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“I LOST MY BRIEFCASE with my all of my notes!” Mort cried, bursting through the front door. He quickly closed the door behind him, to keep the cold air out of the house.
His mother looked up, alarmed, as she watched him stamp his feet and shake his shoulders in an attempt to rid his boots and clothes of snow.
“What do you mean you lost your briefcase? How is that possible? It was strapped to your bike when you rode off a few minutes ago. I watched you secure it there myself. And what on earth happened to you? You’re covered in snow.”
Mort was not totally covered in snow, but enough of it had already begun to pool on the carpet where he stood.
“That’s not important, Mother. Not at all important. I must recover my briefcase and notes if I am to pass my final exam tomorrow. I simply must.”
“Calm down, son,” his mother said, approaching him and helping to take off his soaking overcoat. She led him to the small dining room table in the small house they had called home since her husband, Mort’s father, died a decade before. “Now. Tell me what happened,” she said calmly after they’d sat.
Mort told her about having ridden into the middle of a snowball fight.
“Of course, I could see the no-gooders throwing the snow but assumed they would stop to let me pass. Instead, they became a front united against me and I was assaulted by both sides! I ended up upside down in the snow! One fellow even tried to steal my bicycle. Needless to say, I was not about to let that happen, and in my rush to escape I failed to pick up my briefcase.”
“Well, you must go back for it, son!”
“I don’t think I can face them, Mother.” Mort’s voice trembled. “A rougher lot you’ve not seen in these parts. They were brutish!”
“Then I shall go for it myself,” his mother declared.
Of course, Mort protested. But his mother would hear none of it!
They’d come so far, from a place so unlike this, and they knew they had to do better than where they’d come from. Mort understood. He did. But he didn’t remember that place where they’d come from being so cold or so white or so unjust.
“Our future depends on that briefcase, son. Once you’ve sat your final exam, you will be on your way to becoming Britain’s finest physician, and we will be on our way out of this council house. This is our opportunity to rise, and I will not let it be stolen by a group of hooligans.”
His mother was dressing for the outdoors while giving this speech. She punctuated her final statement with a sweep of her scarf around her neck before opening the front door and heading out into the rich cold, slamming the door behind her before her only son could stop her.
An hour passed and, after no sign of her, Mort began to worry.
By the end of the second hour, he decided he better go look for his mother.
He heard them before he saw them. Mort stood well out of range and observed the hooligans still at it. Their screams, shouts and laughter punched the cold, hard air. Snow missiles flew. Then, as the clumps of crystals settled after a particularly violent volley, Mort observed his mother, his briefcase firmly secured under one arm, stoop to scoop snow and throw it in the face of the lawless boy who tried to steal his bicycle before squealing with laughter and scuttling off a safe distance from the frontline.
Mort froze.
