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| As I stood with my hands on my hips, it occurred to me that perhaps I should make an effort to appear enthusiastic and helpful rather than bored. “Ummmm,” droned the lady across the counter, holding one toneless note for what seemed like hours. She finally came to a conclusion but didn’t remove her gaze from the menu hovering behind my head. “I’ll take the quarter-pounder without cheese but with extra mayo and pickles.” I nodded, pressing the appropriate buttons with a acrylic-tipped finger. “No, wait.” I rolled my eyes, half-hoping she would notice and take the hint: indecisive people do not belong in the front of a fast-food line. She ignored me. “Actually I think I’ll have a regular bacon cheeseburger, except without cheese. Is there any way I can get my bun toasted?” “No.” “Well in that case I want an 8-piece chicken nuggets and a medium fries.” “Are you sure?” I don’t like to play the part of attitude-ridden teenager, but this lady was annoying everyone, including the 300 pound senior citizen behind her. “Yes,” she snapped and shoved a fistful of money toward me. After performing the intricate dance of a cancelled order with my fingers and taking her money, I motioned with a nod where she should stand while she was waiting. She glared at me and moved a half of an inch. “Next?” #### Working at Burger King is like torture for me. I can stand the ladies with crumpled faces screaming about how I put onions on their Whoppers, the swaggering high school dropouts who arrive by the carfull in baggy jeans and undershirts just to say “wassap,” and even the indecisive types. What I can’t stand are the children. There are precious little toddler girls with floppy pigtails tied with pink satin bows, and boys assuming battle stances and shouting catchphrases from the latest action cartoon. When they are happy and giggling I can ignore it; Aiden never laughed. Occasionally—with the help of a few Bud Lights--I can convince myself that Aiden never cried, either. But whenever I hear a child wail over a scraped knee or the lack of a vanilla cone, I remember him. Well, I don’t remember him personally. Just the feel of him, and the way he looked almost alien under those fluorescent lights. The soundtrack of his entrance: “This is the final boarding call for flight 198, service to Chicago. All passengers please report to Gate 21.” I remember gazing at his closed eyes, teeming with curiosity over whether his soul’s windows were blue like mine or espresso-black like his father’s. Then there’s the cry that resounds in my ears a thousand times a day. Gasping for air but at the same time simply protesting discomfort, he had called out to me briefly before he was gone. #### “GONE! GET OUT!” I ducked just before a lamp went crashing into the wall, but the cord whipped back and slashed my upper arm. Blood overflowed from the cut much like the tears would have from my eyes, had I not trained a lifetime to withhold them. “Dad! How can you be mad at me over this when you did the same thing when you were my age?!” “I didn’t have no damn kid when I was sixteen!” “Mom did!” “Well that ain’t my fault. And besides, if you are screwed up enough to have a kid when yer still in school you deserve to take care of it instead of giving it up to some family of damn strangers!” Furious at his lack of compassion and my own foolishness in trusting him, I ran out of the house and down the shadowy street. I could only wonder what my dad would have done to me had I told him the truth. But even here, all alone, weaving in between the patches of orange lamplight, I could barely admit the truth to myself. Although for the first six months I denied Aiden’s very existence, it was what I did to him after he was born that was the worst. Lost in thought, I walked all the way to Dogwood Elementary, a slightly old-fashioned looking building with a shiny new playground in the back. There was no fence, so I walked right onto the grounds, pausing only briefly to check my purse for pepper spray—our neighborhood wasn’t exactly the safest. Luckily, it appeared that I was wandering alone. Alone like you were that day my mind prompted. Yes, alone like that day. Alone in the airport’s bathroom, which should be the center of gossip and makeup-applying on a Sunday in the late afternoon. Alone on the floor in ripping pain and then—for an instant—not so alone. He was born dead another part of my head reassures. You imagined his cry, because he was born dead. Yes, born dead. Born dead just like I was, except he was born to heaven and I was born to hell. A burger-flipping nation with alcoholic fathers as dictators. I settled into a swing. My butt was squished and almost on the ground, but I didn’t notice. Instead I escaped memory for a moment and tried to mend my arm. The blood was all over my sleeve by now, so I took out a wad of paper towels from my purse and tried to blot it all. I flinched as a cool wind blew across the empty playground. A bird somewhere deep in the nearby woods cawed a memento that, no matter how many times I think of the one proof that I ever had a son, it won’t bring him back. Bring him back? That would mean he was alive; he was never alive; he was born dead; there was no wailing at all; it was imaginary. Either way, I concluded, he was gone. My Aiden, named only in my whirring mind, gone. My arm hurt, so I cried. #### When I work in the garden and my sleeves are rolled up high enough, you can see my scar. A lot of people walking by stop to say hello; everyone seems congenial when the sun drenches the world in cheerful yellow. After talk of the weather and current events are expired, many inquire about the dark red lane across my upper arm. Sitting back on my heels, passing a dirty trowel from gloved hand to gloved hand, I just grin and shrug. “I lived a different life when I was younger.” The stock response to this is an understanding nod. “Fortunately this is the last and worst proof I have of it,” I add with a lazy gesture. Sensing a dead end in conversation, both parties nod and the visitors walk on, oblivious of the lie I just told them. The lamp-scar is not the worst, nor the last scar of my youth. Instead, the internal argument that taunts me in the middle of the night, the memory of my five-minute son, and the sound of his body, wrapped in paper towels, falling gently into the airport bathroom trash can. “Why are you crying?” Embarrassed, I wipe my eyes and leave streaks of mud across my face. I look up at a young boy who seems about twelve years old. My vision is blurry but I estimate him to be from the band of neighborhood youngsters. “It’s alright,” I tell him soothingly. “Is it because that hurts?” he asks, pointing a youthfully pudgy finger at my scar. His concern is touching and I smile at him faintly. “No.” He looks nervous for a moment and then plops down in the dirt beside me. Slowly, he beckons for me to bring my ear closer. “I have a secret question,” he explains. I give him a questioning glance but lean in, stringy hair falling forward. “Did grandpa do that to you?” On cue, a lanky woman strides over from a few houses down the street. She smiles at the boy—my son! Aiden!—and kneels next to us. She explains that she worked at the airport where Aiden was born and saved him. She had also gotten a friend to follow me to my plane and get my name and address. After that, the details of her secret become fuzzy, because for the second time since I can remember, I am crying.
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