Balance of Fragile Things Read Online Free PDF

kitchen, with the aroma of her sauerbraten wafting in the nostrils of her button-sized nose, she waltzed across the linoleum floor and directly, accidentally, into Vic.
    â€œOh, mans zvirbulis , you are home.”
    When Vic was born, he’d weighed only a few pounds, and as Maija held him in her arms she decided he resembled a little bird. Now, she gasped at her son’s battered face and had to steady herself against the counter. “Vicki, who did this?”
    She lifted his face under the light. His nose had been broken. Black eyes were forming. His cheek was bruised and swollen. Maija began to cry without a sound. This was the work of a villain. “Oh, my baby!”
    â€œMama, can we talk about this later? Ouch!” Vic’s voice was nasally, and Maija pushed him to sit at a kitchen stool and turned his face this way and that. She looked into his nostrils, cut pieces off a new sponge, and carefully shoved the sponge inside. Then she piled a bag of frozen lima beans on his face and told him to sit still.
    â€œOh dear, does it hurt much?”
    He did not respond.
    â€œWhere is your sissy Queen Isabella?” Maija asked while nervously dumping a pile of ibuprofen into her hand; a few fell to the floor, and she didn’t pick them up.
    â€œRehearsal. The play.”
    â€œAh, yes, will Michelle give her a ride home, then?” She tried her hardest not to say anything about the fight because that was Paul’s department, though it was difficult. “You know, you are lucky to have such a nice little sissy, Vicki; you should take care of her. Ninth grade can be very difficult for kids these days.”
    Maija’s fountain of parenting knowledge reached the end. She considered the archetypes she’d learned from television, including the troubled teens, pregnant teens, druggy teens, and even prostituting teens. Just earlier that day, she’d watched a special on the Internet and teens, and she was thankful neither of her children spent much time on their one family computer in the kitchen, except when papers were due. Oh yes, Vic had an obsession with a video game that had something to do with building a city, an entire simulated world. That and his blog he told her about. This sounded nice to Maija—so creative, not destructive—but Vic would never show his mother his creations.
    â€œPlease don’t call me Vicki, Mama. Call me Vic.”
    â€œOh yes. Sorry, mazs dēls .” Maija put her hands on Vic’s cheeks and concentrated in an attempt to see something, anything—but the other world gave her nothing, as usual.
    â€œMama, quit it!”
    â€œWho did this to you?”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œYour father will fix it.”
    â€œIt’s like I’m asking for it, wearing this stupid thing on my head and all.”
    â€œVicki!”
    â€œThere isn’t even a gurdwárá in this town—why should I have to wear this?”
    â€œYou want I should start one? You’re lucky I don’t send you to Latvian camp. There’s one in Pennsylvania, you know. Or maybe you’d rather.” Maija’s cold eyes found Vic’s pupils.
    He looked unfazed. “You don’t get it. Do kids in Latvia wear this?”
    â€œI know how difficult the teen years are.”
    Vic went to his room without looking back at his mother. She knew he wouldn’t emerge until his father requested his presence in the backyard later. She knew he thought it was unfair that his sister didn’t have to display an element of their father’s orthodox religion. But wasn’t that part of being a teenager, thinking the world’s against you and wondering why it’s so unfair?
    Maija wondered how having a grandparent in the house would change her children. She went to his bedroom; the door wasn’t closed all the way, so she peeked inside. His hair was flowing down his back in curls, rebelling