The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

by Heidi W. Durrow

  His eyes fixed on the photos on the mantel. “Is this your father? I can see the resemblance.”

  “Really?”

  “Through the nose, mouth.” And, he thought, the way that I am touched by you.

  “I don’t remember him much,” she said. “I mean I miss him. But he kind of left us,” she continued. “I mean me. So then Grandma got me. I came to live with her.”

  He didn’t have to ask about her mother. “I’m sorry,” he said instead of Let me explain. Your father said you would be safer here. And this is why.

  “Who’s this?” he asked, holding a photograph of a young woman.

  “My Aunt Loretta.”

  This time it wasn’t fear, but sadness, that registered in Rachel’s face. Brick studied the picture. The woman had a pageboy hairdo and pearl earrings and a necklace to match, and the same soft jawline and high cheekbones as her niece. They did not have the same color eyes.

  “You must have your mom’s eyes,” he said.

  Rachel took the photograph from him when he looked up at her again as if comparing. She wiped dust from the frame.

  He realized he was going too fast. You couldn’t fill a room with ghosts when you didn’t know what power they might have.

  “Is your grandmother home?” he asked.

  “Yeah, she’s asleep. Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to let you in. Do you want to wait for her?”

  “Umm …”

  “Oh. It’d be okay. The rule is no boys allowed in the house. But maybe you don’t count as a boy since — well, you’re older.”

  “Oh.”

  Brick sat. His legs were impossibly long. Impossible because he could not figure how to cross them or lean them to the side without looking effeminate. He was a pretty man so he lowered his voice when he talked; he made sure to stand straight. He put his hands in his pockets. In those ways, he thought, he made himself look more manly. “You’re so pretty,” the women would say. “How do I know you’re not gay?” That’s what the women would tease him with. His beauty. He had learned that the women who said this wanted him to be rough with them — take them in his arms hard. He’d done it a couple of times — both drunk and high — but not without the uneasy feeling that claimed his throat and his gut later. He’d hold the women the way the bruising hands of the pigeon man had held him. It was not the touch he wanted or wanted to give.

  “So do you like the job at the center?” He folded his hands in his lap. Slow, slowly.

  “Yeah, I like it,” she said, fanning the pages of a thick book. “Otherwise I’d be here reading the whole summer. I think I could read the whole library through.”

  Without Jesse between them, Brick felt uncomfortable in her presence. Boyish. Usually their conversations were so easy. He was all nerves now and filled the silence with questions.

  You like reading?

  What’s your favorite book?

  And how come?

  What’s the biggest book you ever read?

  He asked her what was her favorite food, color, day of the week, holiday?

  She answered his questions then said, “That’s not a way to know people.”

  There was a long silence. Then Brick heard a toilet flush at the back of the house.

  “I think she’s up.” Rachel looked toward a closed door. Silence. The remote control clicked. The television turned on. “I think she’s gonna watch her story. Yeah, you better not disturb her now.”

  Again, they were quiet.

  If he wasn’t going to tell her Roger’s story, then he should leave.

  I’m Jamie. I used to live downstairs. He couldn’t form the words. Today maybe wasn’t the day. He felt rubbed down — dull.

  He was about to stand to go when she said, “Hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, can I ask you a question?” she asked. “You had so many for me.”

  “Yeah, sure …” Did she know the reason he’d come? Did she recognize who he was?

  “What are you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re from Chicago. But what are you? Like black, or — like me?”

  “Oh, I’m black. Regular.” He said “regular” like he was describing coffee without milk. “Normal,” he said amending his answer. “Just black.”

  “I didn’t mean …” she said.

  “That’s okay,” he said, trying to take out whatever edge he had in his words. “I don’t mind. Really.” And then, “Do you think people would ask you that if you didn’t have your mother’s eyes?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and her voice changed. When he looked at her, he saw a building, her brother, a fall. There was actual sky in her eyes. He wanted to take it back — put the question back inside.

  “Hey, can we go outside?” he said. “I want to see that bird feeder.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I used to know something about birds,” he said. “A long time ago.”

  IN THE BACKYARD Rachel propped herself on the gate. Brick took a seat on a stump.

  “Did you meet Drew’s daughter, Lakeisha?” Rachel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “She likes you.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s eighteen.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told her that if you and me and Jesse go somewhere. She could come.”

  “Sure.”

  A bird flew down from the neighbor’s walnut tree. It pecked at the bird feeder, then flew off. “It got so close,” Rachel said. “How come?”

  “I guess we didn’t scare it.”

  “I know that. I meant you said you knew a lot about birds. Was this something that kind of bird normally does?”

  “I don’t know. I knew what they looked like, and I remembered their songs. Not so much what they did and stuff.”

  “Is that what you wanted to do? Before …”

  Before he became a bum, Brick knew she was thinking. Before he was an addict, an alcoholic, someone who had lived on the street.

  “An ornithologist,” she said.

  “Big word.”

  “I like big words,” she said.

  “I never thought of liking words,” he said.

  “What do you like? Best? I bet I could guess,” she said. “Music.”

  “You’re right,” he said, and he took out his harmonica, the silver harmonica that was Roger’s gift.

  “You play that? Too?” she asked. “That’s weird. That you would play that.”

  “Weird? It’s a way to make music out of a whistle,” Brick said. “Like a bird does. Let me show you.” With his cupped hands around the instrument, with his eyes closed, he played Roger’s song.

  “It’s a song I knew once. Now I think it’s a song I made up,” he said.

  “What do you call it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It needs a title. I think I’d call it ‘Flight.’”

  How would he say what he had to say?

  Instead he said, “I’m not twenty-five. I’m seventeen. I lied so I could get in the center. I didn’t want to end up in foster care. I ran away. I was eleven. I kind of lived with anyone who would take me in for years. I mean, I say ran away but I thought I was going to something. I just kind of lost my way at some point.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Right here, I guess. I guess I was going right here. Don’t they always say that you end up exactly where you’re supposed to be?”

  “Do you miss home?” she asked.

  He shrugged. Missing people, missing home. He hadn’t allowed himself a feeling like that in so long. “I did so many different things when I lived on the road: ranch hand, factory worker, piano player in a bar. I don’t think I missed out on much. Even if it wasn’t a proper growing up, I think I had a lot of growing up experiences.”

  “Except,” and unable to explain why roller coasters and cotton candy, roasted peanuts and Ferris wheels were suddenly on his mind, he said, “an amu
sement park. I never got to go on one of those rides.” He felt young around her — back to his own age — and maybe younger. He missed out on the chance to seek out a fright just for fun.

  “I was small for my age. If you can believe it. I was never tall enough to get on the big rides as a kid,” he said.

  “That’s easy then,” she said. “We’ll pick a day and we’ll go. I used to love amusement parks. There’s Oaks Park. It’s not Disneyland, but … it’s closer.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” Okay, he thought, it’s a date.

  “Next week. Next Saturday?”

  “Sure. Yeah, okay.”

  They sat silently watching the birds come and go. They were common birds: sparrows, robins, and the occasional large crow. Brick put his hands back in his pockets now, afraid of the silence. But certain today he would not tell.

  “I won’t tell your secret. That’s a promise,” she said. “I’m good at not telling.”

  Nella

  Day 766. I don’t know what to do. Why did he do it? Anything could have happened. When I came home from work there was just Doug on the couch watching TV. When I said where are the kids, he said he took them to the park. He said they wanted to go. I know they wanted to go but they can’t go alone. They can’t be alone out there. They don’t know this place. He said he told them how to get home. He showed them the way. I can’t believe he took them out and left them there. I went to take them home. They were right there when I walked out. I hugged them to me. I think Robbie was scared because he saw me crying. I was so happy they were okay. My babies were okay. What if something happened? I cannot think of it. It is all on my mind.

  Rachel

  Jesse’s regular pizza place in Southeast is crowded. Tonight it’s busy with young rockers with dyed black hair and chains that hang from their belts. They’ll be gone soon, Jesse says, to drag race along the wide boulevards near the college and downtown. But right now the juke box is blasting “white people music,” as Lakeisha says too loudly. “Can we go someplace else?”

  I agree with Lakeisha for the same reason, but say instead: “How about if we get it to go and have a picnic in a park somewhere?”

  Jesse and Brick agree and walk to the counter to ask for the pizzas to go. At the counter Brick accidentally bumps one of the young rockers.

  “Hey, watch it,” the kid says.

  “My bad,” Brick says.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Brick is so much larger than the rocker — really than everyone else in the room — it’s hard to imagine that the rocker would dare to fight him. But it’s the tone in his voice that makes me think he’s eager to prove to his friends, or to his girl, or to himself that he’s not going to be pushed around. Not tonight.

  “Okay, chill,” Brick says. It’s like he’s used to being a target. He’s the guy that you have to challenge to prove that you’re not scared.

  “Yeah, cool it, man,” Jesse says. There’s nothing more forceful or threatening in what Jesse says. But Jesse looks the rocker in the eye, and it’s like they share some secret code. It’s something like: He’s with me. He’s okay.

  “Well, just tell your ‘brother’ to cool it. He almost knocked my pop out of my hand.”

  But before any of us thinks about it longer, the pizzas are ready, we run out the door. It’s summer. It’s a perfect summer night.

  AT LAURELHURST PARK we spread out on a blanket Jesse finds in his trunk. It’s hot still even though it’s after dark. The sky is full of stars.

  “Gotta have something to drink for a party.” Jesse’s bought two six-packs of beer from the grocery store with a fake ID.

  “That’s what I used to say,” Brick says when he sees the beer.

  “Well, not you, man. We should’ve got a root beer for you, man. Sorry.”

  “It’s alright.”

  Lakeisha takes a beer and hands one to me. “I ain’t gonna tell, if you don’t.” She opens the beer. I do too.

  It is a perfect summer night, and I am sitting closer to Jesse than I normally would or maybe he’s sitting closer to me.

  Jesse asks a bunch of what-if questions. What if … what if you could live anywhere, where would it be?

  “In a big old house,” Lakeisha says.

  “Jamaica.” Jesse’s choice.

  “Somewhere in Europe,” I say.

  “Right here. This town.” That’s Brick.

  “This is probably where I’ll end up too. Working in my dad’s law office,” Jesse says.

  We talk about everything. So we also talk about sex. The boys talk about sex. Lakeisha and I listen.

  “I got my sex education from the Sears, Roebuck catalog,” Jesse says. He’s two beers into the night, and I can see the red rise into his cheeks. “I was like nine years old and my older cousin — he was twelve and didn’t know anything. But I didn’t know that then. The things he told me. Anyway, he said I could see it for myself right there in the Sears catalog. There were girls in their bras and underwear.

  “I go home that day. Sneak the catalog into the bathroom with me, find the right page, and start wonking off. Then my dad opens the door. I’m like shell-shocked. He says, ‘Son?’ and he can see I’ve got the catalog open to the bigger-sized women. He says ‘Excuse me, son. Go on ahead.’ He closes the door and I go right back to it. That’s the whole sex-ed talk he ever gave me. Guess he was just glad I wasn’t gay.”

  We all laugh.

  “Bet your grandma had a thing or two to teach you …” Jesse says, grinning at me.

  I smile but I am glad that Brick speaks up and takes the attention away from me.

  “I didn’t get much of a sex-ed talk myself,” Brick says. He’s smiling but something is shaking in his voice.

  “Come on, man,” Jesse says. “What’d you need to learn? I want tips from you. Women throw themselves at you.”

  Lakeisha giggles.

  “I’m not into that. You have to be careful with people.” Already the mood has changed. “I’m just saying,” Brick says, “I was introduced to what sex was or something that — ”

  I can tell there is more than the secret of his age in his eyes.

  “Ah, never mind,” he says. “I’m making this sound like a meeting.”

  “Hi, my name is Brick,” Jesse says. “I’m a buzz killer.” Brick smiles and gives Jesse a playful shove on the shoulder. They play fight, and Brick wrestles Jesse to the ground and pins him. It’s easy. Even if it is just for pretend.

  IT’S GETTING CHILLY. Clouds cover the stars, but the moon is still bright. It is a bright, nearly full moon. Jesse gets his jacket for me and another blanket from his car for Lakeisha. He doesn’t drape the jacket on my back like a cape, but puts it on me like a blanket and kind of tucks me in. When he sits down, and no one is looking, he puts his hand beneath the jacket, touches my knee and gives it a squeeze.

  You can hear the ducks in the rushes by the pond now. And for some reason that makes us quiet. We can’t see them from where we sit, but it sounds like a whole flock has landed and is settling down for the night.

  “Come on,” Jesse says out of the blue. “We’re going to feed the ducks the leftover crusts.” We run down the hill to the pond. Brick carries the box; Jesse leads the way; and Lakeisha and I trail after them.

  We can hear the ducks but not see them. We each throw out several bits of crust into the water. No birds appear.

  Jesse decides if they won’t come to him, he’ll go to them. He takes off his shoes and rolls up his shorts and walks into the water toward where they seem to be nesting.

  “You crazy,” Lakeisha says and takes a seat on a bench by the pond.

  Jesse’s in the water to his thighs. He keeps throwing bits of crust into the water, at first like coins in a wishing well, then like Frisbees across the water’s top. There’s a loud squawking, and suddenly a flock of birds lifts up above the rushes. They dive down to the water where Jesse stands. He’s surrounded by them, and they snap up the crusts he’s already thro
wn. “Hey, come bring me more.”

  Brick turns to me and extends his hand. “I don’t want to get wet,” I say.

  “Then I’ll carry you.”

  He kneels so that I can jump on his back, and he strides into the water where Jesse stands. He’s so tall that my feet barely skim the water when he’s in up to his thighs.

  “Those — those are just mallards, but those over there are swans,” Brick says. “If you look real close, you can see them by the tall weeds.”

  “I can’t see them,” I say.

  “Then you have to listen. You’ll recognize them by sound.”

  Brick puts his hand to his mouth and makes a bird sound like nothing I’ve ever heard. Once. Twice. And then the third time, the sound isn’t one he’s made but one that we hear.

  “Oh wow. What does that sound mean?” I ask.

  “It’s a contact call,” he says. “I guess it means, ‘Hey, I’m here. I’m with you too.’”

  Just then one of the swans swims through what seems like dozens of ducks to where Brick stands. We stand in the water among the birds until we have no food left to feed them. As soon as the food is gone, the birds take flight. We watch them fly away.

  The boys are soaking wet. They smell like the pond. Jesse’s stripped down to his boxers and has wrapped a blanket around his legs. Brick keeps wringing water from his shorts and is standing in a small puddle now. We’re all shivering so we pile into Jesse’s car to get warm. Jesse and I sit in the front — Brick and Lakeisha in the back. Jesse turns on the heat and then reaches into the glove compartment and takes out a pouch.

  “Do you have a light?” Jesse asks Brick.

  “That’s drugs,” Lakeisha says.

  “It’s harmless,” Jesse says.

  “It’s not legal,” Lakeisha says. “You could get arrested for having that.”

  “Shhh … don’t tell.”

  “My hair’s gonna smell all like that. I’m gonna get in trouble,” Lakeisha says.

  “Open the window. So man you got a light?”