Chapter 6
Mia woke at two in the morning.
Asked for cereal.
Anna tried apologizing.
I almost laughed.
“You don’t need permission to feed your child.”
She looked embarrassed.
That sentence revealed too much.
Apparently staff meal rules had changed under Celeste too.
Children could not enter the main kitchen after eight.
Not my rule.
Anna sometimes saved bread in her apron for Mia.
Again.
Small control.
Never enough alone to cause rebellion.
Enough together to teach people where they belonged.
Mia ate cereal at my breakfast table.
Her feet did not reach the floor.
She watched me.
Then:
“Blue gone?”
I looked at my mouth reflexively.
“Yes.”
She nodded.
Satisfied.
Then:
“Mommy blue bad.”
“Yes.”
Anna closed her eyes.
I asked Mia how she noticed.
Simple.
One evening Anna kissed her goodnight after Celeste gave her the little cup.
Mia saw pale blue dust near her mother’s lips.
Tonight she saw the same near my glass.
Children compare patterns without needing theories.
“What did Celeste say when Mommy got blue?”
Mia thought.
“She say Mommy clumsy.”
Anna’s face changed.
“What?”
Mia continued.
“Celeste say don’t tell Mr. Vittorio because Mommy lose job.”
There.
Not just adult control.
She had enlisted a three-year-old into silence.
Maybe casually.
Maybe jokingly.
Did not matter.
Mia believed telling me could cost her mother their home.
Yet tonight she walked through armed guards anyway.
I looked at her.
“Why did you tell me?”
She shrugged.
“Because you gonna drink it.”
There it was.
Simple morality again.
Not loyalty politics.
Not fear of employment.
A person was about to swallow something she thought was bad.
So she spoke.
I had capos twice her age who could learn from that.
I looked at Anna.
“Your daughter just saved me from at minimum a very bad evening.”
Anna started crying.
May you like
Mia kept eating cereal.
Heroism is inconvenient at breakfast.
