Nine Eleven

That Tuesday seemed as any other school day.

We huddled around our kitchen table, heads bowed

over math lessons that would seem trivial tomorrow

and catechism readings on neighborly love, forgiveness,

or some piece of Scripture long forgotten.

My mother hovered by the small TV cube on the counter,

dangling her red pen over a sheet of problems –

someone’s math drills in need of correction –

as she watched the morning news,

passing her frequent gaze our way,

ever-watchful of our movements and efforts.

Nothing escaped her.

In later years I felt resentful, wronged,

cut off from life in our homeschooled sphere,

but that Tuesday it was all I knew.

I was nine, and my sister was eleven,

and our mother was the wise monarch,

loving and firm, our stalwart protector,

wielding her pen like a shepherd’s staff

over her adoring and fearful flock,

somehow grading the papers in her hand

and presiding over our actions without missing a beat,

while still holding an attentive ear

to the newscaster in the little box,

as if guarding against some threat

to our happy community. I remember

her gasp – a sharp intake of breath.

The paper crumpled like it was nothing

in her hand as she faltered

to the TV, fumbled for the volume

and turned the screen away from us,

oblivious and safe at her table,

as if she could keep it all from us.

Wasn’t that why we were homeschooled?

So she could keep it all from us,

prolonging as long as she could

the moment when the ugly face of the world

would peer through our window like a wolf

and whisk away her little lambs.

How could she release us willingly

into such a world – where foreign nations

suddenly became monsters, not neighbors,

and human lives meant nothing at all?

If only she could bear it all.

She grasped the pen so tightly about the tip

that red ink stained her palm like blood.