Erin Curlett

I leave the door open because I know it is only a matter of seconds before I’ll hear the pitter patter of his tiny feet on the tile.

“Mama!” Henry calls out. He rounds the corner, spots me, and exclaims, “Oh! Poop!” he claps his hands, overjoyed to witness the magic of the toilet, which his brother has mastered but to him remains a mystery.

We’re in the tiny water closet off our laundry room and as he squeezes past my legs I wonder what he’s after. Did he spot a plunger? Is there a toy someone forgot to put away? His face sets in determination.

He slaps the wall, right against the shadow my trucker hat has cast, the same trucker hat he tried to pry off my third-day hair this morning as he giggled uncontrollably. The light bulb is out in the water closet–I make a mental note to change the bulb–and the sunlight that filters in through the laundry room windows make gray shapes dance behind us.

“No,” he whispers, his blue eyes widening, looking up into my face. “No. Biiiig rawr.”

Dinosaurs are his favorite, so I’m not sure if it is good or bad he sees a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the wall. But then he throws his arms around my legs and I know he is frightened.

When I pick him up, he wraps his arms around my neck and kneels on my lap, burying his face into my shoulder. His white blond curls brush my cheek.

“You are safe,” I whisper into his hair. “You are safe. Mama is right here. It’s just a shadow.”

I try to make him laugh with the silly shadow puppets that always drove out his brother’s fear, but Henry wants none of it.

“No rawr,” he says. “No.”

So I hold him even closer, smelling his sweet toddler scent, rocking him back and forth, back and forth, as I’ve done since he was new.

“It’s all right, I’m here. You don’t need to be afraid.”

I am pooping and I am rocking my son and there is nothing I can do but sit here in the stench and shadow and tell him I am here.