The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

places, even though it made his heart have a hole in it.
    He took her to the movies.
    He took her to McDonald’s.
    He took her to libraries.
    He took her to the big red bull’s-eye of Target.
    He took her to Shari’s.
    He took her to water parks.
    He took her to boatyards.
    He took her to the beach.
    He took her to bookstores.
    He took her hiking in the forest.
    He took her to museums.
    He took her on the light rail system.
    Again.
    Again.
    He took her horseback riding.
    He took her go-cart racing.
    He took her on Ferris wheels.
    He took her to record stores.
    He took her to music concerts.
    He took her to buildings he’d designed, walking her through light and shadow and form.
    He.
    He.
    He was more tired than any man alive, since she expressed her outrageously embarrassing glee at every one of these placeshe took her, all of it while wearing a helmet, and everyone always stared and said things under their breath, I mean everyone, I mean always, and at some point, no matter where they were or how it was playing out, she’d get to some frenetic moment where she was in danger of injuring herself or others, a tiny amount of drool sliding from her mouth, pee darkening the front of her crotch, the look of . . . Well, I think you can picture her grimace-smiley too-white face, right?
    And so it was that one day, inside his role, this particular thing happened. She was in one of those inflatable worlds that appear at county fairs . . . the kind of inflatable hut kids can crawl inside and jump up and down. You know what I mean.
    She entered.
    He left.
    No, really.
    He left.
    He left his daughter, he left his wife, his family, his life, radically and without hesitation.
    Not that much later—four years, to be precise—her mother was giving a lecture on the child-tragedy circuit. Afterward, a neurosurgeon came up to her and said he knew a doctor in Europe who specialized in the type of operation they’d been told was impossible, and so nearly by accident she got her daughter a different medical team and a world-famous surgeon in Europe, and guess what?
    They operated successfully and her so-called retardation disappeared and she bloomed into a completely normal, beautiful, American teen.
    Completely normal, except for the pearly skull scar and the emotional scars for fucking life.
    And that’s how she comes to be sitting in an airplane with the poet pretending to be her past. Because she’s a stand-in. She’s a retarded girl again, being taken to Europe for experimental treatment again, a story from her real past invading her present. Because without makeup and face jewelry and vintage clothes and hair products, without anything on her head besides that disgusting helmet, she looks much younger than she is. Just past puberty. Which means they can swap her. Which means they can use her special retard-girl identity papers to enter the country with her, but leave the country with a different girl. Later, someone will come back and get her and take her back home.
    It’s the least she can do.
    And besides, the poet had said, this is the most radical performance art she’ll ever do in her life.
    Emotional cripple. Adult need machine. Fuck addict. American artist. She rubs the scar on her head. She rubs the letter against her flesh. The last thought she thinks before she drops into a twenty-something-year-old vodka sleep is: I hate women.

The House of Art
    For more than a year, the girl and the widow live together in the widow’s house while her childhood shifts. When the girl arrives she is eleven. When the girl leaves she is nearly thirteen.
    Inside, the widow starts to teach the girl everything she knows about art. The history of photography, painting, music, literature. “Look at this poem. How it travels down the page in lines, not sentences. How its beauty is vertical, like a body.” The girl puts her fingers on the page, against the words, tracing their meanings, touching them and touching them. Silently mouthing.
    The