Imperfect Spiral (23 page)

“Humphrey and I used to pretend this was a mountain,” I say.

“Yeah?” Justin says. “I can see that. It would be a mountain to a little kid.”

I remember that when Humphrey and I first climbed it, I was nervous. I didn't know how coordinated or strong a five-year-old was, and I had visions of him slipping through the bars and falling on his head. The drop to the ground couldn't be more than four feet, but still.

I soon learned that Humphrey was both coordinated and pretty sturdy. I also learned that if you spend enough time around a five-year-old, eventually you'll see him fall down on his head.

“That sounds right,” Justin says when I tell him this. “If you stopped kids from doing everything that could possibly hurt them, they wouldn't ever get to do anything.”

“I was so relieved that the one time Humphrey had a really bad accident while I was around, his parents were there, too, and it wasn't my fault,” I say. “I mean—before
the
accident. My accident. Isn't that ironic? Or something?”

“Or something,” Justin agrees. “Did it happen here at the park?”

“No,” I say. “Nothing bad ever happened at the park.”

“What happened?” Justin asked. “When Humphrey's parents were there, I mean. That accident.”

I can tell him about
that
accident.

I had just arrived, and Humphrey and his mother were outside. Humphrey was riding his little bike. It was early evening—after kids' dinners, before parents went out, if they were going out. There were other kids riding bikes, too—on the sidewalks,
into the streets. It was nice. There were no cars. Not because there were no cars on their street, just—no one was going anywhere in a car right then.

When he saw me, Humphrey stopped and got off his bike. He was on the sidewalk. Another boy wasn't paying attention and rode his bike right into Humphrey. Right into him, knocking Humphrey down. This boy was a little kid, too, and it was a little bicycle, but the impact would have hurt anyone.

Humphrey picked himself up. His face wore a shocked expression. Like—
ow!
But he squared his jaw and pulled back his shoulders. The other kid's father saw what happened and ran over. Mrs. Danker was soon there, too, hugging Humphrey.

“I'm all right,” Humphrey said. “It's okay.”

He had scrapes on his palms—those rough, corduroy type of scrapes that really sting. He had blood on his knees. He had a bump on his head.

After fussing over Humphrey for a while, the Dankers decided that an emergency room trip wasn't called for. Because he'd hit his head, though, they wanted to stay home—just in case. They canceled their plans to go out.

“You can go home, Danielle,” Mrs. Danker said. “Of course, we'll still pay you for tonight.”

I didn't care about getting paid.

“I'd be happy to stay,” I said. “If you want, you and Mr. Danker could still have a ‘date night' at home.”

“Yes, let Danielle stay!” Humphrey said. “We'll pretend that you and Daddy are out, but you'll really be right here.”

So that's what they did.

Later, I was helping Humphrey get ready for bed. When he took off his T-shirt, I saw the tire tread marks on his chest.

“Humpty!” I said.

He looked down and saw the marks.

“I really got run over!” he said. “Cool!” He went running downstairs. “Daddy,” I heard him calling, “I really got run over and I have tire marks to prove it!”

He ran right into the wall. I didn't see it, because he was downstairs and on his way to the dining room, where the Dankers were eating Chinese food, and I was up in his room. He ran into the door frame, and cut a gash right in the middle of his forehead. The noise of the impact carried upstairs to me, followed by the scrape of chairs as his parents jumped up.

I jumped up, too, and ran downstairs.

There was Humphrey sitting on the floor looking a little surprised and a little amused. Even if, magically, the wound didn't hurt, anybody would have had a right to be hysterical just from the sight of all the blood. Humphrey didn't shed a tear. Not a single whimper.

“Ow,” he said. But even that wasn't a whine.

How can there can be so much blood in a forehead
, I wondered, but there it was, gushing all over. And the bleeding wasn't stopping. Clearly, Humphrey had to go to the ER.

Since he was shirtless, I ran upstairs to get a shirt—one with buttons, so it didn't have to go over his head. By the time I returned downstairs, Humphrey was already in the car with his
parents. I peered in. Mr. Danker looked perturbed. Mrs. Danker looked tired. And Humphrey was crying, crying, crying. Mr. Danker started to pull away, but then he stopped and the windows came down on the passenger side of the car, front and back seats.

“See, Humphrey, she's right there,” Mrs. Danker said.

Humphrey looked at me. I realized that I'd never seen him cry before. “It hurts, huh, buddy?” I said.

No. That wasn't it.

“I thought you left without saying good night.” He was just this side of hiccups from crying so hard.

“I wouldn't do that,” I said. While I had run upstairs for a shirt for him, someone had found his Baltimore Ravens jersey and put it on him. “Nice shirt, Humphrey,” I added. I knew he liked it because it was purple, not because he cared one way or another about the Ravens.

“Laundry room,” Mrs. Danker said.

“Good night, Humpty Dumpty,” I said. I was whispering, as I didn't think Mr. Danker would appreciate the nickname.

“Good night,” he whispered back. “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” His eyes were all sparkly—not with tears anymore, though. He was perfectly pleased with his little joke.

“He did, didn't he,” I said. “But
you
will be put back together again.”

“He sounds like an awesome kid,” Justin says.

“Yeah,” I say. But I can't form another word. If I try to say
anything else I will absolutely lose control. I need to keep my face a mask. Tight. Tight. Hold on.

But I can't hold on to my thoughts. And my thoughts go back to Humphrey's little chest with the bicycle tire tread marks on it. The black of rubber against his pale skin. The pink sandpaper of the scrapes. Tender, tender. Tender and trusting. His tender, trusting little chest.

The kid got run over by a bike, didn't cry, cracked his head open, didn't cry, but when he thought I'd left without a proper farewell, he cried as if—as if he'd gotten run over by a bike and cracked his head open.

Now that I think about it, I never saw him cry again.

I can't hold on. Finally. Finally, I cry.

I rush to climb down from the jungle gym, driven by a need to hide my face from Justin. And once I'm on the ground, I might as well run, right? Where to? Obviously, I have no plan; I blindly make for the picnic tables. No. For the field. No—home. So I head for Quarry Road.

Here's what I discover: it is very hard to run and cry at the same time. At least it's hard for me. I could stop running and cry. Or I could run to stop myself crying.

Or I could trip over a tree root. Which is what I do, falling on the ground just inside the entrance to the park.

“Hey,” Justin whispers. “Hey.” He's kneeling next to me. “It's okay.”

“It's
not
okay,” I choke out.

“It's not your fault,” he says.

“It
is
my fault,” I say. “Why did I think I should play football with him? Stupid, stupid football. I don't even like the game. I hate that game.”

“For him—you did it for him,” Justin says. “It made him happy. And then—sometimes terrible things happen, and there's nothing anybody can do.”

“Why did I bring him to this stupid park?” I say. “I should have kept him right there on his own street, so he could … get run over by a stupid
bicycle
, get mowed down by a bicycle, and get up afterward and say ‘Cool!' and—and—”

That tender little chest.

That trusting little brain, with those gears. Learning and remembering. Fumble and pounce.

“It's okay to cry,” Justin whispers. “You just told me. Even Humphrey cried when he didn't get to say good-bye.”

Okay or not okay, I am sobbing. Crouching there in the scrabbly grass, shielded from the street by the watchful Littleleaf Linden trees, I am grateful, at least, for the shadows that are settling over us as afternoon turns to night, the darkness not illuminated by the false glow of streetlights.

I am not one of those eyes-only criers. What a gift that would be. No, my eyes are the last to get in on the action. My mouth wobbles and, basically, disintegrates. My face becomes red and contorted. The only thing to do is to hide it.

So, am I saying that vanity is what made me run away from Justin when I cried in the park yesterday?

Dr. Gilbert looks at me expectantly. When I don't read any more, she says, “No more?”

“That's everything I wrote down.”

“And that's fine,” she says.

“I do hate the way I look when I cry,” I say. “So of course I
wouldn't want this guy I'm kind of interested in to see me crying, when my face falls apart.”

I sit for a few minutes without saying anything. She waits. Dr. Gilbert is a patient person.

“And maybe I didn't want to cry about Humphrey—about Humphrey in particular—in front of him. In front of anyone, really.”

“Because you think it might seem strange that you felt so close to a five-year-old,” Dr. Gilbert prompts, “who doesn't know enough to have conversations about family dynamics and immigration?”

Wow. I said that two weeks ago. “Do you memorize the things I say and write in here?”

“The memorable things, yes,” she says, with a hint of a smile.

“Well,” I say, “it felt okay for Justin to know how great I thought Humphrey was. How cute and smart.”

I am aware that I am not saying whether I did or didn't want Justin to see how close I felt to Humphrey. I'm only saying that I was okay with Justin knowing how much I liked Humphrey. Two different things. And I know I'm the one who raised this issue with Dr. Gilbert in the first place, this matter of feeling too close to Humphrey—but I don't want to talk about that with her anymore. I'm not sorry I said it when I said it, but I'm not going back to it, either.

“So then why do you think you didn't want to cry in front of Justin about Humphrey?” she asks.

“It's a little confusing,” I say. “Maybe I do feel some embarrassment about what—about what—”

This is hard to say. I'm stumbling.

Dr. Gilbert is sitting there, her usual patient self.

“Not embarrassed, exactly, but I am aware that it might seem, I'll say,
unusual
, what Humphrey and I—what we … had.”

There, I said it. We
had
something. We weren't siblings. We weren't exactly friends. But we were something. I would say we were soul mates, but I don't want to say that out loud.