“They’re in the thrush goddamn I can see them through here. Their mouths are moving up and down and they’re chattering and they’re making infernal noise and I just wish they would stop it.”
	I don’t look back; Ethel’s been seeing the boys in the thrush for a while now. Elan is back there tending to her, and maybe I should be helping, but it wouldn’t be much use. I’m trying to ignore it and hopefully just fade into the wallpaper, but there’s that one goddamn incessant sponge noise. Squish squish it goes, padding over and over again and boring holes into the still air. He’s probably cleaning some residue or other rom her face, but I can’t shake the sight of her trembling lips or the wilting hair or those milk-tinted fish eyes that did see but didn’t comprehend, comprehend not even me, my own dear mumma not understanding who I was. Firstborn I was, goddamn, firstborn and Benny- not Aaron or Demetrius or a face in a cast of Dennises and Williams- I was little Benny, her little lamb, her first little light in life! And what now, mumma? By hell I’m not Henry or a Darius or even my own brother… by God the woman’s let go.
	I can’t stay in the house anymore. But I can’t leave either, Elan’ll be mad. I guess I should sit down. I fall back into the old rocking chair, and its noise obscures that of the sponge. Peace, at last. But the vision’s still there- it’s not going away, is it mumma? You promised to stay, didn’t you?
	You promised so many things, and right so many times! You told me about stealing those apples from the orchard as a little girl, how the stones would fly through the air at you from the hands of the neighbors… how one hit you on the head and left that big scar that you let me touch when I was scared. You promised I could touch that scar, and that you would bring those same apples that gave it to you home. That summer my cheeks were stuffed with those apples, weren’t they mumma? You let me rest on your knee and shake with your feet, and made me promise that’d you’d do the same one day- I said yes, of course I did1 how was I supposed to know that’d you’d be hugging your own knees, shaking to the rhythm of your own feet and whimper, mumma? How could I promise you that when I didn’t know? I didn’t know! How COULD I know mumma?
	And now you’re here, talking about the boys in the thrush, one of them your first love… he died in that big war, didn’t he mumma? Didn’t he tell you he’d come back, and marry, and that you two would live in roses and honey? What happened to little Johnny soldier boy, mumma? Blown in the trench, huh? Is that right, mumma? Did he think of you when it happened? How could you know, mumma?
	And on those evenings that papa left and it was just us in the chair, the chair creak squeak creak squeak, what was it you said to me? What were those little talks that we had?
	“Mumma?”
	“Hon?”
	“How many years old is a star?”
	“Take all the numbers that you can imagine.”
	I would squeeze my eyes and think real hard and keep all those numbers in, wouldn’t I?
	“And think ten times ten times ten times that!”
	The numbers would spill out, right? They’d go out in a gasp and between the gap of my front teeth and right into those little kid eyes, wouldn’t they mumma?
	“Does a star remember everything, mumma?”
	“Hard to say, but if it does then by God it does.”
	“Do you remember everything, mumma?”
	Harmless, wasn’t it, mumma. Harmless.
	“Course I do! Just like an elephant, or one of those preachers.”
	“Will you remember me, mumma?”
	No. Don’t say it.
	“Of course I will, hon.”
	Please.
	“I’ll never forget you, how could I?”
	Stop.
	“I’ll always remember you, Benny.”
	Oh god please no.

	“They’re in the thrush goddamn I can see them through there-.”