Lizzie wasn’t disgusted by the bruises. She was mesmerized.
“Isn’t it amazing that our bodies contain a rainbow,” Lizzie said to Baby Girl. “All someone has to do is push on us a little too hard and we turn colorful.” Lizzie caressed a particularly yellowish-green bruise. Then she gestured to the trees on the walls. “You’re the rainbow in my forest, Baby Girl. You make everything more beautiful.”
But even Lizzie knew rainbows didn’t glow in the night sky. They don’t belong there. And I knew those bruises didn’t come from falling off a bike. They came from fists. I was sick to my stomach.
A day later Chief went to Baby Girl’s house with some of his police officer buddies. They were in full uniform, with guns and tasers and badges that sparkled in any light.
And a week after that, Baby Girl’s dad moved to Coeur d’Alene, and now she sees him only once a month.
When Lizzie found out what Chief had done, she gave him the silent treatment for over a month. But before she went quiet, Lizzie screamed at Chief like she was using up a lifetime of words. She told him he had no right to go over there.
“I had every right,” Chief said. “It’s my job to protect people. I’m a mandatory reporter, Lizzie. If I didn’t take action, I could lose my job.”
“So it was all about you! You don’t care about Baby Girl at all!”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
But Lizzie didn’t see it like that. Her eyes were wild. She radiated love for Baby Girl all over our house that day. It was like a cadmium sun took up residency in our living room, and Lizzie wouldn’t stop yelling until the house burned down.
“You think bruises exist only on the outside!” she screamed.
“Child abuse is illegal, Lizzie.” Chief always tried to remain calm and logical when Lizzie had fits like this. It started when she was little, with the night terrors. As Lizzie got older, the nightmares no longer discriminated between night and day. Chief thought he could hold her together, but you can’t stop the sun. Chief tried to be ice-cold water, but Lizzie hated logic.
“It’s my job as a police officer to uphold the law.”
Lizzie stormed out of the room and slammed her bedroom door. I followed her, because Chief made everything cold.
I wanted to apologize, but she looked at me with this sadness in her eyes like I’d never seen. Sadness is its own living being. It breathes into a person, clings to her skin, changes people right down to the light in their eyes. Lizzie’s dimmed so low that night, I was worried a gust of wind would put it out.
“He just doesn’t get it, Songbird,” she said. “Some love is better than none at all.”
I never confessed that I was the one who told Chief about the bruises. But because of me, Baby Girl’s dad was gone. Because of me, love went away. Even if it wasn’t the right kind of love.
I knew why Lizzie was upset. She knew a rainbow only shined because of rain. And I was pretty sure she would wear a million bruises just to have our mom back.
Lizzie went silent, and the sun went down on our house. It was so cold inside, I thought I might freeze to death if she didn’t start talking again.
So I painted more trees and flowers and butterflies on Lizzie’s walls to get her speaking again. I covered her room in stars and sky and reminded her that the sun shines in the darkness, even when we can’t see it.
Lately I’ve been reminding myself of this a lot.
Baby Girl finally says, “I know why you’re here, and I already told you. I don’t know where Lizzie is.”
“I know.” I can’t help my words seeping out like a deflating balloon. Baby Girl might be the only person who loves Lizzie close to as much as I do. And right now I feel like Lizzie is disintegrating. The longer she’s gone, the less concrete her life here is.
“Don’t waste your time on the dandelions, Wren.”
“What?”
“People prune dandelions, but they’re weeds. It’s their nature to grow and spread. What’s more insane: Constantly pruning something, hoping to change it, or letting the weed be a weed?”
I understand what Baby Girl is telling me, but I don’t like it.
“Take it from Robert Frost,” she says. “‘No matter what road you pick in the woods, in the end, we all turn to gray fuzz and float away.’”
“That’s depressing.”
“Yes, it is.”
I take the patchouli oil from my pocket and offer it to her. “Someone told me this is good for depression.”
Baby Girl doesn’t just put on a drop. She shakes the bottle, a puddle of oil collecting in her palm, and then she rubs it all over herself.
“Thanks,” she says. “I feel better already.”
That’s when I realize that Lizzie’s stray cat is stray once more.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the apology long overdue.
“For what?”
For being jealous of her relationship with Lizzie. For not helping her sooner. For thinking only of myself. For being the reason her dad lives in Coeur d’Alene. He still calls her Baby Girl, too. He still can’t acknowledge her by name.
But the carousel ride is slowly coming to an end, and Baby Girl needs to get back to work.
“I’m not going anywhere . . . ,” I say, “should you need me.”
12
AN ELLIPSIS SPEAKS FRENCH
Luca brings a ham-and-swiss-cheese sandwich on a baguette to our second day at Driver’s Ed.
“Bonjour, Wren. Voudriez-vous une bouchée mon sandwich?” He leans in close enough that I can feel his breath on my cheek as he whispers, “I just said, ‘Would you like a bite of my sandwich?’ in French. I googled the translation. Isn’t technology amazing? What did people do before the internet?”
“Go to the library.”
“Yuck. Libraries.”
“I love the library.”
“And I love that you love libraries. In fact, your love of libraries makes me want to fall in love with libraries. We should go there together. You could show me around. How about it?”
But Luca’s use of the word “love” has me all confused. He uses it too freely.
“What?”
“Let’s get out of here and go to the library. We don’t need this class.” Luca grabs his skateboard from under his seat.
“Yes, we do, if we want to get a license.”
“I’m more of a public transportation kind of guy.” He holds up his board. “There’s room for two on this thing.”
“No, there isn’t.”
Luca leans in again, this time way too close, and whispers, “There’s always room if you make it.”
My mouth is so dry, it makes swallowing a feat.
“And I have five brothers, which means I’m really good at sharing,” Luca says.
“Five?”
“Five. Sandwich? I made it myself.”
With Luca near, I have an intimate view of his nose ring, and the worst part is, I think it’s wonderful and perfect. And he has a scrape on his elbow, and his fingernails are cut really short, and he’s got a cowlick on the left side of his hairline that makes his hair sprout like a fan. And his aura is warm. Better than warm. It feels like home.
I finally muster the driest swallow of my life and scoot back. “No, thank you.”
“I believe it’s ‘Non, merci’ in French.” Luca wiggles his eyebrows. “Are you impressed yet?”
“Non,” I say mockingly, even though I totally am.
“Touché. I’ll figure you out one of these days.”
I knew this might happen. I worried about it all morning. But there is no getting out of Driver’s Ed without alerting Chief, and then he might start talking about Utah again.
He could tell something was off as we watched Wheel of Fortune this morning. All I could think about was Luca.
“If I were a punctuation mark, what would I be?” I asked Chief. Contestant Jorge spun the wheel.
“Dear God, not this again,” Chief said. He gulped an
extra-long swig of beer. “Why do you have to be anything? Why categorize yourself?”
I ignored his question. “You’re a period.”
“How do you figure?”
“You’re a full stop. A complete sentence. That’s how you see the world. There are subjects, and there are verbs, and you hold them together in the correct place.”
“I guess that sounds about right.”
“I think I might be a period, too.” But for different reasons. After a period comes a new thought. It marks the end. A place where ideas take a turn and never look back.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Chief said. “There’s nothing wrong with being organized and concrete.”
“Until you meet an ellipsis.”
Lizzie is an ellipsis. She’s a thought that goes on and on and on. She’s ideas you want to follow. She is infinite. I think our mom was the same. And judging by the look Chief gave me when I said that, I’m probably right.
The problem with a period loving an ellipsis is that the period always wants to contain infinity. A period is just a piece of the ellipsis’s puzzle, but it can never be an ellipsis. And loving an ellipsis means constantly searching for something concrete and never finding it. It means searching in books for a truth that doesn’t exist.
Caring for an ellipsis means throwing love into the wind and watching it scatter.
I didn’t watch to see if Jorge won the bonus puzzle.
Even how Luca sits today, leaning toward me, unafraid and intimate. Engaged not only with me, but around me. Luca is an ellipsis, too. He coasts on the edge, balancing, catching speed as he moves, like a wave. Just like Lizzie. I can’t even muster the courage to do a handstand, propped up against a wall, let alone attempt moving and balancing on a skateboard at the same time. The best I’ll get is the view from the top of the garage. A life of observation, but not engagement. That’s my destiny. And most people live their entire lives never noticing just how many birds float in the sky above them.
I scoot away from Luca. The more distance between us, the better.
“Oh . . . I get it,” he says.
“Get what?”
“You’re a vegetarian.” Luca examines his ham sandwich.
“No, I’m not.”
“Jewish and don’t eat pork?”
“No,” I say more emphatically.
“I swear I don’t have cooties. Or herpes. Or gonorrhea. I’ve never even had sex. Not that you have to have sex to get herpes. At least that’s what they tell us in health class. But they also tell us premarital sex is a sin, so . . .” Then Luca winks. “I’d become a sinner for you.”
I might pass out.
“Don’t worry. We don’t have to raise our kids Catholic.”
“What?” I say, floored.
“I come from a long line of Catholics. We practically founded Gonzaga University. But I’m not set on it. I’m not even sure I like God. What kind of a guy makes premarital sex a sin? I’ll tell you: no guy. Which makes me suspicious about the whole thing. I’m thinking someone made it all up.”
Luca has rambled so much, I’m lost in his words, just trying to breathe.
“Are you hungry yet?” Luca asks, once again offering me half his sandwich.
He’s staring at my lips, and I realize I’m staring at his. They’re really nice, kind of perfectly round, not too big and not too small.
“You don’t have to give me anything in return,” Luca says, quieter now. “Unless you want to give me a piece of your heart?”
“No, thanks.” I’ve never had a harder time saying two words. “You can have the sandwich.”
When he finishes it, Luca lays his head down and commences his nap. The silence is grating. I like when he talks.
At the end of class, Luca grabs his skateboard and slings his backpack over his shoulder. “Au revoir, then, Wren.”
Even if I wanted to run after him, Luca would sail smoothly past me until all I could see were the places his yellow light touched along the way. A period, endlessly frozen in place, left to watch as an ellipsis moves on.
At the next class, Luca unveils a hotdog from his backpack. It’s wrapped in tinfoil. He’s even brought little packets of mustard.
“Have you ever googled what a hotdog is made of?” he asks.
“No.”
“Don’t. You’ll never eat one again.”
“Have you?”
“Unfortunately, yes, but my stomach outweighs my logic at times.” Luca smells the hotdog. “I just don’t care that I’m eating pig anus, as long as it tastes good. That’s the problem with teenage boys. No frontal lobe. No logic. For example, it is completely illogical that I should have a crush on you.”
And the bit of calm I tried to hold on to dissolves.
“And it’s a big one. I’m talking epic proportions. Completely illogical. But I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s crazy. I know.”
No one has ever had a crush on me. You have to see someone to want them.
“Now, if I was logical, I’d back off. If a girl doesn’t want to share a simple sandwich, she’s not interested. But I’m not logical,” Luca says. “I might be damn near delusional. It runs in the family.”
Luca takes my phone.
“For example, a logical person wouldn’t put his phone number in your phone.” He types as I watch, unable to move. “A logical person wouldn’t text himself so he now has your number.”
Luca shows me the text he’s just sent from my phone to his. He hands my phone back to me.
“Only an insane person would do this.” He types, and a second later a text comes through on my screen.
Luca: Hey
Hesitantly, I type back.
Me: Hi
Cadmium yellow radiates all around us in beams and streaks, and it feels permanent. When I breathe, I swear I take in not only air but his essence as well.
“Sometimes it’s good to be illogical,” he says, and then takes a bite of his hotdog. “Keeps life interesting.”
My eyes drift down to Luca’s nose ring and then to the smirk on his face and to his ratty T-shirt and then back up to his eyes, which might be cradling me.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I want half of your hot dog?”
“No. It’s time you meet me halfway. Get it?” Luca’s grin is goofy and cute, a smile to turn a person inside out. He finishes the hotdog and lays his head down on the desk.
“When you’re ready, Wren, you have my number.”
13
I’M CURSED
I sit in my window, waiting, needing Wilder’s light to come on. The noise of the reality-television show Olga is watching echoes up the stairs, making its way through our vacant house as if to point out all the empty places.
Chief is working tonight. Luca’s text is pulled up on my phone. I can’t stop staring at it.
How did this happen? How did I let this happen? I know better, and I need to fix it, and yet I don’t know how. Or . . . maybe . . .
If I’m honest . . .
I’m not sure I want to.
My fingers tingle with warmth, itching to text him again. The memory of his whisper on my cheek lingers in my pores, sweet. How did Luca suddenly become a concrete person in my life?
I rub my cheek clean and shake out my hands, the uncomfortable itch of anxiety nestled in my stomach. It’s coming. To be really means to be known. Seen. Acknowledged. But nothing lasts. Eventually someone leaves.
I felt it the night before Lizzie crept out of the house—the uneasy ache right before someone leaves. Part of me knew it was coming. The leaving is so much a part of me, it’s as constant as breathing—the in and the inevitable out.
People make choices before they take action. For some it’s coded in their DNA. It’s in the makeup of their bones and hair and eyes. The gleam of wanting more shimmered in everything Lizzie did. Anyone who met her couldn’t help but be instantly drawn in.
Like a cold front that comes down over the mountains and settles in t
he valley of Spokane, I felt it creep closer and closer. And yet every morning when Lizzie was in her hammock, swaying to an artificial breeze, I was relieved. I convinced myself I was being paranoid. It wasn’t time yet. She wouldn’t do this to me.
But hope is fickle. And when it leaves, fear takes its place.
Lizzie didn’t leave a note. She didn’t kiss me goodbye. She didn’t hold my hand. She just let go. She snuck out when neither Chief nor I could grab her, when not even the law that Chief follows, day by day, night by night, could bring her home. All she left were the clothes in the closet and an empty hammock.
It’s not her fault, though.
I am made of discarded love, and anyone who holds me feels its use, its wear, feels the holes and the tears and the snags. Even Lizzie, who shopped for clothes at thrift stores because she felt bad for castaway T-shirts and old, worn-out belts desperate to hold someone again. At some point secondhand T-shirts become unwearable and turn to rags.
The light next door comes on. When Wilder sees me standing there, a text rings through immediately.
Wilder: Wanna know what I learned today?
Me: What?
Wilder: Bacon can cure nosebleeds
Wilder: As if we needed another reason to eat bacon
The anxiety resting on my chest eases somewhat.
Wilder: Now u tell me something
Me: I read once that if u name a cow it produces more milk
Wilder: Fascinating
Wilder: Tell me something else
I tell Wilder that the oldest bird’s nest ever found on earth is twenty-five hundred years old and that in Mexico birds use cigarette butts to make their nests.
Me: They make a home from discarded items
Me: A feather
Postcards for a Songbird Page 6