A mother's love

Chapter 1

At 4:30 a.m. Brenda went jogging. It didn't matter that it was winter and that in Clayton, New Mexico the cold air that rolled off the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains brought freezing temperatures. She had organized her life around a structure that she exercised rigid adherence to every day; the peace that she enjoyed during the hour that she spent alone out on the dark, quiet road was the most essential part of her day. School started at 8:00 a.m. but Brenda arrived at school at 6:30 a.m., because Brian's general time of arrival at school was between 6:30 and 7. Her classroom was located on the first floor and was just down the hall from the entrance to the school. After placing her things in her classroom she would stand in her doorway and wait for Brian's arrival. Every morning he arrived at school looking sullen and walked like he always did, with his head pointed toward the ground. He didn't notice Brenda standing in her doorway and watching him until he walked past her.

"Good morning Brian," she said to him.

"Good morning Ms Sylvaine," he answered and kept walking.

It was the same every morning. She didn't know why he came to school so early or where he went after he'd passed her by. She watched him walking away from her and wondered what she was going to have to do to make him less of an enigma to her.

The next time she saw him was during her third period, which was her grade 10 English class, Brian's class. Their oral book reports were due that day and she had been looking forward to Brian's since she had given them the assignment two weeks earlier. He was the only one who ever bothered to actually read a book; the rest either watched movies that had been adapted from books or tried getting away with inventing authors and titles. His book reports were a reflection of his eclectic literary palate and his deep love for literature. He had a predilection for Asian authors that she found interesting; his book report the previous semester had been on Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood and the semester before that he had written a report on Ha Jin's Waiting. The book report that he delivered in class that day was on Gone With the Wind and it was excellent as she knew it would be and the only decent report she heard. She was pleased to discover that his opinion of Scarlett was the same as hers. He thought she was a survivor whose grit and determination was to be admired; most Gone With the Wind readers that she'd spoken with thought Scarlett was an utterly selfish and childish girl devoid of any redeeming qualities. Having suffered through one awful report after another, Brenda engaged in a lengthy exchange with Brian about his report that she knew made him feel conspicuous and embarrassed but she couldn't stop herself; for those few minutes she felt like she was all alone with him like she'd wanted to be for so long. When the class was over it dawned on her how unhelpful she'd been to him and she felt awful. She'd been selfish, thinking only of her own enjoyment, the amount of which that she experienced taking her by surprise.