Chapter Text
The child, male, of Asian descent, and appearing between three to five years old, is mute.
He exhibits minimal distress, even when standing from his seat in Fanny’s patrol car and staring bug-eyed out the windshield toward the hellscape from which she’d rescued him.
The boy does not react. Not a protest, not a cry, not even a peep.
Fanny boasts a one-bedroom townhome, modest in size and in looks. The moment Fanny closes them inside, the boy glues himself to the front door, back pressed into the wood and his head down.
She spends the better part of six minutes kneeling, then sitting, before him and attempting to coax him away from the door. Then, it dawns on her what he is staring at— downward, on her chest, directly at her badge.
She removes the top half of her uniform to reveal an unflattering and wrinkled white tee shirt underneath.
“There. I’m off duty.”
Only then does the boy look up at her face, though not at her eyes.
“Do you think you can tell me your name now?”
His first response to her is a curt shake of his head. At least she knows he can hear and understand her.
“That’s okay. Let’s get you washed up.”
On their way to the bathroom, the boy keeps a good deal of distance between them.
She wouldn’t think twice about it, if not for his… fear? Resentment? Fascination?— with her badge. He appears old enough to understand that he shouldn’t talk to strangers. However, she suspects, and fears, that he understands much more, dangerously more, than just Stranger Danger.
The boy rolls up his soot-caked sleeves and reaches for the faucet.
Even on his tip-toes, he is too short to reach the handle.
Too small to wash his own hands.
Bounding at and clawing into Fanny’s mind’s eye is an image of the boy pinned into the earth, his tiny torso, encasing tiny ribs, tiny lungs, a tiny heart, crushed and ground to even tinier bits by a boulder, squeezing the life out of him, all the while he knows he is dying, and he is as afraid as he is in pain.
Fanny forces a deep breath through her nose, willing her pounding heart to slow.
She is home, providing shelter for this boy in her home, far away from the border,
but a chunk of the mountain sits firm on her chest.
She bends and reaches for the boy’s waist so she can lift him. He glares and steps backward, narrowly avoiding her hands.
“I’m just gonna hold you up.”
The boy scowls at her.
“Buddy, I don’t have a step stool or anything.”
Seemingly satisfied with her explanation, he instead climbs up onto the rim of the bathtub and leaps onto the counter.
“That works.”
The boy puts his glasses behind the faucet, runs the water, and splashes his face.
“Mind if I clean your glasses?”
He reaches and covers them, his fingers arched like possessive claws, and glares at her.
“Got it.” She raises her hands in surrender. “Got it.”
He averts his glare. When he catches himself in her mirror, he doesn’t seem fazed by the residue on his face and in his hair.
“Soap too,” she tells him, surprised when he complies without skepticism.
The soot and the dirt on his hands, face, and neck turn the water an almost opaque shade of black.
It makes Fanny’s hair stand on end, watching the child wash off hell and send it down the drain.
Nearly cleared of the grime, he hops off of the sink. He still needs a bath, to wash his hair and so she can have a lookover of his physical condition. However, this will suffice for now.
She settles him into the dining room with a microwaved pizza pocket and a glass of milk. He lights up like a Christmas tree. Within seconds, he’s gulped down half the glass and devoured a third of the pizza pocket.
Fanny sits across from him, and, like before, he seems to size her up with his eyes.
“Can you tell me your parents’ names?”
The boy responds with a scowl and pushes away his plate.
“We don’t have to talk about anything you’re not comfortable with. But I’d really like to find your parents and get you home safe to them.”
The boy turns up his nose and crosses his arms.
“Are your parents nice to you?” she asks, rubbed the wrong way by his being mute and the way he eats as though he hasn’t eaten in weeks.
She’s amused, relieved, and a bit skeptical herself, when he uncrosses his arms just to nod emphatically with his eyebrows creased, as if to say, are you crazy, woman?!
“Good,” she replies. “Good. I’m glad. So you can try and help me figure out where to find them then.”
The boy takes his scowl off of her and instead fixes his attention to the milk glass.
“Were your parents at the border too?”
His eyes start to wander, meandering the living room behind Fanny, until they abruptly land on one spot and widen.
Without turning around, Fanny knows exactly what’s piqued his attention.
“Did a grown-up take you to the border?”
He glances back at her, polishing his face off with false innocence, when the tips of his fingers peek up from behind his edge of the table. He thinks she doesn’t see them, how they creep ever closer to the milk glass.
“No one’s in trouble, buddy. I just want to understand how you got mixed up in all that.”
Crash! In one swift motion, the milk glass is on the floor in pieces.
The boy gawks down at the mess. He keeps his head tilted downward, toward the white puddle with bits of glass shimmering through, while he looks to her with raised eyebrows.
“It’s okay,” Fanny plays along. “Don’t move, just sit tight while I clean it up.”
The moment her foot meets the hallway carpet, she hears his chair scrape the floor.
Towel in hand, she looks over to the end table next to the front door, where her telephone set normally resides.
The end table is bare. The telephone cord runs behind the couch now.
Fanny cleans the mess, listening for the boy and his success with his hyjink. After the puddle and the shards are all wiped and swept away, the boy is still behind the couch.
He’s not speaking, but she’s heard him pick up and hang up the phone about twenty times.
Sure to keep her steps light and slow, Fanny approaches his hiding spot.
She enters his vision the moment he enters hers. With bared teeth, he scoots backward and wraps his arm around the telephone set.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “It’s all yours. Do you need help calling someone?”
She hears a rattle from his throat, like he’s trying to growl at her but his voice stays behind. Still hunched over it defensively, he picks up the handset once more and presses it to his ear. The pointer finger of his other hand hovers over the buttons. He pushes two of them— the three and the five.
After he studies the buttons, his breaths pick up, and that same rattle comes from his throat, though he’s not trying to be threatening this time. He makes something like a fist, but with his finger tips flat against his palm instead of curled in. He strikes himself two times just above his temple, and then takes to pressing a flat hand over the front of his hair, slowly and repeatedly as if soothing himself.
Can’t remember? she resists asking.
He slams the handpiece back onto the hook and pulls his knees up to his chest. He turns his head from her and fixes his tear-filled eyes on the wall, continuing to smooth his hair over his forehead.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, buddy. Look, if you remember it, the phone is always right over there. And if you don’t, even if you never ever ever remember it, I’m going to keep looking for them. I won’t stop until I find them. I promise.”
The boy sniffles.
Then, stirring up dread inside of Fanny, the boy shakes his head before resigning to rocking back and forth.
What does that mean?
Does he think she won’t find them?
…did he see something?
“I’ll never stop looking for ‘em. But until that happens, you can sleep here. And I’ll take extra good care of you. For right now, you finish your food, I’ll run you a bath, and I’ll make a few calls tonight and see what I can do. Okay?”
She figures he’s going to ignore her. Instead, he rocks a few more times, wipes his tears, and hands her the telephone set.
Fanny smiles, the set warm in her hands.
“Thank you, buddy.”
The boy is enraptured by the water. He runs his hands over its surface, watching the ripples, and then lifting his hand to watch water dribble back down into the tub. The real fun starts when she brings in a cup, for rinsing his hair. Instead, he reaches for it, eyes wide. Assuming he wants to prove he’s a big boy, exact at least a sliver of privacy, and take part in washing himself, Fanny gives him the cup. The boy scoops the water up into the cup and tilts it, ever so gently and slowly, just enough that the water steadily trickles back into the tub. He closes one eye and watches like it’s the most important thing in the world.
He does it a second time. When he scoops the water a third time, she takes the cup from his hand, and he glowers at her.
“You can have it back after. Glasses.” He removes them from his face and this time lets her take them to set them onto the counter. It’s a wonder he can see under all the soot and smudging, she thinks.
When she washes his hair, she conjures a terrible black cloud of soot and dirt, blooming from his scalp. It reminds her of just hours before, him standing there, maybe seconds from becoming like all those other people. The water inside the tub becomes so black, she has to empty and refill it two more times.
Once his hair is clean, she gives him a washcloth to scrub himself down. While he does so, she looks over his entire body. His knees are scuffed, his elbows scarred by old scrapes, small bruises on his shins, nothing she hasn’t seen from her nephews. He wasn’t abused, at least, and the destruction at the border didn’t get the chance to scar him physically, for what it’s worth.
When he deems himself all done, he hands her back the washcloth. He gives her no trouble when she tells him she’s going to wash his back, his neck, and behind his ears. If anything, he’s delighted to get to play with the cup again. Once he’s all clean, she gives him a few more minutes to play in the tub.
He gets out without a fuss and allows her to cover him with a towel, comb his hair, and clean his glasses.
Seeing him clean and relaxed is a relief like no other.
The clothes she found him in are blackened and reek of smoke, so much so that she flinches at the smell after picking them up.
The boy sees this. One hand holding shut the towel draped over his shoulders, he takes Fanny’s hand and leads her to the kitchen. Charmed, Fanny follows. The boy approaches her kitchen sink and gestures to the back of it. Fanny reaches for the handle and turns on the water.
However, the boy shakes his head and stretches his arm over the sink to reach further.
Fanny follows the tips of his wiggling fingers and doubtfully picks up the dish detergent bottle.
He beams and jabs at the front of it, at the word degreasing, so pointedly that Fanny wonders if he knows what the word actually says.
With a hum, Fanny places his soiled clothes into the empty sink. “I’ll try after you go to bed.”
Satisfied, he wanders back down the hallway, despite not knowing where he is to sleep tonight. Fanny catches up to him and motions to her bedroom.
She shovels through one of her dresser drawers and produces a tee shirt, a brown one she has no use for. She sends the boy on his way to change and waits sitting on the bed for his return. She glances around the room, suddenly self-conscious of it. She considers herself a tidy person, but her room would still benefit marvellously from a spring cleaning.
The boy returns, hair fluffy, glasses clear, and looking… lighter. Fanny smiles and pats the bed. “Up up.”
She pulls the covers up over him. With no hesitation, the boy hands his glasses to her, though she catches his wary stare as she places them on the bedside table.
“Comfy?” she asks, if only to break the silence. “While you’re asleep,” she explains, “I’m going to make some calls. So, if you could tell me anything — your name, your parents’ names, anything at all — it’ll be a big help. And we’ll have a better chance of getting you home.”
The boy shakes his head, like before behind the couch.
“Can you talk?” she asks, wondering if she should have squashed the expectation right off the bat.
The boy tilts his head with patronising, half-lidded eyes.
“Of course. Sorry. Silly question.”
She considers what she does know:
The boy testifies to having good parents.
The boy is afraid of cops.
The boy might be able to read.
…the boy might be able to read.
Fanny reaches into the drawer of her bedside table. It is filled with loose change, paper clips, safety pins, hair ties stretched close to their breaking point.
A spiral notebook and a blue pen.
It has phone numbers scattered about and reminders of birthdays she should really be able to remember on her own.
She flips to a blank page and holds the notebook and the pen out to the boy. “Can you write me your name?”
The boy stares for a moment, evidently skeptical. Then, he sits up and draws up his knees just enough to lay the notebook upon them.
Initially, Fanny thinks he is drawing. He creates a stroke and scribbles along it strategically, his tongue poking through his lips in concentration. He creates another stroke, connected to the previous one, and scribbles along that one too.
Suddenly, it is the letter N.
Fanny leans in closer, watching the boy reproduce what looks like a font, an exaggerated headline from a newspaper or the title to a book.
When he’s finished, it reads:
NOT ALLOWED.
“You’re not allowed?” Fanny reiterates. “—to tell me, you mean?”
The boy nods without looking at her.
“Who told you you’re not allowed?”
The boy points back at his words. NOT ALLOWED.
“Was it your parents?”
The boy glances back up at her with the same, narrowed look.
“…was it whoever brought you to the border?”
With the roll of his eyes, the boy doesn’t just touch the paper, but smacks it three times with the pen. NOT ALLOWED.
“Okay… ah… whoever told you you weren’t allowed… did they… maybe… threaten you? Maybe they made you feel scared?”
The boy seems to ponder this, before deciding not to respond at all.
“Buddy, I know I’m asking a lot of you, and it’s okay if you don’t trust me. But I swear to you that I don’t want anyone to get in trouble. All I want is to help you go home. That means I just need to know something about you or your family, anything. And then I can help you. And then you never have to see me again.”
The boy’s eyes pan up and down, as if scanning her. Then, a glimmer of mischief crosses his eyes, and he presses his lips together to stifle a smile.
He takes on a different font when writing this time, this one rounded and bubbly like a child creating a greeting card.
Fanny’s breath hitches when she reads what the boy has written.
pig.
Theresa from dispatch is both exasperated and thankful to hear from Fanny, glad to hear a familiar voice but knowing it is at the expense of a dozen other callers, one of the hundreds they’ve gotten all day, and one of the dozens that were in search of missing people.
Fanny’s heart sinks when Theresa tells her that no calls were for that of the child Fanny described. Journalists, students, even some families, sure. But none for a boy of about four or five years old.
When Fanny hangs up, the phrase even some families lulls about in her mind. Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, children, taking the scenic road trip across Petria for the patriotic occasion, stopping at eateries along the way and smelling strongly of sunscreen.
And then—
Fanny turns to gaze at the boy, all in one piece, intact, snoring softly. Safe. Warm. Alive.
…unlike the folks that, in coming days, will be lucky to even be identified by body parts not totally eviscerated by the debris—
Fanny groans and covers her face, like a black sheet over the terrible pictures in her head.
She has no idea how she’ll sleep tonight.
Four phone calls later, stifling the urge to scream in frustration, she fumes silently and wipes away her tears. How many times can she reiterate, no she does not know his name, no she does not know his parents’ names, no she does not know how old he is? What she knows to be factual is that he was found in glasses, a long-sleeved cartoon sweat shirt, and beige khaki pants—
she storms to the kitchen and takes her frustration out on his clothes, filling up the sink with suds and scalding hot water and scrubbing at them with reddened, hot knuckles until the water is black and soapy. She drains the sink and freehands it under the hot running water.
His clothes don’t smell anymore, but soot hides in its creases and shows up taunting and relentless every time she thinks she’s done.
She wonders if it’s a bad idea to stick dish soap inside the washer. She does so anyway, exhausted and restless.
The clothes emerge from the washer somewhat tinted grey, but they don’t look like they’ve seen hell and brimstone anymore. Fanny tosses them into the dryer, but doesn’t wait to take them out.
She returns to her bedroom and makes one more call, to her sister this time, asking her to bring her boys’ too-small clothes. Fanny’s nephews are six and seven-and-a-half now. They’ll have something.
I’m sorry?
Anything helps. I’ll explain tomorrow.
Fanny is so exhausted, she doesn’t even hear most of how the phone call ends. Seconds after, she falls asleep in her chair.
Her sleep is dreamless but unsatisfying, feeling as if she never fully succumbed to slumber at all.
She only knows she did because, when she wakes up and feels a weight on her,
she is surprised to find the boy curled up in her lap.