Day of Youth

A short story written in 2009. Updated 2017.

The boy sprawled his arms across his desk, reaching in an attempt to grab the other end of the table. Failing this, he sat back in his chair and looked up at the adult, the teacher; the only person talking in the room. The only sounds were that of the teacher, the scuffled fidgeting of five year olds, and a songbird chirruping somewhere beyond the window. The teacher had told the class to clear up the paper and glue and pens and books, so they did, and the room was as neat and precise as when the children arrived in the morning. The only few exceptions to the absolute tidiness were a toy or two that different children had taken to school and played with briefly during milk break or the lunchtime hour. The boy had a calculator. No other child in the class had a calculator, not even his twin brother. The boy had received this article of interest at lunch by trading the chocolate bar in his lunch box for it – an ordinary chocolate bar for a calculator that was smeared with digits, letters, and lines. The boy played with it, frowning at the messages of error that appeared on its face. The girl sitting beside him was also frowning, not at the calculator, but at the boy. In an instant foul swoop, the girl plucked the gadget from the small boy’s fragile chubby fingers. The boy’s eyes showed a sharp pain and his mouth lopped agape – his calculator had been taken.

The school bell rang and the children looked expectantly towards the teacher. As ritual, the words to leave were spoken, which triggered the mass migration. The boy tried to regain his calculator, but could not catch up with the girl in time. It was gone. Instead, he sullenly reached for his coat from the rack. He took down his brother’s coat accidentally, but was instantly corrected by his vociferous sibling, who pecked at him. The brothers arranged themselves and their scant belongings, then followed the gaggle of schoolchildren out the front entrance. More adults awaited. Dozens of mothers and a modest spattering of fathers and other family members stood strategically around the pavement and caught their own escaping children like a giant net, guiding them each to their paths home. Concentration on the boy’s face communicated that he could not catch sight of his own parent, and so turned to a friend to commence who was ushering him away. The two ran along the shallow walls beside the main door, swung from branches of the tree that hid amongst the tall bushes, and threw themselves onto the grassy verge in front of the main hall. The boys shouted and screamed and laughed and played. Then appeared a woman.

The woman could have been among the crowd for a while, or perhaps she’d just arrived, regardless, she was straight-faced bearing down on the boy, with his brother’s hand gripped tightly in hers. Mother. The boy demanded he go play at his friend’s house, she declined – they had to go. The boy demanded that the friend came home with them to play; she said no – they had to leave. The boy demanded a playmate; mother refused once more – they had to go home, alone. The boy screwed his brow and tightened his lips; his mother took his hand directly. She escorted the boys to the car; they all got in, not without protest. The boy’s frustration prevented him from waving goodbye to his friend as they pulled out and sped off.

The car journey was a mere minute or so, but every other second the boy would protest, as his mother bit her lip. They passed by the preschool, the turning to the park, the junction at the foot of the hill, their neighbour’s grand house, and arrived home. The car pulled up slowly and the boys leapt from it almost automatically as it stopped. The three reached the front door and were greeted by their grandmother, whose face was almost expressionless, save for the scythe of a sad curve on her mouth. The boys were invited into their own home and escorted quietly along the darkened, carpeted corridor, into the sitting room. The mother could not hold her gaze on her sons until she had directed them both to sit on the sofa, which they did. The boy looked into the face of his mother: her eyes were pink and tired, and glistened with something strange. After a moment of unresisted crying, she swallowed a choke and looked again into the children’s eyes. Sufficient breaths were exhausted in informing the two children that their father was gone. The boy turned to his brother to gauge the gravity of the words, and found a mirror of confusion and hurt. His mouth shook uncontrollably. Their father had been taken away.

The mother held the two boys as they wept into each others’ shoulders, which jerked uncomfortably with the erratic gasps for breath they achieved between fearful screams. The three yelled and cried and squeezed and rubbed their eyes. The grandmother weakly gave periodic words of support from the side of the room where she stood, yet the three bawled on regardless. The boy asked whether his daddy was never, ever, ever coming back, and his mother replied with another jolt of hysterical tears. The three stayed there together for a long while. The sun arced its course, clouds spinning below it, and birds took flight, outside, out in the large, unbroken world. The three appeared one; a pile of love, but drained and aching – together, but alone. The rest of the house was empty, besides their mournful crying that echoed through the carpeted rooms, and attracted no reaction from the grandmother.

The three held each other as teardrops soaked their hair and clothing, and the boy asked once more, “Is Daddy never, ever, ever going to come back?” The mother didn’t speak. The boy did not ask any more questions.

Rationale:

A short story from the fly-on-the-wall perspective. This was one of the most difficult pieces of text to write on the course due to my emotional closeness to the subject and story. I rarely recount the story of this text, but when I do, I naturally reel it out from the first-person perspective. The memory-dulling of time, and the skewed perspective of a child’s surroundings, mean that I have only retained a vague and dream-logic account of these events, so the story had to be somewhat malleable and altered by fabricated detail. Considering the possibility to take a semi-objective view of my account, I attempted to distance myself from the main character: no inner-thought process, no given motive, no past knowledge or reference to events in the characters’ past. This short story only includes descriptions of what is happening visually or what is said in the moment. Beginning with an account of a classroom at the end of the day, filled with children and order, the story presents a comfortable setting to begin, that turns by the end of the story through ominous actions and description. The imagery of birds and flying is woven into my work, and provides the idea of life continuing outside of the protagonist’s sphere, which is a juxtaposing parallel to the theme of loss that weightily carries this piece.