Chapter Text
Brad was four when he became aware that his mother wasn't exactly like other moms, that you usually didn’t call your mother Ashley by name, but just mom or mama. Or that the life they lead wasn't normal either.
He walked alone to the kindergarten and back. He was taught to pretend to walk out with one of the other kids' parents, so that the teachers wouldn't bother calling his mom to pick him up. Apparently he wasn't supposed to be alone all the time.
“Don't worry, I saw it. Nothing gonna happen to you. Alas I will be stuck with you for a long time”, his mother would say on some mornings when he brought it up; when she was just returning home on time to get him ready for the day. Ashley smelled like the street he walked by every day, dense with exhaust smoke, but she looked as bright as the dandelion flower that broke through concrete next to their apartment building. They were learning flower names in kindergarten this week.
She would be fast asleep or already gone by the time he made it home.
The walk to and fro was sometimes scary, especially in winter when the sun came up late and had already disappeared behind the skyscrapers by the afternoon. But it was like his mother kept saying and nothing ever happened to him.
Brad turned five just like that. Winter became spring and soon it would be summer.
His mother bought him new sneakers with yellow accents and a green polo shirt with a little crocodile stitching on the breast pocket for his birthday. The items smelled new and like nothing Brad owned before.
“You have to wear it every Friday. Go right to the park behind the kindergarten building when your classes end and stay there until I pick you up. Call me mama when you see me”, she told him after dressing him in the new clothes. Her gaze didn't seem so cold that day. Brad knew all the week days by heart, his teacher always complimented him on his good memory. He imagined Ashley looking at him like this again if he did as she told and nodded in affirmation, a small smile spreading across his face.
It was a novelty to Brad, he usually went straight home and stayed there. The first time he went to the park in his shiny new clothes, just like his mother told him, he got anxious when he saw how big the park was. But at that point in life Brad didn’t think of questioning Ashley's instructions, especially because her predictions came true so far and he still hoped to experience what the other children in his kindergarten group talked about. Hugs and praise, walking home hand in hand with a parent, getting ice cream on a sunny day.
When he spotted the big oak tree in the middle of the park, it seemed like something he saw in a dream or maybe in one of the books his teacher showed and read to them. He was immediately drawn to the spot. He didn’t know what majestic meant yet, but it was what he would describe that tree later on. It stood in the middle of the park like a giant, obscuring the sky with its branches and lush foliage. The trunk was so thick, Brad could hide behind it even if he were as big as their neighbor Mr. Johnson, who had to duck to pass under the door and suck his tummy in when more than 4 people got into the elevator. There were other children and adults with their dogs playing in that area. Surely Ashley would find him if he waited there?
When Brad spotted his mother on that sunny afternoon, it didn’t seem like he waited there all that long. That day, and every other Friday he went to the park, she looked especially beautiful. Her hair coiled just so, her lips the perfect cupid bow, her flowy dress would swing in the breeze when she approached. Her gaze would land on him standing by the oak tree almost immediately, the corners of her perfectly red painted lips would turn down in disappointment. Still, she would always take his hand and lead him back to their tiny apartment. Her dainty hand was cool to the touch, even during late spring and hot flashes of early summer. His small hand would soon grow sweaty and warm but she never let go. It was a novelty.
“Don’t twaddle after classes, make sure to go to the park right away”, his mother would sometimes say in a warning tone when she picked him up.
One time her golden eyes went dark, sparkling with malice when she approached Brad and saw the cocoa stain on his polo shirt.
“How did you get your shirt dirty, you little brat? After all the trouble I went through to buy it for you!”
When she took his hand, her grip was uncomfortably tight and her pace hard to follow on Brad’s short legs without stumbling.
Then, on another Friday, Brad was late getting to the park. He was running to the oak tree as fast as his legs would carry him, not paying much attention to his surroundings. Something barreled into his side and he got thrown into the grass, a cry caught in his lungs.
A huge dog appeared in his view, then the owner peeling the dog away.
“Oh my god, kiddo are you ok? Hey, hey…”, a man was helping Brad up to his feet with careful hands.
“BRAD HONEY!!!!”, his mother’s voice pierced through the air almost at the same time.
When Brad turned his head toward her voice, he saw her rushing towards him. Her perfect shaped eyebrows scrunched together, her red painted mouth quivering with concern, her golden eyes huge and glossy. A lock escaping her perfectly coiled hair bounced with each leap she took, her high heels going tock tock tock on the asphalt until she reached the grassy part to kneel beside him and pulled him into a tight hug.
Brad didn’t have to go to the park on Fridays from then on.
They got a TV, a new couch. Brad got a rubik's cube like the one of the popular kids in his kindergarten group. He saw his mother less but on some weekdays the dog owner would take them out for ice cream and for a meal when the days grew colder. His mother would make him wear his best clothes and would look as beautiful as on those Fridays.
Brad turned six and started pre-school when their tiny apartment became crowded with the additional furniture.
He turned seven when they moved to a bigger one in a new area.
“You will have actual math classes now. Make sure to answer incorrectly even if you know the right answer”, his mother said to him on the first day of school, her tone insistent. When her cold gazes measured him, Brad was reminded of his 5th birthday and the Friday afternoons spent waiting under the oak tree.
Unlike going to the park, pretending to be bad at math displeased Brad. He knew the answers better than anyone in his class and as days went by his classmates started making fun of him. It made his skin crawl and his cheeks grow hot; their laughter echoed in his ears. But then he thought of his mother's words and remembered the day he soiled his shirt. He remembered her dainty hand crushing his with surprising force, her gaze dark and frightening; he remembered the breath stuck in his lungs when his eyes met hers.
They had other subjects at school where he didn’t have to pretend, he could do it for math.
Brad learned a new pattern for his rubik’s cube. He became pretty fast in solving it too, but Aaron - the man with the big dog - wasn’t taking them out on the weekend anymore. His mother wasn’t interested in the new trick and forbade him showing it at school.
That day Brad had a nightmare where he took the cube to school anyways. He couldn’t remember too many details but his mothers fingernails were piercing into his hand where hers was holding him tightly. They rode the elevator with Mr. Johnson.
“Ahaha, back here?”, he said and Ashley’s grip became impossibly tighter, blood gathering around the pierced skin.
Brad left the rubik’s cube at home.
Like with the friday afternoons in the park, it was only a matter of the season passing.
Soon it was Mr. Riley instead of Aaron inviting them out for meals on the weekends. Brad didn’t have to play dumb in class anymore and could bring his rubik’s cube to school, and later to their weekend outings.
Brad just turned nine when he had a dream as vivid as the nightmare with Mr. Johnson. He awoke drenched in cold sweat, his hands clutching into his bedsheets. He didn’t remember much of the prelude but the doctor's office cast in the harsh lights was as real as during his waking hours, and so was his mother next to him. The man in a white doctor’s coat beckoned him to take a seat in front of some kind of apparatus, his smile disingenuous, his biddy eyes behind the thick glasses following his mother’s every step with something akin to hunger.
That day his mother took him to a doctor’s appointment to check his eyesight.
When Brad entered the office his breath caught in his lungs, sweat formed on his back and turned cold in an instant. It were his own fingernails, curled tightly into his palms that pierce the skin and drew blood.
Brad was ten, his glasses permanently perched on the bridge of his nose, when they moved to a house in the suburbs on a Saturday. His mother’s hand as cool and dainty as always holding his, the man with the biddy eyes devouring her with his gaze from the doorstep of their new house. The dandelions in the front yard were in full bloom. One strong breeze was all it took and the tiny white parachutes got carried away by the wind. lonely stems left behind.
“Remember what I told you”, Ashley whispered to him harshly, when she led them up the porch.
Brad nodded and left his childhood behind. Hugs and praise, walking home hand in hand with a parent, getting ice cream on a sunny day… He knew better now.