Page 3 of Sugarplum Dreams
She saw blood first. It seemed to be a mother’s instinct to zero in on that life-giving substance and another motherly instinct to try to make sure that it stayed within the bounds of her child’s body at all times.
But Banks was most definitely cut, and it looked like there was a ton of blood. Surely he hadn’t been stabbed by the glass from the lightbulb?
The lamp was in pieces on the floor, and Gifford stood back against the wall, his eyes on her, worried and guilty.
She hurried toward Banks, who struggled to get out of the broken glass.
“Hold still for a second, bud. Let me help you so you don’t cut anything else.”
“He pushed me and made me break the lamp!”
“Okay. One more broken lamp isn’t going to hurt a thing.” It wasn’t like she was going to be sitting in a chair reading to anybody anytime soon. Nowadays, the only reading she did was to her children at bedtime.
Every once in a while, she had them sit at the table and she would read while they ate. But the days of her being able to sit quietly in a chair and read to her heart’s content were long over. She didn’t see them coming back anytime soon either.
“Let me give you a hand,” she said, helping Banks and brushing the bits of glass off him. They must have taken the shade off the lightbulb while they were playing, since it was clear over on the other side of the room.
“Gifford pushed me!” Banks said as Charity felt a tug on her leg and looked down. Serafina. She had totally forgotten about her as soon as the crash in the room happened.
But she wasn’t bleeding.
“I see a gash in your head. I think that’s where all the blood is coming from.” She spoke almost as much to herself as she did to Banks. He wasn’t going to care. In fact, as soon as he thought that Gifford was getting his just deserts, he probably would stop crying and be excited about going to the emergency room to get stitches.
Hopefully the gash wasn’t that bad. It was a head wound, so it was going to bleed a lot.
“My arm hurts!” Banks said, almost as though he didn’t even realize that he was crying.
“All right. Let me see it,” she said as she sat down on the chair, no light, and pulled Banks close to her. Serafina pushed against her, and she put another arm around Serafina. Not for the first time, she wondered why God hadn’t given mothers five or six arms. One for each child. After all, if the Lord was going to give her five children, shouldn’t she have an arm for each one of them?
Apparently not, since God had not seen fit to bestow that upon her. She’d been trusting the Lord for her family size, since it made a whole lot of sense to her to do so, and Clancy had seemed to agree. After all, if a person claimed to trust God but then decided that they would make the decisions about how large their family was, was that really trusting God? Were they saying they knew more than He did? Then of course there was also the idea that God said that children were a reward. Wasn’tbirth control basically spitting in the face of the Lord who might want to issue a reward to His children? Wasn’t it wrong to say to God, “No thanks, Your reward isn’t my idea of a good thing”?
She shoved all those thoughts aside. It didn’t really matter how she got here. And maybe she was questioning everything she ever knew. Maybe she was wrong about it all. Maybe the world was right, and the Bible was wrong, and she had just been deluded. That’s the way it looked to her anyway.
“Where does your arm hurt, honey?” she said to Banks as she pulled Serafina onto her lap, who promptly stuffed her thumb in her mouth and laid her head on Charity’s chest. Of all of her children, Serafina was the most cuddly, and she would love nothing better than to spend her entire day sitting on Charity’s lap, snuggled up, sucking her thumb, listening to stories, or nothing at all.
Charity wished she had more time to spend holding Serafina. She knew these moments wouldn’t last long, but her life seemed to be such a dumpster fire that she was constantly running from one thing to another and didn’t have time to snuggle the way she’d like to.
“The whole thing hurts. Everywhere,” Banks said, and Charity wasn’t sure whether he was being deliberately unhelpful, or maybe his arm didn’t hurt anymore at all.
“Gifford, go get me a paper towel so we can stop this bleeding.” She should have asked Gifford to do that long before now. As a mom, she learned to prioritize things. Blood and broken bones were at the top of the list, and they were the first things to be taken care of.
Maybe that was why she had unintentionally shoved Serafina aside. The child was not bleeding, nor did she have any broken bones. She just wanted to snuggle, which, if Charity were ranking her wants, that would be very near the top. But she learned long ago that a mom didn’t typically get to prioritize herwants. Her life was a series of meeting her children’s needs and prioritizing those.
Gifford had run to do as she asked, and he was back quickly with a tissue, which wasn’t as good as a paper towel, but in hindsight, Charity thought they might be out of paper towels.
A paper towel wouldn’t stick to the wound the way a tissue would, but it was better than toilet paper, although, ten years ago, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea about that.
It’s funny the ways being a mom changed her.
“Thank you,” she said as she took the tissue from Gifford and put it over the gash at the back of Bank’s head.
“Ouch! That hurts!” Banks said, using his hand to try to swipe the tissue away.
“I need to press against it so that it will stop bleeding,” she said, her tone calm and not irritated. And then Banks smacked at her arm, causing it to push against Serafina who tumbled off her lap and promptly started screaming.
“Stop it! First of all, you don’t hit your mother, and secondly, you hurt your sister!” She had been calm up until that point, but her voice was raised as she spoke to her child.
She wasn’t as gentle as she could be as she shoved the tissue against the back of his head, holding his forehead with one hand to stabilize it and allow her to get enough pressure against it. They had blood all over the chair.
