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I pull the old Subaru up to the curb of the school.  Mrs. Bettlen is waiting for me with her arm tucked securely around Jamie’s shoulders.  I had put on my best summer dress for this, just to impress her, but it’s clear that no amount of primping will convince her that I am a good mother.  I’ve raised a boy who has dyed his hair blue in the boys’ bathroom during recess, and her pinched lips and bifocals will never forgive me.

From her tightly curled perm to her no-nonsense orthopedic shoes, Mrs. Bettlen enjoys perfection in her schools, and Jamie is disrupting her vision.  Above her sagging arm is Jamie’s hair, blue as the new electric guitar his grandpa bought him last Christmas.  Jamie’s head is tucked down.  I’m surprised at how tall he is even though I just saw him this morning.  He grows so fast these days.  Ever since he turned fourteen last summer, he’s grown to be nearly as tall as I am.  As I get out of the car Mrs. Bettlen guides him towards me.  She barely bothers to say anything to me, since we are both so used to what has become a routine for Jamie over the past few months.  She just wags her head at me, with a bit of skin flapping around under her chin.  Then she turns and walks back to the office, her blue flowered dress swishing its pleats as she goes.

I’ve never been a big fan of Mrs. Bettlen.  She is always giving me those disapproving looks, and I feel like I’m the one in trouble at school instead of Jamie.  But Mrs. Bettlen has been the principal of Jamie’s school for two years now.  When his older brother Alex went to Santos Elementary, Mr. Tagus ran everything.  He was a nice man, with a broad belly tucked into Wranglers.  He wore cowboy boots to his office and had a sign on the door that read, “This Principal is Your PAL”.  Not that I was ever there, except to pick up Alex if he got sick at school or had a dentist’s appointment.  Alex just didn’t get off track like Jamie does.  I don’t understand it.

Jamie gets into the car, taking an old juice box off the front seat and putting it in the back seat.  He folds his tall body into the seat and carefully shuts the door, but it is loud anyway and makes me jump.  His shoulders move up, and he cringes a little.  We drive home quietly, and I feel the bumps in the road as we move over the potholes more than I usually do.

I pull the car into the garage amid the old bicycles and boxes of pots and pans.  A bookcase stands in the corner of the garage.  It houses old roller blades, a tennis racket with a broken string, and a basketball.  Jamie steps out of the car and heads for the basketball.  I shut the garage door, leaving us in darkness.  His blue hair moves like a beacon through the garage.  He walks softly out the side door and closes it behind him silently, giving me a tight smile through the window.

I walk up the stairs and into the house, reminding myself not to sway my hips as I walk.  I would end up looking just like Mrs. Bettlen and her swishing dress.  I go to my room and open my closet.  Dress after dress hangs on wooden hangers.  Jamie used to complain to me that I didn’t dress like the other moms, but they look so sloppy in their faded jeans and running shoes.  How do they ever convince anyone that they can raise children if they look like that?

I fish through my closet, inspecting each dress.  Yellow flowers, blue stripes, strapless and long sleeve, all of them pass the test.  None of them are blue flowered ones with pleats.  I am safe for another day.  I am not Mrs. Bettlen.

I move into the kitchen and make some tea.  Jamie’s still outside, throwing the basketball up towards the hoop his father put above the garage for his older brother six years ago.  It hits the garage door every time he misses, sending a shudder through the whole house like a bomb.  The window rattles and the table shakes.  I just polished the kitchen table this morning, and the teacup slides gently across it.

I take another sip of my tea. The repetitive bom-bom-bom of Jamie’s basketball is really getting to me.  Not only does my head hurt, but also my hands shake as I drink my tea.  With each miss of the basket, I see Mrs. Bettlen.  Her disapproving stare, her too-clean office, her lips lined in pink lipstick.  Boom.  I hear Jamie yelling at her the first time I picked him up early.  He had gotten in a fight, and I stood just outside the office door where he couldn’t see me.  He was yelling at her that it wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t fair, and that he didn’t want to go home.  Just then, my nerves started up again, and I got a paper cup of water from the receptionist before I went into the office.  As soon as I walked into the office, Jamie quieted down, and he was quiet the whole way home.  Jamie knows about my nerves, and he is such a sweet child when he is home.

Jamie misses another basket.  Boom.  I think of his guitar, a year old but still shiny as the day he got it.  Sometimes, when Alex was home and I left to go do the grocery shopping, I’d come home and he would tell me that Jamie had stayed in his room the whole time and played guitar.  Jamie’s room used to be full of posters of skinny boys with black hair and guitars, but I never heard him play.  Once Alex left home, I couldn’t leave Jamie home alone, and his guitar hasn’t moved since.

Alex.  Alex is a good boy.  Even though he goes to school two hours away now, he still comes home every other weekend to cut the grass.   Sometimes it feels like he’s checking up on us though, as he peers into the refrigerator, scrunching up his nose at the tofu.  I try to explain that since they’ve discovered Mad Cow disease in America, I am a vegetarian, but he just shakes his head.

“Meat has protein in it, mom, and that will give you more energy,” he says.

It’s just nonsense, I tell him. I’m fine as I am.  I’m just tired sometimes, and I certainly wouldn’t want to risk Mad Cow disease.  He still comes every other weekend though, and sometimes after he leaves I find things around the house.  Once there was a twenty-dollar bill on his brother’s dresser, another time a book of songs for the guitar.

Jamie loves his brother so much.  Every time he comes home they go out together.  Alex takes him bowling, or to the arcade, and sometimes they go to concerts.  I don’t like Jamie going to concerts; they’re so loud, and I worry that he will have bad nerves just like me.  But Alex tells me not to worry, so whenever they go I sit on our slip covered sofa with my relaxation tapes on the stereo and wait for them to come home.

The banging stops.  I listen for Jamie’s footsteps on the stairs, but nothing comes.  What if he’s hurt himself?  Basketball is so dangerous, that big ball could hit him right in the face.  Maybe someone’s taken him.  There’s been a rash of kidnappings on the news lately.  Jamie’s such a sweet boy, and with that new blue hair he’s bound to be more noticeable to anyone driving by.  Anyone could just be driving through the neighborhood, child molesters, murderers, anybody!  And they would see my beautiful little boy in our driveway, making all that noise, and quiet just like that would take him away from me.

That last thought propels me off the couch, and I almost spill my tea.  I throw open the front door, and it slams against the wall.  Surely there will be a hole in the wall now.  I slam the screen door open, and its aluminum bangs against the brick of the house.  I race down the front steps, screaming Jamie’s name.  Where is he?  I trip over something on the lawn and I fall hard onto the concrete driveway.  Jamie?  No, it’s his basketball.  Where is he?  I’m crying now, loud, hard.  My baby’s been taken from me.  I let out a long wail, louder than the basketball against the garage door, louder than all the guitars in the world.  I would give anything just to hear my little boy play his guitar, as loud as he could, and it wouldn’t matter because at least he’d be safe in our house.

And then, from behind me, I hear footsteps.  Before I know it, familiar skinny arms are around me.  I turn my head, and it’s Jamie, crouched down next to me on the driveway.  He’s calm and quiet, with one arm around me.  His other hand strokes my hair.  The mail is next to him on the ground.  I’m so happy to see him, and I can’t stop my wailing.  It’s so loud, and my head hurts, but I’m so happy to be here, next to my quiet little boy.  He puts both arms around me, and I cry helplessly into his t-shirt.

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