Words

I'm tossing spelling words at the kids in the car--it passes the time on the Maisie-to-Baltimore drives. Liam hears some of Maisie's more ambitious words, gets annoyed, and says, "I can spell Mississippi, you know."

"Spell it," I say.

"M-r-s-period-i-p-p-y," he says. I smile. Maisie immediately corrects him, and he gets annoyed and barks at her, and she barks back, and it becomes the standard scene. But this time, embedded in the part where they both appeal to me for justice, Maisie tosses at him, "She's my REAL mother!"

Dead silence. I couldn't breathe--couldn't believe she'd say such a thing.

"I'm Liam's real mother, too," I say, "and if I ever hear that come out of your mouth again I really don't know what I'll do."

She recoils; she can't believe she said it either, I can tell. I'm second-guessing: did I make it worse by getting so pissed off? More dead silence. Finally a whispered apology from her. Liam remains silent through all of it.

The fact is, there is a difference in my relationships with the two of them--history, biology and color are easy starters--but after a period of SUCH focus on Liam's biological family--the search, the find, the photos, the letters--the three of us instinctively work very hard now to focus on what makes us a family--not what sets us apart from other families; you can get to a point of displacement very quickly, believe me, if you don't watch the focus. A hard balance for me, being the type to look under every rug and pull apart every dream--the type that believes more harm is done by not looking than by looking and struggling.

Tonight it's just me and Liam. He's cutting snowflakes out of computer paper, and talking to me about my old age. He hums a little tune he heard somewhere, and asks about a complicated story we heard on Ira Glass's program tonight. He asks if he would've had to sit in the back of the bus when Rosa Parks was young, and then says it would've really pissed him off. He negotiates for a new Nintendo game tomorrow instead of church. He chooses crab bisque over Indian food, twists paperclips into a long chain, reads the time off his new analog wristwatch every three minutes (new skill). He seems happy.

"Amee tumakay bhalo pachee," he says, and grins. It's the first time he's said it right--"I love you" in Bengali. I kiss his temple, because I don't know how to say, "Me too" in Bengali, and I don't want to repeat what he said because he'll think I'm correcting his pronounciation, and I want to stay where he is. "Dhonya baad," I say. "Thank you" I know, at least. And he's off to Playstation.