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that position as still as a stick insect mimicking a twig. My mother expertly maneuvered the baby until he was resting on the palms of my hands. She edged him toward the quivering cradle that was formed by my arms. “I don’t want to drop him,” I insisted.
    For a moment my mother stopped. Hesitated. Then she carried on. My brother grunted. The dishes stacked in the kitchen shook every time hetook a step. He positioned himself behind me. I felt the heat given off by his body on my back. He pushed the baby back toward my mother.
    To stop me from taking him.
    The dishes vibrated again as he stomped back to the table, picked up the pile of towels, and disappeared down the hall. Mom’s nose whistled.
    The morning after the birth, I opened my eyes earlier than usual. I knew because all I could hear was my brother snoring in the top bunk, when normally I’d be woken up by the sound of my mother making breakfast in the kitchen. I lay awake in the dark. Something scratched the walls, on the other side. There were rats in the basement.
    Between two of my brother’s snores, I heard the baby whimper in the distance.
    Silently I opened our bedroom door. Dad didn’t like us to go around the basement as we pleased. I stuck my head out into the hall and looked toward the living room. The patch of light was there, shining on the floor, much farther to the right than I normally saw it. It must’ve been really early.
    The baby whimpered at the other end of the hall.
    Dad had put the crib in the room shared by my grandmother and sister. I waited for one of them to wake up and help the baby with whatever was upsetting him, but nothing happened. The child whimpered again.
    I went into the room and approached the crib. I remembered the stack of wood that’d appeared in the basement one day and how Dad, with his box of tools, had turned it into the structure that the little boy now lay in. His eyes were open. He whimpered again. My grandmother let out a single snore. I looked over to the other bed, and in the darkness I could make out the white contour of my sister’s mask, which could’ve been on her face or lost among the sheets. My grandmother soon recovered the normal rhythm of her breathing. I bent over the baby and rocked him with a hand on his little tummy, and he closed his eyes.
    I thought about it for a few seconds and then picked him up. I held him against my chest, his head resting near my elbow, like Mom had shown me. I walked out and took him to the dining room. I sat on the floor, near the patch of light, crossing my legs and feeling the baby breathe in my arms. I moved him into the pale yellow beam of light. It made his face glow.
    “This is the sun,” I told him.
    We stayed there for a few minutes.
    Until my sister woke up and began to scream.

3
    “No one’s stolen the child from you,” my father said when we all sat down to eat breakfast.
    My sister sniffed under the mask, which was fixed in a diagonal, indifferent stare at the ground. The eggs my mother was making for breakfast frizzled as she cracked them into the hot oil. At the time I thought they suffered when they were burned, like we do. And they screamed.
    “I took the baby this morning,” I said. “I woke up early and wanted to show him—” I found the circle of light on the table, but didn’t finish the sentence.
    “Since when are you allowed to come out of your room so early?” my father cut in. “Do you know what a scare you gave your mother and grandmother with your sister screaming?” Dad was pointing a finger at me. “She thought someone had stolen the child.”
    I kept quiet, ashamed. My brother tried to hold in his laughter, but it heehawed out through his nose.
    The frying pan banged against the kitchen sink. My mother appeared with a plate full of fried eggs. She always said they had to stay in the pan until a black line surrounded the white. That was why there was a burning smell. With her free hand she straightened the tablecloth. As