“Hello?” a woman’s voice said cautiously.
“Ahn?” Thomas said, his heart quailing.
“Who this?”
“It’s Tommy.”
Silence.
“It’s Tommy, Ahn. Don’t you remember me?”
“What do you want?” she asked in a slow, metered voice.
Thomas didn’t know what to say. He wanted so much: his mother back alive, his brother living on the floor below, the elementary school where he knew everybody from kindergarten and where the sun wasn’t too bright. He wanted to sit with Dr. Nolan and talk about the heart and blood vessels and muscle and blood. Thomas wanted his room back and the floor where he learned to be quiet and to feel the world become one with him.
“Don’t call here anymore, Tommy,” Ahn said. “It’s not good for you. You stay where you are and things are better.”
Then she hung up.
Thomas cried for the first time since he could remember.
He had dreamed for years about being reunited with Eric and Ahn, but now all of that was over. They didn’t want him even to call. He blubbered there on the couch next to the pink phone. He was crying when May came home.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“They don’t love me,” the boy cried. “They told me not to call.”
May thought that he was talking about some friends at school. She took him in her arms and assured him that she 1 5 1
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and Elton loved him very much. And so did Madeline and lots of other people too.
But Thomas would not be consoled. He had lost something that day that could never be replaced. He was sorry that he’d called. At least if he hadn’t he never would have known the truth.
A h n was al s o desolate over Thomas’s call. She sat in her small room, at the back of the big empty house, wringing the blood-spattered T-shirt that she’d kept from childhood. She didn’t want to hurt Thomas — she loved the little boy — but by now she was certain that Eric was cursed. He was a danger to anyone who threatened him or loved him. Thomas was safer where he was.
Th re e days a f te r the phone call to the Nolan household, Elton came home in the middle of the day. May and Thomas were sitting in the kitchen.
“May!” Elton yelled.
They could tell by the way he slammed the door that he was in a bad mood. His father’s heavy footfalls down the hall brought Thomas to his feet. If he’d had a moment more, the boy would have ducked into the back porch.
“What the hell are you doing here, Lucky?” Elton said when he came in.
“He’s sick, Elton,” May said, thinking quickly. “They send him home.”
“Huh. That’s me too. They send me home too. Said I cracked the block on that fool’s Cadillac. I’idn’t do shit, but 1 5 2
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now I’m fired wit’ no references. Three years an’ now it’s like I never even had a job. Get me some gotdamn beer.”
Elton was drunk for the next three weeks. Thomas couldn’t come back home at noon anymore, and there were fights every night. Some nights he would sneak out of the house and go to stay with Pedro so he didn’t have to hear the yelling and crying.
One moonlit evening, while Elton broke furniture and called May a whore, Thomas went out to sit by Alicia’s tomb.
There were crickets and frogs singing all around him. He delighted in the moon shining on his hands and feet, and spoke softly to the girl.
“Are you lonely, Alicia?” he asked. “I know you must be, and I’m sorry if I don’t come talk to you enough. But I been real busy tryin’ to keep it cleaned up around here. An’ sometimes it’s better to be alone. Sometimes people jus’ scream an’
watch TV an’ tell you they don’t like you.”
Thomas climbed up on the makeshift tomb and lay down.
He slept for a while, and when he awoke the moon filled not only his eyes but all of his senses. He tasted it and heard its rich music. He felt the light on his skin like golden oil sooth-ing him. In his mind the moon was speaking to him, telling him that everything was all right. He fell back to sleep on the rock-rough crypt smiling at his good fortune.
The next day Pedro’s father was killed in a shoot-out on Slauson.
Alfonso Middleman was shot dead on the street. People told Pedro that it was kids trying to take his drug money. No one knew where Pedro’s mother’s family lived, and the father’s family wouldn’t even let him in the door.
“I went to his mother’s house,” the gray-eyed teenager said. “But they said that my mother lied and they were no 1 5 3
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blood to me. I don’t even know where they’re burying him. I can’t even go to his funeral.”
