Midian Unmade by Joseph Nassise Page B

front of her son. She held him firmly by his shoulders. “Can you give me the buttons? I can sew them back on, I won’t need to buy a new skirt.”
    Elliot looked away. “I don’t have them.”
    â€œPlease, baby.”
    â€œI didn’t do it.”
    Her grip tightened on his shoulders. “Give Mommy her buttons.”
    His hands began to spasmodically reach out and snap the twigs in front of him. “Didn’t.”
    â€œWhy are you lying to me?”
    Elliot stopped breaking sticks. His brow furrowed, and he whispered softly, “Why don’t you believe me?”
    There was a heartbreaking silence. They’d had this conversation before. It wasn’t always about a button, but it always ended the same way.
    Kathryn chewed softly on the inside of her cheek and ran her hand slowly down the side of his face. She could feel his slight shaking. Her stomach twisted. A mother’s touch should not evoke such a reaction in a child. It was all just so frustrating. Two years. Two years and no end in sight.
    Her hands dropped to the ground and she tilted forward, resting her forehead against his. “Why don’t you go to the park? Maybe I’ll meet you there when I’m done with the laundry.”
    Elliot knew he was being exiled. Rather than continue their discussion, his mother found it easier to just give up and send him away. It was happening more and more of late. Laundry would give way to dinnertime, and there would be no meeting him at the park. They would both find some peace apart from each other, their mutual accusations fading temporarily.
    He brushed his lips against her forehead and turned without a word. Kathryn watched his small, hunched back retreat from the yard. She went back to the clothes basket, unaware that the buttons in question were roughly twenty feet away, under her back porch.
    *   *   *
    The three buttons were laid out on the cold earth in the darkness. There were two holes in each dark blue button, and they ran perfectly in a line from one to the next. Five white buttons lay in a line that ran perpendicular to the blue ones. Six black buttons ran parallel to these. They were slightly smaller than the blue ones, with four holes.
    A small figure lay next to the arrangement, his black eyes watching Elliot walk away. He was the same size as Elliot, but it had been a very long time since anyone had considered Simon a boy. One long-fingered hand hovered protectively over the missing buttons. They were his now. He had taken them from the woman’s room the night before. Now he lay in the cool darkness, waiting to take his night’s haul back to his new—albeit temporary—home. The sun would not be kind to his pale, almost translucent skin. In the days following the fall of Midian, he had learned to travel by night. Normally, he would have been in and out of a house long before the dawn, but the boy had been up most of the night again. Simon had stood in the hallway, listening to the soft counting on the other side of the boy’s door. It had been hypnotic, comforting.
    He began to count, quietly running through the fourteen buttons that kept him company. He rolled the numbers slowly around in his mouth as if he were tasting them. They did not soothe him as the boy’s droning had, but he still felt his eyelids grow heavy. Sleep had been a luxury since he’d lost his friends and family, his tribe, on that terrible night.
    *   *   *
    As fitful slumber claimed Simon, Elliot was cutting across one of the neighbors’ yards. Since he knew that his mother was unlikely to join him, he could freely skip the park. There would be other children there, and he had no desire to see them. Generally, they were cruel. Best-case scenario, they were confused by his behavior. He would rather be alone than face their taunts or pointed ambivalence.
    His left hand absently plucked at one of the buttons on his