When I walked into the house the phone was ringing. I picked it up in the kitchen.

It was Mom.

“Joey,” she whispered. “Joey, is that you?”

Just from her voice I could tell she wasn’t on her way back home.

“Yes, Mom,” I replied. “It’s me.” I reached up into a kitchen cabinet and removed a patch.

“Joey, is it you? Really?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Really.”

“Good,” she said, then her voice dropped down real low. “Joey, how is the baby?”

“Fine,” I said. “Really.”

“Do you see him?” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“The baby,” she replied. “Can you see him with your eyes?”

I looked out the kitchen window. Olivia had adjusted her hopeful Statue of Liberty pose. She had one arm up like a tree branch and the other wrapped around Carter Junior, who was happily settled under her arm with his head on her shoulder.

“Yes, Mom,” I replied. “He’s fine.”

“Well, keep an eye on him at all times,” she said. “Because he was just here, Joey. Your dad. And he wants the baby. He thought Carter Junior was with me and he dressed up in a disguise as a doctor and came into my room when I was sleeping. He came to steal Carter Junior but the nurse told him that my baby is being cared for at home. He’s after him, Joey. Keep an eye out and don’t let that man in the house.”

“If you were sleeping, how did you know it was him?” I asked, because she had been making up a lot of stuff.

“Because the nurse said the man had the face of a monster,” she whispered. “Frankenstein’s monster. So it has to be your dad because of what he did to his face, so don’t let him in the house whatever you do.”

After Dad’s bad face surgery, he could look like anything. “I won’t let him near Carter Junior,” I said, still looking out the window. Carter Junior was tightly clamped under Olivia’s arm.

“Don’t open the door for anyone,” she warned me. “Promise.”

“Nobody but Mr. Fong,” I said, and changed the subject. “Mom, when can I come visit you?” I asked. “I miss you. And Carter Junior misses you.”

“You can’t,” she replied. “You can’t leave the house. He’ll be waiting for you. He’ll sneak up on you like a monster and snatch the baby.”

“Will he steal me?” I asked, and the question was so odd inside me because half of me was scared of being stolen and the other half wanted to be stolen—stolen by my own dad who wanted me too.

“I don’t think he’ll take you,” she said. “He just wants Carter Junior.”

“Because he’s not broken like I am,” I said. “Like you said I was.”

“I was sick when I said that,” she replied.

“But you weren’t wrong,” I said. “I am broken, because you know what I’m doing now? I’m putting on a new med patch, which you hid on me. I have to take meds every morning. That’s like cheating at being okay. Like faking that I’m as good as new when really I’m like something broken, like a boy made out of glass that you step on then glue back together but he’s still worthless. I’m not okay. I’m a mess.”

I couldn’t slap my new patch on fast enough. I could feel myself getting all worked up and my words were racing way out in front of my brain and even though I was standing still the thoughts were spinning in my head so fast I was dizzy like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl and I was thinking that I was saying angry stuff like Olivia did and I didn’t like it in her and now I didn’t like it in my own self. Just then a single roach ran by and I got so angry I slapped it as hard as I could. I could feel its back cover crack and its guts splat out against the stinging palm of my hand. I looked around to see if I could find another one. I felt like waking them all up in their little Roach Motel beds and then rubbing them all out like a roach-killing gangster.

“Joey,” Mom said quietly as I rubbed my hand on the back of my pants after almost licking it. “Are you okay? Really okay? And Carter Junior? Is he okay?”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, but my heart was racing. “I just got a little carried away but I’m okay now. Really. And Carter Junior is okay. I’m just sorry I said what I said, but I’m over it. Please don’t feel bad.”

“Be careful,” she said. “I have to go.” In the background I could hear a nurse or somebody calling her name.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, and I could hear the genuine yes in her voice, as if she believed in what she was saying.

“Well, be pawzzz-i-tive,” I said in a wide-eyed way.

“We’ll make this work,” she said quickly. “The doctor said it’s good for me to rest and talk my way through the bad stuff. And guess what? I’m on meds too!”

“When are you coming back?” I asked.

“I’m working on it,” she said quickly. “Gotta run.”

Then she was gone. It was like someone had taken the phone out of her hand and hung up on me. I tried to imagine what might’ve happened. I could only imagine a picture of her walking down a long hospital hallway. She seemed in the middle of nowhere. Or was it halfway to home? I could feel her coming and going at the same time.

I looked out the window to make sure that someone hadn’t taken Carter Junior out of Olivia’s grip. But the baby was still there. And then he had company.

As Olivia kept her one-armed pose as the Statue of Liberty for Blind Girls a sparrow landed on her head and began to peck at the pizza crumbs. Then another dropped down next to it. And another, and in a few seconds her head was covered with a crown of frisky sparrows all nipping at the crumbs in her hair.

I could see it, but Olivia could feel it and her beaming face showed it. She smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face and the birds flapped their wings and danced on their springy legs and when they finished getting every crumb they took flight and circled around her in a spiral up above the trees and then higher like a spraying fountain of birds and as they flew even higher I closed my eyes and had an oracle’s vision. I could see that the birds had plucked and plucked at Olivia’s head until they plucked that black box right out of her mind and then they flew into the air as high as the clouds and let it drop down in front of her and smash open and all her hopes and dreams were set free, and all the flames and anger turned into ashes and blew away. I could only hope I was seeing what she was feeling.

When I walked outside and stood next to her she was still smiling. It was almost as big a smile as the first time she had kissed me. But that only happened once.

“Did you see them?” she asked excitedly.

“Yes,” I said, “it was great.”

“Did they make a nest?” she asked.

“They left a note behind,” I said, and pretended to pluck it out of her hair. “It says, ‘Will lay eggs next year and start a family.’”

“You goofball,” she said, beaming.

“I wish I had a camera because then I could show you how happy you looked when they were on your head.” And then the moment I said that I cringed because I had done it again. “I’m sorry,” I quickly said, and flinched because I expected to get a swat from her stick. “I was being stupid about you seeing a picture.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve been mean because I really want to be nicer. And it’s special times like this when the birds aren’t afraid of me and I have a sleeping baby in my arms that I become so happy I forget that I can’t see.”

“That’s funny,” I said, “because when I’m really happy and close my eyes I forget that I can see.”

“You don’t have to see to feel happiness,” she said. “When I hold this baby in my arms I don’t see that black box. I just feel him and I can hold him to my ear and hear his heart beat. I can smell him and kiss him and put his little fingers in my mouth. All I feel for this little Pigza is hope and love and happiness, and if you put all those feelings together it is like I have a bouquet of flowers in my heart that seem so real I can hold them in my hand and sniff them and smell their perfume.” She held Carter Junior up to her nose and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “When you are blind the heart sees the truth,” she said, and looked up toward the top of our tree where the birds had cascaded down and regathered.

Then I remembered something that Mrs. Fabian had said in class. “Did you know that the most famous Greek oracles were blind? The best one was named Tiresias who the goddess Athena blinded because he saw her bathing naked, but then she felt bad for blinding him and gave him the power to understand the voices of the birds—and Athena was the one that gave him a blind person’s stick.”

She didn’t say anything to me. Her ear was tilted toward the tree and she was listening to what the birds were saying. They must have been telling jokes because she was laughing.