Life without Giovanni

Even when it comes, sleep brings no relief to Daisy Colon.

"Last night I dreamed somebody tied me to the bed, and I couldn't get free," she says. "The time was flying. The sun was going up and down, up and down, up and down. I was trying to call my mom, but all I could make was this noise."

She is helpless during her waking hours, too.

Five weeks ago today, Colon went to pick up her son Giovanni Gonzalez after a weekend at his father Ernesto's place in Lynn. They weren't there. She waited for them for hours, then called police. They found Ernesto, but there was no sign of Giovanni. The father denied having seen his son at all that weekend.

Desperate, incensed, Daisy confronted Ernesto at the police station. She demanded to know where her son was. Offered not to press charges. Begged him.

"You have him," he kept saying. "You have him."

And to this day, even after being charged with child endangerment and jailed on $500,000 bail, Ernesto has nothing more to say about the 5-year-old with the wide smile and the Spiderman obsession.

So Daisy Colon drags herself through the days, separated from her beloved child, frustrated, empty.

She forces herself to eat once a day. She chain-smokes Newports on her East Boston stoop. She hugs her daughter Angie, not yet 2, affecting cheeriness for her sake. She stays out of her son's room, where all of his toys are in a box in a corner because she can't bear to look at them.

She plays the same gospel song over and over in her car on the way to see the Essex County DA: "My soul magnifies the Lord. You're my strength. You're my shield." She closes her eyes at stoplights to take in the words. God has a reason for putting her through this, she says.

Every day, every couple of hours, she calls the DA and the Lynn police to ask if there's anything new.

There is nothing new.

Because Ernesto Gonzalez, sitting in his cell, says nothing.

"Do you think he might read this in prison?" Daisy asks. "If he's reading this, I want to say something that will catch his attention."

After 35 days, what could catch his attention?

She pauses, searching.

Finally, she settles on this: "You wanted to hurt me, and you did. It's killing me inside. But it's Giovanni's future, and he needs to show up soon. If you know where he is or if somebody has him, just put him somewhere public - a hospital, a post office, a police station, a mall - anywhere that he can say his name and where he lives."

Her heart tells her Giovanni is alive. Even when police found a blood-stained mop at Ernesto's place, Daisy refused to believe her son had been hurt. Investigators found that the blood was not Giovanni's.

"My mind has a lot of those thoughts, but my heart is straight on one thing," she says. "He's OK."

Still, he has missed out on the start of kindergarten at the Samuel Adams School. He must miss his precious Superman suit with the padded chest muscles. He must be asking questions.

As police follow a host of so-far fruitless leads, Ernesto seems ready to stay right where he is - saying nothing, waiting everybody out. He hasn't sought a bail reduction. He seems utterly disconnected, not even bothering to use all of his telephone privileges.

They can't hold him forever. He has a court date in November to answer the charges. Even if convicted, he faces a maximum of 2 1/2 years in a house of correction.

Maybe he's figuring 2 1/2 years isn't that long to endure, if it means getting away with whatever it is he may have done.

But every minute of Giovanni's life is precious. And for Daisy, every minute without him is torture.

The minutes pile up by the thousand, and the sun goes up and down, up and down.

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at Abraham@globe.com