A Happy Birthday

He was panting heavily as he ran, clueless as to where it would take him. But strangely his senses knew where he was going. He was running, but it was the kind which made him ashamed. Normally, he ran quite well, he was even amongst the faster athletes at school in his 9^th grade. At the moment he knew how he was running but he didn’t have enough courage to deal with it while he had to deal with what had happened. He just felt helpless that he couldn’t do anything about the way he was running but even more so cause things had gone unbelievably awful at his home.

For the past few months Jack and his mom had bickered a lot. When a boy becomes fourteen, he and his mom will bicker a lot, especially if the mother loves him and mostly because the boy would be 14. So for the past few months Jack and his mother communicated indirectly by using Jack’s little brother who had been in his mother’s good books since birth and sometimes by the children’s father. The communication was quite short. This cold atmosphere had lasted for a long time.

But today was Jack’s mother’s birthday and he had prepared the perfect gift for her which could have restored their relationship somewhat or so he had thought. Things hadn’t gone the way he had wanted them to. Jack had made a collage of his mother’s photos which he had taken secretly over the past 2 weeks. He had observed that she has been a bit insecure whenever it came to her beauty.

When he had shown this to his mother, things had taken a turn for the worse. He had been angry, angry because he couldn’t comprehend why she would dislike it. He had expected her to give him the widest of smiles she could after receiving it, instead she had frowned at the collage and had given him a disgusting look. Then she turned away and said “get lost!”

Jack had tried getting lost but he knew the way back home so he ran wherever the road took him. Finally as he kept panting while running in a weird manner on a road along the side of a river, he saw the road go under a small bridge and he decided to relax for a while under the bridge where he would feel safe. It was way past noon by then.

****

The bell was rung twice and when it was about to be rung for the third time, you had opened the door. You looked sad and confused. You had given a sad welcome that afternoon.

It took a while for you to tell the reason behind your grief. You were so worried and on the verge to cry for you couldn’t understand yourself. You were unable to give a proper reason for your actions. You had been careless and indecisive in your choice of words. Words are like swords they say; too sharp and they could stab the heart. You knew that but you couldn’t understand and that moment might’ve incited you to say those words to your dear son, Jack.

You stood by the window grill in our bedroom, looking at the trees which you and Jack had planted together years ago. You saw how they had grown tall and how they tried to reach the sky, for nowadays there was a lot of competition for it too. You had noticed Jack growing too but you had chosen to ignore that. You wanted him with you but at the same time you wanted him to do things that he wanted. You were at a debate with yourself. The same was with Jack, that’s why you both bickered.

And all this time, I let things happen. I thought this might be the perfect moment to say it, that’s why I had said it.

“Idaline, my darling of a wife, listen, the idea of the collage had been mine. I think he had done a good job. When you showed me them, I was at awe, I wondered how he got such amazing clicks. Now I know that you have your insecurities but trust me, he thinks you look beautiful in them, which is why he must’ve given them to you eagerly. I think that beauty is a debatable topic but I know that not all will find a bougainvillea to be a beautiful flower, only some would. No matter what you do, you are according to me a beautiful person and we know now that our eldest son thinks so too.”

After some minutes you gave a small smile that washed your prior worries away for the moment.

****

The place under the bridge was filthier than I had expected it to be. In some parts, the road was wet with who knows what and there were dogs at the end, from where the road took a turn far from the river. There was also a person sitting there, under the bridge; I hadn’t spotted ‘them’ when I had come: that person had rags over them which made it hard to figure out who it was. Anyways, I cleaned up a bit in the area relatively far from the dogs and the person covered by the rags.

My mother would be so angry right now, I wonder if she will be. It was saddening to think of her. I sat down with my legs straight; I was exhausted from all that running and the thinking, especially the thinking. Soon after that, my eyes closed.

When I woke up, the sky was a dark shade of blue but the stars weren’t visible but that wasn’t much of a surprise actually. What was surprising when I woke up is that the stranger had come by my side! That had scared me. The stranger gaped at me like I was a specimen they were supposed to research on.

“Umm… could you back up a bit?” I said.

The person moved behind; nodding as a reply to my question but still sat beside me. That person removed the cloth over their head to reveal a girl’s face.

“Do you have something you can give me?”

I just looked at her. She was damn pretty, so much that I couldn’t answer her question right away.

“Do you have something that you can give me? It is my birthday today.” She said.

I gave her the bougainvillea that I had kept in my pocket which I had intended to give to my mother.

“Thank you very much.” She received it with a smile and looked at it. “Truly, it is quite ugly but I am grateful to receive something even though it is such an ugly flower, I am glad.”

She looked at me again; she had beautiful eyes. “Hey, hey!” saying that she shifted a bit close to me.

“Sing “happy birthday” please, will you?”

“Umm.” After a long silence, I sang for her. While I sang, she stared in the distance. She might have been trying to reminiscence about her past, I thought. I wanted to leave since it was getting uncomfortable for me here. 

After the song was over, she told me things about her past. She told me how she had a family once before among other things. There were things I believed and there were things I chose not to believe in. One thing for sure, it must have really hurt her to remember all that because from the look of her face she seemed to miss all that. I chose to believe in that.

“You look like you have come a long way from home.” Outright she said that. “You look like you want to go.”

I looked at her with my eyes wide and then dropped my head down.

“Some guys robbed my family and killed them all in daylight at home while I was out, trying to get away from them.” She took a pause and looked up at the ceiling. “After a while I tried jumping down a building but I was angry, so angry that it made me sad. At night I’d wake up suddenly, so full of sweat.”

She took another pause. “Say, have you ever felt so full of air that it suffocated you? Have you ever felt so awful about being able to inhale and exhale that you hated yourself for being able to do that? Have you ever been so angry that it made you bawl your eyes out because that anger made you hopeless?” Her tone had kept rising and it no longer felt like she was talking to me but instead had been asking herself.

“Why those robbers killed them? Probably they needed the money is what I came up with when I was sober enough. But I know that whatever the reason might have been, it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. I left the place where I had lived with them because it was like a parasite on to me without them there, stuck on me; sucking me up, every second while I was there. So I left.”

After saying all that she closed her eyes and gave a long sigh and then she looked at me. “Boy, do you want to join me?” She asked me earnestly. I couldn’t answer her question and I left my mouth open, trying to figure out what to say. I looked back at her.

“Just go! Don’t pity me! Just go!” She scolded me. “You know your way home boy, while I have lost mine. So go!”

I realized then that the thought of my mom saddened me because she mattered to me. Because it was sad that she wasn’t here.

I had started running again. I thought I’d come here again someday give her some other flower. But later on, after a week or so I’d come to know that she wouldn’t be there under the bridge when I’d get there. She’d actually be lost then. But that, I did not while I was running towards my home.

****

You were crying so loudly. We were in an embrace, the three of us, lamenting for having lost the fourth one. I was regretting my decision of not going to search for him. I was regretting the fact that I had been over confident in my beliefs. You were probably regretting your behavior towards him. You were probably replaying every moment of yours with him. I know that I was doing that. I still remembered how fast his heart beat was when he was born. When it had come to me that I had become a father, I was thankful that it was Jack.

But all that, I imagined when we were still standing in front of our gate, waiting for him. I imagined what would have happened if he wouldn’t have come home that day.

****

My name is Hal. I have an elder brother called Jack. One day, he ran away from home. It was my mom’s birthday, that day. He had given her a collage he had made of the photos he had taken. Apparently she did not like them (I wasn’t there to witness the event) and this and that happened which resulted in him running away. When they told me about that, honestly I wasn’t sad at all.

We were standing in front of the gate waiting for him. I was yawning a lot but somehow I wasn’t in the mood to sleep. And suddenly he appeared running towards the gate but he stumbled and fell. We went to him, all in a hurry (though I was behind both my parents going, at my pace).

My parents helped him up and dusted his face with a handkerchief immediately which had got a few scratches but nothing much. So he rocked his head to get rid of their dusting and looked at me. He gave me a wide smile. He then looked at mom and said, “Happy birthday mom.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore so I put my hands on eyes, to conceal my tears.