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Steven is still snoring away when Sarah walks back to the bed they share. He’s rosy-cheeked, not fever-flushed like he tends to be when he makes noise like that, but then it’s getting to be autumn and his allergies do kick up around the middle of September.
“Wake up, love,” she says over the monstrous sounds coming from her wee lad. “Time for breakfast.”
His ready alertness, such a trial when he’s ill, is a blessing the precious times he’s well. He pushes himself up and smiles at her, covering a yawn with his hand. He thinks she doesn’t know he’s lost a tooth a bit before it was ready to come out, which tells her all she needs to know about how he lost it.
The yawn ends on a tiny squeak. Steven stares at her, his eyes huge in his narrow face.
“Got a pet mouse, have you?” Sarah asks for lack of anything else to say.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t do that.” He drops his hand from his mouth, and his thumb brushes against his pocket. A moment later, he’s yanked the pocket open--oh, she’s glad he didn’t pop a stitch, she has enough patching to do already--and is staring down into it. “Mama?”
Steven hasn’t called her ‘Mama’ since he declared himself a big boy on his birthday. “What is it?” she asks, already resigned to a dying kitten he found and forgot to mention.
He dips his other hand into the pocket. His fingers wiggle, and then he’s got hold of whatever it is and is drawing it free of the fabric. It whines and rolls over in Steven’s hand, burying its face against the ball of his thumb.
Sarah’s seen smaller, but not in some years, not since her younger sister woke to a similar little being sleeping under her hair. “That’s not a mouse,” she tells her son.
He shakes his head, his eyes never leaving the Pocket curling up in his hand. “It’s a Pocket,” he breathes. “Mama, I have a Pocket!”
Every house should have at least one, Sarah thinks as she leans down to kiss Steven’s forehead and get a better look at the pajama-clad little Pocket in her wee lad’s hand. “You’ll have to name your Pocket,” she tells him.
“I gotta think about it.” He sounds more congested, but he’s alert and still not fevered, so she stands and doesn’t stop him following her out to breakfast.
“I’m sorry we haven’t a thing for you to wear,” she tells the dark-haired little Pocket before she leaves for work, while Steven yanks on his short pants. “I’ll try to make you something tonight. Steven, mind the hems!”
The Pocket gives her a wide, sweet smile. He’s missing a tooth himself, the lower right front. She knew lads with smiles like that when she was a child herself, always either the most trouble or the most loyal. He babbles at her, a wash of playful happiness in the sounds, and Sarah wishes she could kiss his head.
Not that trying it would bother Steven or his Pocket, of course, but something always feels wrong to Sarah when she touches someone else’s Pocket. That seemed more common at home, but maybe it’s just living in the tenements and crowds that makes people so indifferent here. Half the time, they never seem to notice their hand has passed through a bit of someone’s love and soul.
“Make sure he names you today,” she continues to the Pocket. “He’s a mite stubborn sometimes, so you make sure he understands if you like a name, all right? Don’t go letting him run all over you.”
“Ma,” Steven groans at her. He finishes buttoning his shirt. “You’re giving him a bad impression of me!” His voice sounds thicker than it has the rest of the morning, enough that it takes her a moment to understand his words.
“A bad impression it might be, but an accurate one,” she says. “Remember your handkerchiefs, mind your teacher, I love you.” She kisses her boy’s head and lets herself out and does not worry about him making it to school on his own, just as she hasn’t worried since his first day.
She should have worried, she realizes when she gets home to find her son with a bruise rising on his jaw, a sturdy dark-haired lad about a year older than him, and the mending basket pulled out between them.
“Oh, Steven,” she sighs, since he’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t. “Who’s your friend, then?”
“Ma, this is Booky.” He sounds even worse than when she left, but it’s nothing a bit of steam won’t help. “Booky, this is my ma.”
“Booky?” she asks the lad, since she’s certain she hasn’t heard Steven correctly.
Possibly Booky hops to his feet. “Bucky, ma’am.” He smiles at her, sweet and wide and missing a tooth. “James Buchanan Barnes. I go to school with Stevie.”
“Steeb,” Steven grumbles, but he doesn’t do more than that.
“Nah, remember? That’s Steeb,” Bucky says, pointing to the tiniest Pocket Sarah has ever seen. He has wispy blond hair and looks as though he’s trying to climb Steven. “An’ that’s Booky.” This time, he points to the one rummaging through the mending.
“He’s not Booky!”
“He’s Booky,” Bucky confides to Sarah.
At least she can kiss the top of his head.