Skull Fracture #1

Will was only a few weeks out of the womb. Not home long. Mother placed him in a plastic manger. Sitting atop the Formica countertop. Somehow he squirmed his way out. And off. He landed on the jaundiced 1970's linoleum with a splat. Like a tomato or cantaloupe rolling to plummet off the edge.

Maybe Will cried maybe he didn't. No one remembers that. But mother wailed a new sound. Some disjointed shriek of nightmare Bebop. She scooped the dented babe up. Into her arms. Held him close to her breast. As if her touch could heal him. Whispering in a traumatic mother-in-distress moan:  ‘It'll be okay baby.'

As she circled the dining room table. Some magnetized toy trapped in orbit. A greyhound track rabbit. ‘Shh, it'll be okay.' Infant Will had many whispy strands of dark babyhair. But a crater could be seen in the soft skull.

Father eventually arrived. Not because Mother called though. She only circled the table in her migration of panic. He'd forgotten lunch money. Returned for a sandwich. Found his wife cracked and mumbling. He shouted: ‘What happened?'

She kept whispering curatives and circling. Who knows for how long. If father hadn't returned. Would infant Will have rotted in her arms?

‘What happened?' No answer. He backhanded slapped her into the rational. She explained through snotty tears. Father reached and pried. But she would not let loose her grip. Convinced her arms and bosom offered warm magic.

They rushed the baby back to the hospital. From which he'd just come. Like some warrantied appliance. In time for doctors to fix him.

Mother and Father held hands. Watching over Will asleep in a glass crib. A glue-patched vase.

S.M. Gentry is a teacher and writer living in Columbus, Ohio.