Poor Dada had no glue to put her back together again.

He long suspected Mama was, in the kindest way to describe her, a skin bag to hold the lungs and liver inside. The rest of her was a mystery. Her head flying across the room while he was digging into his egg and pepper breakfast only furthered his belief. She was some thing that transported guts and goo from the market to the kitchen and back again, like a dancing milkmaid on the wheel of a German clock. Now he saw she was made of many different parts, and each one was likely to go flying off with enough pressure. The force of having the baby in the middle of their kitchen must have snapped her head loose.

“It’s dusty down here,” her head told him. It had rolled behind the couch and, as such, was a little muffled.

Once or twice, he imagined her neck as one big ‘ol screw where she would fasten a different head each morning. Some of her heads were kinder than others. He liked the one that stood behind him and whispered her wishes for his good day before he went to work, the one who licked the skin of his earlobe. He was not as fond of the one who told him she was tired. He, too, was tired. Everyone was tired. It was not worth mentioning.

“I wish I could see you,” her head said. “Is that the baby crying?”

There should have been more blood. When he accidentally nicked his neck with a letter opener one winter ago he bled all over their wooden floor. The head she wore that day did not like those stains one bit. Her neck must have been drained of all her red, because when he looked down the hole on the top of her torso, he only saw darkness, like a whirl of shadows. It made him nauseous. Or maybe the eggs made him nauseous. She’d cooked them too quickly, and they were a tad runny for his liking.

He did the only thing he could think of to do: he snagged her head from behind the couch, placed her on the mantle and wrapped the baby in furs.

“I still can’t see my family,” said Mama’s head, her voice a little weaker than it was before. “Where did you go?”

Dada tried to feed the baby the rest of his breakfast, but like its mother, the baby did not like eggs. They dribbled down its chin in a yellow spittle. Mama told him, using her helpful voice, which sounded less like a suggestion and more like rusting nails, that babies don’t eat solid foods.

“Put the baby back,” she said, adding that he was doing it wrong when he held the baby up to her eyes. “I miss you both.” He placed the child in her stiff arms and uncovered her left breast, but the baby shook its head so hard Dada feared it, too, would pop off.

“Not there,” Mama said in a whisper. “Give me my family back.”

At a loss, Dada held the baby over the hole where her head should have been. The baby fit into the space of her neck just fine, so Dada turned the baby round and round until it snapped down into the pit of her and was swallowed by the darkness. He leaned over her to try to see where the baby had gone, and once his face was aligned with that dark swirl, Mama’s arms grasped him around the shoulders and lifted him up into her as well. He dropped into those shadows headfirst, screaming all the way. Mama sighed her contentment on the mantle and closed her eyes.