when you have a face, i'll have a mouth.

     In the outside, Tonnie didn’t dare act the way he let himself act when he was in his own house.

     She looked over her right shoulder, over her left. She felt the emptiness at her back. The whole world, except for Tonnie’s house, was the outside.

     That was an idea she had never had before. She pictured the whole world — round — like a picture in a book, with the Australians hanging off by their feet and smiling, and the Japanese sticking out of one side, smiling. She pictured how little a dot Tonnie’s home made on that globe. Everything except for that tiny little dot wasn’t his.

     All the rest —

     Not that she thought the rest of the world was perfect, or even easy, or even safe. Just, it wasn’t Tonnie’s.

     And there was so much of it. So much more of the rest than there ever could be of Tonnie’s.

     She could almost see how much.

     The door started to open, and terror reached out for her, reached up from her belly to grab on to her heart.

     Tish wrapped her hand around that picture of how much world stretched out around the few square feet of house that Tonnie owned. She wrapped her hand around the idea and held it out in front of her, like a knife.