Chapter 4 - What the Design Was For
Marcus and I sat down on the bench the mother and her son had left. Ruby climbed up beside me with her corn. She'd been quiet through most of it. Five-year-olds understand more than you'd think and less than you'd hope, often at the same time.
"What happened?" she asked.
"That boy talks with his hands."
She frowned. "Like sign language?"
"Sort of. He uses letters. He touches them to spell what he wants to say."
She looked toward the parking lot. "On his mom?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because his mom made sure he'd always have letters with him, no matter what."
Ruby considered this for about three seconds. "That's smart." Then she went back to her corn.
I looked at Marcus. He gave me a small smile. "She's not wrong."
"No," I said. "She isn't."
Naomi had been listening too. "Did she really tattoo the whole thing just for him?"
"I think so."
"That must've hurt."
"Probably."
"That's a lot of letters."
Marcus laughed quietly. "Would've been a pretty useless keyboard if she'd stopped halfway."
Naomi rolled her eyes. I smiled, but my mind was somewhere else. I kept looking toward the parking lot long after the woman and her son had disappeared, because now I understood the design.
Those letters were big. Bigger than they'd need to be if the point were decoration. Awkwardly big. The squares weren't elegant. No flowers curling around them. No artistic shading. No attempt to make the whole thing subtle. That was exactly why the blonde woman had spotted it from the food line in the first place. It was also exactly why a seven-year-old could actually use it.
The squares had to be large enough for a small hand to hit accurately. The letters had to be clear. The spacing had to work when the person using it was overwhelmed. It had to function in bad light, in a crowd, at a loud festival, when his mother was standing, when he was scared, when he needed to say something fast.
Every supposedly ugly thing about that tattoo solved a real problem. The clumsiness was the love.
I couldn't stop thinking about the two days she'd mentioned. I imagined a four-year-old who'd learned to rely on one specific way of communicating, suddenly losing it. I imagined his mother reaching for that board and realizing it wasn't in the bag. Calling the restaurant. Searching the car. Driving back. Waiting on a replacement.
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And somewhere in those two days, she'd apparently made a decision. Never again. Not if she could help it. So she sat in a chair somewhere and let another person permanently ink a keyboard onto her body. Not because it looked beautiful. Not because she wanted strangers to notice it.
Because her son needed it.
