āParents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; sheād worn Pearl in a sling because whenever sheād set her down, Pearl would cry. Thereād scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her motherās leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there was something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Miaās in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Miaās arm pinned beneath Pearlās head, or Pearlās legs thrown across Miaās belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearlās caresses had become rare ā a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug ā and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.ā
ā Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
