BLOOD SON

His foot is bleeding on the front porch. I open the screen door and see him sitting cross-legged, holding his left foot with both hands, thumbs attempting to close a cut just above the heel.

“Go get a towel!” he says.

I shut the screen door, run to the kitchen, snatch a dish towel hanging on the oven handle, run back to the porch. He wraps his foot with it.

“Piece of glass,” he says when I ask him what happened. He’d been gardening in the front yard. 

He stands up and as he begins to hobble inside, his right foot slips on a few drops of blood, smearing them on the smooth concrete of the porch. He makes his way through the black iron gatehouse screen door, I watch it close, hear the metallic click when it shuts.

I look back at the thick drops of blood on the concrete shining underneath the Fresno sun like little cherry tomatoes.

Last Sunday at Grandma Papagni’s while the kids were playing outside before macaroni and meatballs, my cousin said something to me that vaguely made sense to my six-year-old brain.

“You’re not our blood cousin, so it doesn’t matter.”

I think my older cousin Kristin or Skip ran to go tell. There was a lot of shushing and hushing from the adults.

This was right after a county social worker paid a visit to my parent’s house. He sat at the Little Tikes table in my room, in a tiny plastic red chair. He informed me I’d been adopted. I didn’t know what that meant, because I’d been with my parents before I formed conscious memories, so I didn’t even have a concept of what he was talking about. He could have told me I was delivered by a stork like I’d seen on Looney Tunes and I would have shrugged and reached for my Star Wars action figures. To top it off, as he was fumbling his explanation, he broke the little chair he was sitting in, resulting in my laughing hysterically until he bid his embarrassed adieu.

“Do you understand, Nathan?” my mother says.

I understand later, at Grandma Papagni’s.

Sitting cross-legged on the front porch, staring at those small globules of Dad’s blood on the concrete, the decision is clear. I stoop over, close my eyes, then swoop in with my tongue and lick Dad’s foot blood from the porch.

It tastes like salty coins. I squint my eyes tight and swallow. When it’s over, I lean back and sit with my back straight, a satisfied grin creeping across my lips. 

I am now Dad’s blood son, I say to myself.

I stand up, wipe my mouth with the back of my forearm, walk through the gatehouse screen, and shut the front door.