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Show arms around him. "There, there, child," she says. She begins to rock, and croons an uneven lullaby, one without any recognizable tune. She rocks as if she were forcing herself to do so, but he can cry now, and so he does not resist. "You're mine now," she says to him suddenly, almost confidentially. He does not understand what she is talking about, and she does not explain. He cries for a long time, only because she will let him do so, and finally falls asleep. When he awakes it is morning. The bears are back in the rocker, meticulously placed. He cannot hear his mother; he decides she is not yet awake. Quietly he slips down the hall, looking for her small sewing scissors, the ones with the sharp points. On the hall table he sees a sheaf of papers, bound in a blue folder, affixed with seals; he sees his name on the papers, but he cannot read what they say. He finds the scissors and steals back to his room. Systematically, beginning with the smallest bear, he slits open a hole in the seam on the bottom of each one, so that it will look like an accidental rip. When she found the rips, the mother made him stay indoors for three days. He wished his father would come; but his mother told him the father was not allowed to come until the weekend, and then only for two hours. The boy was not sure he cared; it would not be better when his father was there, only different. He spent the three days in his room, using first a peashooter and |