LITMIR.BIZ

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left the house, the door creaked and thudded as it closed. Zuko leaped up to chase after him, dragging the chair on the floor. He ran past the henhouse to catch up, and softened his pace to a walk as he tailed his brother, quiet footsteps on the pine-needle beds. When he came to the top of the hill, the river visible through the trees, grey in the early morning, Ash glanced behind him. “Hey!” he called. “Go home! Go back! You know what happens to you at school!”

      Through the morning, while his mother coughed and slept, Zuko sat alone in the kitchen and constructed complex formations on the table with dry Cheerios. Flowing waves moved like painted steam par­ticles across the table. Air molecules made visible, that sat on the wood. Through morning, the house sank further into quiet as it warmed with the heat of the day. Before the sun peaked directly overhead, Zuko went out to the chicken coop. He took a handful of corn from the sack and flung it on the floor. The birds flurried and flustered, brandished their open wings in their fight for the food. Zuko froze where he stood in the dust, waiting for the frenzy to abate.

      He tried to know his own body by the smell of the dust. He wanted to take the two eggs in the straw to his mother. Although he knew he should be gentle, when he picked up one cold shell, his fingers closed involuntarily around it. The crack, the crunch, the breaking of the shell sent a sensation of pleasure through his body, connecting his fingers to his hands and arms, his limbs to his torso and right up into his head. A slow fizz of ecstatic electricity infused his being.

      He took the next egg, determined to carry it through intact into the house, to place it in the nest of his mother’s slipper, a surprise for when she woke. Yet his fingers seemed to have their own mind, and their call to pressure against the shell pulsed too strong. The fingers squeezed the shell. The egg cracked, crunched, crushed in the palm of his hand. Beyond the satisfaction of the sensation, the slime of raw egg repulsed him, and he panicked. It ran between the digits of his hand and gleamed in the sun. The yolk looped thick and yellow on his skin. A strange nausea crept into the back of his throat. He looked around. There was nowhere to wipe or to wash his hands. His legs rooted him, unmoving, to the floor. The chickens flapped, disturbed. Zuko screamed. His voice assaulted the air as the chooks abandoned their home and moved out into the sun and away from the coop for relief. His sobs of frustration and disgust filled the small space. He longed for his mother to appear in the doorway, to gather him into her arms, to soothe his experience with her soft words, to hold him and contain him in order for his body to remain intact. But Yanela didn’t come.

      Long after his sobs had subsided, the chickens returned with relief at the renewed silence. With only the crickets and other soft insects sounding on the air, still Zuko waited for her. He moved from the coop into the sun and back to the giant shadow contained by the house. The gloom of her room was intensified by the pulled curtains. Her eyes were closed and her head bent at an angle of pain to her neck. Fresh beads of cooling perspiration glistened on her forehead. He lay on the bed beside her, and placed his head on her stomach. He thought he could hear the way the pipes curled inside her, the hollow cavity of the womb from where he had come.

      Later, when Ash was home and before the natural light was gone, Zuko stood out at the back on the bed of pine needles below the mon­strous trees. He picked up the biggest pine cone on the ground, and waited. Once, Ash came outside and Zuko’s heart lifted. He rounded his palms against the spiny fronds of the cone in anticipation. Ash went around the front and returned a minute later with a bucket of water. He went back into the house without noticing the boy.

      The second day, Zuko picked up a smaller cone, and waited again for his brother and his mother. Neither one appeared. When darkness dropped he went into the house and put the cone on the bed where Yanela slept, in a smooth place on the blanket, near her feet. He stood over her head and watched her. He counted the spaces between her breaths. Once, she opened her eyes. Her mouth smiled as she said his name, “Zuko.”

      9.

      The following afternoon, her boots remained empty beside the bed. Sun rushed through the broken window, unfiltered. Ash sat on the bed. The weight of Yanela’s eyes pushed against themselves as she forced them open. “Hello, son.” She smiled.

      “Hello, Mama.”

      “Where’s your brother?”

      “Out the back.”

      “He’ll run off if you leave him alone too long.”

      “No, he won’t. I’ve shut the gate. He can’t get out the yard.”

      She reached out, brushed his knee with her hand. “You know I love you the same as him.”

      “I know, Ma.” Ash pushed her hand away before it reached the side of his face.

      “The same, but different too.” The circles beneath her eyes had deepened to hollow grooves. It was as though a sculptor had entered the room unnoticed, and chiselled her flesh away. “You know that just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he’s got nothing to say.”

      “I know that, Ma.”

      “You know he’s stronger than you too, Ash. In many ways.” She put her head back, closed her eyes. “You’ll look after your brother?”

      “I . . .”

      She put up a hand to prevent him from speaking. “Shhh. Listen for now. Hear me out, okay? You need to get yourselves away from here. There’s too much sickness. I want you two boys to live.”

      “You’ll be okay, Ma. You’re tired from looking after Honey. And Zuko was awake all last night; he must have kept you up. You’ll see, you’ll wake up feeling better tomorrow.”

      “There’s money in the biscuit tin in the kitchen. Not a lot. Enough to keep Zuko in his Cheerios for a week or two.”

      “No, Ma. You’ll need money when you feel well again.”

      “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

      “You’ll get better. You’ll see.”

      “I don’t think so, Ash.”

      “Are your lungs weak?”

      A thin smile flitted across her face, though he’d made no joke.

      “I can go to town, get you a doctor,” he said.

      “And leave your brother alone?”

      “I’ll take him with me.”

      She closed her eyes as she spoke. “Don’t leave me, Ash. I am scared.”

      “You’ll need the money for his education and you’ll need it to look after Zuko for a long while . . .”

      She breathed deeply, a rasping sound. “He hasn’t been to school for two years. He’s already eight years old.”

      Her breath smelled sweet as her body evaporated. A spider’s web in the corner glistened and winked.

      “You’ll look after each other?” she asked.

      “I think so, Ma.” Still, he didn’t believe what she was saying.

      She stayed silent a long time. He thought she was done talking. He was readying to creep out when she spoke again. “Dominic lives in the city.”

      “What?”

      “He’s one of those fancy lawyers. In the city.”

      The stranger’s face appeared, clear as crystal stone, in Ash’s mind. “Why doesn’t he come here any more?” Ash asked.

      “You think you’re a miracle child and he’d give up his swanky life and his three houses and cross his lawyer parents for me and my brood?”

      “Why are you telling me this now?”

      She looked straight at him, through his eyes. “Because I am going to die.”

      The boots on the floor had worked a long time. Ash wondered now if they would ever be filled again. Suddenly he thought of burning them, along with

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