I'd watched enough daytime television to know about dark
secrets.
But when she bent down to me, with the creak of stretching elastic, and
she lifted me to my feet and bent to look me in the eye, she had tears
in her eyes.
She went to the pile of oddments and junk jewelry that she had dumped
out on the floor and sorted through it until she found a pair of sewing
shears, then she cut away my T-shirt, supporting my broken arm with her
hand. My wings were flapping nervously beneath the fabric, and it got
tangled, and she took firm hold of the wingtips and folded them down to
my back and freed the shirt and tossed it in the pile of junk on her
normally spotless floor.
She had spoken to me less and less since I had fixed the television and
begun to pick up English, and now she was wordless as she gently rotated
my fingerbones and my wristbones, my elbow and my shoulder, minute
movements, listening for my teakettle hiss when she hit the sore spots.
"Is broken," she said. "*Cholera*," she said. "I am so sorry, *lovenu*,"
she said.
#
"I've never been to the doctor's," she said. "Never had a pap smear or
been felt for lumps. Never, ever had an X-ray. Feel this," she said, and
put her upper arm before his face. He took it and ran his fingertips
over it, finding a hard bump halfway along, opposite her fleshy bicep.
"What's this?" he said.
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