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Sanjit sat back down. He turned back to the book. His hands were shaking.
Peace came in wearing footie pajamas and rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“I forgot Noo Noo,” she said.
“Ah.” Sanjit spotted the doll on the floor, picked it up, and handed it to her. “Hard to sleep without Noo Noo, huh?”
Peace took the doll and cradled it to her. “Is Bowie going to be all right?”
“Well, I hope so,” Sanjit said.
“Are you learning how to fly the helicopter?”
“Sure,” Sanjit said. “Nothing to it. There’s some pedals for your feet. This stick thing called a collective. And another stick called…something else. I forget. But don’t worry.”
“I always worry, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you kind of do.” Sanjit smiled at her. “But that’s okay, because the stuff you worry about almost never happens, does it?”
“No,” Peace admitted. “But the stuff I hope for doesn’t happen, either.”
Sanjit sighed. “Yeah. Well, I’m going to do my best.”
Peace came and hugged him. Then she took her doll and left.
Sanjit returned to the story, something about a firefight with “Charlie.” He skimmed along, trying to glean enough clues to figure out how to fly a helicopter. Off a boat. Next to a cliff.
Loaded with everyone he cared about.
SEVENTEEN
15 HOURS, 59 MINUTES
“MOTHER MARY? CAN I get up and be with you?”
“No, hon. Go back to sleep.”
“But I’m not tired.”
Mary put her hand on the four-year-old’s shoulder. She led him back to the main room. Cots on the floor. Filthy sheets. Not much she could do about that anymore.
Your mother says that you have done enough, Mary.
Mother Mary, they called her. Like she was the Virgin Mary. Kids always professed admiration for her. They admired her all to pieces. Big deal. Not really very helpful as Mary trudged through the daily, nightly, daily, nightly grind.
Sullen “volunteers.” Endless battles between the kids over toys. Older siblings constantly trying to dump their brothers or sisters off on the day care. Scratches, scrapes, sniffles, bloody noses, loose teeth, and ear infections. Kids who just wandered off, like Justin, the latest. And endless, endless series of questions to be answered. A demand for attention that never let up, ever, not even for a second.
Mary kept a calendar. She’d had to make her own, carefully drawing it out on a big piece of butcher paper. She needed big spaces to write endless reminders and notes. Every child’s birthday. When a kid first complained of an ear infection. Reminders to get more cloth for diapers. To get a new broom. Things she needed to tell John or one of the other workers.
She stared at the calendar now. Stared at a note she’d made to give Francis a day off in honor of three months’ worth of great work.
Francis had given himself his own time off.
On the schedule a note from weeks earlier to find “P.” That was code for Prozac. She hadn’t found any Prozac. Dahra Baidoo’s medicine cabinet was just about empty. Dahra had given Mary a couple of different antidepressants, but they were having side effects. Vivid, absurd dreams that left Mary feeling unsettled all day long and made her dread sleep.
She was eating what she was supposed to.
But she had started vomiting again. Not every time. Just some of the time. Sometimes it came to a choice between not eating and allowing herself to stick her finger down her throat. Sometimes she couldn’t control both impulses, so she had to choose one.
