Sparrow

by Mary Cecilia Jackson

  When I get out of the car, I’m enveloped by the hushed, muffled silence that comes with snow. My footsteps crunch across the parking lot, shattering the stillness.

  Closing the gate behind me, I look out at the rows and rows of tombstones. The quiet here is heavy and deep, and I try not to think of all the people under the earth, sleeping in their silent beds.

  I had to ask my father to remind me where she was buried. He didn’t want to at first, but when I told him I’d just read every last stone and search grave by snowy grave, he relented.

  I walk as quickly as I can to the corner farthest from me, but it’s hard. The snowdrifts are deep, almost up to my knees in places, and my foot aches in the cold. I walk between the rows, trying to distract myself by reading the words engraved on the stones.

  Precious Son, Cherished Brother. Devoted Wife, Beloved Mother. Dearest Father, Ever Faithful.

  My mother is all by herself, in the corner just beyond the last row. On the other side of the icy fence, the skeletal branches of a huge sweet gum tree reach out to shelter the graves beneath.

  My hands tremble as I brush the snow from the top of her stone, then step back to read what my father had carved into the dark pink granite.

  CAROLINA JANE ROSE

  1968–2005

  THE SALVATION OF PARDON IS GRANTED THE PENITENT.

  ALLELUIA. ALLELUIA.

  It’s part of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus.” From Tannhäuser, my father’s favorite opera. I stare at the words, clutching the gift I’ve brought her, the one that’s been in my pocket for two days.

  My horror, my torment, my curse of a mother doesn’t deserve the beautiful words. She isn’t penitent. She hasn’t earned those alleluias.

  “I hate you,” I whisper. “All the terrible things in my life flow like a polluted river straight back to you.”

  I don’t pray. I don’t cry. I take the plastic lemon out of my pocket and place it on top of her stone. It looks garish and harsh in the muted winter landscape, lurid and out of place.

  I close my eyes and remember the mother I saw in the hospital, the mother with the feathered throat, the black wings, the mother who wept stones. I remember the way I saw her on that last day, her pale arms, her white capri pants, her pointed pink fingernails. Her red lips and white teeth. I imagine her now, deep in the dark below, trying to find me with her empty eyes. I hear her.

  Come to me, come to me, come to me.

  “Damn you,” I say, a whisper that rises to a shriek.

  “Damn you to hell, Mama! You made me this way! I’ve been afraid all my life! You told me to keep my mouth shut and smile and smile and smile and never tell anyone what you did. Now look at me! Look at me, Mama! Look at what you’ve done! Because of you, I loved a monster. My heart is broken, my body is broken, but you broke them before he ever did. You hurt me, Mama!

  “I was your little girl!” I sob. “You were supposed to love me, but you hurt me!”

  Tears run down my face as I grab the lemon and unscrew the cap with my teeth, just like she did when I was five. I throw it hard at her stone, aiming for the alleluias. It bounces off and lands in the snow.

  But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

  I kneel and start pushing the snow off her grave, my hands numb with cold, until I reach the frozen earth. I squirt the lemon juice into the ground.

  “How do you like it, Mama? I hope it burns into your dead eyes! I hope you can feel this where you are. I hope you know how much I hate you! How I’ll always hate you! Feel it, Mama! Feel all the terror, all the sorrow I’ve carried with me every day of my life because of you!”

  I sob weakly, clutching the empty lemon in my fist.

  “I will never, ever forgive you. I’m telling everyone now, Mama. Everyone will know. You hear me? I’m telling. I’m not prey anymore. I’m not, and you can rot in hell forever. I will never forgive you.”

  I stand and kick her tombstone over and over again. I pound it with my hands until they hurt and begin to bruise. The sounds coming out of me are choked and terrible, all my nightmares boiling out of my throat.

  Suddenly Lucas and Delaney are behind me, wrapping their arms around me. I fight them at first, stopping only when all three of us lose our balance and fall to the ground in a heap. I sink, exhausted, into their arms, crying so hard I doubt I’ll ever be able to stop. Lucas rocks me back and forth. I let him hold me.

  Delaney strokes my cheek. “Oh my God, Sparrow. It’s okay, sweetie. We’re here. Stop now. Hush, we’ve got you. I promise, we’ve got you.”

  Eventually I stop, hiccupping and wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my scratchy wool jacket. Lucas and Delaney let go, and we stand up together, jeans wet and crusted with snow, our faces red and chapped.

  Lucas rewinds his scarf around his neck, finds his hat where it fell in the snow, and jams it back on his head. He says, all quiet and intense, “Birdy. You want me to dig up your mother’s rotting bones and light them on fire? Just say the word. I have matches.”

  Delaney looks at me, eyes wide. Lucas is serious as a heart attack, but his hat is on crooked. And there in the snowy cemetery, with the cold seeping through my soaked jeans, I laugh. I laugh so hard that my stomach hurts, so long that I start to cry again. We walk back to the car, holding on to each other, all three of us weak in the knees.

  I dig at the bottom of my purse for Violet Bell’s card and hand it to Lucas.

  “What’s this?” he asks.

  “It’s that detective. She’s pretty much given up on me, even though she talks to me every week. Could you call her for me? I’m afraid I’ll chicken out if we don’t do it right now. Can you tell her we’re on the way? And then—can you guys drive me to the police station?”

  “Holy crap, Birdy. Are you sure?”

  “No. I’m scared out of my mind to talk about it. But I’m sick of being a victim. I’m not going to live the rest of my life in her shadow. Or his. And I’m freaking tired of keeping my mouth shut.”

  Delaney puts her arm around me and pulls me close. “Do you think you can talk about him now? About what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I could make it all disappear if I pretended it never happened, if I just tried to shove it all away. Because that’s worked so well for me in the past, right? It will be horrible, talking about it. But I know it will be worse if I never do.”

  Lucas digs his phone out of his pocket and punches in the number. While he talks to Violet, I pull Delaney aside.

  “Laney, would you call my father and Sophie and tell them to meet us there? I don’t want to get into a big hairy discussion. I just want to do it and get it over with.”

  “Done and done,” she says.

  She holds my hand all the way back.

  * * *

  Lucas parks across from the police station, behind a row of gleaming cruisers. My father, who’s standing on the top step of the station’s entrance, sees us and jogs across the road. It’s getting dark, and the streetlamps are beginning to blink on. I roll down my window, and he leans in and kisses me. I smell his bay rum cologne, and instantly my heart slows a little. I’m safe. I’m surrounded by people who love me.

  I say it in my head three times. Then three more, counting on my fingers until I get to nine.

  All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

  My father smiles and says, “I won’t tell you how brave I think you are, because I know you hate that. So instead I’ll tell you that I’m proud of you. Not just for this, but for everything. I think you’re my hero, honeybunch.”

  “Dad, stop. You’re totally embarrassing me.”

  He leans in and kisses me again. “Guess what? I don’t care.”

  “Besides,” I say, looking at the uniformed officers going in and out of the station. “I’m scared out of my mind.”

  Lucas tugs on my sleeve. “Birdy, you know what my granny Deirdre says?”

  “No clue.”

  “She says you have to
be scared to be brave.”

  My stomach is climbing into my throat, and I feel like I might throw up. How will I ever say it out loud? How can I possibly say all the terrible things? Where will I find the words? The strength?

  Tears prick behind my eyes and I tilt my head back, automatically, reflexively.

  Lucas squeezes my hand. “Birdy Bird, don’t. Let them fall.”

  And I do. The tears flow down my cheeks, hot and fast, but when I speak, my voice is clear. “If your grandmother is right,” I say, “then right now, I am definitely the bravest person on the planet.”

  Violet Bell meets us inside the front doors, shaking hands with my father and Sophie. She’s dressed in a dark blue suit, and her hair is pulled back from her face.

  “Sparrow,” she says, taking both of my hands in hers. “It took a lot of guts for you to come here today, and we’re grateful. Are you ready?”

  My mouth is dry, and for a second I think about turning and running out the front doors, across the street, and deep into the woods until I’m lost. Until I’m sure no one will ever find me or make me talk or ask me any questions ever again.

  “I think so.”

  She leads us into a windowless room with a long rectangular table and six chairs. There are bottles of water at each place, and at the far end, a video camera is set up on a tripod. The little red light is on.

  “Sparrow,” Detective Bell says. “Don’t worry about the camera. Don’t even look at it, okay? It’s there to make sure we get your words exactly right. Just look at me and forget it’s even there.”

  Sophie and my dad take the seats at the far end of the table. Violet sits at the head, and I take the seat on her right. We make small talk for a little while, how am I feeling, is my foot better, have I started dancing again, what Madame Levkova’s like.

  Then she says, “Sparrow. Who hurt you last August?”

  My heart pounds, and my hands are shaking so hard that I tuck them under my legs so no one will see. I look down the table at my father, who’s leaning forward, his eyes filled with love and encouragement. Sophie puts her hand over her heart and mouths, Love you.

  When I speak, my voice is strong and steady. I sound like someone else, someone sure of herself. Someone unafraid.

  You are innocent. You are beloved.

  I look Violet straight in the eyes. I say his name.

  “Tristan. Tristan King.”

  Lucas

  Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It

  The Sparkles

  “Hey, want to see what I found?”

  I take off my headphones, and Ralph Vaughan Williams fills the air.

  “Hang on, Mom.” I pause the music, then set the piece to start at the beginning when I pick it up again.

  “You don’t have to lurk out there in the hall like a stalker. I swear I took all the toxic waste out to the trash.”

  “Good. Because a person could catch Ebola in here.”

  “That was yesterday. Today’s special is cholera.”

  “Nice, Lucas.”

  She walks gingerly into my room, tiptoeing over tights and slippers, bending to pick up the huge plastic cups whose insides are coated with the remains of chocolate protein shakes.

  “Lucas, the dirty clothes on the floor are bad enough. But if you keep these cups in here, we’re going to get roaches and mice. And then, kid, you and I are going to have a serious issue.”

  “Come on, Mom. If we didn’t have at least one serious issue going on, we wouldn’t be, you know, us.”

  She laughs and sits on the edge of my bed.

  “True. But look what I found when I was looking for books to give to the hospital library.”

  She hands me a huge, heavy book, one of those things you’re supposed to put on a coffee table and never read.

  “Oh my God, I forgot all about this! You aren’t going to give it away, are you?”

  “No. I thought maybe you’d like to have it.”

  It’s a book of paintings by American artists. When I was a kid I loved it so much that we kept it in the kitchen, between the coffee maker and the toaster. My mom and I looked at it together every day after breakfast.

  “Mom, remember the Sparkles?”

  She smiles and opens the book to the page she’s marked with a bright orange Post-it.

  “How could I forget? You loved that painting. You must have looked at it for hours. I’ve always liked it, but you were absolutely obsessed. I could never figure out exactly why.”

  The painting’s real name is Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, by the same guy who painted a picture of his creepy mother sitting in a chair doing nothing.

  I called it the Sparkles. It’s not a picture of a person or a river or a bowl of fruit or anything recognizable. It’s just flecks of gold and smudges of white on an inky black background. But when I was little, I thought somebody had painted what it would be like to stand inside a shower of stars.

  “I think I liked it so much because it made me go all quiet inside. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “I do, honey. Not exactly peaceful. More like calm.”

  “Yeah. I felt like maybe I understood why the guy painted it, but only a little, and not for long. Like it was trying to tell me something, and if I looked at it long enough, I’d figure out some big secret.”

  “And did you?”

  “Mom. In the past seven months have I given you any reason to believe I’ve stumbled on some deep secret of the universe? Pretty sure if I did, I probably wouldn’t have acted like such a jerk to you and Anna.”

  I close the book and put it beside me. I know for sure I’ll be looking at it again, long and hard. Maybe while I listen to Vaughan Williams.

  “Oh, honey. It’s been a terrible time for all of us. Have you forgiven me?”

  “What, for sending me into exile at Granny Deirdre’s?” I smile, to take the sting out of the words.

  “Yes. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do at the time, but I was at my wits’ end. If you’d stayed, something bad was going to happen.”

  “Something bad did happen. A whole lot of bad somethings.”

  “I mean something bad was going to happen to you, something nobody could fix. I felt like one of those mothers in a fairy tale, sending her child off to the wise woman in the woods.”

  She goes to the window and looks out over our street, which is always super-quiet on Sunday mornings.

  “I’m so glad the snow is gone,” she says. “This was the longest, coldest winter I can remember. And now look. There are buds on the forsythia, and I can see crocuses poking up their little heads. Spring always feels hopeful to me. For the first time in a long time, I think maybe we’ll all be okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re both quiet for a while.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your music, sweetie. Let’s go out for pizza tonight, okay? We need to do something fun.”

  “Wait, Mom.”

  She turns at the door, and I see, I don’t know, this naked hope in her eyes.

  “She was the wise woman in the woods, you know. Granny. I’m glad you made me go, though I was super pissed off at the time.”

  She smiles and returns to her perch on my bed.

  “I think I remember you were a bit irritated. I’m glad it was good for you, Lucas. I think you and your grandmother have something special now. I hope she sticks around for a long time so Anna can know her the way you do. And me too.”

  I pull the book of paintings into my lap, not to look at, just to hold. Its weight and heft are comforting.

  “Mom, you know how Delaney’s got that whole Western thing going on?”

  “Those boots are kind of hard to miss, honey. Along with the feathers and the silver and the turquoise. And the attitude. I love that about her. It makes her so different from everybody else, so interesting. I wish I’d learned to carve out a place for my
self, to not care about what other people thought when I was seventeen. I was in my thirties before I figured it out. She’s a smart girl.”

  “Ha. She’s a smart-ass if you ask me.”

  “That makes her the perfect friend for you.”

  “Haha. So last week, when we found out that Tristan’s been charged with assault and a whole bunch of other stuff, and he’s probably going to jail for a long time, Delaney got all these people together in the cafeteria, and they did one of those line dances. She has, like, four hundred country-and-western stations on her phone. They were whooping it up and celebrating. It was pretty funny, you know how Delaney can always get a crowd going, but…”

  “But what?”

  “It made me feel bad.”

  “Like how?”

  “I don’t know. It was weird. Like, I still hate his freaking guts, don’t get me wrong about that. I hope he rots in jail, because he deserves it. But I keep remembering what Granny said to me the night I got there. I almost argued with her about it, but you know, she’s an old lady, and I didn’t want to give her a heart attack or anything.”

  “Wise choice. What did she say?”

  “She was talking about boys in Ireland. I mean, not really directly, you know how she never does, but I could tell. She said when you stop seeing your enemy as a human being, you give yourself permission to do great harm. And I think that’s what I did when I beat the shit out of Tristan. I gave myself permission to hurt somebody, because I thought I was right and he was a monster. I mean, I still think he’s a monster, but I feel like crap for what I did. So when Delaney started, you know, celebrating that he was going to jail, I mean, celebrating that he’s eighteen and he’s destroyed his whole life, it made me feel, I don’t know.”

  “Sad? Unkind?”

  “Well, that’s the nice way of putting it, but yeah. And I don’t want to be that guy.”

  I’m expecting a lecture, or at least some wisdom from my mother, but all she does is scoot closer, wrap her arms around me, and hug me real hard.

  “You’ve learned your lesson, honey. I’m so grateful to your granny, because she helped get you where you are right now. Part of me feels sorry for Tristan, even though I can barely stand to think about him. Still, I can’t help wondering how he got so lost, what it must be like to have so much darkness in your soul. No one becomes a monster overnight.”