Everybody's Son

by Thrity Umrigar

He ran his fingers through the boy’s cropped hair, realizing it was the first time he’d ever touched black hair. How soft, how familiar, how organic it seemed, like wool on a lamb, this thing that they all feared so.

but that was a mistake, because all of a sudden her tears acquired a voice and she was making a keening sound that made his hair stand up. If grief had a baby, she would sing like this. The