“Give him the fucking cracker, Kai,” I tell her, throwing back the sheet and climbing out of bed. I stand before her, furious, in my camisole and underpants.
“Ganesha ate the whole world up, and all the people, up, he ate them,” Kai says. She’s lost the rhythm of it. “The rich man was all naked in space, floating, and he said, ‘You see that sun? That sun is my own mango. I could bite it open if I wanted to.’ ”
“That’s not even the same story,” I say, almost yelling now. “Hanuman tries to eat the sun like a mango, not Ganesha!” But she is talking over me.
“So Ganesha bit the sun in half and ate all halves, and still he’s hungry, and he ate Saturn.”
Now she’s just making shit up.
Tomorrow’s clothes are draped over my footboard. I grab the jeans. “Where’s Parvati, huh? She hasn’t even said the world was too rich, and Ganesha already ate it.” I sit on the edge of my single bed just long enough to yank my jeans on. “She didn’t even turn down a bite of the sun. Maybe the sun’s too buttery for her, huh? You skipped that. You’re drunk, and you lost Parvati.”
“Ganesha ate her ass already,” Kai says, and then laughs. A slurry, drunk laugh, while I root under the bed to find my clogs. She takes a fast, mad drag, then talks through smoke. “He ate up his own mother, and the rich guy says, ‘I don’t even care about that sun. Space is fulla planets, I’ll pick me out another.’ ”
I have my clogs on, and I shove past her, heading for the door.
“That’s not how it goes,” I mutter as I stomp out.
“Then Ganesha farted Saturn out, but he just re-ate it,” Kai says. She’s followed me into the den, and I hear her sloshing wine into a glass behind me.
I slam the door and walk off into the darkness. Out in the night, there’s bound to be a boy who’s waiting for me. There is always a boy waiting for me. Lots of them, actually, and all I have to do is choose. And be back by sunrise, so I can leave with William.
Kai is asleep when I get home. Or at least, her door is closed. Inside her room, it stays quiet. She sleeps through my leave-taking. She never got to give Ganesha that bite of fruit and cracker that sated him, that let him sleep. Now, she never will.
She will never say, You didn’t know, or You were just a kid, much less own up to her part in our downfall. I will never say, If you live a life shaped like a loaded gun, your kid is going to come along and shoot it, and then forgive her anyway. She will never get to yell or cry or hit me or beg for mercy.
Like all true stories, my mother’s ends midbeat. It has no moral, and no epilogue, and I don’t believe in reincarnation. Any bird that shits on me or sings outside my window now is only that: a bird.
Time runs in only one direction, and I run with it, driving toward my little sister.
The foster mother, Mrs. Beale, lives on a narrow road clustered with tiny 1950s ranch homes. They are square and evenly placed, like rows of teeth. I look for the house that holds Hana. I am not a coward, but I’d pay my own hourly rate to have Birdwine here to back my play—double that for Julian. He is a people person and a natural smiler. Ye gods and little fishes, how he’s worn me down and won me over. He’s bounced and wept and hugged his way into the middle of my life, until his physical proximity is a pleasure as invisible as Henry’s. He will do the same with Hana, I have little doubt. But not today. Today, I am going alone, into a situation that does not play to my strengths.
Hana’s therapist thinks that this is how we should begin, given that Hana thought she was an only child a week ago. Julian and I can empathize with that; we do not want to overwhelm her. It’s me instead of Julian because I knew the mother she lost. Also, her first decade on the earth looked a lot like my own freewheeling, Kai-centric childhood. Dr. Patel says Hana is open to meeting us. She’s only been with Mrs. Beale for a few months, and she’s been grieving. She’s not deeply embedded where she is.
I am to be warm but not pushy, Dr. Patel told me on the phone. Be polite. Be interested. Don’t initiate physical contact. Engage the kid, and let her come to me.
This is my preferred approach in any case; I’m a cat person. But it’s good to have my instincts confirmed, and it was good for Julian to hear all this. He may yet need an intensive ten-steps-leading-up-to-hugging workshop before we phase him in.
I see the house, number 115, ahead on the right. This redbrick saltine box with black shutters and white trim is the closest thing Hana has to home territory. She has a room here, at any rate. She has a door, and the right to close it behind her. There’s a bright coat of fresh paint working hard to spruce up the sagging porch.