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scalp.
    The woman drew in her breath, sobbing. “Your fault,” she said to the man. “Raging and smashing that bottle, leaving it for him to fall over.”
    “All right,” Mama said as if she were talking to herself, but stopping the woman from saying what she might have said next. “I want whiskey. Do you have—”
    The man scuttled away and brought it back as Mama rummaged in her bag. She dumped everything out on the floor, small jars of herbs rolling, clean cloths and pieces of rubber tumbling, and metal clinking. She picked up a scissors, a bottle that held needles, some of them curved, and thick black thread.
    “The light,” she told the milkman. “Hold it closer.” She took the whiskey bottle from him, unstopping it, and poured the liquid over the boy's scalp.
    Red washed into pink, and now there was white bone deep inside that flap of skin. She kept pouring until the smell of the whiskey blocked out the other smells in the room, pouring, then leaning over to look inside the wound, and pouring again until there was almost nothing left in the bottle.
    She clipped at the boy's hair, then edged the skin together with her fingers, and Bird felt queasy, acid coming into her throat; she swallowed, biting her lip so she wouldn't be sick.
    How many times had she seen Annie sew in a sleeve, easing both sides so they wouldn't pucker, taking a stitch, and smoothing out the fabric again? And now Mama was doing the same thing to someone's head. Someone's skin.
    All Bird wanted to do was to get out of that apartment and run back home where they'd been celebrating her thirteenth birthday, all of them laughing at Aunt Celia's story, but she wouldn't let herself step back.
    “He's waking now,” Mama said to the woman. “Hold his head.”
    The woman scrambled away. “I can't, I can't.” She said what Bird was feeling.
    Can't.
    “Bird, come here.”
    She hesitated.
Just this time
, she told herself, listening to the woman's sobs,
but never again. Never.
    This was nothing like washing a new baby, having a baby named for her, nothing like braiding Mrs. Cunningham's silver hair into smooth plaits. Nothing like anything she'd ever seen.
    Bird moved slowly around the man.
    “Hold his chin with one hand, his forehead with the other,” Mama said, intent on the boy and barely glancing at her. “Don't be afraid to hold him tight. He's going to feel this. He's going to—” She shook her head, and Bird could see the pity in her eyes.
    She put her hands where Mama told her, fingers sliding over the blood, sliding, then gripping as he began to move, trying to get away from them, beginning to scream, thrashing, his legs kicking out.
    Bird held his head, her fingers in his ears to hold him fast, in his hair, getting up to kneel on the bed next to him, staying out of Mama's light. She heard someone moaning, and realized it was her own voice.
    She clamped her lips together and looked up at the ceiling. A thick crack ran across the plaster like a black river. She told the boy, “Lie still, just lie still, it's almost over.”
    But Mama kept stitching, knotting, cutting, the needle in and out, until a thick line was there instead of that flap; it was almost like the crack in the ceiling.
    Bird began to notice a strange feeling; she felt almost feverish. She was dizzy and there was a buzzing sound deepin her head. She knew she had to take her hands away from the boy and steady herself, otherwise she'd fall against the iron railing of the bed.
    She let go of the boy and scrambled back against the wall. She realized Mama was talking to her, but she didn't know what she was saying.
    Bird closed her eyes, seeing colors in back of her eyelids, reds and greens. She was going to be sick.
    She crawled across the floor, skirt in her way, yanking at it, reaching the door, pulling herself up, then stumbling out onto the landing. She was sick in the hall and down the stairs. Then she was out in the street to take deep breaths until the pounding in