Onely

If you’re conscious, Universe, if you’ve been watching me, you’ll know I’m hiding from a thought I can no longer avoid. And if I try to pretend it isn’t there, it finds a way to drag against me, pulling at my existence like a star collapsing. Almost as if you’re targeting me. You’ll know that I’ve been thinking of abandoning my son.

I lost Brandon before, long after his dad returned to the rez, but I’ve been clean enough to keep him again. He’s twelve now and getting smarter every day. When I was that age, I had no grander desires than to step outside New Mexico and swim in the sea. He plays chess and has gotten me back into reading. All the time I feel him growing more focused and see his observations toward life—toward me—becoming sharper.

But caring for him is risky, and I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m constantly reminded that I’m not able to give him everything he needs, and this shrinks me in ways more than physical.

The idea is there. What a relief it would bring to quit. Why did you make me this way?

* * *

When I pick him up from his after-school program, we stop for fast food, the cheapest hot dinner I can give him. As we wait behind a van, Brandon acts out the colorful incidents of his school day, and the thought of leaving him—the shame and relief of that desire—targets me.

Brandon says, “. . . and then Rachel said that Megan was the one who hit the teacher with the eraser. But the funny part was . . .”

“Have you ever thought,” I say, “that maybe you’d be happier living with someone else?”

“. . . Mr. Greene never brushed off the chalk from his back.”

“Did you hear me?” I say.

“Pull up,” he says.

I inch toward the speaker and order from the value menu, my voice lifeless. After I pay, I feel Brandon looking at me.

“Are you joking?” he asks. “No one’s happier in the group home.”

“I was just thinking,” I say. “You might have a nicer life with a good foster parent—a proper one.”

He’s quiet as I deal with the cashier. I hand Brandon the bag and begin driving back toward the one-bedroom apartment we share with my friend Mary.

He takes a bite of cheeseburger, and some of the sauce slides down his jacket. “I’d miss all my friends here. I would be onely.”

Until around age six, he mispronounced lonely as onely. It stuck, and sometimes he still pulls it out of the bag because he knows it works, that it softens me and reminds me that I love him. Or maybe he wants me to remember him then, to think about the years without him.

“You could make friends,” I say. “No more worries. You could make a new world.”

At a red light, I reach with a napkin and wipe the sauce off his collar. Outside, rain begins beating the car’s roof.

He says, “I’d miss you. You’d miss me too. I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“This is your only good jacket,” I say.

When I pull into the apartment parking lot, the sun is gone. He races up the stairs to the third floor. I climb slowly, exhausted from the day’s work and filled with uneasy adrenaline from finally putting the idea into the air.

* * *

Two nights later, I’m stuck at work and late to pick Brandon up. Mr. Kim, our neighbor, fetches him and brings him back to the apartment. Mr. Kim is the only person I trust now when I mess up or need help. Unlike Mary—the ultimate scolder—he never passes judgment and won’t complain for days after being asked for a favor.

When I arrive, Brandon and Mr. Kim are both leaning over a chessboard.

“This kid is getting too good,” Mr. Kim says and rubs the top of his bald head. “Is this any way to treat a vet? I might have to start cheating.”

After Mr. Kim leaves, I take Brandon with me to get groceries. Beside the supermarket is a separate shop: Liquor & Wine. Though I’ve passed it countless times in the last two years since we moved to Baltimore, today I feel a familiar need.

It’s only after we’ve finished shopping that the urge begins to bounce around inside me—nowhere to go. When we leave, I say, “Can you wait in the car a minute? I’ll be right back.”

Alcoholism has always made me self-conscious. Back on the rez, people drink for so many different reasons. Being half Navajo and having a family history, I have known that I need to be prepared. I got advance warning, attended a few early funerals from cirrhosis, and have had plenty of time to build defenses. Still.

I shut my car door and take a few steps before I realize Brandon is behind me.

“Wait in the car,” I say.

“You’re going to buy beer,” he says.

“It’s . . . for social events,” I say. Pathetic. What the hell social events have I been hosting?

“Mr. Kim told me there’s no such thing as a social drink,” Brandon says. “He says an addict is that way forever. There’s no changing.”

“Why did he tell you that?” I mumble, annoyed.

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“No—”

“You want to get rid of me.” His voice seems to shake, or maybe it is the distance between us, or the wind—tears don’t come to him easily. He is like me.

“Calm down,” I say. “What’s wrong?” I’m gaslighting him now out of panic. I should be thrown into an open manhole.

“I remember what you said to me the other day,” he says. “Now it’s like you want to start drinking again, so you’ll ruin the next meeting.”

The next court meeting is still far off, and I don’t want to dwell on dealing with another life audit.

“What makes you think I’d drink before that?”

“Maybe you want to mess up,” he says. “Then they can take me away. You’ll ditch me like that instead of doing it yourself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s go.”

I lead him back home, no spirits in hand. During the drive, he tells me about his day, but he sounds nervous, as if the events are no longer certain. I’m uncertain too. I want him to be wrong.

* * *

Alone, smoking on the balcony of our place. More of a ledge than a balcony. In the early morning, before work, I smoke and hope for a breeze to touch me. Everything is different here than in New Mexico. Everything is the same.

My body feels like it’s constantly dropping from a great height. The cigarette does not help. And shutting my eyes brings no peace—I only hear the interior of Baltimore yawning and stretching awake. At the industrial laundry where I work, we have to watch these awful training videos. The instructor in them seems to have fallen in love with the word gravity. You must understand the gravity of the situation.

Now the gravity is this: Brandon thinks I am planning a sabotage. Whatever I say is suspect. And I swear I have no plans, no long-term plans at all. How could I? But then why did I float toward the liquor store after keeping clean for so long? I glance at the clouds. You should know the answer.

Someone coughs and topples me out of my thoughts. To my left, on his own balcony, Mr. Kim sits in his usual space. His body is a shape lit only by the beginnings of sunrise and his cigar. He rocks in his chair to an unknown rhythm.

“Thanks again,” I say, “for picking up Brandon the other day.”

“Don’t mention it. He’s a sharp kid. Besides, these tasks don’t interrupt me much. Being retired, time and me get along now.”

“Still, I know I’ve asked a lot of you recently.”

He waves his hand at the dark. “Eh, it’s less boring than TV. Everything is tedious now. I started paying my bills in person just because I want to see other humans.”

“Mr. Kim,” I say. “Do you think I’m a good person?”

He stops rocking. “I wouldn’t know. It probably takes another good person to make that judgment. I’m not one.”

“But you helped me when I couldn’t make rent that month. When the kids at the bus stop were hitting Brandon, you stepped in.”

Mr. Kim grunts. “Could be because I thought you were part Korean.” He might be joking but I don’t press him on it. I’ve heard every guess as to my ethnicity over the years. Eventually, he says, “Those are part of my good deeds in late age. It’s like penance.”

“For what?”

“Things that happened,” he says. “Everyone in the neighborhood—except for you and your son—calls me the Major. They know me as a retired military man. The name always reminds me of what I used to be.”

“It’s a sign of respect, I guess.”

“I don’t want respect. I did horrible things there,” he says. “Terrible.”

“You think it makes you a bad person still? Even if you’ve changed?”

He takes a long drag before answering. “Of course. I’m going straight to hell. And I know who I’m going to see when I get there. But for now, I’m doing what I can to get right with karma. All I can do is watch and help.”

I try watching too. I’m good at it—scanning the sky—but this time I try looking down. Beneath me, a neighborhood kid’s toy catches the sun and shines in the unkempt grass beside the parking lot. It sends a fleck of light up to me like a coin at the bottom of a pool. Who do you belong to? Now you’re a bit of tin left in the grass, out of place, not a tree, not alive, but planted all the same. Soon, little spirals of rust will grow over your skin.

* * *

As a lapsed Catholic, I have not been to confession in years. For good reason, too. God knows there are only a handful of us on the rez, and I never would have been baptized if my father hadn’t worked at St. Michael’s Indian School for a time. Still, when I arrive at St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic Church and sit in the pews, calm settles over me. It isn’t long before I realize that I don’t need to confess to God, at least not right now. I need to confess to Brandon. When I pick him up from Sunday soccer practice at school, he’s out of breath and smells like cut grass. We head home, but in my anxiety, I drive by our apartment’s entrance and keep going.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks.

“North for a while. We’ll find a park,” I say, improvising. “It’s a nice day out.”

Even though I know he would rather be home, he doesn’t object. That scares me, too. I don’t want him to walk on eggshells, going along with what I say because he’s afraid I might snap.

We stay on York Road for thirty minutes, listening to a talk radio quiz that he plays along with. Soon we reach Cockeysville, and I follow my phone’s directions to Oregon Ridge Park.

Together, we walk through the Nature Center’s entrance. Around forty work colleagues are having a weekend get-together. Once we enter the fields, it’s nothing but grass and trees and the fading sounds of forced camaraderie. Serene. But its serenity doesn’t seem to reach my mind—there, far-off drums are sounding instead. Why had I thought being in nature would help?

“Look.” Brandon points to a park bench with a chess set. “Let’s play a blitz game.”

“Can I talk to you about something important?”

He’s off and sitting at the bench, his little legs somehow carrying him faster than I can keep up. Always small for his age, I can still see him playing in the dirt outside his grandfather’s house in New Mexico, and us calling him Shash—bear—his nickname as child. He begins arranging the community chess pieces. I’m shocked no one has stolen them.

“Brandon, I need to tell you something,” I say, settling across from him.

I want to tell him I have to go away. I want to tell him where it is quiet, so my words will absorb some of that peace, and maybe the truth will not harm him there. Stupid fantasy.

“We’re missing a black rook,” he says. “I’ll play with the black pieces then.”

“I’m afraid.”

“It’s alright. I’ll play down a piece.”

“You’ll be at a disadvantage from the start.”

“That’s okay,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I can handle it.”

I make the first move with white, putting the pawn in front of my queen into the center. He moves a knight out.

“You’re trying to give me space,” I say.

We play, and though soon I’m losing badly, it’s a relief to take my attention elsewhere.

“What did you want to tell me?” he asks and moves a pawn.

“I feel trapped.”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “I set that up. I’m gonna take your pieces.”

“By everything,” I say. “All the decisions I’ve made and haven’t.”

I can feel he wants to pretend we’re talking about chess. But after a moment, he says, “Maybe I can help you.”

“That hurts me more—when you say things like that.”

“Why?” He snatches a pawn, slamming his piece into the square.

“Because you shouldn’t have to be bargaining—”

“I’m used to it.”

“—you should never have to feel like I can’t take care of you. You should never have to worry that I’ll—”

“That you’ll what?” he asks. His expression changes into a grimace, one of real fear. But underneath the worry is a face more adult and ferocious than I’ve seen from him, a defiance meant for me, for everyone.

I can’t answer him.

“You know what the group home is like,” he says, his voice quiet as if he’s telling a secret to the remaining pieces on the board. “Of course you do. You know exactly what it’s like.”

“It wouldn’t be that way this time. I would make sure of it. Someone—someone special would take you in and—”

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

We have another quiet drive home. I know he has thought I’m a terrible mother—I’m sure of it. But now he must think I’m a terrible person, too. I want to stop the car, to hug him—not to show him that I’ve decided to stay, but to show him that I understand his disappointment, that I know what I am, that it’s okay to hate me the same way I hate myself.

* * *

Universe, you are sending me a dream now. Watching myself sleep, I’m moving above my body. My hands are pale, translucent like the most familiar form of ghost. The world seems to have become colorless like me.

I glide through the air, through our apartment, and find Brandon sleeping in his cot. Then his spirit too slides up from his body and joins me. We drift out of the window, like breaths, and go beyond the balcony into Baltimore’s sky.

“Let’s go higher,” he says.

So strange to not have this constant weight.

“Look, there’s the Inner Harbor,” I say. Rising, we can see the familiar triangular jut of the National Aquarium.

Moving is like swimming and zaps my energy. Brandon seems to have no issues and floats up without me. I rest inside a cloud where nothing below can see or touch me. From here, our old life is a dot, a tiny detail.

“Brandon, this is far enough for me,” I say and hear worry in my voice. “I don’t think I can go any longer.”

“Quitter!” he shouts. “Let’s see what’s up there.”

He dives suddenly and grabs my hand, and we launch with speed. The end of the atmosphere tumbles by us in a haze.

“Now we’re really flying!” he says.

Space, an endless, terrifying bubble of it, forms on all sides of our bodies. I’m not meant for this, wasn’t meant to leave the rez, wasn’t meant to drift to the East coast, let alone into this black bubble. 

“Brandon, I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.” But he’s no longer beside me.

I feel like a fish must when it’s ripped from its world, exposed to the land for the first time, to the unfamiliar sounds rushing through empty air.

Here there is nothing except a different kind of darkness. And one that is like me, utterly alone. Onely. And you, Universe, are no longer observing, but have turned your back on my movements, turned out of pity at my shaky splashing.

* * *

A few days pass, and Brandon has stopped talking to me. In the mornings, he only greets Mary, and even she has noticed this rift forming.

On Friday night, Mary goes out and we’re alone, Brandon and me. On the couch’s coffee table—our dinner table—he has his math book spread open.

“Need any help?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes as if to say, why are you asking me if you’re planning on ditching me? I don’t have an answer. I’m not used to the quiet, and him not talking brings a different pain.

“Actually,” he says. “Maybe you can help me.”

“Oh, with what?” I say. It’s so calming to hear his voice again.

“When you were at the group home as a kid … did you ever run away?”

“Yeah, lots of times. Why?”

“I’m thinking of running away, and I want to plan it right. So that it lasts.”

I have no time to think before I say, “You can’t do that.”

“I can if I plan it right.”

“You …” I start, but nothing else comes to me. “You shouldn’t think that.”

“Well, I am,” he says. 

He turns his attention back to his books. I know right away—can tell by his focus and directness—that this isn’t some typical teenage rebellion, but instead a quiet decision that he has made based on what I am and what he’s predicted will happen. 

Yes, defiance is what I saw in his face at the chessboard. He must see himself as a surgeon now, ready to amputate when the tourniquet fails. And I am that bandage letting him bleed. Failing him is bad enough, but the knowledge that I have pushed him to this adult reasoning disgusts me. This calculated, rational thought—this weighing of what he has and does not have—it is everything that I never want him to understand.

* * *

Tonight, I send myself a dream. I know it’s me and no one else because I think about it deliberately until it comes to me. A vision of Brandon. I see him wearing his tattered backpack and walking down a wet alley, his head down, his footsteps careful but hurried. His face reddens against the effort of walking toward an intense wind which whips at his jacket. From his gaze, fixed on his cheap shoes, I can tell that he thinks the rumble of nature is his only problem.

But above him, curtains begin parting in the windows of row houses, so softly that you would never notice if you weren’t trained to look. Then faces drift toward the glass, not close enough to become more than shapes. They are all strangers with shining eyes, glowing as they gaze down at Brandon, defenseless, unaware of who or what is coming. I’ve seen these faces all my life—from New Mexico to Maryland.

All this time, the idea of him abandoning me . . . I have never considered it. Maybe avoiding the terror of that thought kept it from ever occurring. But how is it different from what I plan to do?

* * *

I wake early in the morning from this dream, my mind groggy and still asleep. Instead of going to the balcony, I stumble to Brandon’s cot and shake his shoulder hard until he looks at me, his eyes unfocused.

“Wha-what?”

“I’m still your mother. So, listen to what I have to tell you,” I say.

“Tell me when I’m awake,” he mumbles.

“You can’t run away.”

“Fine, whatever,” he says and rolls to his side.

I roll him back. I won’t leave until he understands. “Don’t say it like that. I need you to promise me.”

Brandon squints back at me, annoyed. “Why should I?” He props himself up on his elbow. “Since when do you keep your promises? I hear about kids running away at school. They always get caught anyway.”

“Damn right they do. So don’t be stupid like me.”

“If I run, I’ll keep out of sight. I’m good at hiding.”

“But someone other than family might find you. You won’t be safe.”

“I know there are creeps out there. I’m not stupid. But where am I safe, anyway?”

I can’t answer and it’s not because I’m barely awake.

“I’ll plan it right then,” he says. “So I don’t get found. I don’t want to be. Anyone who finds me will just hurt me.”

For a moment, I think I must be in my own bed, still dreaming. Because, suddenly, he is not in his cot anymore, not in this small apartment. Or he is—partially—but he’s also folding into a memory of mine. There, he stands outside his elementary school, waiting for me. I’m late for the first time. I know I am late because the only thing illuminating him is a streetlight, sending his shadow onto the bricks of the school. All the other mothers have come and gone. A lone teacher waits with him, and she must be angry with me and judging my failure. She must be thinking how bad this kid will have it with me as his mother. This is long before I lost custody, yet I feel myself losing him in this memory, the beginnings of a brick border opening between us. Then he sees me. And he waves with so much energy his little body shakes. He rushes to me, and I lift him and the shadow of him and part of myself into the night air.

I blink and then he is back in his bed, waiting for me to say something. I rest my palm on his forehead as if he’s sick and needs me.

He pokes me gently on the side and asks in a small voice, “Would you look for me?”

I can’t speak, but I nod. My eyes begin to fill. 

He hugs me, and though I can no longer lift him, I pull him close and touch his hair, which is soft, softer than mine. I’ll hurt you. In ways you don’t yet understand.

Outside, I hear police sirens and thunder. Later tonight, I might think of my job, my situation, and how to change our lives. I might smoke on the balcony and feel tiny watching clouds rolling overhead. For now, they are too far away—like everything else.

SEAN SAM

Sean Sam is a Navajo writer now living in Maryland. His writing has previously appeared in Salt Hill, Potomac Review, and Déraciné. He is an editor and co-founder of Ligeia Magazine. Find him online at www.seansam.com.