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The boy’s amber gaze stared up at her, eyes big and brown, lined gently by moisture. A wince riddled his small frame as his mother cleaned the cuts on his face. It stung, and made him feel like crying, but he was a big boy, and if he was going to protect his mama from all the bad things people said about her, he had to be strong.
“Mama,” he said, as strands of gold brushed against his shoulder. She always smelled so sweet, like vanilla, it made him want to bury his face in her hair and just remained there, forever, protected by her warm touch and the circle of her arms. But he was a big boy now, and refrained from doing so.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
She sounded tired, but mustered a smile as her gentle fingers applied a type of ointment that burned his nostrils around the defined swelling of his left eye. Terrance Tozier, being just a young boy of four, was not aware of much besides his father’s strange yet hilarious impressions, his mother’s warm embrace, her home-cooked meals and perhaps basic mathematics and vocabulary, which was not nearly enough to understand that his mother (who had been awake since five in the morning) had almost been driven to tears by the harsh judgement of his principal, who had immediately branded her as a negligent parent.
He didn't know that he needed to tell her that someone had been saying bad things about her, that it was what she needed to hear.
He didn't know that what he was about to ask her would almost shatter her heart in pieces.
There was a lot of things a four year old boy did not know.
“Am I. . . a mih-missake, mama?” The boy’s face is pulled into a frown, curled strands of unruly chestnut falling rampantly against a crinkled forehead. The word tasted unfamiliar on his tongue, but there was no doubt that she had understood, her pretty features paling, rosy margins dipping into a frown.
Terry knew his mama was different, he was different, too; different in the sense where what she called normal people like his daddy could not do, like open a door without touching it or lift a book just by thinking. But she was also different in the sense where she didn't have those wrinkly lines that Harry Gordon’s mama had or the stern, hard face of Melissa Walsh’s mama. He was fairly certain he had the most beautiful mama in the world, with her hair that shone like gold, her pretty dresses and that pretty smile that never failed to appear whenever he brought home an assignment with a sticker on it or when his daddy told her hello with his mouth, which looked really gross to him but they seemed to like it anyways.
She was kind and soft and sweet like the yellow daffodils across the meadow where his daddy had taken them once for a picnic, and had tucked one behind her hair. Daddy was young, too, like Melissa’s big brother who had picked her up a few times from school— their friends were never there, they were all away to some strange place called ‘collage’ (he was glad his parents weren’t at collage too), but auntie Becky and his grandmama were always around. He loved his daddy, loved him as much as a four year old’s heart could comprehend and more — but there was something about mama that made him feel so warm all over, like what home felt like and so hurt and sad when she cried. She was too beautiful, too good, too loving to ever have to cry, and if she heard about the things those boys had been saying about her — he didn’t understand, himself; but their mocking laughter had said enough — there was no doubt she would have cried, and it was worth ten months of detention and a thousand bruised eyes if it meant he never had to see his mama cry.
It didn't really matter that Harry Gordon had called him a missake. But he still wanted to know.
So, he stared up at his mama with those big, fawn-hued eyes that he had inherited from her, as well as unruly curls that she herself did not possess at the very moment, but yet they peeked out at the seams of her poised, blonde facade; two tiny golden ringlets behind each ear, unable to be tamed by an ordinary hairbrush.
Jane’s eyes had begun to fill with tears, which were just as quickly swept away by the pad of her thumb, hesitation rippling through her mind in waves.
“You’re not a mistake, baby,” she told him, moving her hand against a mottled cheek, thumb stroking gently.
(Is this what the fight was about?)
(Who said that to my baby boy?)
Tears had begun to gather at the edge of her lashes, clinging to them for dear life, but amidst that, her mouth curved into a smile that brought a new light sparkling in her eyes, like a rainbow within rainfall.
“You’re a miracle, to me and your daddy.”
The young boy’s freckled features fell into a perplexed frown, thumbs twiddling together nervously.
“What’s a miwhacle, mama?” he couldn't help but ask, brows furrowing upon the vocalisation of yet another foreign term. But he knew that his mama knew. She always did.
“It means something good,” Jane promised her son, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead, blinking tears away. A single droplet fell, and a little hand veered forward to wipe at her eyes. “It means that you're everything to us. We love you so much, baby.”
“Mama, why are you crying?”
Terrance frowned as his mother grasped his wrist, tugging it away from her face gently. She wasn’t crying anymore, but lines of moisture still stained against her cheeks, slightly flushed, like the pictures of cherry blossoms in one of his story books.
“Because my baby got into a fight, and he got hurt,” Jane said firmly, honeyed tendrils framing her visage as she leaned in, arms wrapping around the boy’s smaller build, who returned the embrace in tandem, shorter appendages reaching for her,a head full of curls burrowing into her bosom.
In a few years, he would grow as tall as his father, and would become that ‘big boy’ he so insisted on being. But for now, Terrance was still her baby.
(And would always be).
“Oh.”
The word, though muffled and appeared to emanate merely from the crop of wilful whorls that seemed reluctant to retract (so much for being a big boy), was full of guilt.
“No more fights. Promise me.”
“ . . . Promise.”
“I love you, Terrance.”
“I love you too, mama.”
Silence fell, and for that moment, despite the sheer amount of things left unsaid and the pain stifled in both of their hearts, Jane simply held her son.