Deb and me are on the swings in Chaps Park. We come here a lot. It’s one of my favorite places because the jungle gym is huge and made of wood with bridges and ropes and slides. Daddo always laughs about one time when I was littler and I went too fast down the slide and landed on my face in the sand and looked at him like I was gonna cry but then I started laughing and got up and went back to the ladder because I wanted to do it again. I like the days best when Mommy and Daddo take me here together. Why isn’t your dad here? Deb asks. He’s home working, I say. Mommy’s schedule is all over the place. Deb asks a lot of questions. Mommy says so does her mommy. Her mommy’s name is Carly, and Carly and Mommy are talking on the bench by the big trees and the bathrooms. They use their hands a lot when they talk. I wonder if Mommy still smells like another person today. I wonder if Carly notices that too. My mom says the school is gonna make us be checked for weapons, Deb says. I heard the same thing. Mommy and Daddo got real mad about this. Daddo slapped his palm on the kitchen counter and said the world is “crap.” Mommy started to tell him not to say that in front of me, but then she stopped because I think she agreed with him. It’s gonna be really weird, Deb says. We gotta make sure we don’t have secrets in our backpacks. I think of carnations. A backpack full of them. We swing as we talk. Mommy once told me everybody lives in fear of “something.” She said everyone has “that one thing they’re afraid of.” She told me she doesn’t want to live in fear and that if she ever catches me living in fear it would “break her heart.” Would you ever hurt anybody? Deb asks me. I don’t think so, I say. Like if somebody was hurting me? Deb asks. Would you hurt them for me? O, then yes. I swing higher than Deb does, but then she swings even higher and we talk as we pass each other. Good, she says. Because I would do the same for you. What would you do? I ask. How would you save me? Mommy looks to me from the bench. She’s wearing big, dark sunglasses. A white scarf around her neck. It’s still summer but some days are a little bit colder than others now. She looks like she’s in disguise. But I can tell she’s looking at me. I think about her on the edge of my bed last night. She said she was “risking” everything. Well, Deb says, swinging slower now. I guess that d epends on what’s happening. I slow down until we’re both not swinging anymore. Let’s say I was in my bedroom, I say. And a woman lived in my closet. Deb giggles.
I like scary stories, she says. But really, I say. How would you save me from a woman who lives in my closet? Deb’s face gets smushy while she thinks about it. She taps the dirt with the tip of her shoe. Maybe it’s not bad if she lives in there? she says. But what if it was bad? I ask. Then I would tell your parents. I look to Mommy. She’s really using her hands while she talks and she’s sitting on the edge of the bench. I think of Daddo snapping his fingers, saying yeah we’re best friends. Are Mommy and Daddo best friends too? I wouldn’t want them to get hurt too, I say. That’s true, Deb says. Well, how would she hurt you? She could scare me, I guess. I wouldn’t want that. But she says we’re friends. Because we used to be. Friends? Deb asks. Yeah, I say. We used to play quietly in my bedroom. What did you play? Her question makes me feel weird. I don’t know the names of the games we played. Like staring contests and stuff, I say. That’s weird. What if she watched me from the bathroom when I was lying in bed? I ask. Then I would stab her! Deb says. She said it loud and I look to our mommies but they didn’t hear her. Stab her? Yes, she says. I would say, Leave Bela alone! And stab her with a sword. I think of a mean face. But what if there are no swords? I ask. What if I woke up and she was lying in my bed next to me? I don’t wanna play this game anymore, Deb says. What if I woke up and her face was next to mine? What if her eyes were on the bottom of her face? Deb gets off her swing. Stop it, Bela. Would you save me then? I ask.
Stop it. I don’t want to hear any more of your scary story. How would you save me from the woman who lives in my closet? I don’t wanna talk anymore! I get off the swing and follow her to the jungle gym. Would you still tell her no? I ask. Deb runs the rest of the way to the jungle gym. She knows not to run to our mommies because they’re talking about something serious and now Carly is doing more talking than Mommy, who is holding her head in her hands like people do when they don’t feel so good inside. Would you kill her? I ask. Bela, stop. I’m right behind Deb now. She climbs the metal ladder to the wood bridge. Would you pour water on her like in the movies? I ask. Stop it, Bela. Talk about something else! Would you push her out the window? Bela... Would you— But Deb runs across the bridge and into one of the square wooden rooms. I’m standing down in the sand beneath the jungle gym. Would you really tell your mommy? I ask. Even if your mommy might get hurt? Deb comes out and walks to the top of the yellow slide. Yes! She says. Yes! I would tell Mommy that a mean woman lived in my closet and that she laid with me in bed! Daddo says some things are a “matter of time.” It’s “only a matter of time” before something happens that you think might happen. Are you alone in there, Deb? She’s hiding from me in the little wood room. Of course I’m alone, Bela! Are you sure? Of course I’m alone! Are you sure? Stop it! Mommy and Daddo talk to me when they think I’m asle ep. Daddo talks a lot about “the importance of being nice.” One time he said: The older I get, the more I think the barometer for intelligence is how kind you are. Because it’s not an easy thing to do, staying mindful, after all you go through in life. It scares me, thinking of you going through all the things your mom and I already have. Everybody who has ever lived has gone through some pretty terrible times and it scares me to think you will too. I don’t talk about these things when you’re awake because I don’t want to scare you. What kind of a father tells his kid they’re going to go through hell and back? Well, I guess one day you’ll need to know it. And it’s not just about crushed dreams and failed relationships. It’s much de eper than that.
You know, I can still remember the time I realized people are mean. Most people. I was just out of high school, I was living here in Chaps already. I was working this terrible data-entry job and my job was to type in how many hours these home healthcare nurses worked. Would you believe I got paid more to type in their hours than they got to work them? Yeah. Even then I was able to see there was something wrong with that. But here’s the thing: there was this guy at work named Oren. And for whatever reason, Oren just did not like these home healthcare nurses. They were mostly women and definitely poor and here this guy who worked in the office with me just flat-out hated them. Well, we would hand out the paychecks weekly. The nurses would line up in the office after helping people in their homes, their apartments, and Oren and I would hand out the checks and the nurses would make sure we had the hours right before leaving. Justifiably so. And more than once, we didn’t have it right. And I couldn’t figure out why. They turned in their hours, I typed them in, Oren ran the checks. And if a nurse said we got it wrong? I’d tell them not to worry, I’d figure it out. But Oren would push back. He’d tell them they were wrong. They were uneducated and “couldn’t add.” And there was this glee on his face when he did this and it made me so mad. It still makes me mad now, years later, sitting here with you. But it wasn’t just that I realized Oren was somehow docking their pay, out of spite. It was that Oren would often look to me during one of these beratements, and in his face I’d see he expected I felt the same way he did. That I got off somehow on watching these poor nurses suffer and argue too. And no matter what face I made back at him, no matter how disgusted with him I looked, he still assumed I felt the same. You see, Bela? That’s real cruelty. That’s world cruelty. Where it’s not just the idea that one person is cruel, it’s that they believe, and have reason to believe, the whole world feels the same. Deb, you still up there? I ask. She doesn’t answer. She’s mad at me. I’m being mean, I know. I climb up the slide. It’s not easy, but I get to the top. The wood room Deb is in is just the little bridge away. Deb? I ask. Are you mad at me? I cross the wood bridge. Deb. I’m sorry. I hear her in the dark. She’s crying. Really, Deb. I’m sorry. We can talk about something else. Get away. I’m sorry, Deb. Don’t tell our mommies. Come out. No. Let’s play in the sand, I say. I’m sorry! I can see a little of her face in there. She says, Bela? Yeah? Can I? Can you what, Deb?
Can I go into your heart? I look over the safety railing, down at the playground sand. I see Deb running back to our mommies down there. Can I, Bela? It’s Deb’s voice from the dark. Fingers curl around the edges of the entrance to the wood room. Fingers with hair. MOMMY! I yell. I back up too fast across the bridge and my feet hit the top of the slide and I fall backward, down the slide and hit the sand at the bottom, hard, too hard. I feel dizzy. Mommy and Carly are coming for me. I don’t feel so good, my head hurts. I think of Daddo on the edge of my bed. So the goal, I think, is to stay kind for as long as you can, no matter what happens to you. No matter what you go through, no matter how many breaks you get and how many you don’t. And I think you always have to remember that if someone is mean to you, they are like that with everybody else too. You see, Bela? Meanness doesn’t have to spread. It can stop with the mean person, stop at the threshold of the kind person. I guess I’d put it this way: don’t let them in. Don’t invite them in. If there’s one thing I could convey to you, one thing that would take root in you just like the need to eat and sle ep, it would be this: try to stay kind as long as you can. For all of your life. Always be mindful of what others are enduring. And whatever you do, most of all, don’t allow someone else’s meanness, someone else’s cruelty, to get inside of you. Everybody’s standing over me. The sun is up behind them all. I squint. I see myself in Mommy’s dark glasses. She’s asking if I’m okay. She sounds so worried. She smells like herself again. I look scared in her glasses. I look small. Deb looks scared too. And Carly holds her like she’s worried the same thing could happen to her. Like Deb could suddenly fall down the slide right now. Bela, Mommy says. What happened? Why did you fall? I don’t have the air in my chest to answer. I cough. She helps me sit up and she pats my back and I see past her and past Deb and Carly. I look up to the entrance of the wood room on the jungle gym. Bela? Mommy says. Are you okay? I’m scared, I say. I’m really scared, Mommy. For the first time ever, Other Mommy is outside the house.