“What’s that?” Phee asked.
“Oh! It’s this thing where—”
“I don’t know that we need to talk about our genitals at the table where we eat,” Linus said.
“I don’t mind,” Chauncey said. “I like my body. It’s squishy.”
Helen to the rescue. “Yes, David. I hope you’re as excited as I am for you to meet him. From what I’ve been told, he’s … blossomed, in the care of the people he’s with. Let’s just say I think he’ll fit right in here with the rest of you.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a threat,” Linus mumbled.
Theodore chirped a question, bobbing his head up and down.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “For now, he’s not being included on the adoption petition because we don’t know if he’ll want to stay. This could be just one stop on his journey, and if that’s the case, we will welcome him just the same and make his time here a peaceful one. It’s why we’ve worked so hard over the last weeks to get his room ready for him. Having a place to call your own is an important first step. The best I can say is that we’ll need to take it one day at a time.”
The timer on the oven dinged, and Lucy’s face lit up. “My sticky buns! Yay, yay, yay!” He pushed back from the table, knocking his chair over as he skipped toward the oven.
And that was the end of that.
After they made quick work of cleaning up the kitchen, the children made Linus promise he would close his eyes and keep them closed in preparation for receiving his birt gift. He made a big show of it, bending over to allow Lucy to wave his hands in front of Linus’s face to prove he couldn’t see. Lucy asked Arthur to do the same.
The children led the way, followed by Zoe, Linus’s hand in hers, Arthur bringing up the rear, holding on to Linus’s hips.
When they stood in the sitting room, eyes closed, Zoe—under instructions from Sal—positioned them to face what Arthur thought was the fireplace. In the darkness, Linus’s hand gripping his, he heard Lucy and Talia arguing over how long the countdown should be before he and Linus could open their eyes. Lucy wanted to start at three. Talia wanted to start at five million. They compromised and decided seven would be good.
“Okay,” Talia said. “Seven. Six.”
The others joined in.
“Five. Four—”
“Threetwoone!” Lucy shouted.
Arthur waited a beat to allow Linus to open his eyes first. It was his birt, after all. And he knew he’d done the right thing when Linus gasped, squeezing Arthur’s hand tightly. He opened his own eyes, and there, hanging above the fireplace, was the gift.
Curved picture frames formed what appeared to be a perfect circle. The frames themselves were made of wood, each white with blue and yellow and pink flowers painted onto it. The right and left sides of the circle were made up of three photographs each: Linus with each of the children. Sal and Linus reading together. Lucy and Linus in their pajamas, hands above their heads as they danced to Bessie Smith. Talia and Linus in the garden on their hands and knees, a pile of weeds beside them. Chauncey and Linus standing in front of the hotel in the village, Chauncey’s bellhop cap sitting at a jaunty angle atop his head. Theodore and Linus with their heads underneath the couch, their rears pointed up, Theodore’s tail caught mid-swing. Phee and Linus walking hand in hand through the forest, Linus wearing his explorer’s outfit.
The bottom of the circle seemed a little off compared to the rest; it was as if a frame was missing, especially seeing as how the photograph across the top was longer. The bottom frame held a picture of Zoe, standing with the children in front of the house, all of them smiling widely. The photograph at the top of the circle had Linus and Arthur center frame, dancing in Zoe’s home with the children watching in the background.
Lovely, this, lovely in ways Arthur wasn’t sure he could articulate with any clarity. How could anyone look upon these or any children and only know fear?
Especially when he saw what sat in the middle of the circle. Another frame, this one square. Instead of a photograph, however, the frame held words upon a crisp white page.
See me.
See me for who I am. I am magic. I am human. I am inhuman.
See me.
I am a boy. I am a girl. I am everything and nothing in between.
See me.
You do. You see me. You recoil in fear. You scream in anger.
See me.
I bleed. I ache. You see me, and you wish you hadn’t. You wish I was invisible.
Out of sight, out of mind. Unseen, faded, muted. You want my color. You want my joy. You want a monochrome world with monochrome beliefs. You see me, and you want to take it all away. But you can’t.
You want me lost, but I am found in the breaths I take, in the spaces between heartbeats.
I am found because I refuse to be in black and white, or any shade of gray.
I am color. I am fire.
I am the sun, and I will burn away the shadows until only light remains.
And then you will have no choice but to see me.
“Do you like it?” Chauncey asked. “We worked really hard on it. Zoe helped with the photographs, but we did everything else.” Theodore chirped loudly, and Chauncey added, “Except for the poem. Sal wrote that.”
Arthur couldn’t speak; the lump in his throat was far too large.
Linus managed for the both of them. In a strangled voice, he said, “You did this for me?”
Talia frowned. “Yes? It’s your birt.” She squinted up at him. “Oh no. Are you going senile again? I knew forty-one in human years was old as crap. We’ll have to put him into a home where we’ll promise to visit but then we don’t.”
