The Crooked Branch

“And they have jobs.” “You still have a job, you just have to do your job.” “Ouch,” I say. “I’m not rushing you,” he says. “But don’t complain about it when it’s your own choice.”

It didn’t matter how many people had died of starvation or the attendant fever, it didn’t make the pain of real, meticulous grief any less.

was an awful thing that’d happened, the way this hunger had undressed death, and made it common.

In fact she says this whenever I tell her that Emma is fussy. She says, “Well, she can probably sense how uptight you are, and that makes her uptight, too,” which is obviously a very helpful observation. But now

Yes, I am bovine, entirely.

“What’s it to you?” the brave mom asks. She’s like a firefighter, an astronaut, and a midwife all rolled into one—that’s how fearless she is. I watch in awe.

I’m shaking, and my shapeless green shirt is all wet, and I don’t even know what that liquid is. Snot, tears, saliva, milk. I don’t even know who that liquid came from.

What would the light be like there, among the tall ships in the harbor, the teeming city streets? In

“Did I give up my life and friends and boobs to stay home and babysit?” I ask. “Seriously, is it babysitting when I do it, or just you?”