Baby Is Three Read Free

bounced, chased around in a tilted circle. “Get it,” said Mommy Gwen.
    Bobby picked it up and reached it toward her. She stooped until he could put it on the stack, snug between the tennis racket and the box of crayons. Mommy Gwen didn’t say thank you, but went away through the door, leaving Bobby standing, staring after her. He heard her hard feet go down the hall, heard the bump as she pressed open the guest-room door with her knee. There was a rattle and click as she set his toys down on the spare bed, the one without a spread, the one with dusty blue ticking on the mattress. Then she came back again.
    “Why aren’t you in bed?” She clapped her hands. They sounded dry, like sticks breaking. Startled, he popped back into bed and drew the covers up to his chin. There used to be someone who had a warm cheek and a soft word for him when he did that, but that was a long time ago. He lay with eyes round in the light, looking at Mommy Gwen.
    “You’ve been bad,” she said. “You broke a window in the shed and you tracked mud into my kitchen and you’ve been noisy and rude. So you’ll stay right here in this room without your toys until I say you can come out. Do you understand me?”
    “Yes,” he said. He said quickly, because he remembered in time, “Yes ma’am.”
    She struck the switch swiftly, without warning, so that the darkness dazzled him, made him blink. But right away it was the room again, with the scythe of light and the shaded something hiding in the top corner of the wall by the door. There was always something shifting about there.
    She went away then, thumping the door closed, leaving the darkness and taking away the light, all but a rug-fuzzed yellow streak under the door. Bobby looked away from that, and for a moment, for just a moment, he was inside his shadow-pictures where the rubber-fanged dog and the fleshy black butterflies stayed. Sometimesthey stayed … but mostly they were gone as soon as he moved. Or maybe they changed into something else. Anyway, he liked it there, where they all lived, and he wished he could be with them, in the shadow country.
    Just before he fell asleep, he saw them moving and shifting in the blank wall by the door. He smiled at them and went to sleep.
    When he awoke, it was early. He couldn’t smell the coffee from downstairs yet, even. There was a ruddy-yellow sunswatch on the blank wall, a crooked square, just waiting for him. He jumped out of bed and ran to it. He washed his hands in it, squatted down on the floor with his arms out. “Now!” he said.
    He locked his thumbs together and slowly flapped his hands. And there on the wall was a black butterfly, flapping its wings right along with him. “Hello, butterfly,” said Bobby.
    He made it jump. He made it turn and settle to the bottom of the light patch, and fold its wings up and up until they were together. Suddenly he whipped one hand away, peeled back the sleeve of his sleeper, and presto! There was a long-necked duck. “Quack-ack!” said Bobby, and the duck obligingly opened its bill, threw up its head to quack. Bobby made it curl up its bill until it was an eagle. He didn’t know what kind of noise an eagle made, so he said, “Eagle-eagle-eagle-eagle-eagle,” and that sounded fine. He laughed.
    When he laughed Mommy Gwen slammed the door open and stood there in a straight-lined white bathrobe and straight flat slippers. “What are you playing with?”
    Bobby held up his empty hands.
    “I was just—”
    She took two steps into the room. “Get up,” she said. Her lips were pale. Bobby got up, wondering why she was so angry. “I heard you laugh,” she said in a hissy kind of a whisper. She looked him up and down, looked at the door around him. “What were you playing with?”
    “A eagle,” said Bobby.
    “A what? Tell me the truth!”
    Bobby waved his empty hands vaguely and looked away from her. She had such an angry face.
    She stepped, reached, put a hard hand around his wrist. She