Hushaby…
Jill fell silent. Orsay blinked, a sleepwalker waking. She saw her followers, the children, all so close together now, they seemed almost to meld into one. They had shuffled ever closer to Jill and now pressed against the rock.
But their eyes were not on Jill, or even on Orsay. They were on that angel-decorated sunset and their own mother’s faces.
“Now it’s time,” Nerezza said to Orsay.
“Okay,” Orsay said. “Yes.”
She pressed her hand against the barrier. The electric jolt burned her fingertips. The pain was still stunning, even after so many times. She had to fight the compelling urge to pull back.
But she pressed her hand against the barrier, and the pain fired every nerve in her hand, traveled up her arm, searing, burning.
Orsay closed her eyes.
“It’s…is there…is Mary here?”
A voice gasped.
Orsay opened her tear-filled eyes and saw Mary Terrafino toward the back. Poor Mary, so burdened.
Mary, so terribly thin now. Starvation made so much worse by anorexia.
“Do you mean me?” Mary asked.
Orsay closed her eyes. “Your mother…I see her dreams of you, Mary.” Orsay felt the images wash over her, comforting, disturbing, blessedly distracting from the pain.
“Mary six years old…Your mother misses you… She dreams of when you were little and you were so upset when your little brother got a toy for Christmas that you wanted.”
“The skateboard,” Mary whispered.
“Your mother dreams that you will come to her soon,” Orsay said. “It’s your birthday again, so soon, Mary. So grown up now.
“Your mother says that you have done enough, Mary. Others will take over your work.”
“I can’t…,” Mary said. She sounded stricken. “I can’t leave those kids alone.”
“Your birthday falls on Mother’s Day, Mother Mary,” Orsay whispered, finding her own words strange.
“Yes,” Mary admitted. “How did you-”
“On that day, Mother Mary, you will free your children so that you can be Mary the child again,” Orsay said.
“I can’t leave them behind-”
“You won’t, Mary. As the sun sets, you will lead them with you to freedom,” Orsay whispered. “As the sun sets in a red sky…”
Sanjit had spent the evening watching a movie starring his adoptive father. Fly Boy Too. He’d seen it before. They’d all seen every single one of Todd Chance’s movies. And most of Jennifer Brattle’s movies. Just not the ones with nudity.
But Fly Boy Too was of particular interest for a twelve-second clip that showed an actor-or maybe it was an actual pilot, who could tell-flying a helicopter. In this case he was flying a helicopter while trying to machine-gun John Gage-played by Todd Chance-while Gage leaped from car to car of a speeding freight train.
Sanjit had replayed that same twelve-second clip a hundred times, till his brain was swimming and his eyes were glazed over.
Now, with all the others in bed, Sanjit took the late, late shift with Bowie. Or maybe it was the early, early shift.
He sat down in the deep armchair by Bowie’s bed.
There was a goosenecked floor lamp that arched over his shoulder and shone a small circle of light on the book he opened. It was a war novel. About Vietnam, which was a country next to Thailand, where he’d been born. Evidently there had been a war there a long time ago, and Americans had been in that war. That wasn’t what interested him. What interested him was that they used a lot of helicopters and this particular novel focused on a soldier who flew a helicopter.
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. The author must have done some research, at least. His descriptions sounded good. Sounded like they weren’t just made up.
This was not the way to learn how to fly a helicopter.
Bowie flopped his head angrily to one side, as if he was having a bad dream. Sanjit was close enough to put his hand on Bowie’s forehead. The skin was hot and damp.
He was a good-looking kid, Bowie was, with watery blue eyes and goofy teeth. So pale that sometimes he looked like one of the white marble gods Sanjit had seen in his long-lost childhood.
Those were cool to the touch. Bowie, not.
Leukemia. No, surely not. But it wasn’t a cold or flu, either. This had gone on way too long for it to be the flu. Plus, no one else had gotten sick. So it probably wasn’t that kind of thing. A catching thing.
Sanjit really did not want to have to see this little boy die. He had seen people die. An old beggar man with no legs. A woman who had died in a Bangkok alleyway after having a baby. A man who’d been stabbed by a pimp.
And a boy named Sunan.
Sanjit had taken Sunan under his wing. Sunan’s mother was a prostitute. She’d disappeared one day; no one knew if she was alive or dead. And Sunan had found himself on the streets. He didn’t know much. Sanjit had taught him what he could. How to steal food. How to escape when you were caught stealing food. How to get tourists to give you money for carrying their bags. How to get shop owners to pay you for guiding rich foreign tourists to the shop.
How to survive. But not how to swim.
Sanjit had pulled him out of the Chao Phraya River, too late. He’d taken his eyes off the boy for just a minute. When he turned back…too late. By the time he’d fished him out of the silty water it was too late.
Sanjit sat back down. He turned back to the book. His hands were shaking.
Peace came in wearing footie pajamas and rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“I forgot Noo Noo,” she said.
“Ah.” Sanjit spotted the doll on the floor, picked it up, and handed it to her. “Hard to sleep without Noo Noo, huh?”
Peace took the doll and cradled it to her. “Is Bowie going to be all right?”
“Well, I hope so,” Sanjit said.
“Are you learning how to fly the helicopter?”
“Sure,” Sanjit said. “Nothing to it. There’s some pedals for your feet. This stick thing called a collective. And another stick called…something else. I forget. But don’t worry.”
“I always worry, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you kind of do.” Sanjit smiled at her. “But that’s okay, because the stuff you worry about almost never happens, does it?”
“No,” Peace admitted. “But the stuff I hope for doesn’t happen, either.”
Sanjit sighed. “Yeah. Well, I’m going to do my best.”
Peace came and hugged him. Then she took her doll and left.
Sanjit returned to the story, something about a firefight with “Charlie.” He skimmed along, trying to glean enough clues to figure out how to fly a helicopter. Off a boat. Next to a cliff.
Loaded with everyone he cared about.
SEVENTEEN
“MOTHER MARY? CAN I get up and be with you?”
“No, hon. Go back to sleep.”
“But I’m not tired.”
Mary put her hand on the four-year-old’s shoulder. She led him back to the main room. Cots on the floor. Filthy sheets. Not much she could do about that anymore.
Your mother says that you have done enough, Mary.
Mother Mary, they called her. Like she was the Virgin Mary. Kids always professed admiration for her. They admired her all to pieces. Big deal. Not really very helpful as Mary trudged through the daily, nightly, daily, nightly grind.
Sullen “volunteers.” Endless battles between the kids over toys. Older siblings constantly trying to dump their brothers or sisters off on the day care. Scratches, scrapes, sniffles, bloody noses, loose teeth, and ear infections. Kids who just wandered off, like Justin, the latest. And endless, endless series of questions to be answered. A demand for attention that never let up, ever, not even for a second.
Mary kept a calendar. She’d had to make her own, carefully drawing it out on a big piece of butcher paper. She needed big spaces to write endless reminders and notes. Every child’s birthday. When a kid first complained of an ear infection. Reminders to get more cloth for diapers. To get a new broom. Things she needed to tell John or one of the other workers.