Multicolored pencils. Turquoise safety scissors. Paper in separate piles as the timer ticked down to zero.

The assembly of fourth-graders shuffled around with these tools, cutting and stitching and taping. On the floor lay ripped pieces of cardstock and cotton fluff. Each student worked individually, taking the cotton fluff and willing it into a definable form. Some molded the material into the shape of a heart, its borders bleeding wispy white strands. Others ripped off floating chunks and turned them into clouds. Still others didn’t touch the fluff at all, allowing it to fall onto the linoleum classroom floor, abandoned.

The new student observed the commotion from a distance, unable to join the excitement. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, he was just unable to understand. When the teacher announced that the students were to design a card for the upcoming holiday, he had taken out a pink marker on his desk. 

He approached the other students to see them working hastily. They chattered as they worked—their hands seemed to know what they were doing. 

“He a construction engineer. He travels outside Alabama’ to design big buildings and skyscrapers and museums even.”

“Last year my daddy gave me a skateboard and cash for my birthday. And a BB gun the year before.”

“Y’all know mine works for a big oil company up north.”

“I don’t even have one, what’s it like having one?” His words hung in the air like syrup, coating the paper, the pencils, the hearts constructed out of fluff.

“Everyone’s got an old man.”

“Not me.”

It was true. He didn’t have one. And he couldn’t understand why the classroom had fallen silent, leaking hushed whispers and furtive giggles.

Finally, the boy with dirty-blonde bangs sitting at the desk next to him laughed aloud, “You a momma’s boy. Me, I’m a daddy’s boy, we play football and do crawfish boils. Say, where you from anyway?” 

***

“Mrs. Sawyer, may I ask you a question?”

She glanced up at him from her magazine. Her clothes were wrinkled and her makeup was blurred. He thought she looked tired. 

“Yes?”

“I-I was wondering what the holiday for Sunday was for?” 

“It’s Father’s Day sweetie, make something nice for your daddy, your folks will appreciate it.” 

“What if I don’t have a dad?”

“Everyone’s got a daddy,” she replied with a small but strained smile. “Ask your momma if you don’t believe me. Now you go back to work, you hear?” Her eyes trailed back to the magazine on her desk. 

“Yes ma’am.”

When he walked home from the bus stop that day, the weather felt more humid than usual. Pollen coated the rusted land. The yellow powder blanketed his lawn, as thick as snow. For the first time in his life, he was allergic. Everyone smoked for comfort and so grew the communal cough. 

He saw crawfish surfacing on every front lawn in the neighborhood. He asked his mom what they tasted like when they first moved to Mobile. Mudbugs, she told him. 

***

“Mom, do I have a daddy?” 

His mom opened her eyes from the sofa.

“What did you say?”

“Today in school we were decorating cards for Father’s Day, and I told the teacher I didn’t have a dad, but she said that was impossible because everyone has a dad. I kept telling the kids I didn’t have one and they just laughed at me.”

“Your teacher’s lyin’ to you. Those kids, they ain’t your friends.” His mom was beginning to flesh out her accent. She stood up, a four-foot-something woman wearing a crop top and jeans, a cowhide belt looped around her tiny waist.

“Baby, don’t listen to them. We’re not in Michigan anymore, we’re in the south now. And a daddy’s no good for you or for me.”

“But do I have one?”

“Baby listen to me, listen. I ain’t never gonna lie to you. But you’re in the south now and you gotta toughen up and learn some real truths. Fathers are snakes, comin’ into your life to poison you and leave. Now it’s illegal to shoot ‘em, but no one gonna stop you from shootin’ a snake.”

“Okay.”

“Lemme see the card that you made.” 

His small hands unzipped his backpack and pulled out a half-decorated card. He handed it over to his mother’s upturned palm. 

“Never say the word ‘father’ again in front of me.” Slowly, she ripped the card into paper fragments. White fluff tore apart and floated to the ground, where they scattered like dead flower petals.  

“Yes mommy.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too mom.”

She pulled him in for an embrace. The South, it thaws.