The Wire Hanger

Chapter Six

All through the next school day I couldn’t concentrate on what my teachers were telling me. They had a lot to say about numbers, and the way those numbers ought to be combined, but it didn’t seem to have much relevance to my life. There was a strange obsession with trains. I had seen the trains rushing past on my way to school, all corrugated metal and fury. I wondered if my mother had arrived on a train, maybe when she was very young. I didn’t know where she’d grown up. I didn’t think she was from around here; she didn’t talk about our neighborhood the way some people did, like it was the only place on earth, but then she never mentioned anywhere else either.

            The second we were let out I raced home, blood thumping in my ears the whole way. I could have swung by the elementary school – it was just a half mile out of my way – but I figured that she’d want to be home right away, after all that. But of course with all my running I beat her home easily, and set about making a snack we could both have when she got there. Oatmeal with cinnamon. Both of us would have eaten breakfast food at every meal if we could have, and when I was younger she would fix me oatmeal with cinnamon every afternoon until I told her I was sick of it and wanted what the other kids had (orange crackers, red juice). But I hadn’t lost my taste for it, and even now when I was sick she would make it for me.

            When the door opened I leapt up, ready to fly at her, but it was only Esau. We looked equally disappointed at the sight of each other. “She’s not here yet?” he asked.

            “Obviously,” I said.

            “Well, I guess I’ll do homework,” said the boy who would never do it before eight o’clock unless one of our parents, quite literally, sat on him.

            “Yeah, me too,” I said, but I didn’t move. I watched the kitchen clock tick its way around. The oatmeal sat in front of me, congealed and cold, and she wasn’t home.

            Finally I jumped up. “I’m going to walk over to the school,” I said. “See if they’ve seen her.”

            “I’ll come with you,” Esau said. “I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.”

            “Big shock.”

            “Shut up.”

            The elementary school was just a twenty-minute walk if you were moving quickly, which we were. Esau and I didn’t speak the whole way there, since we had no idea what we might find, and it was useless to speculate. “There’s the principal,” I said, waving my arms at him as we got closer. “Principal Skinner!”

            He shaded his eyes to peer at us. “Oh,” he said, “the Fridsma kids.”

            “That’s us,” I said. “Have you seen our mom? Was she at work today?”

            “The fourth grade class had a substitute today,” he said.

            “What?” said Esau.

            “A substitute.”

            “Did my mom call you? Did she say she was sick?”

            “Mrs. Fridsma was taken suddenly ill yesterday afternoon,” said Principal Skinner. “She had to leave the premises quickly.”

            It was always a trial trying to get information out of him. “Did she go to the hospital?”

            “Which one?” Esau chimed in.