“His eyes were still dark. They were going to be dark brown. And the way he’d look at things. He was really looking at things.”

“How did it happen?”

“I don’t know. I’d just fed him. He was only getting up once in the night to eat by that time. He took a lot of milk. I changed him. It was hard there. There wasn’t anyplace warm to undress him. I had to just unwrap his bottom half and be very quick. He had a bad rash, too. It had bumps and red scabs. I had some lard for it, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t bathe him after the snow came. I was afraid to. At first Han Shan would hold up a blanket near the fire when I had the water warm. To keep out the wind. I’d sit there with the baby and wash him all over. But then Han Shan started going for a walk whenever I told him I wanted to bathe the baby. Lichtenstein always went with him. Sometimes I thought they were homosexuals. Han Shan kept talking about putting mud in all the cracks in the walls, but then the ground froze. Then he said when it had snowed enough it would drift up all around the walls and keep the wind out. But it didn’t drift up. The snow didn’t pile up at all until it got into the trees. Cold like that is just like being cut. When it’s deep enough it loses its name and it’s just pain. The same as all pain, no matter what causes it.

“He was beginning to smile. Just beginning. It would happen as if by accident. When his belly was full and he was dry and his thick little lips would open, crooked. You could see his gums. He looked so silly … or something.”

Her tears fell faster, but her face was still. I folded my hands around her cold hands and we sat crying quietly on the bench. The lady in the suit marched over to the dryer. She banged it open and pulled out armfuls of clean white blouses. She folded them up and put them in a plastic bag, then paused in the doorway. The clothes still must have been warm in her arms. It had started to rain. The woman ducked, leaned forward, and disappeared into the rain.

The machine cycle changed.