Unarmed

He was only five, so she was helping him with his bath routine, like she did every night, even before he had left them. So recently had she been estranged from her husband that she was still growing the strange, new sensibilities that sudden single mothers often do.

She watched her son as he splashed and played in the water, poured water out of the little yellow bucket, blew bubbles into the water, and fooled with his willy, a little too much it seemed. Maybe it's just a boy thing, she thought, which for some reason made her smile.

He sat among the aging bubbles whose blanket thinned in attrition to the vagaries of surface tension.

"Momma?" he asked.

"Yes, sweetie," she answered, still smiling. There he was, naked, as unashamed and ignorantly vulnerable as pre-apple Adam and Eve. Innocence. Beauty. Love.

Chris knew his mother loved him, but he wondered about it: was that how everyone feels about everyone? How his dad felt about him now? Or about his mom, ever? Was it all-or-none? Was it quantifiable?. These were lofty concepts that were relegated in his mind, simplified and truncated into graspable concepts.

"Momma?" he asked again.

"I'm listening," she replied.

"If a real bad man came into our house, like a burglar or something, and he wanted to chop off either your arm or mine, which would you choose?"

"Oh, Chris," she gasped, "what would make you think of something like that?"

"Well," he stammered, "we need our arms, right?"

"Arms are nice things to have," she answered, and steered her answer so that she could further tweak her answer, depending on where he was going with his questions. "I mean, there are some people who are missing an arm or a leg or even both of 'em--or even all of 'em--who are still wonderful people."

"What about your head? You need that, right?"

"Yes," she said, "more than arms. I mean, no, you absolutely need your head. With or without an arm."

"OK, so say the burglar would let both of us--"

"You mean you and me?"

"Yes. Say the bad guy would let both of us keep our head, but one of us had to choose to have their arm chopped off..."

"Yes..."

"Would you tell him to chop off your arm or mine?"

"How 'bout," she laughed, "we just call the police?"

"Say he's already been to the police station and killed all of them?"

"This is a really bad guy," she said.

"Yea. Really bad. And he's got a sword and he's ready for you to decide."

"I'm the one deciding?"

"Well, yea, you're the grown-up."

"I see. So, just to be clear, I have to decide whether he chops off my arm or your arm."

"Yea."

"Why doesn't he just decide for himself?"

"Say he's a really bad guy but he's really fair, too."

"I see. Well," she spoke seriously, looking him right in the eyes, "I'd have him chop off my arm, of course. I wouldn't even have to think about it."

"Wait! Remember, it's your whole arm."

"I know. Here it is," she said, smirking as she waved her arm in the air. "Take it."

"You wouldn't want to talk with Dad about it first?"

"I'm kind of making my own decisions from now on, Chris."

"Oh," he said, looking down, going deep into thought. "You wouldn't grow it back, y'know," he added.

"They don't do that, I know."

"Oh," he said again and considered the scenario.

"I'm you mother and I love you. I would always rather the best for you, no matter how it affected me."

As a child, he couldn't understand how such a basic tenet of survival could be so casually abandoned, without even thinking about it. As a child, he couldn't appreciate how someone could choose someone else instead--and for so serious a decision. Did all grown-ups act like this? Just moms? Would his dad? It made no sense. How could someone give up their own arm instead of letting it happen to someone else? But what disturbed him the most was the question, from her, he didn't see coming:

"Chris, if you had to make the choice for the bad man, which arm would you tell him to chop off with his sword--yours or mine?"

What kind of game was this? he asked himself in the uncomplicated child's rhetoric that asked the same adult thing. It's my arm. I need my arm. Then he looked at the person who just said she would tell the bad man to chop off hers, instead.

He knew, somewhere, as only a child could perceive it, this was a test. He had never been tested before. He had been wavering between his impuslive, self-serving id and his moderating ego recently, as part of normal human maturation; but the ethos of his superego had yet to join the right synapses together in the fray, much less mediate the double-edged sword of judgment.

His mom could sense the convoluted machinations whirring in his five-year-old mind. She waited. Her simple smile was as demanding as a stopwatch.

He took the toy plastic bucket with his right hand and shook it vigorously. Then he switched hands and did the same with his left.

"Are you thinking?"

"Wait, I'm seeing something," he said with some aggravation. She knew what he was seeing. She knew he was right-handed. Perhaps there was a compromise available.

"Do I get to pick which of my arms gets chopped off?" he asked, darting his eyes from his left to his right. She laughed.

"Don't laugh at me!" he shouted, but he was angry because he was ashamed of himself.

His mother then took her mind on a tangent. Thinking of her estranged husband, she thought, I wonder whose arm he would choose for chopping off.

"Hmmph!" she blurted.

"What!"

"No, that wasn't for you," she quickly retreated.

"For who, then?" he demanded.

"For the, um, really bad man," she said, and thus she got a pass when he assumed the burglar.

"Don't worry, my baby. You don't have to answer. I love you and you love me. I know we'll each do the right thing. Always and forever."

She couldn't have said it any worse.

What's the right thing? he wondered. Should I get my arm chopped off? She'd do it for me, so shouldn't I do it for her? But, wait! If her arm is the one she'd choose instead of mine, shouldn't I want what she wants?

"You don't have to choose, sweetie. That's a grown-up thing. Tell you what, I'll ask you again in about ten years."

Chris' blanched face filled again with color and he smiled. "I need to be a big kid to know the answer?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Don't worry, though. No answer of yours will be wrong."

However, she surmised, it would probably take longer than ten years for him to turn that light on. Probably not till he had a child of his own.

She opened the drain and helped him climb out of the tub, where she had a warm, thick towel waiting for his little intact two-armed body. She rumpled him all over with it, especially vigorously on his head and hair.

Tucked in bed, it was time for her adult time. She fixed herself some tea and sat on the sofa, in the dark with just her private thoughts.

I don't have to wonder, she realized, whose that son-of-a-bitch would decide--his arm or mine--because I know. Like all his decisions! Like the one he just made. I wonder what his new sweet, young thing would tell the bad man to do. Have we already let the bad man in?

She grew angry. Is love as easy to unravel as ending a hug by removing one arm at a time, she pondered.

Is it really over for us? she asked herself finally. Do we really have more things not in common than in common anymore?

Then she wondered what she would choose if a bad man had her choose between her arm and her husband's arm. That was a scary thought. Her id and superego sat at the negotiation table.

She knew immediately how she would choose, right or wrong.