The Number Taker I hear my children in the next room chattering along with their favorite characters in the videos they loved last week and the week before that. “Numbers with eyes,” my son calls them. Zero through nine, with eyes. It’s important not to mistake them for numbers without eyes. Because I know my children’s hearts in and out of silliness, I can defend this as if it were my own idea, my own need. There’s a narrow man in a white suit extra tall white hat, white shoes white cane he swings whenever his theme song comes on. His name is The Number Taker, but my children call him Ross when they are scared. He’s a creep. He’s a meanie. He steals the numbers from their sealed equations, messes up everyone’s math. He’ll take your two legs and make them one. Five-person family? No, four. No. Three. He’ll give you two hearts and more eyes than room on your face. Turn a single teardrop into a storm. Two lungs winnowed down to one last breath, and zero is the number of words anyone has left to say. When I hated math in school, what I failed to understand is numbers are everything. And if we don’t stop this Man in White that’s exactly what he’ll take. Do I tell my children the world has become something different than it was when we watched this show last week? Or do they already know. They wreck their own magnificent towers. The rain steals their sidewalk art by night. There is no such thing as apocalypse. The Number Taker is only pretend, a guy named Ross with an acting gig. I take the stage as Mom. I deliver my line. We are all going to be okay.
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