Our Missing Hearts

by Celeste Ng

Yesterday morning, she says, on this quiet street, Family Services officers arrived at the home of Sonia Lee Chun and took custody of her four-year-old son, David. The reason? A recent post by Sonia on social media, arguing that PACT was being used to target members of the Asian American community.

There’s another book I wanted to find, Bird says cautiously. Our Missing Hearts. The librarian’s eyes snap toward him. For a long moment she studies him. Appraising. I’m sorry, she says curtly. That book I know we don’t have anymore. I doubt you’ll find it anywhere. With a bang, she pushes the long thin drawer shut again. Oh, Bird says. He’d known it was unlikely and yet deep down, he’d still nursed a flicker of hope, and it goes out in a small sooty puff. What did they do with them, he asks after a moment. All those books. He remembers a picture from history class: heaps of books in a town square, set ablaze. As if she can tell what he’s thinking, the librarian gives him a sideways glance and chuckles. Oh no, we don’t burn books here. This—this is America. Right? She raises an eyebrow at him. Serious, or ironic? He can’t quite tell. We don’t burn our books, she says. We pulp them. Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet

paper.

Those books wiped someone’s rear end a long time ago. Oh, says Bird. So that’s what happened to his mother’s books. All those words ground up into dingy gray, flushed down into the sewer in a mess of shit ...

It is chilly, and the wind scrapes across the top of the city like a knife leveling

flour from a cup,