Freddy

                                                                        Freddy

    No one knew there was anything wrong with Freddy.  First time I saw Freddy he was lined up in front of the wall to wall mirror ten minutes early.  Swarms of white uniforms bounced from one side of the dojo to the other but he held his position.  He stood strong.  His legs apart, knees slightly bent, hands in fists and arms locked at his sides. They called it the Horse Stance. I sat towards the back, ear to the gossip from chatty mothers, eyes facing forward, awed into trance by this child’s intensity.  The puzzle safety mats muffled a thud.  I turned in time to see my own daughter bouncing off the trampoline, next in line to thud.  She liked karate but never lined up early, never stood like a statue burning holes through glass walls. 

    The Boys and Girls club was nestled into a corner on the bad side of town, literally the other side of the tracks.  I never let my daughter Mae go alone.  Freddy’s mother Consuelo sent Freddy there every day after school for fifty dollars a month, the cheapest baby sitters in town.  She was short and round with deep brown almond eyes that pleaded for some unknown reason.  Her uniform was an apron, slipped over her head, her hair tied at the back in a bun.  She wore it at attention as if at any moment someone would ask her to cook on the spot.  I knew because my grandmother wore one like it. The only anomaly was her dark gangster glasses.  I thought she might have some sensitivity to light, or a strange affliction which necessitated her remaining in the dark.

    Freddy told me once that he practiced karate in his closet.  Of course I found this strange and asked the reason. He said that in the dark he saw the Kata more clearly.  The Katas were a kind of fighting dance the students learned to progress in belts.  Freddy told me he practiced every night when his dad came home.  I imagined him alone in that closet with a chink of light from under the door. The only source cracking darkness.  Freddy’s breath, the shuffling of legs, and the displacement of wind the only audible sounds.  I was wrong. 

    The smashing of glass, a body thrown against the wall, the crack of bone on bone, his mothers face bathed in blood burst in, disrupting the dark with flashes. From his hiding spot he grew stronger than his nine years.  Freddy said once that his mom told him dad drank so much he’d die soon.  I answered with silence. What could I say? Then he asked me to make a sad face, so I did.  He made a sad face and asked if he looked sad.  I said he did.  He asked me if he needed to practice.  I wondered what he meant, but answered that everyone needed practice.  A couple of weeks later he came in and told me he had practiced in front of his mirror every night.  He made a sad face.  I almost cried.  The next day I opened the paper to that same sad face. 

    A small boy had accidently killed his father while rough housing after dinner. Freddy had kicked him too hard in the throat collapsing his Larynx.  Consuelo had been taking a shower and by the time she came out Freddy sat on the couch watching Bruce Lee movies. Dad was on his back with a face full of blood and a burbling spout creating a crimson pond beside him.  Sensei told the kids once that discipline was doing the right thing even when nobody was looking.  In the picture Consuelo was looking at Freddy.  She looked down at him, afraid to look at the camera because for once everyone was looking.