Rejection: Story at Ten

He was ten years old.

Thursday night, May 10, 1956. The night he would be rejected.

His mother was not well following the birth of his little sister three months prior. He had been dislocated out of his bedroom so a housekeeper could stay there in his place. He slept in the basement. On an old folded down chesterfield.

The sun was setting later now at that latitude in Canada, and there was that smell of spring in the air. A sky-blue-pink glow over the silhouetted Canadian Rockies, shadows in Calgary.

After supper, his mother gave him fifty cents for a haircut. The neighbor across the street, with his son Ricky, was going out to Bowness, an impoverished, orphaned community just to the west of Calgary, to a place where haircuts were cheap. He was to tag along.

His turn came to climb into that barber's chair. He did. And instinctively ducked when the shawl was thrown over him.

Not asked how he "wanted it." Too intimidated to tell how he did want it, which was just the same as it was, but only shorter. So the clipping proceeded. It didn't feel right. Something was not usual. Then the culminating swivel around in the chair to admire the tonsorial surgeon's sculpturing skill . . .

There was nothing there.

Nothing but a knob of stubbled wheat. Requisite clumps of straw on the floor.

The return trip home was dark and silent. He sat in the back seat of his neighbor's car, his back to the now long-gone sun. He knew this was bad. He would be laughed at by his peers. He just didn't know how bad it would be.

The backdoor of the house was unlocked. It always was. His Dad would never live in a place where you had to lock the doors. And so he entered as quietly as he could. Entered into the inside landing, and then, turned to make his way to the basement.

But the kitchen door on his right, three steps up from the landing, unexpectantly was opened. His mother stood there. Her bathrobe tightly clutched. Her head wound up in some kind of night scarf. She looked spectral to him. She took one look at him.

"You aren't my little boy anymore!"

The realization hit him with the searing pain of a stabbing, twisting knife. He fled to the basement. Collapsed on that old chesterfield. His broken heart being drenched in tears.

Pray.

Oh! God!

The desperate cry for a miracle. For hair. For restoration. For acceptance. To be his mother's little boy again.

He knew the stories. God could make a whole world . . . just say the word. He could feed millions of people with manna. Or thousands with a fish. Just say the word. He could keep Daniel's friends alive in a raging furnace. Just say the word. Oh! God! Please. Oh Please. It is nothing to you. Please. Just say the word. Put his hair back. Let him wake up with hair. Let him be whole again. Let him be his mother's little boy once again.

The pleading, the crying, the praying . . . fell away to fitful sleep.

Friday morning, May 11, 1956 inevitably arrived.

God doesn't listen to little boys with no hair.

There were no more tears . . . they had been exhausted hours ago.

The same fuzz on his head was still there. His eyes were the window into to his grief.

That Friday was the Friday before Mother's Day.

His little church school was having a Mother's Day Program that morning. He had previously been chosen by his classmate peers to be the leader of that program. A program planned by his church and implemented as part of the JMV (Junior Missionary Volunteer) curriculum. It consisted of poems, a song, an acrostic recitation, and the reading of little essays of love and appreciation to the mothers that would come to that program.

He had to face her.

He had to welcome the mothers.

He had to announce the events of the little program.

He had to read his previously written essay about the love for his mother. A mother who no longer wanted him. Because he had no hair.

He hardly dared.

He looked out over the chairs that they had set up for their quests. She was there. At the back. Wearing that gray cotton coat. Babushka tied tightly under her chin.

It is damn hard to talk when one's throat is having seizures. He was in pain that could be revealed to no one. Somebody had to have noticed that he was not himself. No matter. The program did proceed. As the class had planned.

It was his turn to read his essay.

He stood up. Looked up once. That mother's face was still there. Motionless. Wrapped in her headscarf. Expressionless. Even with his new glasses, the image he saw was without resolution.

That pain has been mollified in the passage of time.

His mother, he takes care of her now, remembers nothing of the incident. She was not well at that time.

His prayers were answered. In the way that prayers are always answered.

Mother Nature placed her healing hand on that knob of stubble. By summertime, it was ready for harvest again.

Over time, he learned more about rejection. What it was not.

He was still ten.

The Refectory Manager