by Sarah Moon
I find Curtis’s card on my bed. It’s a get-well card with a little bottle of pills with a smiley face on it. It says Laughter is the best medicine. It’s so awful it makes me laugh. He scrawled his name and stuffed the gift card inside. Still, it’s the first thing that’s made me laugh in a while. I sit down on my bed and take out my computer. I remember enough of the lyrics from this afternoon and I google them. The Pixies. I enter the gift card and buy the album. I lie on my bed and listen to it while I stare out the window and watch the sun set on the neighborhood. A pigeon lands on the windowsill. Stay, I think. He does. I set the album to repeat.
I wake up, and my room is dark except for the shine of the streetlights and the planes and maybe the moon. My computer is closed, and there’s a sandwich on a plate on my desk. Honey, wanted to let you sleep, but thought you might be hungry. PB, B, & J. Love you, Mom. Peanut butter, banana, and jelly. I could roll my eyes and go, God, Mom, just because it was my favorite food when I was six doesn’t mean it still is, but the truth is, I’m hungry and I miss her. I like imagining her making me a sandwich, imagining that it will make me happy. That she can make me happy again like when I was little and all it would take would be my favorite sandwich and a trip to the library or the park. Or just her. Then I think about her crying as she makes a sandwich for her faraway, difficult daughter who doesn’t talk to her. I get through half before I think I might choke on it, or on the tears I can feel starting up.
I go to my bookshelf. I know I won’t be able to sleep. I look at the books we read in Frequent Flyers. The Pushcart War, Redwall, The Hobbit, The Book Thief—we each got to pick a book and the rest of the group had to read it. Buzz would bring snacks, astronaut ice cream most of the time. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Buzz’s choice), The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Mrs. Wexler’s), The House on Mango Street (Leticia’s), Something Wicked This Way Comes (that’d be Francis and Eric), Flygirl (me), and An Abundance of Katherines (which Emilio put on the table one Friday, terrified we’d make fun of him for wanting to read a “girl” book, but we all loved it, even Francis and Eric). The last one Mrs. Wexler wanted us to read before she died was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I take it down and hold it to my chest. I can’t get myself to read it yet. I wanted to read with her, and with Leticia.
Leticia’s popular. She’s an undercover nerd. Her hair falls in perfect curls, she speaks just enough Spanish to tell people off, and on the first day of school she came in wearing jeans rolled in the exact same way as the rest of the popular girls with color-coordinated T-shirts and the same hoodie they’d all gotten at a One Direction concert. The thing about the popular girls, though, is that they don’t read, and Leticia loves to read. When we started Frequent Flyers, I stayed away from her, until one day when I came in to eat lunch and Mrs. Wexler sat down next to me and said, “I see that you don’t talk much to Leticia.”
“You see that I don’t talk much, period. Right?” I grinned at her.
“I do see that. You should talk to Leticia.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve got way more in common than you think.”
I didn’t think much about it until we read The Book Thief. We read the first page, and Leticia slammed the book down and said, “Oh my God, the narrator is Death! The narrator is Death! This is so COOL!” I’d never seen a non-loser so excited about a narrator before.
After that, she started putting her mat next to mine. She’d come in after lunch with her friends and find me and sit next to me and we’d read together. Sometimes she’d stop after a sad part, and I’d finish the same sad part, and we’d each pretend not to notice the other was crying. I started getting her mat for her, putting it down next to mine and waiting for her to come from lunch. Sometimes she’d bring me a graphic novel—she likes to draw—and we’d read Persepolis together, and American Born Chinese.
Last June, when John Green came and did a reading at the Brooklyn Public Library, we went together and stood on line starting at three in the afternoon, when school got out. We couldn’t stop giggling as we got closer to the table for him to sign our books (the library said he would only sign one each, so I picked An Abundance of Katherines to give to Emilio because he didn’t want to ask his parents to let him come, and Leticia picked The Fault in Our Stars, which we decided we would share). When we finally got up to the table, she introduced us as Speticia and Larrow and we both laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes. Maybe you had to be there. I still think of her as Speticia, even if we haven’t talked in months.
The next week, I see the notebook again, but this time next to the chair Dr. Katz usually sits in. She sits in what used to be my chair and holds out her hand, inviting me to take a seat. “A little bird mentioned that you’d prefer to sit here.” Usually bird puns off my name are irritating, but it’s like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. I sit in her matching chair, which is less frayed but just as worn. She’s taken her footstool over to her side of the room. The windows are just what I’d hoped for.
“Those were the Pixies I was playing last week. They’re an old punk band. Did you like them?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I guess, I went home and bought the album. I guess, I’ve been listening to it all week. I guess, I could listen to them right now. I want more tearing guitar and mumbled words. I want to hear more noise that sounds just like how I feel.
“What did you like about them?”
I like that they sound as crazy as I feel. I like that they make me feel like I’m not crazy. I like that they seem to know just how I feel. I like that I can’t understand what they’re saying sometimes but I still know exactly what they mean. I like that the guy sounds like he’s searching. I like the wails. These are not things you say to people. I stare at the ceiling first, but then I remember: the windows. I settle in, get ready to feel myself get light, to float up and out the window, to get gone.
Dr. Katz isn’t having it today. “Sparrow.”
I say nothing.
“Where are you?”
“Here. Obviously.” I try to bite a little at her. Get away from me. Let me get away from here. From me.
“I don’t think you are. I’d like you to try to stick around for the next forty-five minutes. You don’t have to talk, but you have to stay. Deal?”
Silence.
“Would you like to listen to more music?”
“If you want.”
“How about if you do?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll put some on. Meanwhile, I want you to take a look in that notebook. Write something if it strikes your fancy.”
I want to tell her that she’s old, but not that old. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk like a Victorian.
In the notebook, I see that she’s answered my questions. In neat handwriting, a black pen, small words say The Pixies. Then, below my seat-change request, a second answer and a new question. Sure. Why?
As she fiddles with the iPod dock, I fiddle with the pen. I don’t know how to answer this question in a way that won’t get me committed. Again.
I write, Because I like the windows. I like watching the birds. That seems pretty reasonable, like something a not-crazy person might say.
“Whatever thoughts come to mind while you listen, I’d love to know them. If you can tell me them, tell me. If you can’t, write them down.” Every few songs, she looks over at me and says the name of the band: “The White Stripes.” My foot is tapping up and down. I’ve lost interest in trying to keep it from going. It’s too hard to sit still during the driving beat, the pulsing guitar. There’s a pain in his voice that is as familiar to me as my own name. It’s the pain that would be in my voice if I spoke right now. I write, He sounds like he’s in pain. It sounds like he always has been. But strong too.
I find myself doodling and beating on the notebook with my pen. The next song starts with a guitar that my head can barely resist. But it’s the scream that gets me. I look up. “Alabama Shakes,” she says, smilin
g at my wide eyes. I love the scream, the voice deep and big as a house. And I don’t want to fight anymore either. The next song is the same woman, but the pain in her voice has quadrupled. I feel it on my skin. It feels like my skin. My eyes close. My stomach tightens with the swoop of her voice, the gravel in it keeping us both tied to earth.
Before I can stop myself, I write down one word among my doodles: Chocolate. Before I can stop myself, there are tears all over my face.
Mrs. Wexler died in October. It was a sunny morning after a rainy night, third period on a Friday. I was in Mr. Garfield’s math class, doing nothing as usual. He seemed a little more awkward that day, a little nervous, maybe. At 11:10 he stopped class early and said, “You guys”—he starts almost every sentence with you guys—“I have some really sad news. I’d like you all to be respectful of one another’s feelings and reactions and help me to create a safe space here.” It’s like he’s the living definition of the word dweeb. I don’t know why these girls are so crazy for him. “Our librarian, Mrs. Wexler, was hit by a car this morning on her walk to school. I am very sorry to tell you that she’s passed—um, she didn’t make it, you know, is deceased. We are all very sad and very sorry. The office hired some grief counselors if anyone wants to talk to them. We’ll let you know about the service. Any questions?”
I got up out of my seat and slammed the door behind me. Maybe he called out after me, maybe he didn’t, maybe it was just some kid asking if this meant he could keep his library books. I ran to every eighth-grade room, stopping in the doorway to scan for Leticia. I was out of breath, sobbing, the hallways had never been this empty, I felt like I was in a movie, or a bad dream. It was just me running down the hall, making terrible sounds as I tried to breathe and cry at the same time, looking for Leticia. I finally saw her in Ms. Smith’s room. Her friend, a Popular Girl named Raven, saw me before she did.
“Um, Leti, it seems like that weird girl maybe wants to talk to you? Do you, like, know her?”
I have replayed this moment over and over in my head. I was standing in the hallway, holding my sides like I was going to split in two if I let go, which I think I might have. My eyes were red and fixed on hers. In my mind, she runs out of the room, slams the door, and hugs me. She is crying too. We go and get our mats; we go to the park. We spend the rest of the day crying and talking and watching the birds come and go. Instead, what happened was this:
She mouthed, “Sorry.” She didn’t come. She didn’t hug me. She didn’t cry. I stood there for longer than I should have, waiting for her to come, long enough for Ms. Smith to come to the door, but by the time she said, “Sparrow, come talk to me,” I was down the hall, down the stairs, down the block. I ran to the park; it’s uphill but I didn’t feel it. I guess you can’t get out of breath if you don’t have any to begin with. I ran through the wet grass to a big open field. There wasn’t anyone around, not the dog people or the moms with their babies and their coffee and their organic snack packs, not a yoga class, nobody. I fell to the ground and cried. I don’t know how long I stayed there, facedown in the grass. Eventually, a great crested flycatcher came. It landed right next to me on the grass. Come on, it said.
I went. I went up and up and my arms were long and my body was light and all I could see was green below me. I couldn’t see some sad little girl crumpled on the ground crying, I couldn’t see Ms. Smith outside the school looking for me, I couldn’t see the phone ringing in my house the way I knew it would after lunch when a teacher noticed that I wasn’t there. I was taken into a family of flycatchers, we were in a V, traveling together. We went over the Hudson, not the gross part by the West Side Highway, but up where it gets pretty after you leave the city, diving down to the top of the cool, moving river—our highway—and then back up to where all we could see were trees and blue water, small houses and smaller cars, the occasional train. From here, people were so small I didn’t even see them. I didn’t think about them. Breath came easy as we soared up and swooped down.
When they dropped me off, I was faceup on the ground, the front of my shirt wet with my tears, and it was much, much later than I thought it was. I checked my phone: 2:05. I had a missed call and a text from Mom. She’d just texted at 2:02. The school says you left. Please tell me what’s going on. I couldn’t get myself to listen to her message. I texted her back. Mrs. Wexler died. I went to the park. On my way home now. She wrote back immediately. I’ll be right there. I love you.
I don’t know how Mom managed to beat me home. She works in Manhattan; it’s like she flew or something. Ha. Or maybe I was just walking extra slow that day. Either way, when I got in, she looked at me, my shirt stained with grass and tears and dirt, my hair with little pieces of leaves stuck in it, my face snotty. And she grabbed me to her, still in her suit, put one hand on my back and one on the back of my head, and said, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t expect me to. She picked me up—I didn’t know she still could—and put me in a hot bath and picked the leaves out of my hair. She sat with me, not the way she would now—like, can’t leave Sparrow alone in the bathtub because she might kill herself—but just to be near me. I couldn’t move. She lifted me out of the bath and put me in her big white bathrobe. She made me a cup of tea and we sat on the stools in the kitchen.
“It’s okay, baby, you don’t have to talk. Death takes words from us. Just know that I’m sorry and that I’m here.” She knew exactly. I wonder where that Mom is now; I wonder why she can’t understand me that easy now. She held my hand and we went over to the couch and we watched all of The Life of Birds until I fell asleep, my head on her shoulder, her arm around me.
I was afraid Mrs. Robbins was going to kick me out of last-period science when I woke up with a start in the middle of one of her fifteen-minute lectures about why it is of utmost importance that we memorize the periodic table, how it’s about becoming disciplined adults, how we’ll never get jobs if we can’t manage a simple task such as this. She gives this lecture once every few days. Truth is that if I wanted to, I could probably memorize it, but telling me that my future depends on knowing the symbol for gadolinium … what’s the periodic symbol for bullshit?
But Mrs. Robbins didn’t kick me out. She didn’t even notice that I was asleep. I guess it’s possible that in a room of twenty-seven kids, you don’t notice one asleep. It’s also possible that me asleep is not that different from me awake these days. I’m hoping she also hasn’t noticed that I don’t have my work. That I haven’t had my homework for weeks.
My eyes are closing in this warm little off-white waiting room. I’m trying to pretend to read one of the dusty old magazines, but I don’t have the energy. I snap to attention as the door opens.
“Hi, Sparrow. Come on in.”
Dr. Katz is wearing a long black-and-white cardigan today; it goes all the way down to her Nikes. Her silver bracelets jangle as she crosses the room. I sit myself in the new seat. This whole therapy thing has become a lot less awful since it started involving listening to music and staring out the window.
“So, how are you?” she asks, crossing her sneakers as she settles into her chair.
“Tired,” I mumble, suppressing a yawn.
“Do you normally have trouble sleeping?”
“I didn’t used to.”
“But lately?”
“Lately I don’t sleep.”
“What made it easy to sleep before?”
And so we begin. I start at the top of her head—the two stray curls that resist gravity, and then my eyes go up and up and up until all I’m looking at is the lilac trim of the ceiling against the gray-blue March sky out the window. If I stay still, I can see the clouds shift shape. They don’t look like anything, the way they did when I was a kid. I don’t see a clown or a giraffe or a heart or even popcorn; they’re just gray shifting to darker gray and then back out to edges of white where the sky seems to disappear.
“Okay, so
that’s off the list for today, huh?” she asks. It startles me. I think she’s smiling. I think she’s joking.
“What?” I say, not coming down from my corner of the sky.
“You don’t want to talk about that. Whatever the answer is, you think I’ll think you’re crazy and pack you off to the nuthouse or something, so it’s off-limits. That’s okay. Can we talk about something else, or am I just going to watch you watch the sky for the next forty minutes?”
“You don’t have to watch me.”
“Ha. Yes, that’s very true. I could sit here and meditate, I guess, beat my next level on Candy Crush. But I think I’d rather talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“So, new topic. Tell me about chocolate.” I’d forgotten that I’d written her name in the notebook.
“She’s a friend of mine.”
“Chocolate is her name?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I think she probably made it up.”
“How do you know her?”
“I don’t anymore. I met her on the first day of kindergarten.”
“She went to your school?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you like that school?”
“No. I mean, I was excited when my mom told me I was going to school, because I’d seen it on TV and stuff, but I didn’t understand what it was. I thought it would be like going to the library. I got there and it seemed like everyone else had gotten some set of instructions I’d never heard about. The girls were already sitting together on the rug, they were dumping out their little-kid purses and backpacks and showing their toys to each other, and the boys were chasing each other around the room, and it was the noisiest place I’d ever been. I also didn’t realize that going to school meant going to school without my mom. She was the only person I was used to. It was really scary.”
I am surprised because I have heard this story so many times at family occasions about how silly little Sparrow thought she was going to go to school with Mom and how she stood stock-still by the wall and closed her eyes like no one could see her if she couldn’t see them. But telling it this way, not like some family joke that makes me scowl and pretend I’m not related to them, I feel like I’m right back in that minute. Not standing by the wall (I wasn’t standing by the wall; they always get that part wrong) but in between the cubbies in the corner, trying to blend in with the coats and the backpacks. I wish I had a coat to hide behind now. But I keep going, like telling this story will undo all the times that my family has told it the wrong way.