It’s okay, he says, this is fine. And he means it.
They settle on cups of instant noodles, something to warm their hands. The bottle caps, he sees, are all gone.
When the noodles are ready, she slides a steaming cup toward him along with a plastic fork. They are lemon-yellow and intensely salty, and Bird wolfs them down. On the other side of the coffee table, Margaret pauses, forkless, then slurps hers straight from the cup.
How long have you been living here, Bird asks. He fishes up the last dregs of his noodles.
Almost four weeks. Though living isn’t the right word. This is just temporary, while I get things ready.
This only raises more questions for Bird. Ready, he says, ready for what? What are you doing?
Have some milk, she says, filling a mug and nudging it toward him. It builds strong bones.
She fills one for herself and takes a gulp.
Besides, she adds, it won’t keep. No fridge. So drink up.
From the bag she pulls a can, pries up the ring with a fingernail, pops the lid off. Inside, jewels of fruit glisten.
Dessert, she says, setting the can between them, and this gesture, small as it is, warms him: he has always loved canned peaches and she still remembers this. He spears a golden wedge with his fork.
Do you like school, she asks suddenly. Is your teacher nice? Are the other kids kind to you?
Bird shrugs, a one-shoulder twitch, and scoops up a sliver of peach. It is her fault if they’re not, but he does not want to tell her this. They call me Noah, he says instead. Dad told them to.
His mother pauses. She’s barely eaten any of her noodles, and now she sets her cup aside.
Is he happy, she asks.
Her voice is calm and even, as if she’s asked about the weather. Only her hands give her away: her thumbs press so hard against her fingers that the nails have turned white.
Like most children, Bird has seldom considered whether his father is happy or not. Each morning he gets up and goes to work; he tends to Bird’s needs. Yet as Bird thinks about it, there is a melancholy around him, that hush he’d ascribed to the library but maybe—he realizes—is rooted much deeper.
I don’t know, he says. But he takes good care of me.
It feels important to say this, though whether he’s defending his father or reassuring his mother, he isn’t sure.
His mother smiles, a small sad smile. That was one thing I never worried about, she says. Then: Does he still read the dictionary?
Bird laughs. He does, he says. Every night.
She does remember, he thinks, even that tiny thing. It makes her a little less of a stranger.
He doesn’t like to talk about you, Bird admits. He said—he said to pretend you don’t exist.
He expects this to sadden her even more, but instead she nods.
We agreed that was best.
But why, Bird insists, and his mother sighs.
I’m trying to tell you, Bird. I really am. But you need to hear everything, the whole story, to understand. Tomorrow, okay? The rest of it, tomorrow.
As he heads up the stairs, she calls after him.
Do you want me to call you Noah, now? If that’s what everyone else calls you?
One hand on the creaking bannister, he pauses.
No, he says, cheeks suddenly aglow. You can still call me Bird. If you want to.
The next morning, back at the table, she works faster, hands moving quickly, aware time is running out. She begins without preamble. Like plunging into the ocean before she has time to be afraid.
* * *
? ? ?
Two weeks after Bird’s ninth birthday. Over breakfast, Ethan had suddenly paused, stunned, and set his phone before her. Heads bent over the screen, they’d read the headline together: conflict erupts at protest; 6 injured, 1 dead. Below, a photo of a young Black woman—long braids pulled back in a ponytail, glasses, yellow hat. Still standing, eyes still clear and open, mouth still parted in a cry, a millisecond before her mind knows what her body already feels: a red rose of blood just starting to bloom on her chest. Clutched in her hands, a poster: all our missing hearts. And a caption: Protester Marie Johnson, 19, a first-year student at NYU from Philadelphia, was killed by a stray bullet in police response to anti-PACT riots Monday.
The first of many such articles, but they would all use the same photo.
This young woman—Marie—had read Margaret’s book in her dorm room. She was studying developmental psychology, planning to become a pediatrician, and with each news report of a child taken, the last lines of the last poem had come back to her, insistent as an infant’s cry. Nine years after PACT’s passage, there were more and more of them: the few that made the news here and there, framed as stories of negligence and endangerment, the parents portrayed as reckless and careless and callous; but others, too, shrouded in rumor and secrecy and shame.