Timothy by Allie Fullerton
He sleeps in her arms as she talks to his mother. His hair is almost black and his eyes dark underneath his closed eyelids. His head rests on her chest nestled and perfect, little lips puckered in sleep. This same little boy that would not let go of his mother’s neck earlier. And I want to know the magic word that would let me hold him.
#
I need a summer job. It is a few months before I begin college, and I can no longer escape into a childlike carefree summer filled with beaches, friends, push-pops, days of reading, and sleeping till noon.
But the workforce scares me. It is dark and gray where I want colors. It is the city when I need the country. The anger when I crave the love.
Every job has purpose and value through Christ. I know this and I tell myself this. Yet I cringe at the thought of bagging groceries every day, greeting customers at the door with all the great featured sales, or even sitting at a desk answering phone calls and planning someone else’s schedule. And I am young, wide-eyed, and expectant.
I want to write and create and sing, and care for children. I want to be a mother who is an author, who sings and makes the house look beautiful.
I grudgingly begin searching online for jobs at clothing stores and daycares. I consider working retail, but they want someone strong to lift boxes. I beg God to let me find a job I love.
At church, we get to know the family with the most adorable-looking little boy. His mom is working on her residency and needs a babysitter. And God blesses me with the adorable little boy I so longed to hold.
I go over to his house one day so he can get used to me. All I know is that his name is Timothy, he is shy, about two and a half years old, only speaks Chinese and that I will be babysitting him for my summer job.
#
Timothy sits at his little table eating an apple while I sit with him and read from his children’s Bible. He listens, eyes never wavering from the page, and I wonder what he understands.
He holds out his hands to me.
“What do you mean?” I ask. He just shows me his hands. “You have food. You have your water.” I pick up his water bottle. “Are you all done?” He shakes his head and points to the kitchen and I only stare at him. He points to the kitchen again, then rubs his hands together.
“Oh! Are your hands sticky from the apple? Do you need to wash them?” He smiles and shakes his head yes, and I lift him up to reach the sink.
We figure out how to communicate, he and I. A unique bond of hand motions, laughter, and strange intuition, where words are not needed. Both of us just know.
Timothy slams the door to the hallway and he giggles. I knock. “Can I come in?” He opens it, lets me in, then goes through it again, slamming the door closed and laughing at my horrified face. And we do it again and again and again. Knocking, entering, sneaking away, and laughing.
#
The doorbell rings and he is in my lap. If our guest says hi to him he looks away.
“Say hi,” I urge. Nothing.
Then as soon as the focus is off of him he will watch the visitor. When they leave he’ll look out the window. And then he will leave my lap and continue playing. I find myself hoping my mom will have visitors, wishing for his unique way of telling me he loves me.
But he learns English so quickly. First, he begins to understand us. Then he repeats everything we say and speaks in one-word sentences. I am excited for him, proud of his brilliance, but sad in a way, like not having our wordless bond will change everything.
“I love you,” I say.
“I don’t love,” he says.
“Of course you love me!”
And he smiles.
When Timothy’s mom or dad brings him to our house, he always climbs onto the couch and watches through the window until the car drives away. If my mom, dad, or sister leave during the day, he watches them from his perch on the sofa and they wave and blow kisses. When he leaves at night he hugs every one of us then calls, “Look out the window!”, and one of us has to stand at the door so he can see someone as he drives away.
#
Timothy is at our house on my last day at home, our summer together almost over. The living room has become my closet. All of the clothes and shoes I am taking to college are in piles. Timothy follows us, carrying tags I have cut off of new clothes. Sometimes he pretends they are credit cards. Other times they are tickets and he’ll give us one. Today, he just holds them, and I don’t have time to ask him what he is pretending they are because I leave the next morning. He is content watching us pack and helping by holding the tags and throwing things in the garbage for us, and he doesn’t understand that I’m leaving. That night I have to say goodbye to him, and it is the hardest goodbye I make all week. The one that makes me doubt my decision to leave. I force myself not to cry.
I stand by the door until their car is out of sight.
#
A year of college passes as well as another summer of watching Timothy, and I have to say goodbye again. This time he understands. My mom tells him we’re leaving in the morning.
“How about tomorrow tomorrow?” he says.
He sees the vacuum bags we used last year and asks to help put my clothes in them. But he struggles and the clothes come unfolded. So I ask him to help sort out my wallet. He throws away my old receipts; I take out my library card. Then he hands me something. “Put this in,” he says and gives me his fake Mickey Mouse credit card that was in the junk mail today.
“But it’s your credit card.” He won’t let me give it back to him. So I slip it into a slot. “Here?” And he shakes his head yes and smiles.
Timothy sits on my lap. He stays there for a long time, uncharacteristically still and content as I wish I could stay with him. His hair is almost black and his eyes dark. He is a little taller, a little heavier. He knows so many words in English. When we ask him to teach us Chinese words he just laughs.
This goodbye he understands.
This goodbye, I know all the cute phrases I will never hear and the hugs I will miss.
#
Now Timothy is almost a young man. Tall. Almost taller than me.
I am years past college with a new degree and a new last name.
He makes educational YouTube videos with his photos of birds. He will be a blueberry farmer. Or a lepidopterist, someone who studies butterflies and moths, he tells us.
And there are no magic words that will let me hold him now.
But there are memories cemented in my words, pictures locked away in my heart.
And there are new little hands to hold as babysitting jobs come, this time in pink and purple shirts— daredevil little girls, hair brushing the dirt as they hang from monkey bars and peer over edges, fearless.
Allie Fullerton recently graduated from the Vermont College of Fine Arts with her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her desire is to write good Christian fiction that changes, challenges, and entertains readers as well as shares the truth about the messy world we live in and the gospel that changes lives. Currently, Allie is working on a middle-grade novel in verse. She lives with her husband Jared in Vermont where they enjoy reading and hiking together.