Red Coats – David James Duncan 1996

It's a few days before Christmas, downtown Portland. I am three years old. My mother, two brothers, sister and I have come in from the country by bus. We're here to shop and, I guess, meet Santa Claus. But I'm not interested in Santa. I'm interested in survival. The doors of every car, trolley, bus and building in town are extruding humans, most of them traveling at a pace equal to my dead run, all of them bigger, some ten times bigger, than me. The air at my level is so thick with scissoring thighs, swinging purses and jingling trouser pockets that I can't even glance at the window displays. My brother John is seven, and nearly competent to handle this chaos. But Steve is four and incompetent, so John is under orders to hold Steve's hand and walk directly in front of my mother, whose arms and attention are occupied with a purse, four or five shopping bags, a Christmas list and Katherine, my baby sister. That leaves me to bring up the rear—and I am to maintain my position by clinging to my mother's bright red winter coat.

I am fervently clinging. I know that only by obedience will I survive. We've already walked dozens of blocks, entered revolving or swinging or sliding double doors, traversed the aisle mazes of boiling-hot buildings, ridden fang-stepped escalators and airless, fart-filled elevators, only to shoot, sweating and dizzy, back out into the cram-packed cold. As we head for the Meier & Frank building and rendezvous with Santa, the sidewalk is so thick with percussing shoes that I can scarcely see concrete. One misstep by one of the thousand spiked heels and my foot could end up looking like the foot of Our Lord. On a midblock sidewalk Mom escapes a knot of people by angling us over to the edge of the street--and a delivery truck nearly mows us down. At a crosswalk, moments later, she swims us off the curb with the human current, sees the DON'T WALK sign flash, slams into reverse, smacks her red wool bottom into my face, crushes my head into the keys of some fat guy's pockets, changes her mind, hollers "Run!" and I am barely able to catch the salvific red coat and follow it, dazed, back into the current.

The coat is trolling me now, like a half-drowned herring, through a crush of silhouettes along the shadowed side of a building. The people across the street, in contrast, are ablaze with winter sunlight. Despite sensory overload I am fascinated by their brilliance. It fascinates me, too, to see a woman among them in a fiery red coat who looks a lot like my mother. Tightening my grip on my real mother's coat, I see that sunlight mother is even carrying a baby. And right in front of her are two boys dressed a lot like my brothers. Funny. The only thing missing is the boy dressed like me. I tug on Mom's coat, wanting to show her our near-twin family. She feels the tug, turns, gives me a surprised little smile—

and something's happened to her face. It's wrong, wrong! Every piece of it, lips, eyes, nostrils, is different; not ugly, not bad, just hopelessly different. Hoping it's some trick of the shadows, or of makeup, I gasp, "What did you do?"

She just stares down at me, then laughs—a strange, nervous titter—and in a strange voice says, "You're holding my coat."

Of course I am. And I keep holding it. But she's lost the baby, lost my brothers, lost her face. Does she want me to let go so she can lose me now, too? Too scared to confront her violent foreignness, I look for the family I'd wanted to show her. There they are, in the beautiful blazing light. And look. The red-coated mother just noticed me here in the shadows. Noticed me, then gaped, then looked behind her. Now she's pointing me out to her boys. They gape, too. The woman and boys start waving and shouting. The Steve-like one starts jumping. The John-like one starts laughing. Even the baby is waving. And I can't understand them, it's way too noisy, but they're acting as if they know me, they're acting as if they want me. And though I feel it's a betrayal, I suddenly want them, too.

So I drop the red coat. I let it fall, turn toward the sunlit family, bolt right into the street. But when she sees me coming the sunlit mother screams, tires scream, pavement screams, I feel violent hands, engine heat, my body flying backward, the wind of a speeding car – and I'm back in the shadows, in my weird-faced mother's arms. But she is squeezing me now, she is holding me tight. And strange as she still looks, I know she has just saved my life.

I give her a tentative hug, then grab the sleeve of her red coat and hold it, to show her I remember. She smiles an odd smile in response. But she doesn't laugh or titter. She looks scared now—as scared as I was at first. Yet even scared her face is pretty; maybe prettier than before. I don't know what she did with my brothers or baby sister, but I know by the way she's holding me that they must be okay. "Just wait," she tells me in her quiet new voice—and I like the voice, too. "I'll wait with you. Don't worry. They're coming. See?"

Following the line of her long, elegant finger, I see the sunlit mother herding her boys and baby toward the corner crosswalk. But now I don't understand. I love my changed red-coated mother despite her sudden difference. And the whole time she holds me, the whole time we wait, I believe that I'm about to change families.