Breadcrumb #482
KRYS MALCOLM BELC
Every few weeks you shave my head in the bathtub. I sit naked on the wood stool and you stand behind me, cutting so close to my head I look bald in certain lights. The moment after one of your haircuts is the closest I come to religion. In the damp bathroom church I step out of the tub covered in discarded hair and trim my beard in the sink mirror before showering. Samson has been growing out his hair for over a year. For months his bangs have fallen in his eyes and he wears pins clips ties headbands and sweatbands but still wild blond pokes through and through. Samson says he will never have a beard but also says he likes mine. He rubs his hands along my face and calls me beautiful because that is the word I always use for him. His name feels fuller in my mouth now that I worry one day he won’t want it. Samson. I tell you it makes me anxious to think about how different he is from most boys, from our other boys, and you say Well, that’s on you. It is my job to be ok with what I made. He is sweet and soft in a way I’m terrified of crushing. In his little white drawers dresses stack on leggings stack on jeans. There are bracelets and LEGO creations scattered on his windowsill. You wonder if Sean would have needed his leg braces, if he would need speech therapy, had anyone else made him. Sean looks just like your mother. He is skeptical of me just like she was. But what good is the wondering, we know. We know it does not help our children who are alive, so alive, in front of us right now. They are us and they are their donor but mostly they are themselves.
“His name feels fuller in my mouth now that I worry one day he won’t want it. Samson.”
When I shaved my head for the first time everyone was shocked but I did not care. You said you were surprised how perfectly round my skull was. It was the first time anyone ever said the word perfect about my body. Your long fingers on my head felt new and wonderful. You held my hand as we walked across campus, heads turning. The air so cold so good rushing all over my scalp. What did we know, then? Samson says other children do not believe in dads who make babies. When he says this my stomach turns like it did when he was old enough to eat something other than my milk because that meant we were separating. We are separating. Thread by thread I am letting him fall away from me. There are no stories of his life that could begin without me but many that could end that way. I do not like to write about Samson as he is now because I cannot make him a character like I’ve made you into one. You can handle it. I can only handle writing about the Samson who used to smear berries all over his face. You stuffed them lovingly into a little mesh feeder and taught him to wrap his hands around food that wasn’t me. His eyes so blue, like mine, his face smudged all over with red and purple sweet. Samson says he doesn’t want to be the only child on this Earth made by his dad even though I’ve assured him he isn’t, showed him pictures of dads and children I’ve only met on the internet. They don’t always seem real to me either. Samson is older now, holds dark berries gently in his fingers before placing them on his tongue, sacred like. The Samson who needs me constantly is as gone as the me who made him. I miss the way his head felt when he used to let me shave it. So round and prickly, so much like mine. My heart burns looking at old pictures of him. I gave him this wild life.