Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Author:Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Triage. He had to triage. The term, borrowed from French military hospitals, had always appealed to him. Let the healthy soldiers take care of themselves. The flats would be fine. Abandon the soldiers too wounded to save: Mina. And tend to those you can: this job. Of course he wouldn’t abandon Mina. He’d be home soon. By then he’d have figured out what to say about the baby issue.

His father sighed. “Look, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to get into it here.” His father looked around at the teenagers slurping taro smoothies. Oscar was so tired of deciphering the crinkled foreheads of everyone around him. What message was he supposed to read in these scrawls?

“Let me check with Mina,” he said.

“Great. I’ll tell Ami you’re coming.”

*

Mina had somehow forgotten the apartment’s disarray, until they walked through the door. Wallpaper hung like an open wound. Everything smelled of fabric softener.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. We’ve been redecorating.”

Phoebe walked up to the gap Mina had torn in the wallpaper. Her hand followed the rip until she was crouching on the floor. Leaves of paper curled, abandoned, by the gash. Mina rushed to collect them. They’d dried out in the hours she’d been away. Phoebe caught one as it escaped Mina’s grip.

“Relax. You’re a guest,” Mina said.

“I want to.”

“You don’t have to. I didn’t invite you over to clean up. Please. I’ll vacuum tomorrow. It’ll be easier.”

The dog charged into this standoff. He rolled over. His tail knocked more paper into the air.

Phoebe rubbed an indulgent hand on his belly. “Who’s a useless boy? You are, yes, you are.”

They ordered Chinese, which came in steam-clouded plastic. She ate Buddha’s Delight. The deep-fried tofu was greasy. But the oil was delicious and the tofu seared gold. She wondered what Grandma would’ve made of the English girl sitting beside her, noodle dangling over her lip onto pointed chin. She probably would’ve shrugged and rolled her eyes as she did at cell phones, video games, the president, and everything else the last decades had spat up.

As they ate, they watched an animated kids’ movie full of adult jokes. Mina had missed it in cinemas. The idea of seats roiling with toddlers had felt like too much. It was probably for the best that she was officially not good mother material. The light from the screen made Phoebe look ghostly. The edge of her hair flickered, like a burning thing. As they sat knee-to-knee on the couch, Mina realized that it was far too small for Phoebe to sleep on. It was more a loveseat than a proper couch. Phoebe would have to take the bed. Mina would sleep better in this small space than she could alone on a big mattress thinking of Phoebe crammed on these stiff cushions. As the drama of the movie wound tighter, Phoebe leaned forwards as if trying to dive into the laptop. It worked out okay, as Mina knew it would.

“No, you can’t do that,” Phoebe said, when Mina offered the bed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.