Page 34 of Mornings By the Linden Tree
“I want popcorn,” she mewled before trying to stick her thumb into her mouth. I caught the filthy digit just in time. That made her even whinier.
“We’re not having popcorn. We’re going to the chicken bar-b-q shack Lennon said sounded promising.” I reached into her diaper bag—now known as her big girl bag because only babies had diapers—and found some hand sanitizer. Frowning, I opted to just take her back to the cottage, give her a bath, and settle her in front of her dollhouse until our dinner reservation at eight.
I rose, Valeria hanging off my neck like a lemur dangling from a baobab tree. My back wanted to twinge, but it held off, thankfully. I did not need a back spasm to strike during our little getaway. Perhaps I would fire up the hot tub tonight after Valeria was asleep. If she stayed asleep, that was. We’d had a somewhat mild night with only one small disruption from a nightmare around two a.m. Maybe the sound of the sea had soothed her. Or sleeping on the sofa bed. Hell, I had no clue. But we’d only lost about an hour of sleep, which was markedly better than several hours. Still, the dreams were lingering, which meant we had not found the root cause.
Lennon jogged up, his pale shoulders as pink as Valeria’s swimsuit, his gold hair glowing in the sun, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.
“Is she sick?” he asked, reaching up to feel her brow. She growled and jerked away. His face fell as if he had been struck.
“She’s worn out, I think. Also, I suspect someone is feeling out of sorts over not being the center of your attention.” I rolled my eyes as understanding sank in. “We’re going to bathe, have a cold drink and some grapes, and play with her new dollhouse that arrived this morning.”
“That sounds like fun. Can I play with your dollhouse?” Lennon asked while gathering up our scattered beach accessories.
“No,” she grumbled into my shoulder, her thumb hovering close to her mouth. Lennon pouted dramatically. I heard Valeria giggle at his funny face, but she hid her amusement in my neck.
“Surely, you can let Lennon play. Remember what we said?”
“Sharing makes everyone happy,” she mumbled as her cheek met my sweaty shoulder.
“That’s right.” I placed a kiss on her gritty hair, winked at Lennon carrying two huge totes, and led the procession back to the cabin.
Showers went smoothly as did snacks and juice. We’d had the craftsman set up the dollhouse in the corner of the den area beside a pair of large windows, and so I set Valeria down there with a box of juice and a bowl of washed grapes. She was sparkling clean, her hair brushed out after a liberal application of apple-scented hair detangler. Her hair was incredibly thick. It took ages after a bath to comb the long black mass out. Tears were usually part of the detangling process. I’d thought about having it cut shorter, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Perhaps because Aida had the same beautiful ebony locks as a child. Aida. Who was still packed away in a satchel in the main bedroom. I was hoping to do the scattering on Sunday morning when the beach would be quiet after a wild night of fireworks and festivities. It was only a pinch of ash. I’d not felt up toapplying for permits or hiring a boat to haul us three miles out to sea. If someone found out, they could sue me.
Lennon and I sat on the blue sofa, put our clean feet up on the white wood coffee table, and sipped on cups of fresh coffee while we played footsies. Imagine it. Me, allowing a man to slip his big toe along the sole of my foot. It was so immature. Yet I was wholly into it.
“You have very nice feet,” I told Lennon as Valeria munched on a grape as her dolls were getting ready for bed. She looked tired, but her spirits were much lighter now she had Lennon to herself.
“Thanks. I wash them every day,” he replied as he tried to pin my big toe to the table. So now it was toe wrestling instead of footsies. That escalated quickly, but I was not a man to surrender being on top, be it with foot wars or in the bedroom. The wrestling got a little giddy as we both tried to outdo the other. Valeria was paying us no mind.
“Mama says you has to go to bed,” I heard her saying as I did my best to get the upper hand—or I guess I should say foot—in the battle of the toes. “But we sleep on the sofa. Beds is bad for Mama. Beds kill Mama.”
All the giggles died off as the child’s words moved over us. I sat up, my feet hitting the floor with a thud as Lennon blinked at me.
“Did Aida die in bed?” he asked in a whisper.
I nodded.
“She was found dead in her bed. Oh my God.” I rubbed at my face with my hands as I digested this monumental discovery. “What do I say to her about it? Should I call Dr. Bajaj? This could be the reason why she refuses to sleep in a bed. No, the doctor is surely out of his office and only accepting emergency calls. I’ll handle it.”
“You’ve got this, Uncle Wes.” Lennon gave my knee a squeeze. I stood, ran my palms over my shirt to press out any wrinklesfrom sitting, and then walked over to sit on an ottoman beside Valeria’s dollhouse. She glanced up at me with a weary smile.
“Are you having fun with your new family?” I asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her little ear.
“I am. I wish they was brown like us.” She returned to tucking the two children into bed on the floor, covering them up with one of my silk hankies that had been forced into double duty as a bedspread.
“We’ll find some brown people like us,” I promised her. “Valeria, I noticed the mommy and children are sleeping on the floor. It’s a very hard place to sleep. Why aren’t they in bed with the daddy?”
“Oh, because the bed is a bad place for Mama because…because it makes her dead. But not uncles,” she said it so matter-of-factly that even an educated man like myself could have believed her. I wiggled to the end of the rolling footstool to cup her chin and lead her attention to me. The sound of seabirds floated through the window screens.
“Darling, the bed did not kill your mama. The bed is an inanimate object. Therefore, it cannot kill anyone or anything.” She stared hard at me. I’d lost her. “The bed is not alive. Only things that are alive can take the life of another thing that is alive.”
“Cars is not alive. Guns is not alive. They kill people.”
Okay, well, wow. That was not the discussion I planned to have with a preschooler this afternoon.
“True, they do, but cars and guns that hurt people are being used by people. The person driving the car or pointing the gun is harming someone. The bed itself is just stuffing and springs. The car is just metal and computer diodes. The gun is just steel. Your mama died in her bed, yes, but the bed did not kill your mama.”
“The drugs killed Mama.” She flicked a look at me and then at Lennon. We both bobbed our heads. “If I takes medicine then nap, will it make me dead?”
