Zuma

“Mom, I can stand up!”

“I know you can, but you can show me some other time. Please sit.”

Four-year-old Tyson wanted to do everything the way his older brother did, including pee standing up. But their flight was about to board and Marielle didn’t have time to wipe up the pee that would invariably end up on the seat and, probably, floor.

The family restroom was occupied, so her husband Alex had taken their seven-year-old Henry to the men’s restroom while she went into the women’s with Tyson. The stall door swung inward and barely allowed room for their bodies, carry-ons, and Tyson’s Paw Patrol backpack that was nearly as big as he was.

“Ok, now can you wait for me to go pee too, please? Tyson? Get off the floor” He was down on his hands and knees looking under the next stall, which was mercifully empty.

“Mom what’s in here?” He blurted, reaching enthusiastically for the sanitary disposal bin.

“It’s a little garbage can, don’t open it,” Marielle responded calmly, pulling his hand away.

Tyson was in a stage where he acknowledged everything. Everything that existed in the physical world needed to be noted, and more importantly, questioned.

“Mom, they have sandwiches!”

"Mom, that guy is bald!"

“Mom! It’s a dog!”

“Mom, why is there a dog in the airport?”

“Mom, why does that dog have a job but Moose doesn’t have a job?”

Motherhood didn’t come naturally to Marielle. She was a good mom, but had little of the patience necessary to raise two boys. She worried she relied on Alex too much to make the world decipherable to their insatiable preschooler. She marveled at the way he was able to communicate with their boys so simply and elegantly.

“These dogs have to go to dog school for a very long time. They’re special dogs.”

“Moose isn’t special?”

“Moose is very special, but his job is different. His job is to love us and make us happy.”

Marielle was mid-pee when a male voice boomed through the women’s restroom.

“Alright, first of all, everyone stay calm”

No good news ever started with “stay calm.” “Stay calm” is the phrase most likely to incite panic. Marielle heard the sink shut off.

“There’s a situation in the terminal. We’re assessing it now, but in the meantime, we need everyone to stay put.”

Oh god, a shooter, it’s finally happening, thought Marielle. Her blood went to ice. She instinctively grabbed and squeezed Tyson’s hand.

“Mom, why is there a grown-up BOY in the girl’s bathroom?”

“Shh honey, We need to hear this.”

The TSA agent continued, “Due to the nature of the situation, we’re also going to ask that you immediately shut off any cellular or Bluetooth devices. Please refrain from making calls or sending any text messages at this time.”

Marielle hesitated. She had immediately reached for her cell phone to call Alex. For a moment, she looked at her lock screen, the faces of her three boys and Moose smiling back at her. It was taken at Henry’s seventh birthday party mere days ago. Getting all of them to pose and smile had been the kind of chaos she’d come to embrace.

Slide to power off.

She complied.

“We’ll be back shortly with updates. In the meantime, do not leave this restroom under any circumstances.”

The restroom locked from the inside. The women did so as a precaution. Now they sat atop their suitcases around the perimeter of the restroom. Marielle took note of her fellow captives:

A college-aged girl with a dirty blonde bun, wearing a U Penn sweatshirt, bike shorts, and sneakers. She was crying.

Two elderly women in insulated jackets despite the summer heat, whispering tensely in Mandarin.

A tall, striking woman with waist-length braids wearing a white pantsuit, red-bottomed heels, gold jewelry, and red lipstick. She had her eyes closed and her head leaned back against the wall. She was sitting on her expensive-looking suitcase with one leg crossed over the other, bobbing an ankle nervously.

Despite the situation, Marielle felt a pang of envy at this spectacularly dressed woman. There was a time she would have flown in heels. Between leaving instructions for the dogsitter and trying to get her boys packed and out the door at 6 am, she hadn’t even given a thought to her appearance. In her leggings and baggy baseball tee, Alex's hoodie tied around her waist, and hair in a greasy ponytail, Marielle had not prepared to leave a pretty corpse. What a trivial thing to be thinking about at a time like this. But she did not want to die dressed like a soccer mom.

I am Mom. She snapped back to Tyson tapping her arm.

“MOM!”

“Tyson please keep your voice down,” she whispered.

“Why can’t I play Paw Patrol?”

“Because the man said we can’t use iPads right now. Please be patient.”

The woman in the pantsuit chuckled. At the very least, it was an injection of much-needed levity.

“Where are you headed?” She asked, turning her head to them.

“Michigan. To see their grandparents.” Marielle motioned to Tyson, who leaped to his feet.

“Grandma has a POOL!” He exclaimed.

“She does have a pool,” Marielle confirmed.

“That will be so nice in this heat! Are you a good swimmer?” The woman in the pantsuit asked Tyson.

“Dad makes me wear water wings, but my swim teacher Sarah said I’m like a, like a DOLPHIN.”

“I hear dolphins are really smart!” She responded. Tyson threw his head back and made a clicking sound, imitating a dolphin. The woman laughed again.

“How about you? Where are you off to?” Marielle asked.

“Galveston for a firm retreat. Assuming we make it out of here.”

Marielle was sure she hadn’t meant it to sound morbid, but a grim silence ensued. The faucet dripped.

“I’m Marielle.”

“Safiyah.”

The women shook hands.

The bomb squad had arrived at the airport, unbeknownst to the women in the terminal C ladies restroom. They had all deduced individually that the threat was likely a bomb, but none of them dared say it out loud.

Half an hour felt like an eternity. The restroom was purgatory, and the women awaited their final judgment. Tyson, meanwhile, had invented an inscrutable hopscotch game with the bathroom tiles. Each time his little feet landed, the sound echoed off the walls.

“You have blonde hair, like my mom!” His hopscotch path ended right in front of the college-aged girl. She was still sniffling but smiled.

“Yeah, I do.”

“You’re crying. Are you sad?” Noted, and questioned. Marielle winced.

“Tyson, come here,” she said, reaching for him.

“I’m not sad, just scared,” the girl answered, still smiling, though the smile didn’t reach her red, puffy eyes.

“My brother, Henry, he showed me a really scary thing in a book,” Tyson continued.

“Yeah? But it didn’t scare you?”

“No. My dad said there’s no such thing as monsters and Moose would keep me safe. We had to leave Moose at home, but this is Zuma and he looks like Moose so he’ll keep us safe.” He set his Paw Patrol backpack next to the girl.

Tears welled in Marielle’s eyes. A memory of her own childhood suddenly came to mind, when she was just a year or two older than Tyson. The doctors found a lump in her mom’s breast. Everyone was scared. But Marielle was too young to really understand the true gravity of the situation. She hadn’t understood death, she hadn’t understood the fear, but she understood that she needed to tell her dad everything would be okay. She understood her older sister needed a hug. She picked flowers for her mom.

Tyson didn’t even know the crying girl, but Zuma was Tyson’s flowers. It was his reassuring hug. Safiyah grabbed Marielle’s hand. The old women in the jackets beamed. “Such a sweet boy,” one of them said.

“Thank you so much,” said the girl, smiling sincerely now as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. “Do you and Zuma want to sit over here with me for a while?”

There was a sharp knock on the door. All five women jumped.

“The coast is clear, ladies. Thank you for cooperating.” It was the voice of the TSA agent.

“You’re good to go.”

“Jesus Christ, Alex!” Marielle threw her arms around her husband’s neck, nearly knocking him over. People were milling back into the terminal in ambivalent states of incredulity, relief, and annoyance at disrupted flight plans.

“Where have you been? Where did they take you?”

“All way out on the tarmac. The ground crew let Henry inside the cargo hold. He was totally geekin’.”

Henry wasted no time bragging to Tyson about being in the cargo hold. He held his arms out to demonstrate and then leaped sideways, indicating that it was actually the size of several seven-year-old wingspans.

“What the hell happened? Did they tell you?”

“Yeah, some jackass left a mysterious brown paper package at the gate unattended.”

“DAD YOU SWORE,” Tyson pointed out.

Marielle put a hand gently on his head. “So obviously not a B-O-M-B.”

“You’re not gonna believe this. A cake. A goddamn fancy cake.”

“Dad swore again! Mom, how come you say swearing is bad but dad can still swear?”