Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  The attic was dark, and Leonard and Annalee were playing with matches. They had gone through three boxes, struck so many matches their noses had grown immune to the stink and sting of phosphorus. Leonard picked up a matchbox that was strangely heavier than the rest, and when he slid it open, there were no matches, but instead a round and brilliant cut diamond.

  “Look,” he said, shook it in his palm, and presented it for Annalee’s eyes.

  “Put it back,” she whispered, as if she had already known its forbidden history, as if she could predict its forbidden future.

  He had done what she said and put the diamond back in the matchbox, but as she turned her back and walked to the dollhouse that summer day, he slipped the box inside his left white sock.

  Another summer passed, another summer came, and in the attic, Leonard became Annalee’s plaything. She could make him do anything she wanted, and took great pleasure in her control. He was a ragdoll she could dress and contort, a game of gin rummy she could always beat, a Simon Says who always did what she said. It was one of the delights of male adoration or perhaps it was Leonard’s lot for stealing the diamond. However, the control she was so pleasured by ended the summer she hid behind the gramophone. She was fourteen. Her breasts had changed shape, and her first pimple had pushed through her chin.

  She stood at the attic window, looking down at the moon vine her mother planted that spring, it bulging with plump buds, and waited for Uncle Reece’s car to turn left on Spivey Street. She watched Leonard rush from the backseat and run up the front porch steps. His shoulders had grown broad, and his throat was bumped with a protruding knot. Annalee held still until the attic flap opened then darted behind the gramophone.

  Through an opening, she watched Leonard’s loafers, stocked with shiny pennies, come toward her. Her fingers fled to her mouth, concealing her exhilarated smile and the unfortunate pimple on her chin. Leonard’s hand reached in a box and retrieved a record. He wiped the record off, the dust falling lightly on his eyelashes, and placed it on its holder. He cranked the handle and positioned the needle in its groove, and from the flower-headed speaker came the most beautiful sound her ears had ever heard.

  That summer, they spent all their days and all their nights dancing. He taught her the Charleston, the Shimmy, the Foxtrot, and the Bunny Hug. He made her mind count and her fingers snap. He made her arms pretzel and her feet kick. He made her dip and jump and twirl and rendered her weightless as he threw her in lifts, her hair sweeping the cobwebs from the ceiling. No longer was Leonard Annalee’s plaything. She was his.

  At night, after their parents stopped yelling up at them to quit all the racket, and after they felt confident the four of them had passed out on gin, Leonard and Annalee knotted the quilts together, threaded them through the attic window, and ran the four miles it took to cross the tracks to Jimmy’s Dance Club. Every night at Jimmy’s they took center stage. Leonard danced the pennies out of his loafers and Annalee danced the ribbons out of her hair. Come sun up, they raced home salted with sweat and cussing their blisters just as their parents were waking and cussing the empty gin crystal from the night before. They slept most of the day, and started it all over again, threading the quilts through the attic window, running to Jimmy’s, and dancing all night.

  When August came around and Leonard had to leave, for the first time in her life, Annalee became sick of heart. They promised to write letters every day and did so, wrought with romance and the anticipation of June. When June finally came, and Leonard streaked from Uncle Reece’s car and pounded up the porch steps, Annalee, who had spent hours primping in front of the mirror that morning, did not possess the mischief to hide.

  The attic flap pried open. A cut of light shone warm on her ankles and traveled up the prettiest Sunday dress she owned—a white eyelet that fit her perfect. From the light crawled Leonard, his shoulders square and broader than the summer before, his eyes hungry, his lips poised. The attic flap slammed shut. Annalee cupped Leonard’s face, it void of boy and chiseled with man, brought him toward her, and placed her lips on his, kissing him with the kind of passion the red apple she spent six months practicing on could not possibly stir.

  Leonard kept his mouth locked in the heat of hers. He clutched the back of her long slender neck and braced his other hand between her shoulder blades. He backed her against the wall where they kissed through a hot rainstorm. Annalee lifted her newly shaven leg, the eyelet lace tickling up her thigh, and wrapped it around the small of Leonard’s back. He lifted her, and with all four of her willing limbs, she encased him like a spider encases its meal. They spun around and around the attic’s room until they fused into one.

  Leonard laid her on the velvet fainting couch and unlocked his mouth with hers. He reached for his ankle, and from his sock retrieved the matchbox they had found the summer they were twelve.

  “Marry me,” he whispered, pulled the matchbox open, and slid the ring that he had made from the stolen diamond on her finger.

  She took him into her mouth again. She lifted her dress above her waist and fondled his belt buckle until it came unleashed. Her legs traveled up his calves and hams, her toes eager and grasping, and tugged his trousers down. His fingers curled inside her panties and took them past her knees. Her naked pelvis trembled from the sudden rush of cold only to quickly melt from the weight of his pressing heat. And there, on the fainting couch, among the wardrobes, the boxes, and chests, they made love. They took in the Scriptures, they recited the nuptials, and moved through the songs and ceremony, and in their bodies and in their souls, they were married. They lay in each other’s arms, their bodies kneaded and limp. Their breath ebbed and flowed in perfect unison.

  The attic flap slammed. Annalee jumped up and covered her breasts. Leonard grabbed for his drawers.

  Towering over them stood Annalee’s mother. Her mouth was clenched shut and her eyes shook with anger. She clawed at Leonard’s collar, yanked him off the couch, and struck his face with the backside of her hand.

  The strings in her neck flexed. “Go downstairs and tell your father and your uncle what you have done. But spare your mother. She is too weak to handle this kind of shame.” She grabbed Leonard’s arm and made him face Annalee. “Take your last look because you will never step foot in this household again.”

  “But Mama,” Annalee stood up, “I love him.”

  “Shut your mouth, you silly child. You are not nearly a woman and have no say so in the matter.”

  “You can’t do this!” she yelled, lunging for Leonard. The back of her mother’s hand knocked her down on the couch.

  Leonard’s eyes set deep into Annalee’s and stayed there until her mother ripped them apart and shoved him down the attic flap.

  Her mother descended down after him and before closing the flap, she stabbed Annalee with her eyes. “You are forever ruined,” she said, and she slammed the attic flap shut.

  Annalee rushed to the flap and tried to pry it open, but her mother latched it and locked her in. She pounded her fists against the boards and pulled against the flap’s handle.

  “Leonard!” she screamed. She stood and stomped on the flap, hoping to bust through and fall to the ground. “Let me out!” she yelled, as her feet pounded against the floor. She dropped to her knees and placed her ear to a crack. She heard footsteps and mumbling and then the rise of male voices followed by a hard knock against a downstairs wall.

  She pawed at the attic flap and yelled down again, “Leonard!” Her voice echoed throughout the attic walls, its vibration rattling dust from the rafters. She lay atop the attic flap and kept her ear against the boards, listening for Leonard. The house was silent except for the crashing of tears and the beat of her dying heart.

  The front door slammed, and she heard Leonard’s feet pound down the porch steps. She ran to the attic window and watched Uncle Reece shove Leonard into the backseat of the car and throw their travel cases into the trunk while her Aunt Missy, throwing up her arms, circled in confusion. As
they pulled out of the drive, Leonard looked through the backseat window and found her staring down at him. Their eyes hooked. Reaching for each other, they placed their palms against the glass separating them from the world, only to find it unbending and cold. Before the blue in Leonard’s eyes, once streaked with hunger, now sinking with tears, began to slip and slide to memory, she removed her palm from the window. She put her wedding finger in her mouth, raked the ring off with her teeth, and positioned it in the warm pocket under her tongue. She vowed then to keep it there forever and never to smile and show her teeth.

  “‘Til death,” she whispered. She watched Uncle Reece’s car turn right off Spivey Street while the last bit of Leonard trailed down the inside of her thigh.

  Annalee, remembering the dejection of that day, kissed Leonard’s wrinkled eyelid. Had he come back for her, an angel finally sent from the turtle-paced God? She had been robbed of what every human being desired most. It had been stripped away, no matter how tightly she grasped, no matter how violently she fought. Why had it taken him so long? For him to return to her this late was an act of the cruelest order, for she had no life left. The damage had been done.

  A burning sensation, both foreign and familiar, filled her eyes. She blinked and expressed a tear. It rolled down her cheek and dropped from her chin. She caught it in her palm, stunned it held warmth, stunned it was real. Her hand went to her mouth, and she tasted this little sign of life, and when she did, she heard Gradle weeping from below.

  She put her ear on the floor from where the sound rose. It was the quietest thing she had ever heard. No sound came from the girl’s mouth, but Annalee could hear the gentle acoustics of her tears.

  She pillowed Leonard’s head with quilts, came down from the attic, and stood in the doorway of what once was her room. Aglow in the lamplight, Gradle lay on the bed in her bra and underwear next to her green chiffon dress. Blood stained the dress and her underwear, and Annalee could smell the hurt of her wound.

  She sat on the bed at Gradle’s side. The girl saddened Annalee, and she found herself fighting the urge to hold and pet Gradle as if she was one of her own. She was not at all baffled by the draw, for the girl possessed a type of gravity that would attract many moons, not to mention their circumstances were much alike. If God makes a home for the lonely, they hadn’t found it yet.

  She wondered who would have told her, who would have taught her about how it happens, how it works. The girl had no mother, no father, and from what Annalee had gathered from their time being here, she had no Leonard either.

  A roll of thunder sent the moon vine into a shiver and brought down a hard rain. Annalee remembered how her mother taught her how it happens, how it works. She thought back on that day her mother sowed the moonflowers’ first seeds. Annalee had watched her the night before nick their eyes with a knife and drop them one by one in a tumbler of water to soak. Moonflower seed is hard as a rock, and her mother was against the clock. Annalee had just turned fourteen and was beginning to flower herself.

  It took three days for leaves, another twenty for blooms. As the hawk worms were turning to moths, Annalee’s mother invited her out to the porch for a swing. In the dusk they watched the moon vine creep and bloom. When the first hawk moth drank the flower through its tongue, her mother, pleased with her plan, cocked her chin and said, “You see, Annalee. It’s the moth, not the flower, that makes the seed.”

  Her mother’s timing had been profound, but her poetics were not ample warning for what was to come.

  Annalee stayed at Gradle’s side and offered what piddly little comfort a dead woman could. She felt warmth as she wiped Gradle’s tears, yet she couldn’t say for certain if she felt her at all. She stroked her head until she fell asleep. When Gradle’s breath grew heavy, Annalee removed her cat-eye glasses, kissed her forehead, and covered her with the sheet.

  The storm passed. A dark, watery night fell, and hundreds of moonflower blooms starred the ceiling. A hawk moth lit on her ringed finger and stretched out its wings before joining the others in their feast. She watched the moths feed, watched them grow satisfied and flock to the ceiling to roost. She watched the sunrise, and when its delicate pink came in the room, the moonflowers wilted and curled. Night bloomers not made for the sun. She watched every bloom fall to the ground, each making a loud spank as if they carried the weight of wet towels. To serve a purpose and then die. What a privilege, Annalee thought.

  GRADLE SAT ON the front porch swing reading The Holy Bible while she waited for the postman. She had been waiting every day, all day, since she licked the stamp Grandpa had left on her pillow and placed it on the makeshift paper and Superglued envelope she addressed to Delvis Miles. The letter sat in the mailbox for three days because the postman acted too scared to come on the porch and get it. Every day he altered his route by crossing the street before he passed, and crossing back over once he was two doors down, swerving around the old Spivey house like it was a dead animal in the road. The letter would have never been mailed if she hadn’t finally chased him down and forced it in his hand.

  Each day after, each time he crossed the street and waded through the median’s azaleas, she chased after him, yelling out at his back, “You got any mail for me, sir? My name’s Gradle Bird!” Every time, the runty postman avoided her eyes and shook his head as he kept walking with his face fixed to the ground. She’d watch him pass on, lift his head once it was safe, and greet the lady down the way with sunshine and smiles, staying there and chatting for a good half hour.

  She wondered if her letter had even made it to Delvis. Perhaps it was true what Sonny Joe said. Perhaps Delvis never got mail. Perhaps the mailman was scared of him too or didn’t have a key to unlock his box. But until her letter was returned, she would continue to wait and hope. What else did she have to wait and hope for?

  She finished reading the book of Luke, turned the page, and entered the Gospel according to John. Her dress sighed in the swing’s wind as she read about how the word became flesh, how Jesus turned water to wine, fed five thousand, healed the blind, and rose Lazarus from the dead. The sky darkened and thunder growled in the distance. She came to chapter thirteen and read how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and came to the Scripture that was scribed underneath the stained glass window in Sonny Joe’s and Ceif’s church. She remembered Ceif with his pitiful limp and bloody arm whispering, “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

  She clapped the Bible shut, hugged one of the porch columns, and looked down the street in search of the postman. The smell of cigarette smoke moved her attention from the street to where it breathed through the attic’s broken window. She had never known Grandpa to smoke, but he had been acting stranger than his strange normal self. He had been working incessantly, more than usual. He worked as if there was no such thing as time, no such thing as night or day, no such thing as a body needing rest. He had stripped the house of all of its paint, replaced all its missing boards, and had fixed most of the leaks in the roof. He hadn’t eaten much of the groceries, nor had he bothered to shave or shower, even though he had managed to get the water cut on. When he wasn’t working a saw or pounding nails, he was in the attic making all sorts of racket, mumbling to himself and doing God knows what.

  She turned her gaze back down the street, and spotted the postman standing two doors down, staring at the old Spivey House. He nervously slapped a letter against his palm, so focused on the challenge at hand that he didn’t seem phased by the sudden onslaught of rain.

  Gradle jumped the porch steps and ran to him. “You got mail for me?” she yelled through the rain.

  The postman held the letter out. She took it from his shaky hand and ran back under the porch, through the door, and into her room. She plopped belly-down on her bed and smelled the letter. There were hints of earwax and body oil buried among a strong scent of cheap cologne. She studied the envelope and found fascination in Delvis’s handwriting. Part was writt
en in cursive, and part was written in print. Some of his letters were large and important, others were small and mere, and although there was no obvious pattern, his handwriting almost looked like code. He capitalized all of his Ns regardless of their place, and none of his lines were straight. Everything, even the cross of each t slanted down to the right as if the gravity of his black pen was too heavy to bear. Most fascinating of all was the manner in which he dotted the i in her last name Bird. Instead of a simple dot, he drew a realistic eye, detailed and precise, with eyelashes and irises and reflections of light on the pupil. As she kept staring at it, she could have sworn it winked.

  She opened the envelope and pulled the letter out. It was written on pink paper, like some sort of valentine.

  Dear GRaDle,

  ThaNk You for YouR NiCE letteR. Your A BEAutifuL PerSoN. My dog RaiN dieD. I bury-id him iN the back yard aNd MAdE hIm a GRAVE CrOss. He’s iN heaveN lickiN’ JESUS I kNoW, but I’M STIll sad aND CRY every day STILL. GRadLe LET me Tell you I HAVE a cataract aNd DOUBLE back TROUBLE but they doN’t get me DowN. You caN come see me ANYTIME. WheN yoU come HoNk THRee times so I kNow YoUr A True frieNd.

  YoUrs Truly,

  D-5 Delvis MiLes The LoNe SiNger

  She folded the letter into her bra and walked around the house to the backyard shed. She pulled the wooden door open, yanked a cotton string leading to a lightbulb, and as sudden as the light snapped on the brittle string broke and a swarm of mosquitoes fled to the light’s warm glow.

  She emptied water and wrigglers out of a washtub and carried it down the hall through the house, but she stopped and froze when she heard the most unusual sound coming from the attic flap.

  Leonard curled in his toes and laughed as Annalee ran her finger down the arc of his foot. They lay on the fainting couch, head to foot, their backs propped by water-stained pillows. The attic was sweltering hot. Leonard felt like a sopping rag; he had already stripped down to his underwear, but the downpour drumming the hawk moths to sleep had begun to make his sweat cool. He could lie like this forever, die just like this.