Cruel

Kids can be cruel. That’s true. But parents can be even crueler.

Kids often forget things and leave them behind at a friend’s house after playdates. Books, hair bows, umbrellas, phones, galoshes, jigsaw puzzles, eyeglasses, jewelry, even pet goldfish. This is all accepted amnesia.

My sister Reina, however, was ostracized from playing in most of the houses of our neighborhood. This is because she would tend to forget her shadow.

My mother did her best to calm down Mrs. Awkwiddle when she telephoned and practically shrieked in my mother’s ear that she must drive over there immediately and fetch Reina home.

“Reina’s sitting right beside me at the kitchen table doing her homework,” my mother countered.

“No! I mean her….her…shadow! It’s upstairs with Heidi still, making shadow animals on her bedroom wall. I agreed to host your child, but not to have her live here in some silhouette form! I wouldn’t even know what to feed her!”

“I’ll be right over,” my Mother promised wearily. It was no use arguing with that woman and she did have a point.

We both looked over and confirmed that Reina was no longer casting any shadow as she worked out long division corrections on a class assignment marked generously with a teacher’s red ink.

“What did I tell you about leaving that at people’s house? Do you hear how freaked out that woman is?”

Reina smiled at my mother but it was not a sorry smile. It was a tolerant smile that said this really wasn’t a big deal.

“Let the math wait. We need to go pick ‘her’ up before that woman loses her mind. Don’t you ever worry you’ll lose her permanently when you engage in these sorts of shenanigans? And how is she making shadow animals on Heidi’s bedroom wall when you’re doing math?”

“It’s called multi-tasking, Mother!” Reina tsk-tsked.

As we headed to the station wagon, Mother had one more good question.

“Can’t you just call her home? Why do I always have to go pick her up? Or doesn’t she know where she lives? Can’t she just shadow walk back to our house?”

We were in the station wagon now and Reina sighed deeply, as if any explanation she needed to give to explain the shadow universe was an exhausting chore.

“Look, she’s got her own life. She doesn’t have to live her life tied to me. That’s so mean! That’s the way you treat your shadows. I don’t feel that’s fair. And to have her walk home all by herself could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous!” mother laughed. “How could she be in any danger? She’s just a blob of darkness.”

“Mother, there are shadow stealers out there. They’re not good. If you lose your shadow, you’re not going to be a happy camper, let me tell you. Don’t ask me how I know. I’ve never met anyone who actually lost their shadow…yet. But I know it can happen. And I’ve seen a shadow stealer with my own eyes. It was…just horrible!”

“Where did you see this? And isn’t that all the more reason to keep your shadow close?”

Mother had a good argument, I thought.

“It’s just Heidi. She knows about my shadow. She asked me to leave her there because she knew I had to come home early to work on that stupid math homework. It’s all messed up. And the shadow stealer was in our backyard on Halloween. It was messing around our jack-o-lantern. It was looking up at my window. Somehow it knew I could split. I knew then I had to be careful going forward. Very careful.”

(……)