Free Human Sister by Jim Bainbridge

soft ceramic floors were heated from below. But Elio appeared proud while showing me his room, small and cramped and carpeted though it was. He took particular care while demonstrating exactly where and how he sat when he talked with me on Vidtel.
    He and I played with a few of his toys while Grandpa and Aunt Lynh talked in the kitchen. I’d never before played with another human child and was fascinated watching Elio’s hands and hearing his voice, which made growling, screeching, and exploding noises, as if he were adding a soundtrack to our activities.
    After about a half-hour, Aunt Lynh peeked inside the bedroom door. “Elio, it’s your bedtime. Sara has to leave with her grandfather. They’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
    As soon as Aunt Lynh’s face disappeared from the crack in the door, Elio whispered, “Tell them you want to stay here with me.”
    “Where’s Grandpa going?”
    “We don’t have a guest room, so he’s going to a hotel. But you tell them you want to stay here with me.”
    I ran out to Grandpa and hugged him tightly around his neck.
    “Oh, my, my,” he said. “Whatever is the matter?”
    I glanced back at Elio, who was standing near his bedroom door, his enticing dark eyes focused on me.
    “May I stay here with Elio?” I asked.
    Later that night, right after Aunt Lynh had tucked Elio and me in bed and kissed us goodnight, Elio whispered, “Let’s take off our pajamas.”
    I turned to him. “Why?” There was just enough light coming in from his bathroom night-light to allow me to see him smile.
    “Because it’s more comfortable that way—and free.”
    “Would that be okay with your mom?”
    “The rule is, if she wants to come in, she has to knock and then I go and open the door. So, if she knocks, we’ll put our pajamas back on and then I’ll go and open the door. She’ll never know.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    That was the first night, the first of many in summers to come, that he wrapped himself around me and called me the cuddliest teddy bear in the whole world.
    In the morning, I woke before Elio, slipped out of bed, put my pajamas back on, and began playing with his toys—quietly, with none of his action-imitative noises. All the while I played, I felt as though I was getting away with something I shouldn’t have been doing. Then, as was usual for my mornings at home, I began meditating. I was still sitting cross-legged on the floor when Elio woke.
    “What’re you doing?” he asked sleepily, his head raised slightly from his pillow, his hair tousled and matted as if it were wind-churned black grass.
    “Meditating.”
    “Meditating? Why do you do that?”
    “To quiet the hustle and bustle of the world, to help me become more aware.”
    “What do you become more aware of?”
    My mind went blank for a moment, aware only of his enchanting eyes and hair and sleepy puzzled look. I should have told him that while meditating I found a heart beating, the quiet rise and fallback of breath, sensations of my body touching the floor—but nothing more, except a sense of a dark hollowness abuzz with unformed thoughts, which I could watch fill my consciousness, not so unlike how I sometimes sat quietly on the deck above the vineyard house and watched fog drift over the hills and down into the valley, finding its place in the emptiness of the world.
    But all I was able to think of then in answer to his question was, “Things.”
    “Things?” He squinched his eyelids to such narrow slits that I wondered whether he could actually see through them.

First Brother

    I n her gloved hands, she holds a paddle in which the shaft is partially retracted into one of its blades. In sync with the rocking of the raft in the water, the shadow of the brim of her hat moves about on the paddle. She appears to visually scan the coastline. She pauses once for approximately five seconds and again for approximately eight seconds to focus on a sailboat listing onto its port side in the sand