Fiction

When Sylvester first saw the Buddha in the shop window, it was marked at $200. With his right hand he fingered the felt-like softness of a worn five-dollar bill in his pocket, and with his left he held on to a wriggling younger sister of five. Her brown curls bounced as she stomped impatiently at being kept in the empty parking lot. She was not interested in the old and dusty statuettes, or the smiling fat man who sat on his rump and was as bald as an onion. She clutched a tousled Barbie to her chest and skipped impatiently on feet clad in clean white loafers — she wanted to go home.
            “Five more minutes, Ruth,” he said, without taking his eyes off the display. Stout painted kittens waved their paws in endless homage, and red-blue dragons arched their scaly, snake-like bodies. The Buddha, however, was king. His golden stomach, as round as a pumpkin, radiated opulence, and his ears hung down as if they were weighted with heavy jewels. His eyes slanted like moons and his mouth was open in laughter. Sylvester’s chest tightened with desire.

His parents brushed his request aside.

“Do we really need it?” asked his father, sitting in his paisley armchair and not looking up from his copy of the Times. Sylvester pressed further — they hadn’t gotten him a birthday present this year, but Ruth had gotten a Barbie.

The ends of his father’s moustache turned down and he seemed to think for a moment. Then he ruffed Sylvester’s mouse-brown hair and said, “Ask your mother.”

“No space,” said his mother from beneath a criss-crossed curtain of leaves. He saw only a mass of frizzy brown hair, a plaid shirt, faded jeans. She was bent, snipping at leaves, and her rump stuck up in the air. The fern would need repotting soon, and there were some new sprouts. And her dahlias — they were incredibly successful this year, red-purple-yellow bursts blooming under her care. She was estimating that by next month all the ledges and corners of the house would be occupied, and under the windows too.

Ruth got the Barbie, he pointed out once more.

“Mm.” Leaves rustled uncomfortably. “Could you pass the shears, honey?”

He turned on his heel and stomped away.

Ruth refused to hold his hand the next day on the way home from school. Instead she trailed behind him, jerking the doll’s stiff legs like chopsticks along the curb. Sylvester sat cross-legged under the store window, where the Buddha smiled benevolently at him over its golden belly. There were seven dollars in his pocket, and his stomach growled for its missed lunch.

When he came home, his mother was sitting on newspapers, between piles of dirt and mulch. He couldn’t see an inch of carpet in his family room between the dirt, the papers, and the plants. “Well!” said his mother. “This will all get cleaned up soon.” She cupped a baby dahlia in her hands and beamed at him. “How was school?”

He asked her once more for the Buddha — slowly, in his best grown-up tone. I’m serious, it implied. I mean business.

His mother looked up and wrinkled her nose at him. Both of their eyes were almond shaped and almond colored, but his nose was sharper and mouth tighter. Were it not for his small face, weak chin, and baby skin, he could have had the older face. He was so severe, she thought. Except for the pleading in his eyes, which would have moved a machine, he was too old for his age.

“If you’re good, I think Santa will get it for you for Christmas,” she said, and winced to herself. Once again she had failed at saying the right thing.

“That’s too late!” His lower lip pulled downwards, showing his bottom teeth. “You never give me anything!” He spat these words like venom, left the room. His mother eased the baby dahlia into the flowerpot and tucked it gently into the soil.

***

It was getting harder and harder for Sylvester to get to the front door. An army of newly potted plants crowded the walkway and Sylvester needed to push past a few ferns before he could see the doorknob.

“Goodbye, dear!” his mother’s muffled voice came from somewhere upstairs. “Watch the plants!”