by Sarah Moon
“So I hid in the cubbies under the coats and backpacks and stuff, and this hand comes through, no bigger than mine, and grabs me, like there’s someplace really important we have to go and it won’t be the same if I don’t come with her. She brought me to the circle and she sat with me. We sat there, and the teacher asked us all to go around and say our names, and when it got to me, I said ‘Sparrow’ in this tiny voice, and she couldn’t understand me and I had to say it like six times and I hated the attention and the giggling girls who thought it was so funny that the teacher couldn’t hear my voice. And then it’s my new friend’s turn and she just says ‘Chocolate’ loud and clear. I was jealous because I wanted a name like that. More than that, I wanted to pick any name I wanted and have the balls—sorry, can I say that?—to pretend it was my own. When it was time for recess, I went and hid under the coats and backpacks by the cubbies. I could hear Chocolate looking for me, though. She called my name all over the playground.”
“How did that feel?”
I shoot her a look. “What a very therapisty question.”
“Sorry, occupational hazard. But seriously, how did it feel to be hidden there and have her look for you?”
“Good. Like I had a friend. I’d never had one before. And at the end of the day, she asked me why I wouldn’t come to recess. And I told her I didn’t like it, and she asked me how I could know that if I’d never been. The next day, she was right there at the door when I walked in, she grabbed my hand, she steered me through the chasing boys, and we sat down on the rug again. We ate lunch together. I remember I gave her half my sandwich and she looked at me with these big eyes like she couldn’t believe I would be so nice to her when she’d basically saved me from kindergarten hell. It was just peanut butter and jelly; she acted like I’d given her an organ.”
“Maybe she didn’t have a lot of people who were as kind to her as you were.”
“I wasn’t kind; I was just returning the favor. She was my friend.”
“A lot of people are shitty friends. You were a good one. Maybe her first.”
“She always seemed like the expert.”
“How expert could she have been? She was five. Sounds like the two of you were just what the other one needed.”
“She was.” I get quiet. I can feel myself about to cry. I try to shake it off. “So that day she’s like, ‘Come to recess,’ and I tell her no, and we go back and forth about it and she goes, ‘Fine, but then you have to come with me after school, and we’re going to the playground. If you don’t come, I’m telling everyone where you hide during recess.’ So we go through the day and whatever, and then at the end during dismissal, we go outside and she makes straight for the swings. I know this is weird, but I’d never been on them before, or not that I remember. I’m sure my mom took me when I was little, but as soon as I was old enough to protest, I told her not to take me to the playground. I didn’t like being with the other kids and I’d rather play in the yard at home or read in the park with her. So I got off to a rough start, but soon I was going as high as she was and just as fast. And I would look down and it was brown legs over green grass and the school that barely seemed visible from up there and I’d look up and it’d be nothing but birds and clouds, and it seemed like I was up there looking down at us, and I just saw two girls with big smiles on their faces, I couldn’t even tell them apart anymore, moving their legs in time and laughing. And she taught me how to jump off. And I was terrified. But she went and she was fine, and so I trusted her.”
“Did you jump?”
“I did.”
“How was it?”
“Perfect.”
A bird comes to rest on the ledge above the window exactly over Dr. Katz’s head, like it’s come to perch on top of the two flyaway curls. It’s a house finch; it’s brown and yellow like they are, and female, I think. I like house finches; they’re all over New York. They look like winged chipmunks, and I like how unfussy they seem, how small and how brave.
“So, what happened to Chocolate?”
“She never came back to school.”
I cry for the rest of the session. I cry and watch the house finch come and go, come and go, and then just go.
I hate Tuesdays. Friday is really far away, and we have a double period of math after lunch. Mr. Garfield asked me for my homework again. I lied to him again, saying it was at home, or in the wrong folder, or whatever I told him today. He smiled and said no problem. I don’t even know what the homework was.
The morning goes by okay. Ms. Smith has us do grammar exercises with sentences we’ve written in our journals. After grammar, we do silent reading for the last ten minutes of class, and I think about starting The Perks of Being a Wallflower but reread Brown Girl Dreaming instead. I know I should be reading something new, but it’s like an old friend and I could use one of those right now. I sink into the book; it’s not as good as Mom’s shoulder, but it’s close.
During lunch, I go eat in the bathroom. I don’t even try the cafeteria. I don’t even think of it as weird anymore. I try to shake the feeling that Mrs. Wexler is frowning at me. I just go to my stall, put my feet up so no one can see me, and take out my sandwich. It’s not great, I guess, but it’s better than the cafeteria with its lights and noise and human degradation. I like this stall because I like the graffiti in here the best. There are a few tags, J.J. loves ME and that kind of stuff, and there’s this:
Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I hear the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing for me.
—T. S. Eliot
It’s not that I love the poem, I mean I do, but it’s mostly just nice to know that there’s someone as weird as I am in this school. Someone who copies poetry about peaches on the bathroom wall. I imagine it’s someone I haven’t met yet, someone I somehow missed while I was hiding out in the ornithology stacks and they were tearing through poetry and memorizing lines. I try not to think that it’s probably Leticia. Maybe it’s someone who graduated, I tell myself; maybe it’s someone I’ll meet next year in high school. I know I’m a little old for imaginary friends, but I imagine that she ate lunch in here too. Peaches, obviously.
After lunch, Mr. Rothman drones on about the Silk Road. Maybe he’s not droning. Maybe I just don’t care. Either way, I watch birds out the window. I put my hands down by my sides, see if I can get them light, see if I can remember how it feels to be above all this. I close my eyes and feel my body go soft and light, and then I force myself to stop. I can’t fly in the middle of social studies, no matter how boring it is. Anyway, he seems to have an announcement to make.
“So, there’s going to be a talent show.”
Mr. Rothman doesn’t seem excited, but then again, I don’t think he gets excited. The other kids in the class are, though. They start planning their routines immediately, Francis and Eric are talking about the magic tricks they want to perform, Naomi asks if she can sell cookies at the show to benefit charity, Destinee starts singing and Tracey tells her she sucks and then she tells Tracey she’s fat, and this is all anybody is going to talk about for the next twenty minutes, so maybe I could have taken off. I get out my National Geographic Complete Birds of North America and read it under the table until the period ends.
When I get home it’s only four and I get a text from Mom saying she won’t be home until seven. I put on the Pixies and go out to the porch. It’s almost April, and snow seems like a long time ago. So much seems like a long time ago. There are crocuses starting to poke through the dark earth. George from downstairs has already brought out my hammock. The bird feeder is empty; I fill it, letting a little bit drop on the ground near my feet, hoping it might get some bird to come and pick me up. It doesn’t take long. She is small, brown-gray, skinny, and not as shy as she looks. A swamp sparrow—kind of how I’ve been feeling lately. I stare at her until I can feel the familiar rise of my arms, my belly r
ounded out beneath me, and up we go. I follow her lead, but I know where we’re going. It’s only a minute before we’re sitting right at the top of the Brooklyn Bridge watching the traffic stall below. The honking sounds like a ringtone from this high up. It’s just the two of us. It’s never been like this before, I’m always part of a pack, but it’s just us up here. I stare down too long, wondering if I can see George making his way home across the bridge on his bike, and I almost lose her as she takes off for our next spot, but my feet are fast and my arms are strong and then I’m right there with her, zooming above office buildings, doing curlicues around the letters in the Pepsi-Cola sign in Queens. We stop for a second on top of the i. There’s a soccer game on Randall’s Island. We fly higher, and I’m out of breath as we head farther north, Connecticut maybe? It’s all bare trees and green grass. We keep going to an empty field with a big tree in the middle. I see more swamp sparrows as we get closer. Suddenly it’s like the bird version of the cafeteria. I don’t want to be in a pack today. This has never happened before, but I feel shy around them. I don’t belong here. They take off in a V and I turn tail without looking back, back through the woods and the Pepsi-Cola sign, past the Brooklyn Bridge to my porch. Mom is standing in the kitchen staring at me. She sees me see her and comes out.
“Sparrow, you need to come inside now.”
“Okay, I was just … ”
“What?” She’s expectant, even hopeful. Maybe I’ll finally give her the answer she’s been waiting months to hear. I try to think of something that won’t sound crazy, that won’t make her worry more. I don’t think telling her that I just had this weird interaction with a family of birds in a tree in Connecticut will do it.
“Filling the feeder.”
“I brought us sushi,” she says, defeated.
My mom is a great cook, but lately she hasn’t felt up to it. She puts miso soup in matching blue bowls and puts a California roll and a sweet potato tempura roll on a plate for me. She has sashimi and an eel roll. She always says that until I’m ready to eat eel, I can’t really say I like sushi. She doesn’t say that tonight. I put out napkins and the chopsticks Aunt Joan gave Mom for her birthday.
“Turn the music down please, Sparrow.”
“Sorry.” I turn it off.
“You didn’t need to turn it off, just down. Who was it, anyway?”
“The Pixies.”
“Where did you hear them?”
How do I explain? How do I tell my mother that my therapist is playing music for me because I refuse to talk to her too, but don’t worry, it’s helping.
“I don’t know, around.”
“How was school?”
“It was okay. There’s going to be a talent show, which is like all anybody can talk about it and it’s boring.”
“Are you going to go?”
“No.”
“You should think about it, Sparrow. You might have fun.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s not until May.”
We each turn our attention to our soy sauce, Mom taking a whole mound of wasabi and stirring it in. I poke the end of my chopstick into the wasabi so there’s just a tiny hint of green on the tip and then stir that into my soy sauce. I see her smile at me, holding back a laugh. I smile back.
“You’re almost in high school; you still think that a little wasabi will kill you?”
“No, that’s exactly my point: A little wasabi won’t.” She laughs. It feels like I can breathe again.
“So,” she says, taking a deep breath that takes away the new freedom my lungs have just found—I can tell this isn’t going anywhere good—“what were you doing out on the porch?”
I drink my soup. I put a piece of sushi in my mouth. This has been so nice, this sitting here on our stools, closer to normal than we’ve been in almost two months. I hate what I’m about to do. I hate that I don’t know what else to do. I hate that she’ll blame herself.
“I said, filling the feeder.”
“Sparrow, that’s clearly not true. I watched you for thirty minutes; you were just standing there. You can tell me.”
I have to find the teenage angst within me to push my stool away and storm upstairs. Really, I want to ask if I can sleep in her bed tonight, if we can watch whatever she wants until I fall asleep. If she’ll read to me from Persuasion. If I can fall asleep on her shoulder with her arm around me.
I can’t even get myself to slam my door. So close to normal, and then, just like that, we’re back to this new, terrible normal where I’m stuck inside my room crying, listening to her downstairs cleaning up my dishes. I swear I can hear her sigh.
I’m cold and shivering when I come into the waiting room. It’s been raining for days. You’d think by now I’d know to carry an umbrella. Mom is going to be pissed at me for not even bothering to put my hood up. At least, Old Mom would have been pissed. Current Mom is too scared of my flinging myself off a building to be mad at me. Honestly, nothing could be better for us at this point than for her to get really irritated with me like mothers are supposed to get with their daughters. I want her to roll her eyes, to say, What on earth were you thinking? Don’t you have any sense? You’re going to catch a cold. I want to roll my eyes right back and say, Mom, I’m fine. Don’t worry. I want her to make me take a hot shower to warm up, like that’ll keep me from getting sick; I want a fluffy robe and bad TV with my mom, who will forgive me when she sees me happy and healthy and wearing that much-too-big robe with the sleeves rolled over four times, like white terry-cloth swimmies. But I’m not fine, and she is worried, and those terry-cloth times seem as impossible to get to as Chocolate. Speaking of which, that’s all Dr. Katz wants to talk about today.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say, arms crossed.
“Well, you’ve tried the thing where you don’t talk about how you feel. It’s worked in some ways—you’re still alive—but it hasn’t in others, like that time about two months ago when everyone thought you were trying to kill yourself and you ended up in the hospital. We know what happens when you don’t talk about it. What we don’t know is what happens when you do.”
“It’s not going to make a difference.”
“Might, might not.”
“What am I supposed to talk about?”
“Why do you think it’s been so hard to make a friend since Chocolate?”
I look down at my sneakers, knowing that the sky is no help to me today. There will be no house finches, there will be no goldfinches, no Cape May warblers, not even a pigeon.
I’m silent for a long time. It’s not that I don’t know the answer; it just seems stupid to say it. I am fourteen years old. Everyone in my life, my entire life, has told me that I just have to get over it, that only babies are scared, only babies long to be back in that noisy kindergarten hidden under backpacks and coats. Only babies would give anything for a swing set to send them flying away.
I’m convincing myself that I don’t have to tell her. That therapy is just self-centered bullshit, there are starving children in Africa. That nothing that terrible has ever happened to me. That this is all a waste of time and money.
Just as I’m starting to really get on a roll, about to tell her off for real, I see myself in a long hallway, with many doors lining it, each holding a better treasure than the last. I start running down the hallway, and the faster I go, the faster the doors swing shut. Behind the first is my mom, and she looks less shocked than I want her to as the door slams in her face; the next has the guy from the Pixies playing “Where Is My Mind?” He doesn’t even hear the door as it slams him inside the dark room. The next room is just sky, and birds. If I stepped in it, I could take flight, but I can’t stop running and that door slams closed too. I am alone in a dark hallway full of closed doors.
“People, okay? I’m afraid of people,” I say.
“That’s right.”
“And you think talking will fix that? Nothing is going to fix it.”
“If I’m wrong, we already kno
w what happens: Things stay the same. You know what that’s like; you’ve been living it for the last fourteen years. The question is this—what if you never even try?”
A long, dark hallway with no birds, no Pixies. No people. What if I never even try.
“So, it’s up to you. Let me know what you decide. I’ll see you next week.”
We have homeroom on Fridays. It’s twenty minutes of forced bonding with fifteen other kids. Mostly I read. Sometimes Mr. Phillips will get on my case about it, but usually he leaves me alone. He’s a fan of the one-on-one heart-to-heart “let-me-tell-you-a-little-something-Sparrow,” but he’s not a bad guy. He’s the gym teacher when he’s not running homeroom, he wears track pants every day, and they make a swish swish swish sound as he walks. He walks a lot when he’s making a point, so homeroom tends to sound like “All right, guys”—swish swish swish—“today we’re going to do some team building.” Swish swish swish. Today we’re doing Highs and Lows. Everyone sits in a circle and says the best and worst parts of their week. Some kids (Naomi) take it super seriously; they overshare about their dogs dying or their parents’ divorce. Other kids are like, “The best part of my week is that there was creamed corn in the cafeteria.” Mr. Phillips doesn’t push it. He lets everyone say what they want; the only thing you can’t do is pass.
As we go around the room and Jayce talks about how he beat a new level of whatever game, and Naomi talks about how the worst part of her week was that she got a pimple and has to go to the dermatologist and we all wonder why she wants us to know that, and Monique rolls her eyes at Sasha and mouths, “Loser,” which Mr. Phillips doesn’t see because he’s looking at Naomi and trying to seem interested, and Travis says that the worst part of his week was babysitting his little brother, I try to think about what to say. The best part of my week was flying after school. The worst part was that my mom caught me and now thinks I’m even crazier than before. The best part was that I made progress in therapy. The worst part was that I’m in therapy. The best part was that my cousin, Curtis, gave me another iTunes gift card that I want to use to listen to the music we listen to in therapy. The worst part is contemplating saying that sentence out loud.