by Crystal Chan
I made five holes, wrapped my fingers around the first pebble, and held it close to my mouth. “My birthday was horrible yesterday,” I breathed into it, and my throat tightened as I spoke the words aloud. “It always is.” Then I put the pebble in the hole and covered it up, patting the dirt lightly.
I took the second one, the pinkish one. “I want more,” I whispered to it. I paused. It wasn’t like a “I’m shopping and want to buy things” more, but something else. I couldn’t figure out the words I wanted to say after that, so I just put the pebble in the ground.
I had buried quite a few pebbles for ponies. Well, ponies and scratch-n-sniff stickers and fireworks. That’s what I’d first wanted when I started digging like this. Every time I put a pebble in the ground, something in me released, like the earth was holding my question or worry or secret and giving it an all-around hug. The earth could hold as many pebbles as I wanted to give it, and thinking about that felt so good that I buried pebbles every time I came. Couldn’t stop if I tried.
I know people would call me crazy if they found out that I come to this cliff. I know that my parents would be angry and disappointed and afraid. But even though I’ve tried to stay away, this place calls me back as if it has a voice of its own.
Something is here.
Dad thinks the cliff is haunted by duppies. Maybe Bird’s duppy is here instead of in heaven, where it belongs. But after coming here for four whole years, I think there are just some things no one is able to explain, not even Dad or Mom or mayors or priests. They think they know, but they don’t.
I held the third stone in my hand. “There is this boy named John,” I whispered. “I’ve never seen him around before—”
I paused. The hairs on my neck stood on end, in a wrongness kind of way.
Something awful was happening. Something really, really bad.
I didn’t think about what it could be. I jumped to my feet and sped down the footpath, toward home.
I found Grandpa in the living room, slumped over on the floor, the TV blaring out some game show. Dad and Mom had gone by now, Mom to her part-time clerical job in Caledonia’s town hall, Dad to sell gadgets at Max’s Appliances three towns over, the only store like that for more than sixty miles.
“Grandpa!” I cried, shaking his body. He was cold. Unresponsive.
I felt my eyes grow wide. “No,” I whispered.
I dashed through the house, looking for the case that held his diabetes emergency kit, which contained a vial of glucose that could save his life. I crashed into the bathroom and yanked open the medicine cabinet. It wasn’t there. I ran into Grandpa’s bedroom, even though I wasn’t supposed to go inside, and rummaged through his nightstand, then his dresser drawers, then his closet. I was nearly ripping apart with fear: Even if I called Dad or Mom, it would take a half hour for them to drive home. An ambulance, too.
I spun around in a circle, my eyes searching furiously for the kit. Then I saw it: a small, clear box with a syringe and a vial inside. It was only the size of a pencil box, much smaller than what I had been looking for. In my panic, I had yanked it out of his nightstand and hadn’t seen it fall to the ground.
I snatched the kit and ran back to the living room. I had seen Dad give Grandpa this shot only once, a long time ago, when he didn’t think I was watching. Dad had injected the glucose in Grandpa’s arm, deep into the muscle. I clenched my teeth, pulled the syringe out of the box, stuck it into the vial, and drew up the clear liquid. Then I plunged the needle into Grandpa’s arm and injected the glucose into his body. Wild applause filled the room. I jumped and turned around. A participant on the game show had just tripled her money and won a trip to Bermuda. She was screaming and crying and waving her hands in the air.
I ran to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed 911.
By the time the ambulance got to our house, Grandpa was already starting to move. I showed Mr. Williamson and Mr. Brendle, the town’s two part-time paramedics, into the living room. They lifted Grandpa onto a wheeled bed and put him in the ambulance; his skin was a shock of color against the perfectly white sheet. I let my eyes linger on him, which felt weird since I never really let myself look at him. His body was lean but muscular, his chin firm, his cheekbones pointy and no-nonsense, and his short, wiry hair just lightly tipped with gray. I was amazed at how strong he looked, even in an ambulance. Maybe he thought he was strong enough to stop worrying about his blood sugar level, even though he should have known that if he let it drop that low it could kill him.
“Jewel?” Mr. Williamson was looking at me, tugging on the dark blue cuffs of his shirt.
I jumped. “Yes?”
“I said, how long was he unconscious?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t home.”
Mr. Williamson made a puzzled face. “You weren’t?”
“No. I was at the cliff.” The words came out just like that, like a tsunami was crashing out of my mouth.
Mr. Williamson straightened, and his face went hard. “The cliff?”
We both knew what cliff I was talking about.
I sealed up my lips, not revealing another secret. A tight silence surrounded us, and for what seemed a small eternity, I felt the weight of his questions and accusations and judgment.
I squirmed. “Is Grandpa going to be okay?”
Mr. Williamson looked at me and nodded, and he started talking about insulin and a lot of medical things I didn’t understand. He talked more than he needed to, and the angle of the morning sun slowly blended away the stress lines on his face, his lines of apprehension at being at our house. He looked comfortable, almost.
But I knew better.
“Jewel,” he said, pushing up his glasses on his nose, “are you going to come with us to the hospital? We’ll need someone to translate . . .” He trailed off and his huge feet fidgeted on our gravel driveway. The entire town knew that Grandpa couldn’t speak, or chose not to. There were even people at church who whispered he had a curse on his mouth for nicknaming my brother Bird.
I shook my head. “I called Dad, and he said he’ll meet you there.” Grandpa wouldn’t want me that close to him in the ambulance, anyway. He also wouldn’t say thank you to me for saving his life, of course. But truthfully, a grateful look would have been nice.
Mr. Williamson nodded again and hopped into the ambulance, and the vehicle crunched on the gravel as they drove away. I walked back to the house, trying to take some deep breaths and calm my thumping heart. More than that, though, I tried to forget about the moment when Mr. Williamson’s gaze faltered, when he looked at the house and at me with the strangest expression on his face, almost fearful, before he nodded his professional nod. I get that same look when I’m in town with Mom or Dad, from Mrs. Ballantine, who owns the hardware store, or from Mr. Stewart, the grocer. I wonder sometimes if people are afraid of us, of the circumstances of my birth, of Bird’s death, of how we’re mixing cultures and stories and magic that shouldn’t be mixed. It did make my stomach flip, though, to get that same look from Mr. Williamson. Of course he would help us if we needed him.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
CHAPTER THREE
IT TOOK a while to put back all the bottles and odds and ends in the bathroom. When I was done, I hesitated, wondering if I should go into Grandpa’s room and try to put his things back too. I couldn’t decide what was worse: him returning and finding his room an absolute mess, or finding that I’d gone through his things again and put them back incorrectly. In the end, I decided I should at least try to fix his room. It’s not like he would yell at me.
Grandpa’s room was just as it had been all my life. I’d been in there only once before, when I was four or five, looking for Foo Foo, my stuffed rabbit. Mom and Dad told me not to go in his room, but they didn’t even have to say anything; it was more the frozen click of his door shutting each time he entered and exited that kept me away. I knew I shouldn’t have been in there, but I had looked everywhere else and I was getting sc
ared because I thought maybe I lost Foo Foo forever. There I was in his bedroom, calling for my rabbit, when Grandpa came into the room. I sensed more than saw him, and when I turned around, the air caught in my lungs.
It was the way he looked at me that terrified me, the dark features of his face pulling together into rage. I bolted out of there as fast as I could, ran into my room, and stayed there for the rest of the day. I told Mom I was sick, and when she brought me some canned soup, she happened to step on the tip of Foo Foo’s ear, who was lying just beneath my bed.
Grandpa’s room was exactly the same as it was then: empty, blue walls, a window with white blinds but no curtains, a dresser, a nightstand, and a bed, neatly made, with a dark green comforter. Nothing was on the bed, just like nothing was on top of his dresser or nightstand. Barren.
My eyes scanned the items on the floor. I had been a whirlwind, and Grandpa’s things were scattered like debris across the room. Thin books about Louis Armstrong; yellowed receipts and scraps of paper with delicate, old penmanship; letters; packets of seeds with no names on them; a small, black-green-and-gold Jamaican flag. One by one I put these things back into his nightstand, as best as I could. There were faint smells coming from all his belongings too, and I found myself sniffing each item that I replaced and trying to name them: coconut oil, cinnamon, and the scent of falling rain.
I was putting Grandpa’s shoes back in his closet when I saw an entire shelf of old cassette tapes tucked along his back closet wall. Mom had some cassettes of her favorite music and played them every once in a while, but she had maybe five of them, big and bulky and holding maybe only ten songs each. Here in Grandpa’s closet, there had to be at least a hundred cassettes, maybe two hundred, and they were flawlessly stacked in their old, plastic cases. That was strange, since there was never music coming from Grandpa’s room. No sound at all.
A box had fallen to the ground, not far from the shoes. A small picture box, one whose red cardboard lid had been opened and closed and held so many times the edges were a muted pink. I opened it up and saw a picture of Grandpa and a woman who had to be Granny. There was only one picture of her in our house, on the living room wall, and that was the only way I knew her—the only face and clothes, the only lighting. In these pictures, it was so strange seeing her with different clothes, a different angle and expression, but still with joy in the crinkles of her deep brown skin. Grandpa was in the picture this time, his arm casually around her waist. His arm was at her waist in all the other photos with her: the two of them in front of the car, at the park, at a waterfall, with my dad when he was younger and stood taller, somehow. And each time, there Grandpa was, looking square into the camera with a huge, endless, unstoppable smile on his face, a smile broad and dark like two diverging tectonic plates, a smile that says, Come with me. My heart pulled with thick throbbing, but I wouldn’t let myself want that Grandpa too. I knew better than to want the impossible.
Then I came to the last five pictures. Grandpa and Bird on horseback, on the swings, in the forest. Bird blowing out candles. In the last one, Grandpa was holding Bird by the edge of the cliff, laughing. The trees were red and golden, and the sky a cold, showy blue. Bird had this huge grin on his face as he was trying to stick his fingers up Grandpa’s nose. Grandpa’s face was wide with joy and surprise.
Grandpa, who laughs and speaks and joys.
Bird, who lives.
Jewel, who doesn’t.
Then I saw an old, yellowed piece of paper, folded up into quarters and lying at the bottom of the photo box. It was a drawing. With crayons. A boy was flying in the sky, with a line coming from him and in labored writing: “Me.” A man on the ground, smiling and waving: “Pooba.”
Pooba. My mouth silently formed the word once, then twice. Bird had called Grandpa “Pooba.”
I bit my bottom lip. Who were these people? Where was all this joy, and where does joy go when it leaves your family? Does it go to someone else’s family, soak into the earth, or does it dissolve away like your breath in the winter? And if it doesn’t leave like this, then why isn’t there any left for me?
I placed the box back on the shelf and tried to arrange the rest of Grandpa’s things. To my dismay, even though I tried to jam everything back in, it wouldn’t fit—his nightstand had been so full that the drawer wouldn’t close properly. I scribbled a note explaining what had happened and left it on his bed. I knew he wouldn’t have asked me about it, but I felt I should tell him anyway.
The phone rang. It was Dad. He was already at the hospital, and Mom was there too. The doctors had stabilized Grandpa, but they would keep him all day and release him that night. Dad sounded tired, but there was something behind his voice. Something uncomfortable. I told him not to worry about me, and after we hung up I put on my shoes, feeling the need to get outside. My feet pulled me along, running down the road, and it wasn’t long before I was headed back to McLaren’s tree.
The third branch was empty. My lips puckered up a little, the same way my mom’s do when she’s disappointed. I climbed up to the third limb anyway. The first branch is always the hardest. In a year or so I’ll be tall enough to get off the ground easier, but for now I had my rope tied and knotted around the first limb to help haul myself up. John must have used my rope too, I thought, as I climbed my way through the tree. I was surprised how proud that made me feel.
But it bothered me that I told Mr. Williamson about going to the cliff; I’ve been going to the cliff since I was eight, and I’ve never told a single soul. Today, however, that secret just plopped out. People here call Dad superstitious, and he wouldn’t be happy knowing where I go. He would think Bird talks to me there, or Granny, or a duppy. Mom would be even more upset, but for different reasons. The very worst thing would be to not be able to go to the cliff, because then I wouldn’t belong anywhere. So when it comes to things that matter, I’ve always been really good at being as quiet as a stick.
Except this morning with Mr. Williamson.
Up from my perch, I spotted John walking toward me through the humid cornfields. It wasn’t too hard. He was like a spot of night roving through the sunshine. He waved at me, and I waved back. It felt a little strange to be waved to. Folks in Caledonia don’t wave to each other; they mostly nod or smile, or the guys jerk their chins up slightly, like their necks have an itch. The nods and smiles I get in town are smaller than the ones everyone else gets—or maybe that’s just my imagination. Regardless, John was waving like he meant it.
It was a little startling.
John’s moon teeth glimmered again as he grinned up at me. “It’s my tree, remember?” A hefty pair of binoculars hung around his neck.
I grinned back from my branch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I called.
He hauled himself up the tree—using my rope, just as I’d suspected—and before I knew it, he was sitting in a fork off the thick trunk, not too far from me. He was a good climber; most kids try to climb trees only with their arms, and anyone who knows anything about climbing knows that you have to use your legs, and you have to be smart about it. Like climbing rocks. You have to find the center of your power in your hips, shift your weight at exactly the right angle, at exactly the right time, and find the exact right next place to go to, or you’ll get stuck.
John did not get stuck.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Binoculars.”
“You were spying on me?” I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or pleased.
“You can see a lot of things from my uncle’s house if you have a good pair. I just happened to see you,” he added. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and stared through a break in the leaves and into the sky. Puffy, white cumulous clouds gathered like glowing cotton candy, and endless white streams from planes crisscrossed overhead.
John was still looking at the planes. He adjusted the focus on his binoculars. “I bet those people never look down at us.”
“Nope,” I sa
id, swinging my legs. The bark pressed into my skin. It used to hurt, but I got used to it a long time ago.
“I bet they never land anywhere close to here either.”
“Nope.”
“I bet they don’t even wonder about us, like how we’re wondering about them.”
“There’s nothing special about us, I guess.”
John lowered his binoculars and looked at me appraisingly. Some birds hop-fluttered among the branches, chirping. He gestured to the patch of sky. “Those jet lines in the sky are called contrails, short for ‘condensation trails.’ ”
I peered with him at the glowing white ribbons.
John put his binoculars back to his eyes. “The airplane’s engine releases carbon dioxide and water vapor, and at that altitude, the water vapor condenses into water droplets or ice.” He looked at me. “They’re streams of artificial clouds.”
I had never thought about contrails, and I told him so.
John’s lips curled up at the edges, like he was happy he knew something I didn’t.
But I know things too.
“The whole state of Iowa used to be covered with water,” I said, tugging at some hair that had escaped from my ponytail.
“Really?” John smiled even more, like I was making it all up.
“The exposed bedrock of these parts is from the Paleozoic Era, in the Silurian Period, about four hundred million years ago,” I said. “Iowa used to be a shallow inland sea and filled with brachiopods, trilobites, and stromatoporoids.” I said that last word slowly. Stromatoporoids. It’s one of my favorite words. “Over millions of years, their shells helped form rocks in this area—”
Then I noticed how he was staring at me bug-eyed. My face suddenly felt hot, and my lips fused shut. When I started learning about rocks, I told Dad about what I’d read in books and on the computers that they let you use in school. But he just shook his head and looked embarrassed, as if I was telling him something top secret—or worse, disappointing, like I’m not supposed to be turning out like this. “Don’t tell your mom,” he said to me. All the other girls were interested in their hair or the little makeup kits they got from Pickett, the largest town in the area, and not one of them ever talked about rocks or the earth or the secrets that came long before them. That’s the thing with telling people what you know: You never know what they’ll do with the information.