Face Of The Monster

***25***

Phoebe Kim has a serious problem and she knows it.

She's going crazy; she's sure of it. She organizes and reorganizes Emma's kitchen, first by food groups, then alphabetically, then in a way that made sense to her at first but by the time she was finished ended up being nonsense. She gets up in the middle of the night, bothered by the fact of a dirty mirror in the bathroom. She spends hours pulling up weeds in Emma's horribly neglected, overgrown garden, refusing to wear gloves or a hat or bug spray. She likes the little pains of her mosquito bites, the sunburn on the back of her neck. The callouses on her palm.

Phoebe Kim has a serious problem, but it doesn't stop at the cleaning. She does other things in the middle of the night, too, stranger things.

When she wakes up and Emma is still asleep, her face sweet and blank with dreams, Phoebe traces a fingernail over her features, imagining quick, painless ways to kill her. Injecting her with a lethal amount of heroin, perhaps. Putting a pillow over her face, rocking her into asphyxia.

They're scary thoughts, but they won't go away.

Some nights, when she is too afraid of what she might do, Phoebe slips out of bed, pulls on sweatshirt, and ventures out into the humid May night. The boy follows her, loyal as a mangy puppy. She talks to him, but he never talks back. She talks to him about Chloe and Emma, about Al and his strange thoughts about the world, his face pocked by years of drug abuse. She talks about other people she knows and sometimes, just about what a strong desire she has to get away from them all.

Right now, though, the boy lays placidly by her side, ameliorated by Phoebe's own calm. She is lying on the floor, her stomach pressed against the scratchy carpet in Tiago's bedroom, watching Ti and Sofia bustle around in their wooden kitchen. They are playing restaurant and Phoebe is their only patron.

She finds herself fascinated by the intricacy of their playthings, the knobs on the wooden oven and the working handles on the plastic sink. The cupboards that open, revealing shelves sized perfectly for plastic cans of beans and mushroom soup.

Right now, she is waiting for her order of pancakes and eggs, over easy. The children make noises as they cook, the sizzling sound of bacon and the gurgling of coffee in the fake machine.

Duck is in the room too, keeping Phoebe company while she waits for her food. He is curled up under her chin like a warm pillow. Phoebe kisses the quiet, lazy dog thinking to herself that it's no wonder Emma dotes on him like a third child. He is sweet and simple as a newborn baby, sturdy and reliable as a grown man.

"Done!" shouts Tiago. "Here's your pancakes. And a egg."

"An egg," Phoebe gently corrects him.

He blushes furiously. "What's the difference?"

"Do you know what a vowel is?"

Tiago blushes even deeper, turning rosy red. "No."

"Don't you learn about it in school?"

"Kind of. But Mommy don't have time to help with my homework anymore so my teacher always get mad at me and put me in the hallway so I don't learn the vowels."

He sets down the plastic plate, laden with a feast of brightly colored food. Perfectly circular, orange pancakes, ordained with starburst pads of white butter. An egg, raw looking, round yolk bright as a cartoon sun.

Phoebe smiles at the reddening child. "Thank you," she says. "Come here, sit down and eat with me. You're working pretty hard over there. Must have worked up an appetite."

He nods and sinks down to the floor, picking up the plastic egg and pretending to nibble at it. Sofia is still busy in the kitchen, shouting orders to an invisible staff.

"So, your teacher puts you in the hallway, huh?" she asks. The pancakes come away from the plate in a stiff line like a snowman, all three connected into a caterpillar of a meal.

Tiago nods, sparing her a shy glance. "She don't like me."

"Aw, honey. I'm sure that isn't true."

"She don't," the boy insists. "She say I don't do good on my work and she say I talk stupid."

Phoebe furrows her eyebrows. "She said that to you?"

"She didn't say it to me," Tiago tells her. He looks away. "I hear her said it to Missus Raymond. She said, Tiago is a smart boy, but he talks like a kindergartener."

"Well, at least she thinks you're a smart boy," Phoebe consoles him. She thinks to herself that the teacher isn't exactly wrong; Tiago does have a rather weak command of basic grammar for a boy his age. Then again, the correct way of dealing with it would be to get him some speech therapy, not gossip about it with her colleagues.

Tiago looks like he might cry. His face is crumpled, grooved with sad little wrinkles. "My class maked fun of me, too," he says. "They says I'm stupid."

"Honey, don't listen to them. They don't know what they're talking about."

She takes his hand and he lets her, staring. With his other hand, he traces the prominent veins in her wrist and the conspicuous whorls of skin around the joints of her fingers. "But they all say it," he sniffs.

Phoebe wipes the first tear away from his face, only to find a flood of them raining down to replace it. She pulls herself into sitting position, sighing as her joints tense up. "They don't sound like very nice kids," she says. "Not like you."

Tiago leans into her shirt, his tears soaking through onto her chest. "I don't say mean stuff to people," he sniffles between sobs. "I say nice to everyone."

His skin is warm and sticky with sweat when Phoebe pulls him into her lap. Duck climbs up, tongue lolling with languid success when he curls up on Tiago's thighs. Phoebe strokes his thick, dark curls and says, "It's very good to be nice to people who are mean to you. Then, they can learn about how to be nice. You can teach them."

Tiago's sobs quiet to ebbing bouts of tears. He hugs Duck to his chest, face pressed into Phoebe's neck. "But they don't wanna be nice," he says.

"Not right this second. But trust me, soon they'll see that you're right."

A scream erupts from the little wooden kitchen. Phoebe looks up to find Sofia bawling, little face flushed with red.

"Honey, what's the matter?" Phoebe asks, bemused by all the crying children.

"Why do Tiago get a hug and I don't?" the girl whines, voice wavering up and down.

Phoebe grins. "Get over here, then."

Sofia quiets immediately, joining her cousin in Phoebe's lap. She holds them, rocking them gently until Tiago stops crying and Sofia falls into a delicate sleep. If only all of life's problems could be so easily solved, she thinks. If only.