I turned down the stub of a street lined with crayon-bright bungalows and Portuguese pocket gardens to avoid a clot of weekend traffic. There were few driveways, so cars parked bumper to bumper tight to the curb.
Two blocks from the church, the slanting afternoon sun was sharp in my eyes as I coasted over a traffic bump to a stop sign and flicked on my right turn indicator. Off to my right, a man of about thirty- five backed from the shadows between a dented van and an orange VW. Tucked in his arms was a boy of about four years old with a snub nose and elfin ears. He twisted around so that his twiggy bare legs hung loose against the man’s thighs. They both had gangly limbs and were in the midst of a smiling kind of conversation. A bulging cloth Chapters bag swung from the man’s right elbow. With his left hand, he rhythmically stroked the boy’s head and over the knobs on his narrow back.
The man twisted to check for oncoming cars, nodding at me across the intersection. He hiked the boy’s body onto his right hip then stepped into the street. Ten paces kitty-corner to where I was stopped, the driver’s side door of a rusted sedan screeched open, exposing a slice of denim blouse collar, a spill of messy dark hair and a mobile slash of red lipstick. The coarse voice matched the thick-shouldered woman’s face.
She thumped the side of the car twice and flipped out a tattooed arm fanning hurry up, hurry up. The man’s face shrank like an old balloon. He drew in his chin as he jolted to a stop behind the open door. The child’s face looked like crumpled tissue. He scissored his arms and legs around the man like he was climbing a tree. Pressed tight, the two of them swayed in the storm of the woman’s words. Her mouth worked like a rotor, keeping time with the hack of her fingers through the open window.
The father took a step back and shrugged the bag from his wrist. With a hand on either side of the small body, he pried the boy off, first fingers, then arms, legs. When he stood him up, the boy swayed and clutched at his belt, face puckering, sobbing, “No Daddy. No Daddy. No Daddy.”
The man snatched up the cloth bag and thrust it through the window. The woman cursed, jerking forward the back of her seat. Lips pressed to a pale line, the man stroked the boy’s cheek, kissed his forehead then nudged him towards the car. The boy shrank away and the woman snarled for him to get in, get in. She yanked him into the back seat where he pressed his cheek against the glass, laying a smeared trail of tears in the grime. The woman slammed the door and gunned away.
