These Dreams of You

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Of course when she first starts doing the finger-cross-the-throat thing, it’s alarming. Now she does it all the time, little brown buccaneer, to convey irritation at whatever parental lapse has transpired.

Zan thought they were going to get a shy little Dickensian orphan girl. Please, sir, may I have some more? with empty porridge bowl lifted pitifully to a merciless world; and when Viv first met her at the Ethiopian orphanage, Sheba seemed exactly that. She barely spoke, only looked at Viv when she thought Viv wasn’t looking. Viv would lie with Sheba until the child fell asleep, but when she rose from bed, the girl’s hand shot out and clutched the mother’s wrist in a death grip.

From California to Ethiopia, Viv brought to the girl pom-poms and a toy giraffe and a photo of Zan and Viv in a bag with pictures of cherries on it. The girl cast all of it aside except for a picture of Parker that she kept day and night. She slept with it and woke to it. No one could take it from her.