Thursday V

The large kitchen of the Thursdays was full to bursting. Every meeting involved a bit of puzzling to fit everyone’s plate on the table; growing up in the system meant learning to eat shoulder to shoulder. Usually the buzz of around thirty conversing adults and children filled the room at every frequency. Tonight only a low hubbub spread across the tables. Except for the occasional outburst from a small child, even the kiddie table was mostly quiet. My father had made and served dinner, as usual. My mother sat silently at the table and looked at her hands, an empty chair between her and my dad. No one dared speak to her. There was reproach in the eyes of some, as if it had been her idea alone to make me the point of contact with forces unknown. But she had been the one who suggested to hold off the search for me until tonight. Her own child, the eyes said.

No meat that Thursday night: a simple lentil dish with pieces of egg and green herbs, quite spring-like. Despite everything, my father had made an effort. To do something. Many plates were cleared half-empty. The bigger children washed the dishes, the small ones clung to their parents. My sister sat in my father’s lap for the first time in at least three years. The back door was wide open, but no one thought of going outside. No tag tonight, and especially no hide-and-seek. The last thing anybody wanted was more vanished children.

The children stayed, as I had asked. The two large tables were joined together, and the children placed between the adults as much as possible to form a big circle. No wine, no messages from the community, no small talk. No one dared address the situation. What were the children thinking in that moment? Were they happy that they could stay on during the meeting, considered worthy at last thanks to the last words of a stolen child? Were they convinced I would come back? Were my parents? Perhaps everyone was just waiting quietly for a catastrophe: the revelation of nothing, and possibly the end of our meetings. It was windy. The company were so quiet that at times you could hear the wind blow around the house. Night singers, such as the robin who liked to hang around our garden or the nightingale at the forest edge, were still.

My mother started, as she always did at Thursday meetings. She chose a slow, repetitive verse, and recited it with an uncharacteristically deep voice. The children looked up at her with large eyes: they’d never heard her produce a sound like that. Others joined in, first among them my father. Vero had the Tuesdays’ daughter on her knees, and wordlessly encouraged her and other children to participate. It was an easy piece, and the effect was compelling: the high, young voices and the deeper older ones, speaking in the same rhythm. Like a flying dragon with thirty heads. Sometimes a melody entered the sounds, because deeper voices varied their volume, so that they all but fell away at times, bringing the higher ones to the fore. All voices joined in now and it became a complex tapestry in which vocal groups formed and fell apart. They lost themselves in the song, made eye contact to egg each other on, to experiment. They had fun; they had forgotten me. So the sound swelled. They did not notice the other sound, the one that approached.