It was the first time she ever thanked God for anything. She thanked God for the smell that only a baby can carry. She thanked God for Adam’s wrinkled, red face. She thanked God especially for letting her see her son in his first minute of life. She memorized all his tiny, tiny wrinkles. The ancestors who stood next to her and the God of the white people were showing her what her newborn would look like as an old, old man.

“When I am gone and tending the kudlik waiting for him to come back to me, I will recognize him in his old age,” she thought. “Newborn babies have the look and wisdom of the old ones. Mothers will always know their child, regardless of age or time or distance in this life and the next. A mother connects to her child in greater ways than what we can see. Moms and babies are the Forever People.”

She held on to that. Held on to that moment over and over, and when they came along forty-eight hours later and said that social services were at the hospital to take him away, she didn’t want to let go. She started to scream. Adam cried. He cried for her because he knew she was upset before anything started.

Bunny wrestled for her baby. Her body wrestled. Her spirit wrestled. But they were stronger and bigger, and their sloppy white paws reached into that soft baby blanket and snatched him from her. Took him as though he were just a thing. A blob. A job. A number. Something they had to follow through on. He was not Bunny’s child anymore. He became nobody’s baby.

All those sad memories flooded into her. They hung inside her chest like spiked icicles. She had to keep moving ahead. She had to keep fleeing away from downtown. All that mess. She knew if she crossed the river, she could find Adam on the other side. He had to be there. Only her mother understood the broken heart that she carried. She knew that she wanted him back, and they had made a plan. A plan to cross over together tonight. A plan that Mama had forgotten. Mama had become just another disappointment in her life. Another person who had let her down. Another person with their own agenda.