Page 8 of To the Moon and Back
Brady blinked and two more tears slid past his sunglasses and onto her memorial chair. There were only a handful of other memories. Mainly ones from the building that day. He and his mom had done errands together. Brady hadn’t felt good. He’d had a cough, so he’d stayed home from preschool.
They had gone to the bank to pay bills. At least he thought that was why. And then they went to the Murrah Building to see about getting help. That’s what his mom had told him. Brady had long since understood that the help must’ve been financial aid. Housing assistance or food stamps. Something to ease the burden of being a single mom and living with very little income.
Whatever the reason, they were in the building that morning. Brady felt his heart rate speed up. The way it always did at this point in the flashback. They were in line and Brady was playing with the stanchion.
The gray weathered filthy stanchion.
And his mom was saying, “Don’t touch that, Brady boy. You’ll get germs.” And she was looking right into his eyes and he was staring into hers. Her sweet blue eyes. She smelled like minty toothpaste and flowers. The way she always smelled. She smiled at him. The warmest, most wonderful smile. Her blond hair spilling over her shoulders, framing her face. And she had touched his cheek. “We’re almost done here.”
Those were her last words before the bomb exploded.
We’re almost done here.
Brady’s next memory was cold and frightening and painful.
Even still.
The next thing he knew, he was lying in a hospital bed with tubes attached to his arms. His mom’s friend was there. He couldn’t remember her name, but she had dark hair and she was crying. Crying hard. She had her hands over her face.
Brady tried to talk and she must’ve heard him because she jumped up and came to the side of his bed. “Brady . . . can you hear me?”
The room was spinning a little. Brady could still feel the dizziness every April 19 when he allowed himself to go back. He looked at the woman, stared at her and tried to feel steady and strong and brave. “Wh . . . where’s my mommy?”
And the woman cried harder. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Or maybe those were the tears sliding down Brady’s face now. The memory was old and grainy and fainter every year.
That’s when the woman put her hand on his little arm. She smelled like pizza. Nothing like his mother. “Brady . . . I’m so sorry, honey.”
Whatever was she sorry for? Brady couldn’t understand. And why was she crying? Those were the thoughts in his little five-year-old mind. But before he could spend any real time wondering, the woman told him.
His mother was dead.
She rambled on, doing her best to explain what she thought he wanted to know. How a bad guy had parked a big truck near the building and blew it up, and how there had been flying glass and metal and concrete. Which was why his arms had bandages all around them. Brady was almost certain he could remember the woman saying all that.
But the part he was absolutely sure about was what she said next. She told him the reason he didn’t have any cuts on his face or his head was because the very last thing his mother did before she died was cover him.
She protected her little boy. Guarded him at the expense of her own life.
When the bomb hit that Wednesday morning, it ripped the front off the building, leaving a gaping hole and exposing every floor. Brady and his mom hadn’t fallen to the ground along with the mountain of people and debris that collapsed that day. Instead, they were buried under rubble on the fifth floor. Later Brady learned from the paperwork in his mother’s things that a chunk of steel had hit his mom in the head while she lay over Brady.
That was how she died.
The rest of the details were a mix of Brady’s memories and news accounts he’d studied. For years after the bombing he had been obsessed with details about survivors and the monster who did the deed.
At least until five years ago. At that point he’d had enough of the true accounts. He still visited the memorial each year, but otherwise he lived his life. Brady let the memory fade into the cool wind around him. With no family to take him in, his mother’s friend had kept him at her house. But only until the state found his first foster home.
After that, his childhood was more like a court dossier as he was passed from one foster home and social worker to the next, shifting between three elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools until he graduated.
His sophomore year, on the anniversary of the bombing, Brady connected with a couple who had lost their baby in the attack. The little boy was one of nineteen children killed in the daycare center on the second floor of the building. From their first meeting, the woman and her husband had embraced Brady. They would’ve done anything for him. But Brady struggled with one thing.
The husband and wife were Christians.
Brady didn’t hold that against them, exactly. Faith was a personal thing. He just didn’t want to be around it. If God was for him, then why did the bombing happen? What about the good plans God was supposed to have for him? And how come evil was so much a part of this world? None of it made sense. So while he still stayed in touch with the couple, he mostly kept to himself.
When he turned eighteen he started volunteer work with the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Two years later they hired him. Ever since then he’d been doing something for strangers that no one had been able to do for his mother.
Helping people survive tragedies.
Brady used the fabric of his sweatshirt to dust the top of his mother’s memorial chair. The S in Sandra looked grimy. A little spit on his sleeve and he used it to work the dirt free. He stood straight again and studied her name. Yes. That was better.
