Three Brown Sacks Before Dawn

I could have done the sensible thing. I knew that. I could have called the school office at eight that morning and asked for a printout of every deposit on Tyler’s account since August, and I would have had my answer by nine.

I didn’t want a printout. I wanted to hear it from my mother. I did not want to find out who my mother was from a woman at a front desk, and I did not want to stand in a school office and fight about it like strangers.

So I drove home on the dark highway with the radio off, and I tried to think of a reason. I could not think of one.

My mother is not a thief. My mother is the woman who drove forty minutes each way to sit with me every day of the nine days Tyler was in the newborn unit in Paducah. She is the woman who put her own wedding ring in a pawn shop the winter Daddy got laid off, so we’d have Christmas, and bought it back in April.

So I knew one thing for sure, sitting in my driveway at ten till four. Whatever had happened, there was a reason under it. And I wanted the reason more than I wanted to be right.

The house was quiet. Mama was asleep in the front room with Daddy’s old afghan pulled up to her chin, and her reading glasses still on her face. I took them off and folded them and set them on the end table, the same way she used to do for me.

Then I went into the kitchen and turned on the one overhead light, the one over the counter, and I got out the bread.

I made Tyler a peanut butter sandwich, cut corner to corner the way he likes it. I put it in a brown paper sack with an apple and a juice box. I stood there and looked at it, one little sack on my counter, and I felt like a fool for how small it was.

Then I remembered the other thing Bev had said, right before she left. She had said it almost to herself, picking up her tray.

“He’s not by himself in that line, if it helps you any. There’s two other boys in his class who are in it most days. The three of them sit together at the end of the table.”

I thought about that. Three little boys at the end of a long cafeteria table, eating the same sandwich, while everybody else had a tray.

I thought about those other two mamas. Maybe they knew and maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were on nights somewhere, too.

I got out two more brown sacks.

I made one more peanut butter and one bologna, because I did not know those boys and I did not know what they liked, and bologna is a safe bet with an eight-year-old. Two more apples. Two more juice boxes. I folded the tops of all three sacks over twice.

It was about five when I heard Tyler’s feet on the hall floor. He has always been an early bird. Since he was a baby, he has woken up when I come home, like some part of him is listening for my car.