“There is no such thing as ‘healing,’ you know this. You just grow this strange familiarity with your wounds, and they become a part of you.”
Amaya slowly turns his head to face me in the overly dramatic way he usually does when he’s about to strongly disagree with something. “That is not always true. How do people end up with scars, then?” He holds out his elbow, showing the purple scar tissue from his first roller skates, proving his point.
The crickets above us are unusually deafening tonight for some reason. I’ve never been a fan of nature, but Amaya absolutely loves our backyard, especially at night.
“Let’s just say some wounds are different from most. Have you been picking at your lips again, Amaya?” He pouts his bloody lips in response. “No, they keep peeling on their own,” he answers. I slap his hand away as he reaches for his lips to pick at them again.
“No wonder Ammi and Baba want you to see that doctor. You think your wounds are so special, don’t you?” He challenges me, turning his whole body to face me this time. The widow’s peak on his large forehead seems so different in the dark.
I take the opportunity to take it all in: the dimpled cheeks, the flat nose, the perfect cupid’s bow, and the eyebrow cut I gave him on his 5th birthday last year.
“Well, I guess they are to me.” I reach for his unruly curls sprawled over the blanket we’re lying on because Amaya hates lying on grass. Especially now that the leaves have started to shed, our backyard is a mess. His tangles keep me from running my fingers smoothly through his hair, as usual.
“There might be bugs out here. I think I got bitten around my left ankle,” Amaya says, closing his eyes.
“Do you want to go inside?” I ask.
“No. We can fall asleep here tonight,” he replies.
The crickets have gone oddly silent. Someone nearby is killing an engine at this late hour of the night.
“Anna?” Amaya lets out a huge yawn with his eyes still closed.
“Yes?” My fingers are now pretty much stuck in his hair.
“That’s so snobbish of you,” he mutters, half asleep.
It’s a little chilly tonight. I realize I should have brought a second blanket to keep us warm.
“Remind me to give you a haircut tomorrow morning, before Ammi wakes up,” I say to the void as I resume caressing his hair after detangling my fingers. Amaya sighs in reply, and my eyes water, fogging my vision. But not enough to blur the scene of our sobbing mother about 7 feet away, sitting by the grave of her freshly buried son, watching her daughter lie alone under the starless sky and stroke the empty autumn breeze.
