Little Deadly Things

relayed to a home pillar?”

“I don’t see why not. But that’s not my area. You want to talk nanomeds? Ask Marta.”

“You mean it? Plant Lady can do this?”

“She could, but I don’t see her abandoning her work.” The two sat in an amiable stalemate. “And by the way, it shows respect when you use her name. Marta. Not Plant Lady.”

Eva fidgeted but did not speak. They’d discussed respect and social graces often, especially since the fiasco at Harvard. Eva’s impulsiveness had cost Marta’s trust and friendship. Jim counseled Eva that to temper sudden actions, to use proper names, to be courteous, even to observe ordinary table manners, were better ways to recruit help from others.

Finally, Jim broke the silence. “You need her, don’t you.”

Eva said, “Is that supposed to be a question?”

“You’ll have to come up with something in public health,” he said.

“Easy. I have a plan.”

“Your last big idea was to build fat-loving nanomolecules for tummy tucks and replicator cells for breast augmentation.”

“Boob jobs pay.”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to get Marta interested unless you go deeper into the thoracic cavity. She wants public health, not private wealth. You want her help? Meet her halfway.”

“But you know what my problem is,” said Eva.

“Sure. Chronic disease is expensive. And the countries that need help the most don’t have the treasury to pay for it. So, you’re back to where you started.”

“Not this time.” Eva’s coffee was untouched and cold. She looked down and said, “If Plant Lady gives me the meds and the controls, I’ll give her public health.”

Jim stared without speaking.

“Sorry. If Marta can come up with the controls, then I’ll give the good Dr. Cruz her public health.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes,” Eva said. “But you need to convince her. I can’t just drop back into her life. And I need your help, too. You have a practical side that’ll be valuable to NMech.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty happy with my stinky residents.”

“Just hear me out,” said Eva. “You and Marta will like what I have. Then you decide if my proposal is as important as your mangy dogs. Besides, you owe me.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Jim said. His eyes dropped to the floor again.

She had asked for something from him once before, something very personal, reminding him of his debt to her. “It’s not mine to share,” was all he said.

Then Mama and the others at the Table howled at Eva.

1 SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

SOFIA, BULGARIA

APRIL. 2022

One week before her departure from Sofia to attend a special high school in Los Angeles, 13-year-old Eva Rozen had awoken to the sounds of Mama and Papa fighting. She had been accustomed to shouted curses, taunts, and screams, even the crisp crack of hands on flesh. Those sounds had not bothered her. To be roused from sleep, however, was to lose its comforting amnesia. That did bother her, and a reckoning had been long overdue.

She slipped past Gergana’s empty bedroom, gaze fixed ahead, and crept down the spine of the railroad flat to the fracas in the kitchen. Separate rooms and separate lives were connected by a dark hallway as grim as Eva’s thoughts.

Eva stepped in unnoticed. Mama’s screams alternated with Papa’s. Eva looked around. She heard a thought, as if from a separate intelligence within her. Use what’s at hand. She found a wine bottle. It was an easy task. They littered the kitchen. She hefted one to test its weight, and gripped the neck, entered the field of combat and swung two-handed.

Eva was smaller than an average child on the cusp of adolescence and her aim was low. But she wielded the bottle with the predatory ferocity of a weasel and the roundhouse blow drove into Papa’s left knee with a satisfying crunch. He bellowed as the kneecap shattered. Eva regarded her mother, swung and caught Mama just below her hip. The impact was cushioned by the soft tissue of Mama’s thigh, once seductive territory that had first captured, then repelled, Papa. Mama cradled her leg, and sobbed. Eva regarded her parents, sprawled on the floor.

“That’s for Gergana.” Her voice was impassive.

She returned to her small bedroom where memories came, unbidden: Mama’s indifference, Papa’s drunken visits, and Gergana. Most of all, Gergana. Eva imagined what Gergana might have said to her tonight, tried to feel Gergana’s cool hand on her forehead. She would have told Eva that she was very brave.

She wanted to sob but choked back her tears. At that, she heard a low murmur of approval. Startled, she sat up and looked about. The whispers would not have been from Papa or even Mama. They were still in the kitchen. Papa was moaning in pain and begging Mama to call an ambulance.

Eva heard the murmurring again. It was distant, yet…interior. For a moment, Eva imagined the voices coming from within her pillow. She sat up and then walked to the door. The sound grew and followed her. She heard notes of pride, of encouragement, of approval. The words were indistinct yet the meaning was clear: she had done well.

Then a second message emerged from the swelling clamor, increasing in volume, building in pitch and resonance, blotting out any other thought, a boulder rolling slowly at first, then crushing every obstacle in its path. “Strike first!” she heard from within the din. “Strike hard!”

Eva listened. She could pick out individual calls and caws. She strained to identify one voice. It would have been a quiet one. But Gergana’s crooning was lost in the uproar.

From Eva’s first hours of life, uneasy forces shaped her. Her birth was a brief cause for celebration, as Gergana’s had been some years earlier. Mama and Papa displayed Eva like a gauche traveler waiving a first-class airline ticket. But soon, parenting enervated rather than enlivened them and Mama and Papa’s interest decayed. Eva was demoted from an object of inestimable worth to that of a curious gewgaw. Then they nurtured Eva as they might a caged falcon, tossing scraps of attention as they might have cast bits of offal to the raptor. The bird survives but is stunted, fettered by self-doubt, never to soar, always ready for a sharp-beaked defense of its circumscribed territory.

The roles of mother and of father fell to Gergana whose de facto parenting was as tender as Mama and Papa’s was feckless. When Eva looked for comfort, her eyes lit on Gergana’s smile. Eva’s ears heard her sister’s soft lullabies and her hands played with toys that Gergana somehow provided. When Mama ignored Eva’s cries, Gergana cleaned and changed her infant sister. When Papa stumbled home, Gergana stood at juvenile Eva’s doorway.

Eva nursed on Gergana’s attention and Eva’s loyalty was as fierce as a samurai’s. Gergana adorned their bleak lives with bedtime stories, fanciful embellishments to bring hope.

“Little One,” she’d say, “I’ve got a story for you.” She portrayed the family as heroic figures in a romantic adventure. Gergana transformed Papa into a sea captain whose perilous journeys accounted for frequent absences. Mama was a member of the exiled royal family of Simeon II. “Little One,” Gergana told Eva, “one day you’ll be on that throne.”

Gergana’s stories and dreams were grand, but Eva saw life with open eyes. She fought to reconcile Mama’s