Our Missing Hearts (2)

Only that she was a hero, she said.

Bird said nothing. Everyone knew that Sadie’s parents had been deemed unfit to raise her and that’s how she’d ended up with her foster family, and at their school. There were all kinds of stories about them: that even though Sadie’s mother was Black and her father was white they were Chinese sympathizers selling out America. All kinds of stories about Sadie, too: that when the officers came to take her away she’d bitten one and ran screaming back to her parents, and they’d had to cart her off in handcuffs. That this wasn’t even her first foster family, that she’d been replaced more than once because she caused so much trouble. That even after she’d been removed, her parents kept on trying to overturn PACT, like they didn’t care about getting her back; that they’d been arrested and were in jail somewhere. He suspected there were stories about him, too, but he didn’t want to know.

Anyway, Sadie went on, as soon as I’m old enough I’m going back home to Baltimore and find them both.

She was a year older than Bird, even though they were in the same grade, and she never let him forget it. Had to repeat, the parents whispered at pickup, with pity in their voices. Because of her upbringing. But even a new start can’t straighten her out.

How, Bird had asked.

Sadie didn’t answer, and after a minute she let go of the bar and slumped down beside him, a small defiant heap. The next year, just as school ended, Sadie disappeared—and now, in seventh grade, Bird is all alone again.



* * *



? ? ?

It is just past five: his father will be home soon, and if he sees the letter he’ll make Bird burn it. They don’t have any of his mother’s things, not even her clothes. After she’d gone away, his father burned her books in the fireplace, smashed the cell phone she’d left behind, piled everything else in a heap at the curb. Forget about her, he’d said. By morning, people living rough had picked the pile clean. A few weeks later, when they moved to their apartment on campus, they’d left even the bed his parents had shared. Now his father sleeps in a twin, on the lower bunk, beneath Bird.

He should burn the letter himself. It isn’t safe, having anything of hers around. More than this: when he sees his name, his old name, on the envelope, a door inside him creaks open and a draft snakes in. Sometimes when he sees sleeping figures huddled on the sidewalk, he scans them, searching for something familiar. Sometimes he finds it—a polka-dot scarf, a red-flowered shirt, a woolen hat slouching over their eyes—and for a moment, he believes it is her. It is easier if she’s gone forever, if she never comes back.

His father’s key scratches at the keyhole, wriggling its way into the stiff lock.

Bird darts to the bedroom, lifts his blankets, tucks the letter between pillow and case.

He doesn’t remember much about his mother, but he remembers this: she always had a plan. She would not have taken the trouble to find their new address, and the risk of writing him, for no reason. Therefore this letter must mean something. He tells himself this, again and again.



* * *



? ? ?

She’d left them, that was all his father would say.

And then, getting down on his knees to look Bird in the eye: It’s for the best. Forget about her. I’m not going anywhere, that’s all you need to know.

Back then, Bird hadn’t known what she’d done. He only knew that for weeks he’d heard his parents’ muffled voices in the kitchen long after he was supposed to be asleep. Usually it was a soothing murmur that lulled him to sleep in minutes, a sign that all was well. But lately it had been a tug-of-war instead: first his father’s voice, then his mother’s, bracing itself, gritting its teeth.

Even then he’d understood it was better not to ask questions. He’d simply nodded, and let his father, warm and solid, draw him into his arms.

It wasn’t until later that he learned the truth, hurled at him on the playground like a stone to the cheek: Your mom is a traitor. D. J. Pierce, spitting on the ground beside Bird’s sneakers.

Everyone knew his mother was a Person of Asian Origin. Kung-PAOs, some kids called them. This was not news. You could see it in Bird’s face, if you looked: all the parts of him that weren’t quite his father, hints in the tilt of his cheekbones, the shape of his eyes. Being a PAO, the authorities reminded everyone, was not itself a crime. PACT is not about race, the president was always saying, it is about patriotism and mindset.

But your mom started riots, D. J. said. My parents said so. She was a danger to society and they were coming for her and that’s why she ran away.

His father had warned him about this. People will say all kinds of things, he’d told Bird. You just focus on school. You say, we have nothing to do with her. You say, she’s not a part of my life anymore.

He’d said it.

We have nothing to do with her, my dad and me. She’s not a part of my life anymore.

Inside him his heart tightened and creaked. On the blacktop, the wad of D. J.’s spit glistened and frothed.



* * *



? ? ?

By the time his father comes into the apartment, Bird is sitting at the table with his schoolbooks. On a normal day he’d jump up, offer a side-armed hug. Today, still thinking about the letter, he hunches over his homework and avoids his father’s eyes.