The Day Between

Night Shift

Chapter 18: The Day Between

The park was Whitehaven City Park, which was not a grand park, was not the kind of park that appeared on tourism websites or in city planning presentations, was the kind of park that neighborhoods had — a few acres, a playground, a walking trail, a basketball court with nets that were replaced every spring and torn by October, benches along the trail, a pavilion for birthday parties and family reunions, the park the neighborhood's outdoor living room, the place where the people of Whitehaven went to be outside together, to let the children run, to sit in the shade of the trees that the park district maintained with the budget the park district had, which was never enough but was enough for the mowing and the trash cans and the equipment that the playground offered — a slide, two swings, a climbing structure, a set of monkey bars.

Delia sat on a bench near the playground. The bench was metal, painted green, the paint chipping at the edges where the weather and the use had worn it, the bench one of four that faced the playground in a semicircle, the semicircle the design's acknowledgment that the benches existed for the parents and the parents existed for the watching and the watching required a sightline to the playground and the sightline was the semicircle, the benches oriented toward the children the way the consoles at the center were oriented toward the screens, the orientation the design's statement about function: you are here to watch.

Jaylen was on the climbing structure. He climbed the way seven-year-olds climbed — with confidence and without the caution that adults would prefer, the climbing an expression of the body's belief in itself, the body at seven believing that it could reach the top and the believing producing the reaching and the reaching usually succeeding, the body's faith in itself usually justified at seven because at seven the body was light and strong and flexible and the climbing structure was designed for the body at seven, the structure's heights and distances calibrated to the capabilities of the age, the engineering meeting the biology, the structure safe in the way that structures could be safe, which was the way that accounted for the expected use and not the unexpected use, the expected use being: a seven-year-old climbing the ladder and crossing the bridge and descending the slide, the expected use the reasonable use, the use that the park district insured against.

Delia watched. The watching was the day's work. Not the only work — the day contained the other work, the domestic work, the mothering work, the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and the homework-helping and the bath-giving and the story-reading and the thousand small acts that constituted the daily labor of raising a child alone, the labor that was Delia's labor during the hours between 3 PM and 9 PM, the hours that were her shift at the other job, the job that did not have a console or a headset or a protocol but that was a job nonetheless, the job of being Jaylen's mother, the job that required the same voice (gentler, warmer, the voice modulated for a child) and the same attention (broader, softer, the attention modulated for a park) and the same presence (physical now, not remote, the presence of a body beside the child rather than a voice in a stranger's ear).

The watching at the park was different from the watching at the console. The watching at the console was focused, was specific, was directed at the screens and the data and the calls, the watching a professional act performed with professional tools in a professional environment. The watching at the park was diffuse, was ambient, was the watching of a mother on a bench, the watching that encompassed the entire playground and the trail and the parking lot and the other parents and the other children and the sky and the weather and the general environment, the watching that was not looking for information but looking for safety, looking for the continued safety of the child on the climbing structure, the safety that was the default condition, the condition that the watching maintained by its presence, the watching itself a form of protection, the mother's eyes on the child a shield that worked not through intervention but through attention, the attention the thing that said: I am here, I am watching, you are seen, and the being-seen is the being-safe.

But the watching at the park was also the watching of a tired person. The tired was the constant, was the baseline, was the condition that Delia lived in during the days between the night shifts, the condition of a body that had been awake from 2 PM yesterday to 6:30 AM today, a body that had slept from 8:30 AM to 2:45 PM and that was now, at 4 PM, awake again and would remain awake until 9 PM when Jaylen was at Gloria's and the apartment was empty and the body could have slept but would not sleep because the body knew that the next shift started at 10 PM and the sleeping between 9 PM and 10 PM was not sleeping but was the anxious rest of a body preparing for the next eight hours of wakefulness, the body's clock confused and protesting and adjusting and never fully adjusted, the adjustment permanent and permanently incomplete.

The tired sat behind Delia's eyes. The tired sat in her shoulders. The tired sat in the particular heaviness of her limbs, the heaviness that was not weight but was the body's reluctance, the body's resistance to the demand that the day made on it, the demand to be upright and alert and present in the sunlight when the body's recent memory was the darkness of the dispatch floor and the body's recent activity was the sitting and the listening and the voice, and the transition from the dispatch floor to the park bench was a transition that the body made five days a week and that the body never made easily, the transition always a negotiation between the tired and the required, between the body's need and the child's need, the child's need winning because the child's need always won, the mother's override functioning as it always functioned, the override that said: later. The tired can be later. The child is now.

Jaylen climbed to the top of the structure. He stood on the platform and looked down at Delia. He waved. The wave was the check — the child's check, the child's version of Gloria's midnight check on the sleeping boy, the child checking that the mother was there, that the mother was watching, that the connection between the platform and the bench was intact, the connection that was the sightline, the sightline that was the wave, the wave that said: are you there? And Delia waved back, and the waving back said: I am here. I am watching. Go.

He went. He crossed the bridge to the slide. He slid. He ran to the swings. He swung. The swinging was the particular motion of a seven-year-old on a swing — the pumping of the legs, the leaning of the body, the arc increasing with each pump, the arc a pendulum, the pendulum the physics of play, the play the thing that Jaylen was doing while Delia watched, the thing that looked like nothing — a boy on a swing — and was everything, was the childhood, was the thing that the arrangement existed to provide, the thing that the night shift funded and the grandmother facilitated and the mother protected by working the nights so that the days contained this, this park, this bench, this swing, this boy.

The other parents were on the other benches. A woman with two girls. A man with a toddler. The parents nodded at Delia when she arrived and Delia nodded back and the nodding was the park's greeting, the park's acknowledgment that they were all doing the same thing, the thing of sitting on benches while children played, the thing that was the most ordinary thing in the world and that felt, to Delia, like the most extraordinary thing, the ordinariness extraordinary because the ordinariness was the counterpoint to the night, the night's calls the extraordinary and the park's bench the ordinary and the distance between the two the distance of Delia's life, the distance she traversed every day, the distance that she was traversing right now, sitting on the green bench with the chipping paint while her body carried the night's calls and her eyes carried the son and her mind carried both.

The calls were in her. The calls were always in her, during the days, during the park, during the watching. The calls were not loud — not the way they were loud during the shift, when the calls were the entire environment, the calls the only input, the calls the world. During the day, the calls were quiet, were the background noise of the mind, the residue that the shift left, the residue that the sleep had not fully dissolved, the residue that sat in the mind the way sediment sat in a river — settled, quiet, present.

She thought of Tanya Williams at 2614 Mallory Avenue. She thought of Tanya's lip, bleeding where it had hit her teeth. She thought of Tanya's daughter, five, in the room with the door closed. She thought of the door — the door that was a barrier to the sight but not to the sound, the door that the five-year-old was behind while the hitting happened on the other side. She thought of the five-year-old hearing the hitting the way Delia heard the calls, through a barrier, through a surface that separated the listener from the event, the listener receiving the sound without receiving the sight, the sound the only information, the sound the thing that the listener had to construct the event from, the construction the imagination's work, the imagination worse than the reality because the imagination had no limits and the reality had the limits of the reality.

She thought of this and she watched Jaylen swing and the two thoughts occupied the same mind and the same moment and the coexistence was the thing, the coexistence of the calls and the child, the coexistence of the night and the day, the coexistence that was Delia's life, the life that was both things at once, the dispatcher and the mother, the voice and the person, the calls and the park.

Jaylen jumped from the swing. He jumped at the apex of the arc, the moment of weightlessness, the moment when the body was neither going up nor coming down but was suspended, was floating, was free of the swing's pendulum, and then the moment ended and the body came down and the feet hit the ground and the landing was solid, was confident, the landing of a seven-year-old who had jumped from swings before and who knew the landing, who trusted the landing, who did not fear the ground.

He ran to Delia. He ran with the particular run of a child returning to a parent — not the run of urgency but the run of connection, the run that was the physical expression of the desire to be near, the desire that children expressed with their bodies, the bodies moving toward the parent the way water moved toward the lowest point, naturally, inevitably, the movement the expression of the gravitational force that connected the child to the parent.

"Mama, watch me do the monkey bars."

"I'm watching, baby."

He ran back. He climbed. He reached for the first bar. His hands gripped the metal — the metal worn smooth by thousands of hands, the hands of children who had hung from these bars over the years, the bar's surface polished by the friction of the gripping, the polishing the evidence of the use, the use the purpose, the purpose the play.

He swung from bar to bar. His grip was sure, his arms strong enough to hold his weight, his body swinging through the air between the bars, the body suspended by the hands, the hands the connection to the structure, the hands doing the work that hands did — gripping, holding, carrying — the hands a seven-year-old's hands, small and capable, the hands that drew the pictures that went on the refrigerator, the hands that held the pencil and the crayon, the hands that were Jaylen's tools the way the headset was Delia's tool, the hands the instruments of the boy's life, the life that was climbing and drawing and swinging and sleeping and eating cereal in the blue-rimmed bowl.

He made it across. He dropped to the ground. He looked at Delia. She clapped. The clapping was the response, the mother's response to the child's accomplishment, the response that said: I saw. I was watching. You did it. The clapping the validation, the validation the thing that children sought from parents and that parents provided by being present, by watching, by clapping when the monkey bars were crossed.

"Good job, baby."

He smiled. The smile was the thing. The smile was the day's compensation, the day's payment for the night's cost, the smile the currency that the child's happiness provided and that the mother accepted because the accepting was the living, the living the thing that the night shift made possible and that the day shift contained and that the park bench held and that the smile expressed.

She was tired. She was always tired. The tired was the tax and the park was the purchase and the purchase was worth the tax, the purchase being: this moment, this bench, this boy, this smile. The purchase was Jaylen on the monkey bars. The purchase was Jaylen waving from the platform. The purchase was Jaylen running back to the bench and sitting beside her and leaning against her arm, the leaning the child's way of resting while the body was still energized, the leaning the child's way of being near, the nearness the thing.

"Mama, can we get ice cream?"

"Maybe. After dinner."

"That's what you always say."

"Because that's the rule."

"Can the rule change?"

"The rule is the rule, Jay."

He accepted this. He accepted the rule the way children accepted rules — with a protest and then a compliance, the protest the performance of independence and the compliance the acknowledgment that the parent's authority was real, the authority exercised not through force but through consistency, the consistency the thing that children needed even as they protested it, the consistency the structure, the structure the safety, the safety the thing.

They sat together on the bench. The afternoon was warm — October warm, Memphis warm, the particular warmth of a Southern autumn afternoon, the sun still present, the light still golden, the air still carrying the memory of summer in its temperature if not in its angle, the angle lower now, the shadows longer, the light arriving from the side rather than from above, the sideways light the autumn's light, the light that made everything look warmer and older and more beautiful than the overhead summer light, the October light the light that photographers preferred and that painters preferred and that Delia did not notice because Delia was tired and the tired filtered the light through the tired and the light was just light, was just the day, was just the world that she was sitting in while her body wanted to sleep and her mind carried the calls.

Jaylen leaned against her. His body was warm — the warmth of a child who had been running and climbing and swinging, the warmth of exertion, the warmth that radiated from his small body into her arm, the warmth the physical fact of the child's presence, the fact that no phone line mediated, no headset delivered, no screen displayed, the fact that was simply there, beside her, warm, present, real.

She put her arm around him. The arm was the holding. The holding was the thing. The holding was the physical version of the voice — the voice held the callers through the phone and the arm held the child on the bench and the holding was the holding, the holding the function that Delia performed in all contexts, the holding the thing she did for the city at night and for the child during the day, the holding the work, the holding the life.

"Mama, are you tired?"

"A little, baby."

"You should take a nap."

"I'm okay. I want to be here with you."

The wanting was the override. The wanting was the mother's override of the body's demand, the wanting that said: not yet, not now, the child is here, the park is here, the afternoon is here, the tired can wait. And the tired did wait, waited on the bench beside the wanting, the two of them — the tired and the wanting — sitting side by side inside Delia's body the way Delia and Jaylen sat side by side on the bench, and the wanting was stronger than the tired, the wanting always stronger because the wanting was the mother and the mother was the thing that did not yield.

She watched the other children on the playground. She watched them the way she watched everything — with the attention that the headset had trained, the attention that could not be turned off, the attention that registered details and patterns and the small indicators of safety and danger that the environment contained. She watched a girl fall from the climbing structure and land in the mulch and cry and run to her mother. She watched the mother pick up the girl and examine the scraped knee and produce a tissue from her purse and wipe the knee and kiss the forehead and the girl stop crying and run back to the structure. She watched the sequence — fall, cry, mother, examination, treatment, return — and the sequence was the protocol, the playground's protocol, the mother's protocol, the sequence as structured and as reliable as the EMD protocol, the sequence that said: when the child falls, the mother responds, and the response is the hands and the voice and the kiss and the tissue, and the response is sufficient, and the child returns to the play.

She watched this and she thought of the calls. She thought of the calls where the child did not return to the play. She thought of Miles and Layla on Winchester Road. She thought of the three-year-old on Dunn Avenue, the grape, the choking. She thought of the five-year-old at 2614 Mallory Avenue, in the room with the door closed. She thought of all the children who entered her headset as voices — the voices of parents calling about children, the voices of children calling about parents, the voices that contained the children's emergencies, the emergencies that were the calls that broke the bank, the calls that sent the river into the person, the calls that produced the shaking.

She held Jaylen tighter. Not much tighter — a degree, a fraction, the tightening imperceptible to anyone watching but perceptible to Jaylen, who looked up at her with the look that children give when they feel the change in the holding, the change that means the holding has become something more than casual, has become something intentional, has become the mother holding the child because the mother needs to hold the child, the holding not for the child but for the mother, the mother needing the physical fact of the child's body in her arm to counterbalance the facts that the headset delivered, the facts that were the calls, the facts that lived in the mind and the body and the space between the night and the day.

"Mama?"

"Yeah, baby."

"I love you."

He said it without context, without prompting, without the ritual that usually preceded the saying — the bedtime ritual, the goodbye ritual, the drop-off ritual. He said it on the bench, in the park, in the afternoon, without reason, the saying spontaneous, the way children's sayings were often spontaneous, the feelings arriving in the child's awareness without announcement and the child expressing the feelings without the social apparatus that adults used to manage the expression, the child feeling the love and saying the love because the love was there and the saying was what you did with things that were there.

"I love you too, baby. I love you so much."

The exchange was the exchange. The words the words. The bench the bench. The park the park.

And the night was seven hours away. The night was waiting — waiting at the center, waiting on Poplar Avenue, waiting at Console 7, waiting in the headset that Delia would put on at 9:58 PM, the headset that would deliver the city's emergencies to her ear while Jaylen slept at Gloria's house under the nightlight shaped like a moon. The night was waiting and the day was here, was this bench, was this boy, was this arm around this body, was this moment that existed between the last night and the next night, the moment that was the day between, the between that was Delia's life.

She sat on the bench. She held her son. She was tired. She was present. She was both things at once, the tired and the present, the night and the day, the dispatcher and the mother, the voice and the arm. She was both things because both things were her, because the both was the life, because the life was the night shift and the day shift and the park bench and the console and the headset and the boy.

The afternoon continued. The shadows lengthened. The light changed. The children played.

Delia watched. Delia held. Delia was there.

The day between. The space between the nights. The space that was not empty. The space that was full.

Full of Jaylen. Full of the park. Full of the tired that would not go away and the love that would not go away and the calls that would not go away and the life that was all of it, all of it at once, all of it always, the life that was Delia Robinson's life, the life of a woman on a bench in Whitehaven City Park on an October afternoon, holding her son, watching him breathe, carrying the night inside the day.