Content warnings

Child injury. Controlling parent.

Halfway to the park, I have to ask Mom, “Are you sure Mellamine will like my present?” Because even though I like it, I keep wondering if I should give her something else, and there’s still time to do that.

“Of course she’ll like it,” Mom says, like the answer is obvious. “You put so much thoughtful effort into making it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“She’ll definitely appreciate that.”

But will she like it as much as her other presents? That’s what I really want to know because—

Then we’re further down the sidewalk than we should be after the last step I took. Like time skipped a beat. Like more has happened in the blink of an eye than should have. Like the world has jerked forward and jumped over a second. But into a moment that’s happened before. The house finches and chickadees singing like they’re repeating a conversation they’ve already had. The splotchy shadows on the sidewalk so familiar that we must have just walked under these exact maple leaves. The red car going by of course followed by a gray car like both are passing us for the second time after circling the block together.

So even though I feel like everything has gone two steps ahead, it’s actually gone several steps backwards, back to what it was from whatever just happened, whatever I just did to make Mom lose her temper and rewind time for a redo. Whatever is now a secret kept between her and the world—kept from me. No matter how much I ask, Mom never tells me why she reversed time. She doesn’t want me to know anything about how nasty she can get when she’s really upset. That leaves me with only the handful of things that could be clues—what I’d been doing and what I was thinking and the way Mom redirects my behavior or attention, like she should be doing any moment now, maybe by starting in on a different topic because I said something about Mellamine’s present that really rubbed her the wrong way and sparked an argument.

But Mom doesn’t say anything. We just keep walking down the street. And that might mean the reason for the rewind was something that happened to us and not something I did. Maybe a car sped into an intersection we were crossing or a dog off leash bit me—or a rabid squirrel. Something out of nowhere. And that could have been—could be—anything. So I stay alert and try to tell if Mom is looking for something that will tell her how to keep us from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe at the end of the block, she’ll say she wants to do a quick errand and we’ll take a detour to the convenience store.

Mom notices me paying attention to what she’s paying attention to, then says, “Don’t worry. Nothing bad is going to suddenly happen.”

“Then why did you rewind?” I ask.

Mom walks on without answering, probably deciding how to deflect my question.

But then she says, “You got hurt at the playground.”

“So why are we all the way back here?”

“I needed some time to calm down and think. You injured yourself pretty badly after jumping off the swing.”

“But I’ve jumped off so many times before.”

“That’s no guarantee you’ll never get hurt doing it.”

“But you don’t ever rewind when I get hurt. You said I have to learn from my mistakes.”

“Well, this is one lesson we can’t afford.”

The injury must have been serious—one that would mean missing school, and Mom never lets me miss school unless there’s something serious.

“Even if it had been a sprained ankle and no broken bones, the medical bills could still get pretty high,” she says.

“So was it my leg?”

“Yeah, and maybe your arm too.”

“Wow. I must have really messed up the landing.”

“That was probably it. The whole thing happened so quickly. One moment you were up in the air having a blast, and the next moment you were on the ground screaming. If we didn’t come back here, I would’ve had to call an ambulance, and emergency room visits aren’t cheap.”

“Don’t we have health insurance?”

“Yeah, but the coverage is very basic.”

“Oh. But if we did have money for better insurance, you would have let me learn this lesson the hard way?”

“Yup.”

I knew Mom would answer this way, but now that she has, I imagine us spending hours in the emergency room and me wearing a cast for months, struggling to get around on crutches. Learning the hard way would have been really hard this time.

“For once I’m actually glad we don’t have much money,” I say. “Even glad that we couldn’t get a videogame headset for my birthday.” Because that’s what it takes for Mom to undo a horrible injury. No Super Argotron Plus, no broken leg.

“Well, when you’re older you’ll be plenty glad we couldn’t afford fancy game tech once it’s clear how much time your friends have lost to mastering things that don’t matter. Time they could have spent doing real things in the real world.”

But where in the real world can you do anything close to piloting a spaceship through an asteroid field or leading a band of fellow rabbits into farm fields full of veggies and traps?

Then we’re at the park, and Mellamine is already there, on a swing pumping her legs.

I turn to Mom and ask, “Should I do something else with Mellamine?”

“Swinging is fine so long as you don’t jump from too high up,” Mom says.

“OK. I’m probably too old to be jumping off swings anyways.”

A small smile seems to flash across Mom’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it came, if it came at all.

END

Soramimi Hanarejima

Soramimi Hanarejima is the author of the story collection A Psychography of Modest Intimacies. Soramimi’s recent work is forthcoming in West Branch, The Worcester Review, and Lost Balloon.