“A toad. Do you think it’s Ichiro?”
Gus had found a toad in the parking lot at school and brought him home in his shirt. He’d lived in the backyard for months, and Koji could do a pretty good imitation of his low bwrrracking call, but nobody had seen or heard him for a while. Now Isa held out the slightly rotting body of a toad that had been run over by a car.
“Isa, put that down. It’s not clean.”
Isa set it on the kitchen table and ran to put his arms around Coral. Gus walked in, dropping his backpack next to the toad.
“Mom, I told him to leave it in his glove.”
“It’s okay, Gus.”
“Do you think it’s Ichiro?”
“No. I don’t.”
“How do you know?” Isa choked out.
“Well, Ichiro’s bigger.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“And he’d be even bigger if he were smashed like that, right, Mom?”
“Gus.”
“Can we bury him?”
Malaya said she would help, and Gus found a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was too small for either boy. Her sons wrapped the toad carefully in it before digging a hole near the plum tree and burying him.
“Can we sing a song?”
“How about ‘Froggy Went A-Courtin’?”
Coral gave Gus the warning eye, but Isa said, “That’s a good song.” And so the four of them sang it. When they finished, Isa said, “Bye, Ichiro’s friend. We liked you.” And Malaya took the little boy’s hand and told him that he had done a really nice thing for the toad. Gus said he had helped too—he had done most of the digging—and then they all went inside to try the sweet rice cakes that Malaya had brought over.
Was that the day they had the conversation about physics? Malaya had surprised Coral, talking to the boys about her high school class.
Gus had started it.
“My teacher said that because of quantum physics, being happy isn’t just good for the person who’s happy, it’s good for everyone else. For the whole universe.”
“Because of quantum physics?” Coral was pleased to think this had caught Gus’s attention.
“Yeah. Everything affects everything else.”
“So being sad makes everyone else sad?” Isa asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“We talked about that in my physics class.” Malaya flipped her long hair to one side. “It has to do with the forces that connect elementary particles, like electrons.”
Gus looked at Malaya, pleased that the older girl knew what he was talking about.
“Yeah, it’s physics. That’s what my teacher said too.”
“I don’t know what physics are,” said Isa.
“It’s a science. It’s the study of atoms and things.”
“Oh.”
“Somebody in my class asked if one sad person made everyone else sadder”—Gus jumped up and sat on the kitchen counter as he spoke—“and we had a whole conversation about how something good might make the whole universe better, and something bad, like war or murder, would make the whole universe worse.”
“I feel sorry for the sad people,” said Isa.
“That’s just what I thought,” said Malaya. “Like it’s not bad enough that they’re already sad, but somehow they make everything worse too?”
Gus frowned. “I don’t think that’s what my teacher said. She just said the thing about happiness.”
Now Malaya wound her hair on top of her head, and stuck in a pencil to hold it in place. “Well, I thought about it a lot—and I decided that it’s really about love. And hate. I think that loving something makes the universe better, and hating something makes it worse. So if someone is sad because they love someone, then they are still making the universe better, because it’s really about love.”
Coral remembered the way Gus had scrunched up his face and shifted in his seat when the older girl said the word love. And she remembered the way her own eyes had filled, and how she’d wanted to say something—something that told Malaya what a lovely thought it was, something that made Gus more comfortable—but she was afraid to try to speak right away, so it was Isa who had replied: “Then our toad helped everyone, because he made me feel sad, and I love him.”
Malaya laughed and lifted Isa high in the air.
“That’s right, Isa monster!”
And Isa had laughed and said, “Put me down,” and they had all taken another piece of biko.
Now Malaya stood up from the rickety folding chair, nearly banging into the police officer behind her.
“I don’t want to sit here.”
“We have to stay here. They might not tell us anything for a while. But it seems really calm. That’s a good sign.”
Malaya looked at her, and Coral waited to see if she would say something, but the girl just sat back down.
They stayed there, quiet, until Tom came over.
“Hi. Malaya Begtang? Is that right?”
Malaya looked at Tom and nodded yes.
“Listen, I know this must be scary for you. Things are going fine, though. We just want to go real slow, make sure there’s nothing happening. We don’t have any indication that anything is, and I’m sorry to scare you like this.”
Malaya’s lip quivered. Instantly, Coral saw her as she had been at four, at seven. She looked tough, but of course she wasn’t.
“This doesn’t look routine, but it is routine in some situations. And we’re always happy when we’ve overreacted. Okay?”
The girl nodded, but did not say anything.
“Just sit tight with Coral here. You couldn’t be in better hands right now.”
Malaya looked at Coral doubtfully, but Coral smiled, and the girl tried to smile in return. She was trembling now, and getting close to tears, so Coral waved Tom away and looked right into Malaya’s eyes.
“It’s going to be okay. I’m right here with you.”
“Do you think my dad’s there?”
“I don’t know, honey. Why do you think he might be?”
“Because I found him. And because he said he would visit me. And I told him where I lived.”
There was a pretty good chance that this was about her dad.
“I really don’t know anything at all. I just saw the police cars, and I came out because I know Tom. And then I saw you.”
“He didn’t seem like a bad man. My dad, I mean.”
“Well, we don’t know anything. Let’s just stay right here, with what we do know.”
“I just wanted to meet my father.”
“I understand that.”
Coral’s voice caught, and she batted back tears that rose in her eyes. Incredible. That she could still feel this pain, after all these years.
“I know how you feel.”
Malaya looked directly at her; she’d caught the change in Coral’s voice. She waited.
“I don’t know who my mother is. I mean, I had a mother, she raised me, but she isn’t my biological mother. And nobody knows who that was. You’re only about the fifth person in the world to know this about me.”
Malaya did not seem exactly surprised.
“Does it bother you? I mean, do you want to know her?”
“Yes. I’ve spent my whole life wanting to know who she was. But there isn’t any way to find her. I’ve tried. Or I did try, for a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. It made Coral want to cry.