The Confusion of Laurel Graham

by Adrienne Kisner

  “That hose, is it attached to water? You know what, let’s find out.”

  I doubled over. The tears kept flowing, but the more they did, the farther down my face I could feel fire.

  A cool gentle stream started flowing down my forehead.

  “Just try to breathe,” said Risa. “Try to avoid inhaling the water, obviously. But stay bent over like that so I can rinse your face.”

  I still didn’t understand what was happening, so I listened. The water eased what felt like my eyes sizzling out of my head. After a few minutes, the water stopped.

  “Give me your hands,” Risa said.

  I stuck them out in front of me. I watched a blurred Risa turn the nozzle and blast my hands. I turned them over for her to do the back side.

  “Do my face again?” I said. I started coughing, but she obliged before I had to try to repeat myself.

  A few more minutes later, she stopped. She took off the bandanna tied around her hair and dabbed my face.

  “That anti-squirrel stuff is wicked,” she said. “You basically Maced yourself.”

  “I can see now why it is effective.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A lot?”

  “Kinda. Less than it did, though. I can mostly see. And breathe. Now that I think about it, that shit burns your hands, too.” I tapped my palms gingerly. Pinpricks traveled up my fingers. “Ouch.”

  “I’m sorry, babe. I probably should have tackled you when you were pouring it while upset,” said Risa.

  “I deserved this,” I said.

  “No way. No one deserves that shit in their face. Well. Maybe Bill Andrews or Michael Ross, but I’d hesitate to do it to them even.”

  I scrunched up my nose, but it only made it burn again. More tears dripped from my eyes, though I couldn’t tell if it was from life or the Tabasco facial I’d just given myself.

  “Laurel,” said Risa. She reached an arm around my waist. “Listen to me a second, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “All that stuff … it wasn’t your fault. Your grandmother. I knew her. She did what she wanted to. If she wanted to be on that path looking for a bird, she was going to be on that path looking for a bird. You didn’t harm her. And now, looking back, it seems like your fault. But how many times had she probably gone on that same road and nothing happened? Or how many times did you stop her from doing something that could have hurt her? You just don’t know. This one time something really bad happened. But maybe it would have happened sooner if you’d acted differently in the past.”

  “You’re just being nice,” I said. I sniffed painfully.

  “No, I’m not. I mean, I’m not trying to bullshit you. I really believe this. It’s easy to want to take all that blame and pack it inside your brain. But if you do that, you have to take credit for all the stuff that you’ve done. But the thing is, half the time we don’t know what we’ve done, because we don’t see the effects.” She squeezed me to her.

  This would have been a nice moment if my nose didn’t feel kinda like exploding.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying?” Risa said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I think so. I get it. It’s just … it’s hard not to feel responsible.”

  “I get that.”

  “I saw her. I saw her right before.”

  “Yeah.”

  More tears came and I sat there, wrapped up in Risa.

  “I must be a mess,” I said.

  “Nah,” she said. She wiped my face with a paper towel.

  Birders. Always prepared.

  “Still being nice,” I said.

  “Look.” She pointed. Two downy woodpeckers flew to a feeder. Both pecked tentatively at the food. One called the other and they flew over to the yard, where the suet bag lay splayed on the ground.

  “I think I might have made the other stuff too spicy,” I said.

  “Well,” said Risa, looking at the feeders. “The squirrels are avoiding it at least. And there are downy woodpeckers eating in your grandmother’s yard right now. That’s a win, right?”

  I shook my head, smiling in spite of everything. “Yeah, sure.” I started to laugh until Risa did, too.

  “Hey, who is Brad?” she said after a while. “Do we hate him?”

  She said “we.”

  Sophie would love that.

  “I don’t know. I barely even met the guy. Mom … Mom doesn’t always make good choices.”

  “Ah.”

  I leaned into her. She squeezed me again. Under different circumstances, we would probably have started kissing by now, but I got the distinct impression Risa was avoiding getting anywhere near my face.

  “Do you have to go to the Center?” I said.

  “Yes. My shift starts at ten.”

  “Mine too.”

  “You up for it?” she said.

  “The face. It feels ablaze. But I think it’s better to stay busy.”

  “Good idea,” Risa said. “Richard and Louise have a plan for the city council meeting. Karen’s mom told me they were coming by today to tell people about it.”

  “They want us to go to the meeting?” I said.

  “I think so? Or make our own signs and stand outside it, maybe? We’ll have to go find out.”

  “Okay. I’m in.” I reluctantly untangled myself from Risa’s arms.

  “Do I look decent enough?”

  Risa grinned. “You look beautiful.”

  “I do not.”

  “Your skin does kind of glow.”

  “Yeah, in a hot-sauce kind of way,” I said.

  “It works for you.”

  “Stop.” I shoved her.

  “Do you want me to clean up the suet?” she said.

  I hesitated, watching two new woodpeckers who had just shown up. Word had gotten out about the smorgasbord. So this is what it took for them to finally come around. “Nah,” I finally said. “Leave it.”

  “You okay to ride your bike?”

  “Will you be my bodyguard? My peripheral vision is still kind of, um, burny.”

  “You got it.”

  I rode away from Gran’s house, maybe for the last time. But at least the woodpeckers were there, and the squirrels would probably fear the place for a little while.

  And I felt better. Risa’s words finally filtered through the pepper-induced fog. If anyone would know something about sucky life circumstances, she would. That alone almost made nearly boiling off my face worth it.

  Almost.

  FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY

  JULY 2

  Memorial Day was huge for birding. Near Independence Day, not so much. Risa and I sat alone on the dock next to the pond, looking out at several preening black-crowned night herons.

  “How’s your Fauna entry?” she asked. “Got anything?”

  “I think so. I had a stormy encounter with some tanagers. You?”

  “A couple, I guess? They are ho-hum.”

  We pointed our cameras at the night herons, and then I turned my camera on her.

  “You inspire me. I’ll submit you.”

  “This is my natural habitat.” She laughed.

  “It’s almost time for the meeting,” I said.

  We got up and brushed off the dirt from the dock. Louise and Richard now held daily meetings to prep for the city council meeting. A school board meeting had been hastily thrown in right before. None of this usually took place during the summer, but it had been advertised, and even with all of the publicity, I think Deputy Mayor Michael Ross and company were still hoping no one would come out to see what was really going on with the development of the nature reserve.

  Richard and Louise, however, would have none of that.

  All of the birders gathered in the clearing next to Grandma Maple. Jerry, the knitting birders, Owen, Karen, both of her mothers, and several other Birdscouts and their families sat in a circle looking at Louise.

  “We thi
nk we’ve come up with a viable option,” she said.

  “Our brainstorming thus far has been good, but none of the ideas strictly feasible. But Owen here had a revelation that I think everyone will be able to get behind. Owen, I hand over the forest floor to you,” said Richard.

  Owen blushed. “Well, thanks. Um. So, I’m an Eagle Scout.”

  One of the knitters whooped.

  Owen grinned. “And for a badge once, we studied social justice movements. What strategies worked to change stuff. And I was thinking about all the marches and nonviolent protests of people like Martin Luther King Jr. I had to read a series of graphic novels called March by a senator named John Lewis that got me thinking about that again. When they wouldn’t let Black people eat in restaurants, the protestors would just go in and order lunch. Because that’s what anyone should be able to do—go into a restaurant and order lunch. It was dangerous, because the white people who didn’t think everyone should be treated equally got mad. But they still did it.”

  Heads around me nodded.

  “People still do stuff like that now, too. There was a mom who tried to feed her baby, um, with her breasts and mall police showed up and told her she wasn’t allowed. So all these moms went at the same time and fed their babies with her, because it’s totally legal to feed babies in public. They called it a ‘nurse-in.’ I thought we could have a ‘bird-in.’”

  Owen stopped talking and looked around at the group. Finally he sat down next to his dad. Karen started clapping, and then everyone joined in.

  “So what would we do, dress up as birds?” said Karen. “I have a flamingo costume.”

  “Or bring birds to city hall? Spread birdseed outside? That would bring them,” said Risa.

  “Or maybe unleash birds inside city hall? In that room where they have all their meetings. It’s always needed more sparrows, in my opinion,” said one of the knitters.

  “Well. I hadn’t exactly gotten that far. I hoped for ideas like these,” said Owen.

  The group sat thoughtfully for a few moments.

  “I think this needs to be a multipronged approach,” said Louise. “I like the birdseed-outside idea. And people are allowed in the meetings, but I don’t think birds will be allowed in. It would be disruptive to the point of police to capture and let birds out inside the meeting. But…”

  “Don’t say it,” said Richard.

  “Richard and I…”

  “I don’t even fit into them anymore…”

  “Have bird costumes also. Ravens, to be exact. I look good in black.”

  Richard sighed. “I—” He paused. “Fine. Yes. I could dress as a bird. For the cause.”

  “I don’t have a bird costume,” I said. “But I have pictures. Of most of the birds you can see at Jenkins or Sarig. Or backyards around here. And binoculars.”

  “If you don’t have a costume, you could just bring your binos! Brilliant. And we could blow up some of the pictures from the pond and bring them.”

  “Most of the kids aren’t in school right now at the community college. So, the teachers are probably away, too. But I bet a lot of them are around, and there are summer session students. Some of them were here the other day tagging squirrels,” said Jerry.

  “Okay. This is what we need to do. We put the word out to our networks. Get the people to that meeting next week. Dress as your favorite bird. Or fox. Or, uh, marmot. Any creature who lives around here. Or wear your binoculars to watch the meeting up close and personal in the room. If you don’t want to do that, Risa and Laurel will print some of their pictures, right?” said Richard.

  We nodded.

  “We’ll bring the birdseed,” said Louise. “Cover all the bases.”

  “We should tell other people?” said Karen. “The unschoolers?”

  “Everyone,” said Louise. “Their game plan all along seems to have been to keep people from being interested. To try to get this done under the radar. We are going to fly this up to the top and shout it from the canopy.” She practically glowed with joy.

  “Birdscouts on the count of three,” Jerry yelled. “One, two, three…”

  “Birdscouts!” the assembly called. Several annoyed cardinals hurried away from the noise.

  Afterward, Risa and I walked back to the Nature Center and cleaned the bathrooms together.

  “Do you think this can work?” I said. “A bird-in?”

  Risa shrugged. “Can’t hurt. It will create a scene at least. And I bet Michael Ross won’t be able to stand that.”

  “What if they don’t even let us in?” I said.

  “Well, then. That will create an even bigger one, then, won’t it?” Risa grinned.

  “Yeah.” I smiled with her.

  “How’s your eyes?”

  “Oh. Better. I keep rinsing them. It still kinda burns now and then. I feel like that stuff hides in your pores.”

  “You know what, I’m willing to take my chances.”

  Risa leaned in and her lips gently brushed mine.

  “There’s nothing like romance in a public restroom.”

  “A clean public restroom,” she pointed out.

  “True,” I said.

  “Want to go get some ice cream after this? It’s on me. We get paid today.”

  “Jerry giving us actual money?”

  “I believe so. Someone donated money to expand the Birdscout program. I heard a rumor he’s trying to butter us up so we’ll stay on next year even after co-op ends.”

  We walked outside, carrying our bleach and brushes. I stripped off my rubber gloves and threw them into my bucket.

  This time, I kissed Risa. Her thick, long eyelashes tickled my cheeks.

  “I’ll buy next time.”

  “Deal,” she whispered.

  I hadn’t been able to save Gran, or her house, and maybe even her beloved woods and pond. But at least I had a plan now to try. Maybe my pictures could have some impact for Gran, even if they didn’t bring me Fauna greatness. As Brian Michael Warbley says, “A picture can be worth a thousand words to another person, even if you don’t think it says anything at all.” I didn’t know if a bird-in would do the trick, but sometimes just the hope that you can do something is enough.

  FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY

  JULY 7

  I sat at Gran’s right side as usual. I swept my fingers through her hair and stroked her face. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t there, she wasn’t there. But her heart beeped on the monitor. Her lungs expanded in and out. Tubes with clear liquid that glistened in the midday sun drifted lazily into her veins taking the place of food in her mouth.

  “Gran,” I said. “I know you said you’d wait for me. We’d have a Big Year together and add kakapos and condors and Honduran emeralds and red-crowned cranes to our life lists. We’d go to Iceland or Greenland or the artic and see the aurora borealis. But … maybe you shouldn’t stick around for that. I don’t think you like being this way. Stuck here. Even if you might occasionally be a bird.”

  Twitch. Flutter. Same old story.

  “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

  The machines remained the only sound in the room, besides my own voice.

  I sighed and walked out of her room. The July air felt heavy. A few nights ago, I’d watched fireworks with Risa on the old bridge next to Shunksville Creek. The light in the sky above us bloomed like flowers, and lightning bugs blinked their thoughts around us. Still, Risa was the brightest thing burning against the darkness around me.

  I parked my bike in the driveway. Mom’s car was there, but Brad’s was not. We’d barely spoken since our big fight. Most of the time it was Mom-and-Brad time, but when she was nearish to me, it was like Mom kept trying to find words to say to me but then didn’t have the heart. I figured it was because I’d probably killed Gran. I couldn’t blame her.

  I walked in and Mom was on the phone. She waved at me with the pained expression she’d been wearing the last three times I saw her. I grabbed an apple and went upstairs to my room, where I shut my d
oor to hide. I finished emailing Jerry the pictures he was having blown up and printed.

  “Laurel,” I heard Mom call from downstairs. I heard her feet on the stairs, her weight creaking the boards in the hall. She knocked. “Honey?”

  “Busy, Mom,” I said. Neither one of us was good at talking about our feelings with one another. Mom usually just burst into tears and I just wanted her to cheer up. Not the greatest system, as it turned out.

  “Okay. I’m going out. I … I’ll see you.”

  I listened to her retreat down the stairs, the jingle of her car keys as she lifted them from the hook on the wall, and the front door whine, wood on wood, as she pulled it shut.

  My mystery bird called outside the window. I opened it wide and gazed out at the houses and trees and wires and clouds. The bird called and called.

  Come see me, I thought at it. Show me who you are just once, please? But nothing came. Two robins, a grackle, and a jay flew past.

  I was as alone here as I was at the hospital.

  Gran wasn’t really there. But there was still a chance she was outside somewhere, waiting for me to find her.

  FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY

  JULY 10

  The morning of the bird-in dawned bright and hot. It was already eighty degrees by nine in the morning. I’d refilled my water bottle twice before Risa even made it to the Nature Center.

  “Holy balls,” she said. “Summer decided to kick in.”

  “At least city hall is air-conditioned,” I said.

  “Thank god,” she said.

  Jerry walked down the path carrying two huge bags.

  “I got the stuff,” he said, and went inside. Risa and I caught up with him before the Center door even had a chance to close.

  “Can we see?” I said.

  “Show us the goods, Jerry, my man,” said Risa.

  Jerry set the bags on the floor.

  “Wow, you sprung for—what—two-feet-by-three-feet signs?” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “Holy shit—sorry, Jerry. Holy lightning—that’s your picture you were talking about?” Risa pointed to my lightning tanagers. “This. This is going to get you first place and Fauna glory forever.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It was mostly luck I had it on the right setting for it to show up. I didn’t know it was going to happen. We should take pictures of the protest. Fauna loves this kind of thing. As Brian Michael Warbley says…”