The girl’s father had taught her that one must be consistent in one’s oral compulsions. His had been the thumb, the men, and the cigarettes. Hers were the fingernails. He was dead.

The girl couldn’t remember her father without the appearance of his thumb there, like a cloud. The right or the left thumb, or his cigarette placed between his full lips, or all three hanging around his teeth—leftthumbcigaretterightthumb.

Though it was not her real purpose for being in the field, the girl also looked for her sister amid the growing mob of people on their way home—for her sister’s ears, which stuck out like splinters; or for her sister’s nose, which was prone to bleeding; and for the trail of dots her nose would leave, the red red red, red; or for her sister’s long oval nails, which once scraped the green-and-white wallpaper from their kitchen.

She looked up; she listened for her sister’s laugh.

Emman’s sister had gone out one warm night, 24°C, half-dressed, hair undone, loose, to purchase a helicopter. After a dinner of roasted scallops with lemon zest and Greek yogurt and pecorino, smoked sea salt, russet potatoes roasted with onions, with mushrooms sautéed in wine and butter, with rosemary, she left.

In June she left.

The girl wanted to fly too, of course she did, but she couldn’t agree with this purchase. It was silly, irresponsible even, and she wasn’t sure where they would put it. Helicopter fatalities were up by thirty-five percent. She told her sister so, I’m not sure where we would put it, helicopter fatalities are up by thirty-five percent. But the sister had convinced her that the helicopter was necessary now that their father was dead (their mother was alive, but had already left to be with a white man, John).

Think of the rotors, the sister said, the thrust, to be able to land vertically, in a narrow space, or even the sound it would make, the crowd would look up at the sound, they would. Even the white men would look.1

After a while the girl stopped looking for her sister in the sky. She wanted to look, but resumed staring straight ahead at the white men. But she still listened for the sound of the propellers, the whoosh of them, or for her sister’s laugh. She might still be coming. The white faces were few and the girl heard only the birds wailing, and the wind, and the ambulances, the coughing, and the dirt accumulating bit by bit in her ear canal.

The girl’s legs were tired from standing.

She imagined these white men (who exhibited the straightness of their teeth and the reach of their arms and the quiet of their noses) as little boys. White boys pushing each other hard with their fingertips, silver braces tightening, smoking, peeing everywhere, laughing, comparing the length of their penises.