After the trial, I found I couldn’t bear the silence of my own company. I bought a plane ticket and flew from San Francisco to Madison. My mother had parked in the expensive airport garage and was waiting for me at the arrivals gate. Wrapped in a blue quilted coat and fawnskin boots, she tilted forward, searching the crowd. All I had to do was be found.
The Pits
Nina was in a cold sweat now. She ran one way and then the other, and found the third pit, which was just as deep as the second one. She waited and listened before returning to the first pit where Nolan was crouched and shouting the boys’ names. What had happened to them? She wondered if they’d gotten lost in a subterranean maze. She crouched over the pit with Nolan. A warm wind swept over them.
Coyote
Just as she turned out the lights, she saw something move in the distance, and she froze. If the man had climbed out, she and the baby would have to run away. The woman stood in the shadow of the house and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Coyotes were moving down the hills.
With both hands and very slowly, Xin-Ping scooped up the baby, who had on a blue and pink hospital beanie and a white onesie with a small yellow daisy print. She was wrapped in the hospital’s white and turquoise blanket. Todd’s sister had told her to take as many hospital supplies as possible—blankets, beanies, diapers, and those big puffy pads that felt like she’d stuffed a bicycle seat into her underwear.
How Much I Love You
With no one watching, the kid steadies himself and tilts his head back until the water cups his skull. He even lets the gluey water glob his ears closed until he can't hear them talking. He can barely hear the music from the stereo underwater: a scattering of notes stippling the surface of the water like rain and diffusing into thick, cloudy echoes. What was the name of that music?
A last stray firework glitters in the sky, and then the sound reaches us, a loud clap absorbed by the humidity. That man tells me to stand closer to the wall to watch the last performers down below. He leans against me, smelling of sorghum liquor and sweat, and he’s right. I see straggling performers in shining shoes and red costumes following the parade.