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Thaw

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2009

before I realized that final confrontation in the kitchen was staged for me and my brothers. Papa wanted us to know what kind of woman Mama was, and he succeeded. But the lesson I learned was not the one he intended. Something else happened that spring, however, something that gave me reason to watch and wait, imagining flashes of summer colors out of the corner of my eye.

It was three weeks after we had moved into the abandoned building. The snow still blanketed the ground, but it was rotting, turning soft and runny. The thaw had begun. We huddled in a small room and covered the glassless windows with scraps of old newspapers we had scavenged from the basement. Papa had chosen the room because it had a fireplace, and at night we built tiny fires that offered only the illusion of warmth.

Father still scavenged every day for fuel. He had spoken perhaps 10 sentences since we left the hotel. His trips would take him away from us for most of the day. When he returned, he would eat a bit of the morsels Mama had conjured for us and curl up under his coat and sleep.

One morning I awoke to Joop standing over me, his tear-streaked face inches from mine. He had shaken me awake. The early morning light, filtered through the newspapers, was mottled and thin. My brother's face was a vague smear.

"Henk, my frog is gone."

"What?" I was foggy with sleep.

"Mr. Hop-A-Long is gone. I can't find him anywhere."

"He can't be far. Maybe you left him in another room."

"I've looked everywhere. He isn't here."

I rolled out of my blanket. The cold slapped me awake. "I will help you look. Don't wake the others."
Mama and Pieter lay curled next to the fireplace. Papa had left earlier on another of his endless quests for combustibles. We searched for perhaps 40 minutes. I checked every room in the house, the street out front, the yard in the back. There was no frog.

Joop sulked at my side. He had searched all of these places before.

By the time we returned, Mama was awake and a breakfast of watery oatmeal was simmering in the pan over a low flame.

"Where have you two been? I was afraid a boogeyman had spirited you away."

"I can't find my frog," Joop said. He sat down heavily, raising a puff of dust from the floorboards.

"Ah. Well perhaps you are looking too hard. It might just hop into your lap when you least expect it." A grin touched the corner of her lips, the first real smile I had seen on my mother's face in weeks.

"It won't hop. It's broken."

"What's all this moping?" I started at my father's voice. I had grown accustomed to his silence. He stood in the doorway cradling an armful of what looked like shingles. His cheeks and nose were red with cold, and his nose was running. He set his bundle near the hearth and removed his gloves, keeping his back toward us.

"It seems we have a bit of a crisis," Mama said. "Joop has lost his toy frog."

"Is that so?" He did not turn as he unbuttoned his coat. "What did it look like?"

"Like a frog, Papa," said Joop.

"Was it green?"

"Yes. It had a green back and white belly and black eyes and a red mouth."

"And did it hop?"

"No. Not anymore. I still called him Mr. Hop-A-Long, but I broke him. He doesn't hop anymore."

"Are you sure?" Papa turned, and in the dimness of that strange room, in a house that wasn't ours, something ticked and pinged. A coil unwound and a spring achieved a critical tension, setting into motion all that was promised in a smooth arc of perfect grace and infinite potential.

THE END

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