spinelli

"Real mothers don't die," said Ferdi.

No one had an answer to that. So we talked about oranges. Like mothers, oranges were a common topic. Enos said he had eaten them many times, but Ferdi said they were only made up.

"What do oranges taste like?" I asked Enos.

He closed his eyes. "Like nothing else."

"What do they look like?"

"Like a little sun before it sets."

Ferdi said, "Oranges don't exist."

In the morning light, most of us would begin to believe in mothers and oranges again, but for now, under the rug in pitch-blackness, hearing the faint sounds of the city from the other side of the wall, Ferdi had given us doubts.

(Jerry Spinelli, "Milkweed," p. 88)

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The cow had become something to believe in or not to believe in. Like angels. Mothers. Oranges. How could something as large as a cow live in a ghetto and not be seen? How could it survive? What would it eat? Rubble dust?

And yet so great was the cry for milk for children that the cow seemed to materialize from the very hunger of the people, until one could almost see the animal loping down the street. Of course, no one really did see it, and the more we did not see it, the more we believed in it. Almost every day someone claimed to have heard a mysterious moo.

(Spinelli, "Milkweed," p. 115)