Bananas

“Do you think you could throw it like a boomerang?”

“Huh?”

So, we’re walking through the supermarket and this is what she comes up with: Do you think you could throw it like a boomerang? And she gestures towards the big pile of bananas sitting there in the bin between the mangos and the oranges.

You just can’t tell with Stacey. You just don’t what’s going to pop out of her head next.

I have a lot to do, I want to get some of those reports checked tonight. It’s already 7.30 and I’m still at the supermarket, and so of course I haven’t had a chance to start dinner, have I? And Stacy, like she’s being held up by balloons, like she’s just floating through the supermarket, eyes catching everything. If I can just keep her hands from touching everything…. Half paying attention, I manage an answer, “No, I’m pretty sure that boomerangs are made pretty exactly to do what they do.”

“It’s just a curve though, isn’t it?”

“A particular kind of curve.”

“Yes, but if people can create something that does like a boomerang does, then why would it be any weirder if nature did the same?”

I get some apples. I get some bananas too. One eye on the clock.

“Nature could make just as perfect a curve.”

“Nature could have, it doesn’t mean nature did.”

Stacey goes to pick up a banana.

“Put it down please.”

“I just want to see.”

“It doesn’t. Okay?”

A little bit crestfallen. “Okay.”

And that’s the trouble with Stacey at times, she takes it all so personally, she gets sulky and upset. It’s like she takes all the feelings and tries to feel them as hard and heavy as he can.

She’s eight. Is any of this normal for eight?

I wish I could ask. I wish I had a bevy of friends and sisters who all had children the same age and I could turn to them and say, ‘does your such-and-such do that?”

I know Stacey’s special. She’s sensitive. She plays her emotions bright and brilliant; she takes her imagination out and polishes it and lets the world see it for what it is.

She gestures towards some chips.

“Not today, love.”

Then some chocolate.

“We don’t need that.”

A jar of… what are these… brandied cherries….?

“No love. Those aren’t for kids.”

“But….”

“And we can’t afford that sort of thing.”

A couple of aisles. Is she silent or sulky? It’s hard to tell with Stacey. I want to think I’m bringing her up right. I want to think want every mother wants to think: I’m good at this. I’m raising this angel. But I actually feel clueless. And who’s going to be guide me? Mum, in America? Dad, long up and gone? I don’t have sisters, and the brother I have is in jail. And my friends… where have they gone? I mean I know they’re still around; we still talk, we still get out and do things, but the gulf, the distance, you know, it’s so far between them and me. We’re not the same people anymore. I feel older, I feel detached.

“Ice cream?”

“Honey…”

“Please Mum.”

“Okay. Choose a flavour.”

She picks banana with white chocolate. Looks gross.

“Are you sure, love?”

She nods eagerly. Vigorously. One tooth is hanging on there by a thread.

“Okay then.”

The checkout lady smiles broadly at her, and gives me that ‘she’s adorable’ look as she packs my groceries. I nod politely, but my eyes are on the little screen as the totals add up. I figure I can’t put the ice-cream back, but maybe I don’t need the washing powder quite yet… and the can opener at home might hold out a bit longer.

In the car, Stacey thinks we can play twenty questions.

“It’s only a ten-minute drive.”

“I’m going to count the red cars.”

“Okay, you do that.”

We get home. Out in the garden, Stacey helps. She has a shopping back in each hand. Her eyes fix on the bananas. She reaches into the bag for one. “Just a curve,” her voice is soft and faraway.

“You really want to test it?”

She nods.

“Come out the back then.”

She takes her banana and follows me. We stand out next to the swing, and she points the banana at the fence. I can see that she’s giving it all her concentration, she wants to prove me wrong, she wants to believe. Even I want to believe. She throws as if she’s skimming a stone.

It doesn’t come back.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work