…day has been hot, as usual,
and we both like the cool darkness of early night.
There’s no moon, but we can see very well.
The sky is full of stars.
The neighborhood wall is a massive, looming presence nearby.
I see it as a crouching animal,
perhaps about to spring, more threatening than protective.
But my stepmother is there, and she isn’t afraid.
I stay close to her. I’m seven years old.
I lost an arm on my last trip home.
My left arm.
And I lost about a year of my life
and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone.
When the police released Kevin,
he came to the hospital and stayed with me
so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too.
But before he could come to me,
I had to convince the police that he did not belong in jail.
That took time.
The police were shadows who appeared intermittently at my bedside
to ask me questions I had to struggle to understand.
“How did you hurt your arm?” they asked.
“Who hurt you?”
My attention was captured by the word they used:
Hurt.
As though I’d scratched my arm.
Didn’t they think I knew it was gone?