Susan hates airports. She doesn’t like flying for a start and then there are all the people rushing about and the noise; all that  shouting, weeping and cheering and those incomprehensible announcements: sheer chaos. Susan likes things calm, well-managed, orderly. She knows that take off and landing  are the most dangerous parts of flying and airports are full of take offs and landings. One day one of them won’t work properly and she doesn’t want to be around when that happens. Now, of course, she’s got terrorism to worry about as well. With the shadow of the absent towers putting everything in the shade even the pretence of glamour has gone from flying.  

She looks around and takes in the policeman, crisp and creased  with a shiny leather gun holster at his side. A few feet away stands a US marine, eyes attentive, scanning the crowd. He holds his small dark automatic rifle with the casual assurance of the professional. He’s in full camouflage and she can’t help thinking how absurd. Camouflage here should be loud Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts and floppy sandals. She can’t decide if the men with guns make her feel more or less secure. In her mind guns are connected with people getting shot.

That sort of thing doesn’t happen to the people she knows in the places she knows and calls home. But of course she’s still “abroad”: that foreign land where things are supposed to be different and exciting and mysterious and maybe even a little dangerous; where things don’t happen the way you know and expect. She wishes they’d call her flight, begin the process of reeling her in and bringing her safely ashore to the place called home. With an unintended smile she remembers the old playground game where “it” is trying to catch you and “home” is the place where you’re safe and can’t be touched. And she thinks it’s true. That is how she thinks of her house, her street, her neighbourhood and now she wants it even more. She really wants to be home.

 “Mum my feet hurt”  She looks at Robbie, thirteen years worth of awkward, sloppy, disorganised boy. His new San Francisco 49ers tee shirt and LA Lakers baseball cap make him look different. This is his camouflage and it’s perfect for this world. He looks at home in this America which reaches out and engulfs in its easy embrace all who look upon it with wide eyes and open minds. She still doesn’t quite understand how this cheap seduction has awakened such fierce, angry vengefulness in dark corners of the world that are also not home.

She fails to stifle a giggle at his feet encased in large purple blocks, making him look like a cartoon character on the run from Disneyland. This brings a pained look to her son’s eyes. It is not cool for parents to laugh at their children, it is against the established order of things: children may laugh and sneer and goad, parents may not. He communicates all this telepathically in an instant. She tries to subdue her smile which is also prodding her into a warming awareness of love and concern and a gratitude that this strapping manchild is still ,just, her little boy. Only just and not for long, but right now, for all his martial arts, gun-toting movies and hi-tech computer warfare, he still needs her to help and protect him. She is glad and for a minute the crashing planes, and armed soldiers and shadowy terrorists all recede and give her back her place in the world.

“I’m sorry Robbie but you wanted them.” It’s true. He wanted this pantomime footwear more than anything in the world just a couple of days ago and already his magic boots have become a trial to him. Half casual shoe,  half roller skate, transformed from one to the other with just the press of a button. Of course it’s another hollow  sham, another unfulfilled promise: as roller skates they are ponderous, slow  and unmanoeuvrable, and as shoes they have now been proven clompy and uncomfortable. But, for all that, they are heavily enriched with the invisible force which fuels the adolescent world: cool. Now ,for a few weeks anyway, they are irresistible and worth every cent of his mother’s money and all the discomfort they cause.

 “Yeah, but I didn’t want to wear them on the journey.” Injustice and something approaching contempt seep easily into his words.

“Robbie, look at the size of them. They’re huge. We’d never have got them into one of the cases, not without throwing out all my clothes,” she says trying to be reasonable. But his eyes tell her that’s what she should have done. A better mother, a decent mother, would have abandoned her boring old clothes and found safe storage for the precious purple cargo.

“It’s not fair.” In Robbie’s world unfairness is everywhere, like the air. He breathes it in and expels it in his words, his actions his gestures. But there’s always more of it pushing him down, pressing his shoulders into a slouch and his face into a frown and his voice into a mutter. She wants to tell him it won’t always feels like this, and, for a mad moment she is tempted to open her case, here at the check-in counter, and throw away the new dress and the jeans that fitted so well, and everything else and take the skateboots, or bootskates or whatever they are called,  from him, just so she can see him smile and be happy for a moment before the next great injustice lands upon his too-small shoulders. She resists.

“If you want them you’ll have to wear them back,”  she says trying to sound more determined than she feels. He says nothing. If he pushed just a little harder she would probably surrender just for the pleasure of pleasing him and the feeling of satisfying warmth she would get from his temporary gratitude.  They check their cases in almost silently nodding at the pro-forma questions.

“Are these your bags ma’am?”

“Did you pack them yourself?”

“Did anybody give you anything to carry on board for them?”

She’s suddenly frightened by the thought that this inanity is what’s supposed to be protecting her, and her son, and everyone here, from the dark forces: the haters and the killers and the bombers. And it’s so pointless, because if you were one of those men or women bent on destruction and craving death you would just lie and you’d still be allowed on the plane. Obviously, nobody’s ever going to say

   “I’m glad you asked me that. A man gave me a bomb which I intend to detonate at 35,000 feet killing everybody including myself. Obviously, it’s rather a delicate mechanism so he did the packing.” 

The absurd charade which is supposed to reassure her leaves her more alarmed and edgy.

They head for the departures lounge, Robbie slopping along behind, sulky, still hobbled by his fashionable footwear. More security: a metal detector surrounded by a cluster of airport uniforms and police uniforms and, further back, army uniforms. As Susan joins the line, people, get between Robbie and herself. She wants to wait for him  but she’s pushed  by tutting travellers and she allows herself to be swept along. After all, she can wait for Robbie on the other side of the ringing arch.  Maybe this is where they catch the bombers, she thinks. Perhaps it’s a doorway to safety like something in a fantasy movie. Once she’s through she’ll really be on the way home.

     “Put your change, keys and any other metal objects in the tray ma’am.”

She does as she’s told, trying not to think of plastic guns and modern explosives that she’s read about and seen on tv. She holds her breath and walks through: no alarm, she’s made it! 

Her relief is so palpable that she begins to think all the uniforms will notice and think she’s acting suspiciously, so she tries to calm down and only makes herself feel panicky that she can’t. Her heart is thumping, her breath is short, she’s beginning to feel shaky.  Any second now she thinks she’ll feel a hand on her shoulder, or maybe a gun in her ribs and then what?

“Come with me please ma’am. This way.” Only it doesn’t happen like that because the alarm bell is now ringing and she sees to her horror it’s Robbie who’s set if off.

At once she realises it must be those bloody boots that have done it. She sees the puzzled look invading her boy’s face and she turns to help. It’s then that the strong arm does appear, it’s swathed in camouflage, thick and muscled, it’s attached to a marine and it’s barring her way.

“I’m sorry Ma’am this is a secure area you cannot return.” The voice is more or less polite but very clear and very definite.     “But that’s my son. It’s those boots. It’s just a silly mistake.” Her own voice is soft and pleading as she tries to push against the arm and finds it unmoving.

“I’m sorry ma’am you CANNOT return. This is a secure area.”

She’s not listening because now she can see two more marines  pointing guns at Robbie. They say something and he places his hands on is head. They gesture with their surprisingly small, black, deadly weapons and he moves at their instruction. As he turns his face wears a bewildered look. He sees her and yells

“Mum!”  and one of his guards prods him with the gun. Now she’s desperate. 

“He’s just a boy. I’ve got to go to him. I’m his mother. He needs me.”   

“You cannot return Ma’am.” The monolithic marine tries to soften his tone, “ Just routine security. Can’t take chances Ma’am.”

That’s when she flips. She tries to push the arm aside. It doesn’t flinch so she reaches for the marine and starts hitting and shouting

“Robbie! ROOOBBBBIIIEEE!!!!” and as she yells, she’s slapping and punching, and kicking out at the man mountain who doesn’t move and still shows no emotion. She is a woman not given to fierceness or violence but now it comes easily from somewhere deep down  and overpowering. It’s like a hot ball of burning light which has been buried at the centre of her and is now bursting forth, tearing through everything in its way.

She’s lashing out but at who? This man who won’t let her go to her son? Or his uniform and his gun, and all the other uniforms and guns? Or is she lashing out at a world where a boy in silly boots is a threat that must be contained by the guns and uniforms because IT IS possible that just such a boy, or one a little older, from somewhere else, wearing silly boots, wants to get onto a plane and destroy it, and himself and everyone aboard: blow them to pieces, scatter their bones and flesh and blood. She feels the hot radiance coursing through her and bursting from her and she keeps on hitting with one fist and slapping with the other hand. She strikes out with all the power of her small mother’s body wanting to fight back fiercely in defence of her son and all the other sons and daughters and mothers and fathers. She wants the strong, searing light inside her to wash over the guns and uniforms and spread across the face of the earth. She wants it turn the camouflage into Hawaiian shirts and the guns into…something else, anything else.

Now another marine has her arms pinned behind her back and suddenly she has exhausted all that energy and light and she can’t fight anymore. She gathers just enough strength left to call out

“Ro -b-bi-e!!!!!”

before her shoulders slump and she finds herself overtaken by huge, wracking sobs.

Some time later, she is propelled gently along by the men in uniforms and a female chaperone into a plain room with a table and a chair both bolted to the floor. She sits there numb and dumb. They take her passport and they go through her things and all the time they talk. She listens but hears nothing. Finally they reach a conclusion

“…heightened security… terrorist threat… must understand… all checks out…no further action necessary. Have a good day ma’am”

She stares at the desk, blank and exhausted, feeling empty and hopeless until the metal door creaks open on heavy hinges and in walks Robbie. He’s smiling a big, excited little-boy smile. She stands up and puts out her arms and this time no one stops her. He comes easily, eagerly into her embrace and she hugs him tight against her. As if trying to reassure her, he whispers excitedly:

“It was cool Mum, really cool. These marines are real neat dudes. Mum can we, like, live in America, like Dad?”

She hears the borrowed words and constructions with an inward shudder.

     “No Robbie. We’re going home.” Her voice is definite and firm.

When she thinks of home, her neighbourhood, her street, her house; she knows what she has to do. She will take Robbie to his room and gently close the door. Then she must put bars on the window and padlocks on the door. Then she must go to the shops and buy cans of baked beans and tuna and lots of dry pasta, enough to last a siege. When she gets back from shopping, she will lock the door and nail it shut with big, long nails. She must nail planks to the window frames and pull the curtains and then, when she is done, she will play music: something strong and sad and stirring, maybe Bach, and then she will sit down and wait for the world to turn and the light to come back again.