The mother returned from what she’d done then to stand above the copy of her son. There was very little about his copy body that betrayed any major difference from its other—in fact, if the mother hadn’t known for sure already her true son was upstairs curled in the new bed the father and the mother had bought him—no more nits yet in the mattress, nothing eating where he slept—if she wasn’t sure for sure the true version of her boy was up there with his sleep eyes spinning in his head—wasn’t he?—if she hadn’t put him there herself—she wasn’t sure that she could tell him from this child here—this child with the same scar along his forearm like the one the son had gotten fallen fainting from a tree—he was not supposed to have been walking yet—he’d been bedridden for so long—trying to reach the sun, he’d explained later. This child here had the same black pockmarks where disease had come into the son’s body, searching his flesh for what it wanted—when the son had stayed alive the doctors seemed more nervous than relieved—how peculiar, they kept saying, it’s against science. This child here had the same blond bowl-cut hair like the son, hair the mother could barely bring herself to snip, every inch of him her precious—such nights she’d dreamed of his insides, swimming deep inside his cells. This child, this boy—he was made of her, and she was made of him.
No, the mother could not bring herself again to do the thing she’d done twice just now already.
No.