The Easter Hat

“Is your mother going to come with your Easter hat?” his kindergarten teacher asked him, almost accusingly.

Joshua shrugged his shoulders. He put his right forefinger up to his mouth and uttered a single cough. He scratched his head and slumped his shoulders, walking to a folding table with premade hats.

The hats were all made of yellow construction paper and were the same. They were big top hats, except the tops were nearly a foot high. Big, pastel-green polka dots were painted all over them.

Joshua grabbed one with a reflex so fast that his teacher didn’t see him. Instantly, he tore the top of the hat from its base and dropped it like a fragmentation bomb.

“Joshua! What are you doing?” she pleaded. “Those are not to be torn up, do you understand? Now, please pick it up; don’t do it again. When you’re finished, grab a new one and put it on. Do you know where your mother is?”

Joshua ignored her. He bent his knees forward and fell on them. He wiped his hands over the construction paper as if ironing them for a special occasion.

“No. Pick it up and throw it in the trash. Come on, Joshua. Put on a hat from the table and put it on. We’re leaving in a few minutes.”

Joshua got off the floor, picked up the paper, and stuffed it in a waste basket by his teacher’s desk. Next, he walked timidly over to the hat table and grabbed a hat. His teacher fussed with a giggling girl, helping her put on a pink bonnet adorned with white satin ribbons. In her periphery, she saw Joshua standing alone with his hat. She walked over to him and placed it on his head.

“There now. It doesn’t look like your mother is ever going to come. It’s okay.” She softly clutched his right hand and led him and the others into the hallway. “Kids, line up in the hallway. Shhhh. Yes, we’re about to enter the auditorium for the parade. Come on, now. Line up and quiet down.”

Once in order, she led the kids to the auditorium just 20 feet away. Joshua couldn’t see anything from behind a taller boy but heard the music floating in the air. He remembered that once they got to the stage, he was supposed to march with his legs like the army men he had seen on television with his dad. But as soon as he entered the door to the stage, he started coughing and stopped suddenly. The boys behind him started cussing him out and told him to move it. Joshua’s hat fell off his head, and he reached down to pick it up. Someone kicked him on his behind, and he wobbled, lost his balance, and fell on his left knee and hand, crushing the hat beneath him. He jerked his head to the left and saw darkened figures in the audience. He hurried backward and took refuge behind a curtain.

A parade of his classmates walked in a circle on stage, and as they passed Joshua, a few of them briefly glanced down at him and continued their march. Joshua peaked around the curtain again.

He saw a door open in the back of the auditorium, letting in a bright light. Then she appeared in the doorway like an apparition. His stepmother. In her hands was his hat. He knew it because his grandmother had spent two days making it while he watched and played nearby.

She measured his head and made it custom-fit from styrofoam and cardboard. She painted it carefully with tempura baby-blue paint and glued a menagerie of little plastic animals to the brim. Because Joshua had told her many times he wanted to be a pilot someday, she bought little toy airplanes and other embellishments at the local art store and, to Joshua's amazement, created on the top what looked like aircraft in the sky.

She glued little candies and chocolates to the outer circumference of the hat, playfully pitching some of the leftovers to him. When she finished the night before the school parade, he tried it on many times, looking in the mirror, uttering gasps and squeals.

His mother stood in the doorway, erect and without facial expression. For a long minute, she stood there until she spun around, and Joshua knew she was about to leave without him.

He didn’t know what he had done wrong again.

The music stopped, and he ran across the stage to his teacher on the other side. He tugged on her arm, but she swatted him away.

“Please, please, please,” he pleaded. “She’s leaving! She’s leaving!”

His teacher continued to clap and smile. And on cue, she walked to the center of the stage with a microphone. The applause from parents and others in the audience died down. “Well, this was marvelous, wasn’t it? These kids are great, but they couldn’t be as great without all of you. Thank you so much for giving these fantastic kids a chance to shine with fabulous hats before Easter Sunday. We will all meet you outside for cake and coffee.”

As people stood up to leave and headed toward the exits, Joshua panically ran through the side doors leading to the main hallway. He opened one of the main doors and looked frantically from left to right. He finally caught sight of her a few yards away. She was headed to her car with the hat.

Joshua instantly held tight to the outside door handle and squeezed. His body did not move. His face flustered red, and his eyes became wet. He blinked rapidly to dry them out. Then, he was nearly knocked over when a barrage of people came rushing out of the doors to find nicely decorated tables with sweet cakes and coffee urns. Joshua’s teacher was ahead of them, stepping onto the sidewalk. She exclaimed loudly to everyone on the entrance steps, “Please, help yourselves. The kids will do an egg hunt while you watch and enjoy!”

Joshua pulled hard at the entrance door and stepped back inside the school lobby. Cutouts of bunnies, eggs, and pink candies adorned every brick wall. There was nobody but him. He walked to the lobby's center and looked straight at the ceiling. He made one vast, asthmatic inhalation. His hands were fisted, and he held them up to his eyes and pressed hard. And like a plane landing haphazardly, he fell to his knees, touched his head to the ground, and finally wept.