Free Bird by Crystal Chan

“Is this your daughter?”—as if I were a neighbor girl or a complete stranger kid tagging along. And we always have to say, “Yes.” Some families never have to say anything—their bodies shout out the answer for them: the color of the hair, the shape of the nose, the curve of the eyes. My body doesn’t shout out that I belong to my parents; it only whispers.
    But John’s body doesn’t even whisper.
    â€œWhat’s it like, at home?” I asked.
    He didn’t look at me. “I hate them.”
    I was startled. I would never say that about my family, even if I really, really felt it. “Why?” I asked.
    John kept staring at our wall of family pictures. “It’s not like they’re even my family,” he said. His eyes went back and forth from one to the other, and then to the Xolo dog, always returning to Granny’s picture.
    My fingers played with the insides of my pockets. “What do you know about your real parents?”
    He finally ripped his eyes from the photos and turned to me. “Well, they were black.” John’s words were dry, sarcastic. “But I figured that one out by myself.”
    â€œYou’ve never met them?”
    He turned to me. “You’ve never heard about closed adoptions?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œWell, there are open adoptions and closed adoptions. With open adoptions, you know your birth parents’ names, where they live, and maybe even visit them once in a while. With closed adoptions, you know your birth mother’s age and race. That’s it.” John’s lips twitched.
    â€œHow old is she?” I asked cautiously.
    â€œTwenty-nine.” The words stuck in his throat. “There. Now you know everything that I do.”
    If I were John, I’d stare down every twenty-nine-year-old-seeming black woman I met and wonder if she was my birth mother. No wonder John was so courageous. The odds of finding her were awful.
    But when I glanced at him, John didn’t look all that courageous. Just the opposite.
    I didn’t want him looking at those pictures anymore. I drew him into the dining room. “Dad was really impressed with my weeding,” I said, “but he mentioned only the areas that you pulled up.”
    A smile crept into John’s eyes. “Those were some massive weeds.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Dad forgets about weeding until they get huge.” Little beads of sweat had gathered on John’s nose. “Sorry we don’t have an air conditioner,” I said.
    He shrugged. “I don’t mind it. Air conditioners are fake. We should be able to handle light beams that come at us from some ninety-three million miles away.”
    I got us some ice water, pulled out two beef patties from the freezer, and heated them in the microwave. As we ate, the morning sun cast a rectangle of light across the surface of the kitchen table. John swirled his ice cubes around in his glass, watching them glint in the sunlight. “You know,” he said, “the sun is here all the time, and yet most people don’t really ever think about it.” His voice was solid again, not like how it was when he was talking about his mother. John’s shoulders relaxed a bit too. “Have you ever thought about the sun?” he asked me.
    â€œIt’s hot,” I offered lamely. I took a bite of my beef patty.
    â€œYeah, like twenty-seven million degrees hot. But it’s made out of nothing but gases, right?”
    I didn’t know that, but I nodded anyway. “Right.”
    â€œSo what holds all the hot gas together? What prevents the gases from flying away into space?” His free arm waved in the air.
    My brow furrowed. “Gravity?”
    â€œYes!” John slammed his hand down on the table with excitement. He grinned a huge smile. “Gravity!”
    I grinned back. He’d be a great teacher one day. I could just see him