The Children's War by C. P. Boyko

Author:C. P. Boyko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2018-07-26T16:07:53+00:00

FROM THE BEGINNING, Burris felt that there was something wrong with Oxley. His birth had been violent, and had caused him bruising, swelling, and a fractured clavicle, but there was much that it could not account for. His eyes were different sizes, and his ears weirdly misshapen. His feet both pointed to one side. Sometimes individual knuckles in his fingers moved independently of the others. His skin was at first too pink, then yellow; then, after a few weeks, it turned a purplish blue. His scalp was both flaky and oily, and his hands were cracked and peeling. In the first half-year of his life, he broke out in a series of rashes, each different from the last. He coughed a lot, cried when he was not coughing, and slept poorly. His stools, from the very first, were shockingly strange.

His mother saw no cause for concern in any of this. Rachel was simply enthralled by Oxley’s existence, and found proof, even in his screaming, of his uncompromising vitality. Also, because she was with him all the time, she was better able to chart the subtle variations in his fussiness, and to recognize in his calmer moments something not unlike contentment; sometimes, usually after pooping or puking, he even smiled. Every day he learned something new: how to lift his head; how to stick out his tongue; how to track a moving object with his eyes; how to clap his hands; how to sniff things before putting them in his mouth; how to spot her in a mirror, though her voice was behind him. Together they conversed in tones and inflections. She could watch him eat, or sleep, or make faces like a troubled executive, for hours. Time, which during her pregnancy had seemed like all the sunshine falling on a baking plain, now contracted to the cozy, fascinating flame of a single candle. Her son, warm and vital in her arms, was beautiful, clever, and dynamic, and she could not believe that he was unwell.

To Burris’s annoyance, all the doctors that he spoke to agreed with Rachel. Oxley’s symptoms, they said, were common in newborns, and would clear up in due time. He was only colicky, they said. Try not to worry so much, they said.

This blithe advice brought back to Burris all the feelings of impotent rage that he had experienced at the hospital, when his wife, after two days in labor, had been whisked away to an operating theater that he had been prohibited to enter. Left standing in the corridor, clutching the consent form that had waived his right to object if Rachel or their baby died, unable to imagine what was happening and powerless to do anything about it, Burris had resorted to prayer—a wordless prayer in the form of a bargain: if only Rachel lived, the baby could die.

It was the thought of a moment, and soon forgotten; but some small, unconscious part of him still gnawed on remorse.

“Have you been feeding him too much?” he would ask Rachel.

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