Madeline pulled into the pickup zone at Bindi’s school, lining up with the other mothers and fathers—mostly mothers—and she marveled at the fact of being one of these parents picking up their children. Since she and Bindi hadn’t had his first eight years together, it wasn’t something she took for granted. It took these moments. His arms were full of books again, forcing him to waddle down the main steps. Between his schoolwork, the books he checked out from the library, and the damned encyclopedia set Eddie got him, she was lucky to ever find his head out of a book lately. There were worse problems, to be sure. Still, she worried. Kids could be cruel. He was already adopted from India. Could he afford to be a nerd as well? Maybe she should enroll him in a sport of some kind. Something that got him outdoors and active. He stopped at the base of the steps and was putting the books away. He must have noticed there was no taxi waiting in its usual spot. Madeline had sent Paige to meet potential clients, a commercial job she wasn’t thrilled about. Madeline picking him up would be a surprise. When he heard her honking and saw her waving from the line of cars, his face lit up. She’d been waiting for that all afternoon, she realized. It was easy to doubt that she was doing a good job, doing right by him, especially after the tongue-lashing Eddie had given her the day after his party. She worried Bindi might not be happy, that he felt out of place in his new life. But the look on his face told her their connection was real and that she was clearly doing something right, at least some of the time.
Blondie’s “Call Me” was playing on the radio. She turned it up and was already dancing in her seat. She had to shout over the music to be heard.
“What are you waiting for? Get in.”
He struggled to hoist his bag into the back, then sank into his seat beside her.
“What have you got in that bag? A body?”
“No.” He liked when she joked like this. “My books.”
“Jeez Louise, did you already skip ahead to college?” He smiled. “Why are you out of breath?”
“I ran to the parking lot.”
“Why were you running?”
“I didn’t want to be late.”
“Oh. Well, you made it!” she said and pinched his cheek, then pulled out of line.
She let Bindi put the top down when they stopped, then they zipped along Olympic. She heard Prince say “Dearly beloved” and turned the music up even louder, waving her hands at the open sky. Bindi loved it when she did her car dances and sang along to the radio. They stopped at the dry cleaner on Santa Monica, then she ducked into TCBY to pick up a frozen yogurt. He liked Oreo cookies and M&M’s. She couldn’t resist teasing him when he saw her holding it.
“Not so fast,” she said, then tossed her dry cleaning in the backseat, next to his bag. In the driver’s seat, she ate a spoonful and threw her head back as if it were the best thing ever. “Oh, you don’t want this,” she said, preparing to take another bite. “It’s not very good.”
“I do want it,” he said.
“Are you sure? Wait.” She hovered the spoon in front of her mouth. “Let me just make sure it’s okay.”
“It’s okay!” he squealed, reaching out again. “Please—”
“Two bites is my limit anyway,” she said and handed it over.
“Thank you,” he said.
She started the car but didn’t move. She turned down the radio and watched him eat.
“Is it good?”
“It’s delicious.”
“Good,” she said and put the car in reverse. “You know what today is?”
“What?” he asked, chasing a blue M&M with his spoon.
“It’s the day we celebrate! The lawyer called, and all the paperwork is done. It won’t be long now, Mr. American.”
He was trying to be excited, bless him, but she could see it wasn’t quite computing. For him, it had all been sorted out back in India, no doubt, or perhaps upon arriving in California. For her, too.
The house was empty. And Paige wouldn’t be back after her meeting. Madeline flipped through the mail and pulled out an envelope from Bindi’s school. It was a letter from his principal, which shocked her but also—inappropriately, she realized—gave her a rush as she imagined Bindi misbehaving somehow. In fact, he was not in trouble. The letter was a reminder of a meeting that would be held in a week’s time. It pointed out that parents were encouraged to attend in order to discuss suitable classroom reading materials regarding the subject of AIDS. Because of “the sensitive nature of the topic,” the letter advised parents to consider making arrangements to attend the meeting without their children.
“Do you know anything about this, Bindi?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“A letter from your school.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry—you didn’t do anything wrong. There’s just a meeting for the parents. And a reminder about”—she read to the end and cleared her throat, hoping it might help her accent—“les vacances de février? You have another week off?” He shrugged. “A whole week? Okay, I guess I’ll try to schedule work around it somehow. I don’t know how people do it.”
He stared at her a moment. When she saw he wanted to speak, she thought it might be to venture an answer, and she felt bad about it but also curious what he might come up with.
“May I make some rice?” he asked instead.
“You’re hungry? Already?”
“No, I’m not.”
She was confused, but decided not to probe. There was most likely a message in there she’d learn soon enough. It was often his way to be indirect. When he learned about Watts Towers, for instance. He’d wanted to go, but instead of just asking her to take him, he’d drawn her a picture and made her get it out of him. She’d finally had to sit him down and tell him it was okay to ask for things.
“I think there’s some Uncle Ben’s in the food drawer. Be careful, and don’t forget to turn off the stove when you’re done.”
“I won’t.”
As she read the letter again, the serious tone and subject matter hit Madeline. It would be her job to impart to this little person all the values she’d come to take for granted. The letter was serious. And this responsibility would require careful consideration. He was young and innocent, but what if he also came with preconceived notions from his own mother, or from his old school, or from India, for that matter? What if he’d been taught that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, as the idiot fanatics on the news said it was? How would she counter that? How could she tolerate it?
She should work a little before making dinner. But the house was quiet, aside from Bindi’s rustlings in the kitchen. She moved to her chair in the sunroom. She would close her eyes, just for a bit.
The peel was lying on the counter, its brown spots spreading like a disease. She heard the front door close. Bindi was off for another day of school. Her eye moved now to the knife, still coated in peanut butter, the honey lid next to the jar. She ran to the front door, but the taxi had already left. She got in her car and chased after it. Up ahead, it pulled into the emergency lane at the hospital. A nurse had lifted Bindi from the taxi and was carrying him inside. Paige was crying hysterically, saying he couldn’t breathe. Madeline followed the nurse into a hospital room. Her mother was lying on the bed in front of her, bloated and pale, asking for Madeline’s help. The nurse took Madeline by the arm, guiding her deeper into the room. Her mother called after her again. Madeline pulled back the curtain. There he was. The skin of his skull had sunk and constricted around the dark circles that stained his eye sockets, like bruises, making his big brown eyes appear dim and small. The nurse was saying he’d gone into anaphylactic shock. Did he take any medicine that morning? Had he eaten something? Did he have allergies? She knew he did. So how did this happen? “Bananas,” she said. The doctor and nurses struggled to revive him. Then she sat by his bed and watched his tiny body, already frail, dry up even more. She begged them to do something, anything. “Why is this happening? Why doesn’t he improve?” But the doctor shook his head. Eddie shook his head. Even Paige—Simonetta had come, too—they were all shaking their heads at her. It was too late to do anything. Just like that, he was dying on a hospital bed right before her eyes. “But I won’t forget ever again.” She promised. She begged. They shook their heads. Then two more doctors entered. They spoke to Eddie, ignoring her. “The virus may have come from the mother,” said one. “It’s a miracle he lasted this long,” added the second. And when she turned back to Bindi, she heard the steady beep, and she saw that life had already left his body behind. “It was your own damn fault.” Who said that? She turned, but there was no one there. They’d all gone. The voice spoke again. “What were you thinking?” It was coming from the other bed. Madeline walked toward the voice as the beep grew steadily louder. She covered her ears, but it made no difference. She couldn’t breathe. She awoke, gasping for air and still crying, half asleep. She sat up and listened for Bindi. Everything was quiet. The pot was there. The stove was off. The kitchen was empty. She tried to tell herself it was a dream, an awful dream, but it didn’t help.
He was outside on the grass. He’d cut a leaf from the heliconia and placed it on the ground. She panicked. Was it in the same family as banana plants? The leaves were similar. She wanted to rush to him and make him wash his hands, but what was he doing? He placed a ball of rice onto the leaf, alongside two others, then stepped away. He clapped once. Then again. And a third time. It appeared to be a prayer or ritual of some sort, but she’d never seen him do this or anything like it before, and, after her dream, the sight disturbed her.
“Bindi, sweetie?” The sliding door stuck, and she left it open. “What are you doing?”
“Pind daan,” he said, as if that meant anything. He seemed disappointed, his head hung low.
“I don’t understand, Bindi. What does that mean?”
“I don’t think it worked. I should have done it yesterday.”
She approached and took his hand, leading him away from the leaf. They shared the center section of a chaise longue. She couldn’t make sense of anything he’d said, and she questioned if she was still dreaming.
“What didn’t work? What are you trying to do here? Help me understand.”
“Yesterday was the sixteenth day. I counted earlier, when we were in the car, and you asked if I knew what day it was. I remembered on the sixteenth day we had to do pind daan, and I clapped three times and the birds came.”
“Sixteenth day of what, sweetie?” she said, but suddenly she understood. “Oh, you mean since my mother died.” He nodded. Was Bindi trying to set her mother free from purgatory or whatever the belief was? She wrapped her arms around him. “Why don’t you think it worked?”
“No crows came when I clapped.”
“I see.” Feeling him so close, safe and in her arms, she finally felt able to breathe. “Well, shall we try it again, maybe a little louder and together this time?”
“But we’re late and it might not work in California,” he said.
“Well, it’s worth a shot. Will you show me how?”
They returned to the grassy ceremonial site. Madeline put her hands out as he had and began to count to three, and, watching each other, they clapped three times. A small bird alighted on the fence. She pointed it out, and he nodded. It flew away, and she shrugged.
“Maybe they don’t know we’re here,” he suggested.
“Could be. Or they’re shy.”
“Crows aren’t shy,” he said.
She didn’t even have time to say he was right about that because one swooped down and stared them off. When they’d backed away a satisfactory distance, the black bird plucked a rice ball until it broke apart, the grains scattering over the leaf.
Later, when they were waiting for a pizza to arrive—she was still too frazzled to cook—she called Eddie and told him what happened.
“Well,” he said, not at all impressed, “birds do like rice, and there are an awful lot of crows around LA.”
Maybe he was right, or maybe he was still angry at her. In any case, she’d choose to think of the event as a minor miracle, the day Bindi set their mother’s spirit free. She took the phone in her office and closed the door behind her so she could mention the nightmare she’d had privately. Just thinking about it brought back the sound of the machine flatlining, and she struggled not to cry. If she’d been incoherent in recounting the dream, Eddie still found a way to understand; she could hear it in his voice when he said, “I see.” She knew she had to continue, to say the words aloud. She had to admit that in her haste and determination to adopt Bindi rather than one of the other children who were officially up for adoption, she had not obtained a health certificate for him. When Eddie remained quiet, she spoke for him, saying she knew she was blowing a bad dream way out of proportion, then she mentioned the letter from his school, which had certainly played its part, but the thought of anything happening was more than she could bear.
“But what about his school? You must have had to show immunization records.”
“He didn’t have any,” she said. “So we got him all the shots he required, but I didn’t think to get other blood work.”
“And he’s had a physical and all that?”
“I brought him to my nutritionist. She said he was in fine health. A little short for his age.”
“That’s okay, that’s fine,” he said gently. “But you should probably take him to a proper pediatrician as well. And you’re smart to think about having his full blood work done.”
She felt the constriction in her throat again, that feeling of not being able to breathe.
“Oh, Eddie. I don’t even know how his mother died.”
“Did you not ask?” He said it without judgment, but the words stung. “What about his school in India? Or his aunt in London?”
What was he talking about? And why was he suddenly taking that tone? She felt she both knew exactly and didn’t have a clue what he was saying.
“His what?”
“You didn’t know, Maddy? Honestly?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Why did it feel like a lie? Silence. Please let him stay silent. Whatever point he was so intent on making, she would deal with it. But please not right now.
“I’m sure if you just explain the situation to your doctor’s office, they’ll know what tests to run, perhaps even rule out some potential health threats and put us that much more at ease.”
She was so grateful he’d said “us.”
“Thanks, Eddie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You know, Maddy, I’ve been thinking. A lot. And this just makes me feel more resolved. We need to contact his family in London.” The words echoed back to Mr. Channar’s office. “I told you I’m going there.” The nape of her neck tingled with fear. What had he been planning? “It’s not the only reason, but I do want to try to find his family while I’m there. They need to know where he is. And we need to be made aware of anything there is to know, for his sake. You see that, right?” She saw nothing clearly. “Madeline?”