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Sunlight spills in fresh rays through half-drawn curtains sat simply above a sink, dusting the countertops and white porcelain alike in a soft orange glow.
Strewn across those countertops are a variety of things — of ingredients, of flour and butter and a simple carton of eggs and, perhaps most importantly of all, a child.
Brown-haired, wide-eyed, with the lightest smattering of just a few freckles across his face, complete with that same beanie he’d taken to wearing despite the swelling heat outside in the fields —
“So let him,” his father says, gruff ‘round the edges. “It’ll keep him ‘out the sun.”
Mary, this child’s mother, offers a smile — try as she might, and God had she tried, her little boy just would not veer towards anything else; so thick-knit beanies it was.
The AC runs in sputtering waves but the hose outside runs cold enough, and the child, named Ezekiel , likely fair to mention, doesn’t mind cold rags against his neck and sits well in front of running fans.
Therefore — the hats remain. Mary considers this, something like it, as she drifts about the kitchen while Ezekiel watches on curiously, like most children do, idle pacifier in the tight grip of one of his hands—
“If it ain’t broke,” is what’s said, came with dismissive shrugs, when she voices her concerns about it. It keeps him from crying and so it is good — but she worries, equally as idle as the thing in his hand.
She finds what she’s searching for around the disorganized cabinets and drawers rather quickly, her hands coming around to tie the hand-embroidered apron snug around her waist over her pinafore, wiping down the front in an action borne of habit rather than necessity.
She hums as she gets to work — getting to work more referring to the simple act of propping Ezekiel up on her hip as she bustles around grabbing at spatulas and bowls, all while a small, just-so clammy hand finds itself tangled in her similarly brown hair; it’s where he’d gotten it from, after all.
Strands fall loose around her ears, tugged away from their place tied back low by curious hands — curious hands soon dropping that pacifier to the floor in favor of splashing around in the flour once she sits him back on the countertop, leaving a clouded white dusting of powder in its wake.
Mary laughs, light and chiming — Ezekiel, for his part, doesn’t seem to understand, staring bug-eyed down at the residue on his overalls, patting at it only serving to worsen the miniature handprints made with it.
She uses one hand to move his out of the way, grabbing at a dry cloth to wipe most of it off — she taps him, gentle, on the nose once, giggling at the manner in which his face scrunches up and he stares at her with the strangest, most inquisitorial look.
Ezekiel, her baby… her pride, really. Her hope that every sleepless night, that every snide comment she endured from her family, all the pain and sickness and cramping and kicking and regret would turn out to be worth it, that her fears of resenting this unborn child would turn out wrong — and please, God, please let them turn out wrong, she had prayed, so very often — and, so blissfully, it had.
Everything had turned out so lovely, so damningly insignificant in the face of flesh to flesh, with an infant in her arms — every worry, any concern she had melted away and overshadowed by the swollen thing in her heart she’d call love if it weren’t a word so insignificant and unbefitting for what it was.
He was what made it worth it. Tired could pull at her seams but she would watch him toddle around or see him mud-stained but so childishly happen and it would be, simply, gone.
Mary considers, absent, cracking eggs and watching Ezekiel do much the same, clumsy and uncoordinated, of much. Of the family reunion coming up soon, of the sidelong glances and sugared comments.
But she considers, too, of the doting and adoration and cherishing — rightful. And she believes that for his sake, for her baby first and foremost, that she could handle it. That she could handle much of anything.
The food they make — the eggs that Ezekiel’s klutzy hands whisk and that her own steady, the pancakes, half too-cooked and others surely with raw batter still inside, the bacon mostly burnt to a crisp from the pause, where she’d checked him over methodically for grease burns after he’d begun crying — is messy. Plain and simple — a mess.
But it is lovely — it is homely and lovely and time well-spent with her baby, teary-eyed still but wondrous right beside it.
Mary considers, she considers and thinks and contemplates and ponders, smiling gently at Ezekiel’s fumbling body movements, presenting the food to his father —
That he was special, deserving of the best and only that. That he’d go far.
It’ll be something nice to see.
___
(at least — that’s how ezekiel would choose to remember the situation. the vaguest, snapshot memories, fuzzy at the edges and never quite whole, gaps filled in with yearing and crossed fingers and childhood wishes whispered kneeling next to windows.
left alone, left to rot and decay and watch his seams rip slowly under the nauseating pressure, that is how he would choose to remember it.
everything here fades, like sun-bleached but simply not, for the sun is something he hasn’t seen in weeks — his memories of the show, this show, are ones best left to decompose. so all that’s left is home.
and with all that’s left being home meaning, really, that all that’s left is mary.
he’s seeking out something like comfort, after all, or some warped and mangled version of it — he must, for why else would he chew at his skin and faux-pacify himself, what else would the clawing thing borne of desperation tearing it’s way through his chest be best soothed by?
ezekiel would desire comfort, and there is so little that provides it.
the cargo hold is cold. damp, lonely. damning.
it’s his. he could make it work.
no matter how much he missed spilt sunlight and warm mornings — no matter how much he missed comfort and love and doting and family, ezekiel could make it work.
he’d have to.)