with Narcan. Light splintered your head like an ax.

The first words you heard: The boy pulled her out. He saved her from drowning.

Thank you.

Thank him, a man said. Only now, thinking back on it, can you hear the bitterness.

Five years, the shame has kept you from letting yourself mourn in the open. What gives you the right? But today is different. You are prepared, bags in hand.

You stand, sprinkling the first handful of Cheerios at your feet. You feel power—a sad power, yes, but power, nonetheless. This is what they have kept from you—or what you have denied yourself. You begin to walk, scattering Cheerios as you go. You hold your head high, looking straight ahead; you don’t want any stares to distract you.

For my girl, you say out loud. Samantha.

It’s been so long since you’ve spoken her name, the syllables have a thickness, the shape of an unfamiliar language on your tongue.

When the first bag is empty, you open the second.

For my boy. Nathaniel.

You walk. Scatter. Walk.

Louder now. For Nathaniel.

You can feel the trail of Cheerios stretching behind you for blocks. For miles. All the way back to that bathtub. Connecting you. To them.

Don’t worry, you hear yourself telling your sponsor, as you pinch the last dust from the corner of the bag, It’s just this once. That’s it.

But already you’re thinking, I have a whole box at home.

END