Sitting
Jeff
Reichman
I see three children inside the playpen. I count
them, one, two, three, and then again, one, two, three. Three
is the correct number of children to have in the playpen at
this time. One, two, three. Then I call out their names, Irene,
Sammy, David. I am Uncle Tommy. Good old Uncle Tommy, they will
say when they learn to speak. I have high hopes for them.
Uncle Tommy is hungry, so I move to a spot in
the kitchen where I can still see the playpen. There, I make
a sandwich with cold cuts and whole wheat bread. I don’t
particularly like whole wheat bread, but that’s the only
bread my sister keeps in the house, so that’s all I eat
when I’m here. I cook my own meals and I care for my nieces
and nephews. I have come a long way.
I thought about having kids a long time ago.
I was troubled then, and I thought maybe a kid would bring me
out of the funk, give me something to do all day long, changing
its diapers, feeding it, all those kinds of things. But then
I thought, maybe that’s not the best solution to my problems.
So instead of having a kid, I went to a doctor. My sister has
enough kids to go around anyway. One, two, three.
I live with the fear that I will do something
wrong, that I will break one of these kids somehow, maybe hold
it wrong and snap a bone in its arm or something. So I try not
to touch them much, and when I do, I try to be gentle. I’m
not always good at that kind of thing, but I haven’t hurt
them yet.
But the worst fear, the absolute worst fear I
have, is that I will lose one of these kids. One day I’ll
look over at the playpen and there will be one, two... and no
three. Sammy will be missing, or David or Irene. I hold my sandwich
out above their playpen and count them again, but they aren’t
interested in me. Sammy rolls over onto her side and giggles,
Irene sits up and looks away, and David just lays there. I say
to David, don’t you want some of my tasty, tasty sandwich?
But he’s not moving. I wave the sandwich inches from his
face, but he must be exhausted, and that’s okay. Sometimes
I don’t feel like moving either. There are one, two, three
bodies in this playpen, and I feel better having counted them
again.
When my sister comes home, I will joke with her
a bit. I’ll tell her that something might be wrong because
none her kids are hungry. That’s funny, she’ll say,
and we’ll laugh and I’ll look at the kids in the
playpen and pretend they are mine. I love them so much that
it exhausts me. There are beams of light shining from each of
their foreheads, like flashlights or fireflies. You make it
look so easy, I say to them and yawn. Sammy and Irene inspect
each other, amazed by everything they see. They mirror one another,
the same face on either side, their light bouncing between them,
magnified. I am overcome with joy while I sit down on the sofa
to rest my eyes, just for a minute.
....
Jeff Reichman's fiction
has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Word Riot, Monkey Bicycle,
several issues of Quick Fiction and on bathroom stalls nationwide.
He lives in Santa Barbara, California.
