The boy is already wearing his Halloween gloves, black with figures of hand skeleton on it. It probably glows in the dark too so he can enjoy this macabre sight before he falls asleep. His playmate had just left to get on his bus to his school. And within a few more minutes, the little boy's bus will come too.
They call him Jimmy. You know because his mother would scream out "Jimmy, don't go too far." But today she hasn't screamed out at him or anything yet. She's standing where she always stands every school morning: right in front of the bus stop. She doesn't notice that Jimmy is now trying to find something to occupy himself now that his playmate has left. When he was here, Jimmy would play a game of imagination. You see, the bus stop is in front of this house that has a trench. It's a rather clean trench, so the kids would go in there to play. Of course, Jimmy's Mother is so oblivious of her son's doings that even if the trench were littered with broken bottles from last night's drunks she wouldn't care. She's too busy now.
Today's game was based on a movie Jimmy and his buddy had seen. They didn't intend on watching that movie, but since no one at Jimmy's house cared, they saw scenes from the movie Jimmy's brother was watching at the moment. Jimmy's brother had three things in life at the moment to do besides eating and sleeping: working at a car wash on the other side of town, blasting his raggaeton wherever he went as he peers out to whistle at pretty girls of all races, and watching the most violent movies Hollywood could dish out from its shallow plate of creativity. He was watching some recent movie about some white hero fighting a group of brown skin soldiers from an evil army from some land far away. It didn't matter that Jimmy and the rest of his Hispanic family were brown skin too. Action is action. Jimmy and his buddy was mesmerized by the deft and skills of the hero in sneaking up on his adversaries and cutting their throats or throwing a dagger or something at them. Normally, Jimmy's grandmother would come in and tell Jimmy to stop watching. But today his grandmother is having her hair done. She isn't very old, but she wants one of those puffy styles that attempt to bring youthfulness to those whose hearts are aging.
The hero manages to slaughter all the brown people, but not the leader, who, being also brown, was very tricky and managed to slash an apparently non-fatal wound on the back of the hero. Jimmy was still. He thought that was the end. But of course, we, adults, know that Hollywood couldn't give that as the ending to Jimmy's brother. Needless to say, the hero gets up somehow, fights with bad leader, and brilliantly kills him. He did so by climbing up a wall where he could see the leader and down he jumped on him with his machete.
The brother saw Jimmy watching the end of the scene and got annoyed, knowing that Jimmy wasn't supposed to be watching it, and cursed at Jimmy to tell him to get lost. Jimmy, being the loudest boy in the block, complained and complained as he led his friend out of the dim, depressing living room. But the scene stayed with him through the night and in his sleep.
So the next morning as soon as Jimmy met up with his buddy again to wait for the school bus, they started re-enacting and making up parts where their memories failed them or that they didn't see it. They pretended that the trench where all the fallen leaves and branches from the autumn wind were sitting was like in the movie. Jimmy was the white hero and his equally brown buddy was any of the evil soldiers hunting down Jimmy. They were multiple shootings with fingers and feigned screams of death as the soldiers, one by one, played by the same little brown kid, dropped dead. But unlike the movie, Jimmy and his buddy were shouting, not only to make the scene more interesting, but also to tell each other how to act it out. "No no, you stay over in the corner and pretend to ambush me!" screamed out Jimmy. And when his buddy tried to ambush him, he shot at him immediately with his finger. Another soldier dead. "Now walk along the stairs!" commanded Jimmy, and as soon as his buddy got to the bottom of the stairs and therefore the bottom of the trench, Jimmy, hiding behind the corner, lunged at him and "slit" his throat with an imaginary knife. Jimmy's buddy was not only very compliant to Jimmy's directing, but also a very good actor. His death was as real as a five year old's adaptation of an adult's violent death can make out.
Jimmy's Mother, in the meantime, still didn't notice Jimmy's creative directing. She has been doing this for four months. Normally her mother would be doing this because she had to work. But four months ago she was laid-off. Some blamed it on the economy, but she thought it was the blacks whose unions didn't like a Hispanic woman like her. She hadn't really been trying to find a job, and her son never helped her drive to any job that required driving. He didn't think much of her, his mother; after all, their father left her, and she never showed much attention to her two boys. Her attention for the past four months had been on her phone, which she had bought just before she got fired. It was an amazing phone because it had games on it, and it could have more games too if she was willing to buy them and download them. So she spends her free time, like waiting for the school bus with Jimmy, playing her games. No one called her; she had no friends and all her family except her own mother had forsaken her long ago when she got involved with a man before she was married. Her mother was able to look beyond their Catholic restrictions and helped her as much as possible, but sometimes she wondered if by helping her so much she wasn't poisoning her by spoiling her.
While Jimmy's Mother continued playing her game, trying to get to the next difficulty level, Jimmy was about to pretend smothering another soldier played by the same boy. Then the big, yellow bus arrived. The little evil soldier escaped his doom by running back up to the ground level and saying good bye to Jimmy as he ran into the bus. The whole street was suddenly in a big commotion because the school bus lights were blinking and no traffic could flow by the bus. There was honking and angry shouts from drivers who could not see the cause of the traffic jam.
Then the commotion died as the bus carried away Jimmy's buddy. He wasn't shouting anymore, as there was no one to listen to his director's commands. Jimmy is only five, almost six, and he already wears glasses. No one else in the family has glasses, but Jimmy has big, cheap glasses. He slowly glided one of his hands along the railing that prevents people from falling into the trench. He does this back and forth, from the end of the railing to where his mother is leaning. He wouldn't go so far as touching his mother. He would just turn around and glide his hand on the rail as he walked the other way. And he continued this for a few repetitions. Then he stopped and looked into the distance, and had a thought, which brought him a smile. No one saw that smile because no one cared. Not his mother, and not all the busy and annoyed drivers who have to wait for the traffic light that was regulating the morning rush hour.
Jimmy imagined the bad leader was in the trench. He imagined that the bad leader was sneering, holding his slick machine gun, thinking he had cornered our hero. But Jimmy was smarter, or at least, in his mind, his role was smarter. Jimmy climbed up the railing and looked down at the trench and saw his enemy, the last to kill. He got to the top of the railing very slowly, careful not to alert the enemy below, who was moving slowly along the trench hoping to surprise the hero that he thought was at the end of the trench. The railing is cylindric, so it was difficult for Jimmy to get balance. But his goal was to be able to stand on the top of the railing and jump down to stab the bad guy. He levered his little body up so at least his four limbs were still on the railing. He was smiling more and more now. What a surprise the bad guy would get! With his whole body propped up in the air and all his four limbs holding on the railing, he started raising his right arm. No problem. His smile grew larger. It didn't matter that by now the bad guy probably had made it to the end of the trench. Time had stopped for Jimmy. He now just had to raise his left arm and then he might be able to stand on the railing with his two legs. Just like in the movie!
The cars started honking again, but that didn't bother Jimmy's mother. She is still wearing her hold badge from her previous work place. She lied to them about having lost the badge. She is still wearing it today. It had her name on it, Ines, and her photo taken on that day when she proudly started working there two years ago. She didn't notice that her little son had made it to the top and slipped and fallen into the trench. His scream of agony was coincidentally muffled by the much louder screams of the frustrated cars. She was at a point in the game where she either will advance to the next level or lose the game because she only had one life left and if she could advance to the next level she could gain another life.
She cursed when she died. Jimmy's bus finally arrived at that moment, and she turned to call Jimmy. Jimmy was next to her, his face a little dirtier than when he had left their house, and his knees and right elbow were bruised, but you couldn't see that underneath his cheap clothes. She said to him, "Your bus's here". Jimmy doesn't speak Spanish, but even if he did, no one would hear him. He ascended the yellow bus, and the familiar driver smiled at him and said, "C'mon Jimmy, hurry up, we're running late already." And with all his silenced pain in his little body, Jimmy dragged himself to his seat. Only then, did he start crying, quietly.
