Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

“Jesus Christ, Derrick! I don’t care if he doesn’t want to lie down!

Babies cry themselves to sleep all the time. It’s the only way they learn that they can’t get what they want by screaming about it. Give him to me. I’ll do it since apparently it’s too much to ask for you to do!”

Tyson watched this back and forth with those big eyes of his, those eyes that had such knowledge in them, such awareness that each day it took my breath away. He saw our mom’s outstretched hands reaching for him, and his grip tightened in my shirt, and he buried his face in my neck and opened his mouth and said my name.

Or, at least as close to my name as he could possibly get. It was garbled and quiet, but it came out in two distinct syllables, “Bear-rick,” and my mother stopped, and I stopped, and we both looked down at the little guy in my arms, who started to mutter the same thing over and over: “Bear- rick, Bear- rick, Bear- rick.”

“Did you hear what he just called you, Derrick?” my mom asked, her eyes wide.

“Yeah,” I croaked out as his head bonked against my chin, and he sighed.

“It sounded like he called you a bear,” she said, giggling drunkenly.

“Oh, oh, his first word, and he calls you a bear? He must think you’re ferocious!” She started laughing loudly, bending over and slapping her thighs as if it was the funniest damn thing she’d ever heard.

Tyson stared at her for a moment before turning back to me, his hands coming up to my face as he poked my lips and chin, laughing at how he could press my cheeks in. “Bear- rick,” he said confidently.

I turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving my mother laughing. I sat him in one arm and dragged his crib from my mother’s room with the other, pulling it into my room, not caring when it banged against the walls, when it gouged out part of the doorway. I shut the door behind me and set him in the crib, and he immediately stood up against the bars, looking at his new surroundings, obviously wondering how and why his bed had been moved, chattering in that way he did, only now punctuated with the occasional, “Bear- rick.”

I leaned over on the railing of the crib, setting my face on my arms so we were at eye level. He watched me as I watched him. “You and me,” I finally told him. “It looks like we’re stuck with each other. Just you and me.

Derrick and the baby. Fantastic.”

“Bear- rick!” he shouted happily.

I grinned and shook my head. “Bear, huh? You know I’m never going to hear the end of that, right? Bear and the baby. Bear and a kid. Christ.” I rubbed my hands against my face. “Well, kid,” I told him. “I’ve got a history test tomorrow. Don’t suppose you can help me?”

“Bear- rick.”

“Yeah, Ty. Bear-rick. I hear you. Jesus, you’re going to be a little kid before long. Already talking. Not a baby. What the hell am I going to do with you?”

He smiled.

And then, I made a promise, even though I didn’t know then what it would mean. “I got you,” I told him quietly. “I got you. You’re just a little guy. Just a Kid.”

Tyson slept in my room from that point on.

I had been named, and I was Bear.

Tyson had been named, and he was the Kid.

Looking back now, I can see that was the beginning.

THE Kid scowls at me, pulling me

out of my reverie. “Did you see the size of those cats, Bear?” Bear- rick. “I swear to God those are just miniature mountain lions. You really think a wannabe cat lady should be giving me therapy? Call Erica back. Tell her to recommend someone else so that we can give him a therapist to go to.”

“I dunno, Kid. He seems to be alright.”

His eyes narrow. “You were yelling at him. He pissed you off somehow, and you think he’s ‘alright’?” Air quotes. Fun. “You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

“Oh, Lord,” I groan. “Where’d you learn that?”

“You DVR’d Maury Povich again, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Before I knew it, the show was half over, and I needed to find out if Jerome was the father to Sharelle’s son J’real.”

Oooooh. That had been a good one. Jerome apparently had a twin brother that—

My phone rings. Alice Thompson, the display says.