1503933547 by Paul Pen Read Free Book Online Page A

aquarium.
    “Shut that baby up!” Dad shouted from the living room. He made himself heard over the noise of the gunfire and my nephew’s inconsolable crying.
    I crossed the hall in the direction of his room. Something hurt my foot. It was a little screw from Dad’s toolbox. I thought it’d stuck into me, but it fell away by itself, rolling along the hall floor.
    As soon as I walked into the room I smelled Grandma’s talcum powder. By the crib, my mother was rocking the little boy in her arms. Seeing me, she held a finger to her mouth so that I wouldn’t make any noise. When there was more light from the screen because an especially bright image in the film had come on, a pan shot of a sunny day in the mountains, for instance, I could make out her features. But when the screen went dark with a close-up of a cowboy’s dirty face, she wasn’t more than a black shape in front of me.
    I felt my way up my mother’s body, over her stretched T-shirt, to the baby.
    “Easy now,” I whispered.
    Mom sighed. My grandmother put her arms around me, resting her hands on my bare chest.
    That was when I saw it.
    A spot of green light floating in the hall. A few flashes left a trail from the ceiling to the floor. I pushed Grandma’s hands away so I could go find it.
    “Hang on,” my mother said. I thought she was talking to me, that she’d seen the firefly, too, but then she switched on the bedroom light and the insect’s green flicker disappeared.
    Dazzled, my eyes stung.
    The baby stopped crying.
    Mom hit the switch once more.
    In the dark, the baby started crying again.
    When my mother turned the light on for a second time, it was as I guessed.
    “Same as him,” Mom said, pointing at me with her chin. “It’s the dark that makes him cry.”
    “Same as me?” I asked.
    My mother passed the baby to Grandma. Then she sat me on the bed.
    “When you were little you were frightened of the dark,” she explained. “The first few nights, you wouldn’t stop crying until someone turned on a light.”
    “But I’m not scared of it anymore.”
    Mom smiled and an eye closed. “Of course you’re not.”
    “And how did I stop being afraid?”
    “Like all fears are overcome,” she answered. She stood and went to the door, then held a finger over the switch and added, “By facing up to it.”
    She turned off the light.
    The baby cried.
    Grandma shushed him over his crying while my eyes readjusted to the absence of light. I looked toward the hall, but the firefly was gone.
    “Are you going to let him cry?” I asked.
    My nephew screamed with all his might, grating his throat. The two dark shapes that were my mother and grandmother approached the crib. One of the figures shortened. It was Grandma bending to put the baby down inside.
    “It’s all we can do,” she replied.
    “Anyway,” added Mom, “the dark isn’t so bad.”
    The baby was crying louder and louder.
    Dad’s voice came from the hall. “Shut him up, please!”
    I approached the crib and peered in. My grandmother, or my mother, was rocking the frame to lull the baby to sleep.
    “Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. “The dark isn’t so bad.”
    Mom’s nose whistled as she heard me repeat her words.
    But the baby kept crying.
    My father’s armchair scraped along the living room floor. The changes in light on the television screen marked out his silhouette in the doorway. In the movie someone was playing a harmonica.
    “What’s wrong with the child?”
    “It’s the dark,” my mother answered.
    Dad turned on the light. I closed my eyes in time.
    “And what’s he doing here?” he asked. I knew he was referring to me. “You, what are you doing here?”
    “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see what was happening.”
    Dad hit the light switch twice, seeing that the baby was quiet when it was on and cried when it was off. He left it on.
    “Then we’ll leave it.”
    “We have to turn it off,” said Mom.
    “Do you want us to leave the light on all