Bird

by Crystal Chan

  “It’s about Jewel.”

  “What does Jewel have to do with this?”

  “Go ahead. Ask her.”

  “But—”

  “I said ask her.”

  Silence.

  Tears burned my eyes. If I hadn’t been friends with Eugene, none of this would have happened.

  It was all my fault.

  “Jewel!” Dad called out.

  I trudged into the dining room. Dad had dropped his briefcase in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I sat down.

  “What happened, Jewel?” His voice wavered, like he was either mad or scared. Or both.

  I wanted to answer, I really did. I wanted to say that I go to the cliff, where the earth takes care of my worries and I can just be me. That I met a friend who wasn’t really a friend and I made the mistake of trusting him, and now I have a massive black hole swirling in my chest. That I’m ruining everyone’s life.

  I wanted to say all that, every last word, but I didn’t. Instead I looked at my hands. A tear slid down my cheek.

  “Jewel is still going to the cliff,” Mom said.

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up.

  “And Mr. Robinson said they’ve seen a circle of stones at the cliff, and there are rumors that Jewel does strange things with those stones. He doesn’t know what goes on there; it’s just a little too different.” Mom paused. “He was laughing, like it was a joke, but I knew what he meant. And I told him,” Mom continued, “how dare he insinuate that my daughter is doing anything wrong, and that he was too much of a coward to stand up to the rumors in his own community.”

  “You told him that?”

  Mom smiled weakly. “He got angry when I called him a coward. And I was on a roll and said that I don’t want to work for a coward either. Then I left.”

  I sniffled. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “What you did wrong was disobey,” Mom said, turning to me. An edge crept into her voice. “What matters is I lost my job because you didn’t listen to us.”

  “A circle of stones?” Dad asked. His voice was funny.

  I swallowed. How come I have to tell them everything when they keep all these secrets from me?

  “Answer your father,” Mom said.

  The dilemma: Which is worse, opening your mouth only to burst into tears, or remaining silent and absorbing their blame?

  “You see what she’s turning into?” Mom said to Dad. Her voice was still quiet. Almost pleading. “You’ve demented our daughter with your superstitions.” She propped her forehead in both hands.

  “I can talk to Mr. Robinson,” I pleaded.

  Mom groaned.

  “I’ll tell him everything so he’ll believe me,” I insisted.

  Dad’s jaw clenched. His Adam’s apple moved up and down.

  A whimpering noise came from behind Mom’s hands. “How will we pay our mortgage?”

  Dad stalked out of the dining room.

  “Maybe Mrs. Jameson needs help,” I whispered. “In the bakery.”

  Mom hit her fist on the table. “Who will hire me when I’ve upset the mayor?” she shouted. Her knuckles were white.

  Something inside me caved, and I burst into tears. “I’ll tell them that I didn’t do anything wrong. And you could get your job back—”

  “People believe what they choose to believe. Arguing won’t help.” Mom swore under her breath.

  “I’m sorry, Mom!” I howled. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “ ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to keep a roof over our heads!”

  Dad’s feet pounded back down the hall. He held a brown paper bag in one of his hands. The screen door slammed as he left the house, his shoes stabbing against the gravel.

  “Nigel, where are you going?”

  My stomach dropped. Mom and I ran out of the house and followed him. Dad got in the Buick.

  “Get in.”

  We did.

  Dad threw the car into gear and swerved down the driveway. His hands gripped the steering wheel, hard. Then he veered onto the road.

  I knew the route we were taking. Dad was headed to the cliff.

  “Jewel is a smart girl,” Dad said, punching the gas pedal. The car lurched forward. “If you would have let me teach her, she would have known to stay away from the cliff.”

  A rabbit leaped into the road. Dad swerved to miss it.

  “Nigel!” Mom cried as her shoulder slammed into the car door.

  “But you’ve kept Jewel ignorant,” Dad continued, ignoring her. “If she doesn’t have a good head on her shoulders, it’s because of you. You’ve done nothing to protect her.”

  “Nothing?” Mom cried. “You believe in hocus-pocus. That’s ludicrous.”

  Dad braked hard as he pulled to the side of the road. He threw his door open and stomped to the footpath. We had to run to keep up with him all the way to the cliff, and when he saw the circle he stopped cold. A strange cry came from his throat.

  “This is your fault!” he shouted, turning on Mom. “All these years I’ve tried to protect her.”

  “Me?” Mom put her face inches from his. “I’ve been trying to protect her too!”

  “I mean from duppies.”

  “And I mean from you.”

  It was so strange to have my parents at the cliff. With my circle. So wrong. Even the angle of the sunlight was wrong. My parents were standing on the place where I buried my pebbles, trampling them down.

  “Jewel,” Dad said, “this place is crawling with duppies.” Then, almost to no one, he cried out, “I’m not losing another child to this cliff.”

  “This place is not crawling with duppies,” Mom retorted, grabbing his arm. “This is exactly the nonsense that I’ve been trying to keep from Jewel.”

  “And how well has that been working out?” Dad asked, waving at the circle of stones. “No matter how much you deny the reality of the spirit world, it’s here, pressing on us from all directions.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “And the spirits are angry at our family. Because of you, Rose. You refuse to respect them—”

  “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is for Jewel to become a levelheaded, practical girl,” Mom retorted.

  Dad snorted. “Think what you like. It’s clear that Jewel coming out here is a sign. Something is teaching her since we have not.” Dad walked right to my circle and picked up a stone.

  My seventh-year stone. My breath caught.

  Dad looked at us. “And a duppy is waiting to trick her, too, if we don’t stop it.”

  Then he heaved my stone over the cliff.

  “Nooo!” I cried, running at him. “No! Please! Anything, please—” I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off. Mom dashed at me, took my arms, and held me in a bear grasp while I watched Dad tear up my circle and throw my stones, one by one by one, into that empty space. Then he took out his paper bag and threw fistfuls of rice onto the ground, sprinkled holy water, and put a crucifix where the circle used to be.

  I heard screaming echo off the boulder, under the cloudless sky, for a long, long time. I’m still not sure that was me.

  I didn’t speak on the way home, or that evening, or the next day. Not one word. In fact, I didn’t want to talk again for the rest of my life. When something you love is taken from you, words are pointless. What’s the use of words if they’re empty or powerless or fake? Why not be silent until the very last minute of forever?

  Over the next week, my parents were home more. Mom got on the phone and called around town to see if anyone needed any help, which of course they didn’t. Dad came home straightaway from work on the nights he wasn’t putting in extra hours. He bought a lot of milk for cereal. And more rice.

  I stayed in my room.

  Mom tried to talk to me, and Dad, too; they tried to explain that by throwing my rocks off the cliff, they were protecting me. It was for my own good. But that kind of talk made my lips fuse shut. How could they say they were protecting me when t
hey slit me open and scooped everything out? My head hurt every time I thought of what they said that awful afternoon.

  It’s incredible how differently we see things. I mean, someone could say, this is the sky. And someone else could come along and say, oh no, this is the house of the spirits. And they’d be looking at the exact same thing. Or someone could say, this is a special place, and another person would say it’s just a bunch of stones. And then a third person would say, actually this is a dangerous place and throw the stones over a cliff.

  My throat got tight. I got up, took my rock collection off my shelf, and held as many as I could in my hands, gripping them hard until my fingers hurt. And even though I tried not to think about it, I kept seeing my stones fall into the emptiness.

  But I didn’t want to think about things falling anymore. So I put my rocks down on my bed and played with the golden chain around my neck, which was smooth beneath my fingers.

  Suddenly, for the first time, I saw Bird jumping off and flying instead. It was an incredible sight, seeing my brother’s arms outstretched again, embracing the sky, his face smiling like the sun. A shiver went down my back. Who knows, I thought, maybe Bird did fly that day, and now my big brother is out there, soaring.

  A fat, black fly stopped droning about my room and perched on the back of my desk chair. It stood there, still, for a long time, staring at me. Then it rubbed its hind legs over its wings and abdomen, over and over and over, taking out the dust and dirt, then cleaning the underside of its wings, shivering those wings, which were glowing spiderwebs.

  There was a light tap on my door. I went over and opened it a peek. A thin slice of Grandpa appeared in front of me.

  He’d never knocked on my door before. I opened it wider and gave him a look that said, My words still don’t want to come out.

  The edges of his lips curved up slightly, and I felt better when he did that. If there was anyone who would understand about not talking, it was Grandpa.

  His eyes flicked around my room. I pulled out my chair and there we sat, him in the chair and me on my bed, the both of us silent. I felt stupid, like I should be saying or doing something, and I made to get up and maybe bring out my dominoes, even though I really didn’t want to. But Grandpa put his hand up, like, It’s okay to just sit and do nothing. So I sat back down, confused. After a while, something changed and the strangeness left the room, and it was actually nice, being quiet together.

  I had never shared silence with someone before. In my house we wield silence like shields and swords: We use it to push people away or injure them. But there Grandpa and I were, sitting in my room, and it was totally different. Instead, the quiet that fell over us was the softest, safest blanket you could ever imagine. A blanket where I could just be me. Grandpa must have known what happened with Mom and Dad and me and the cliff—either because of all the shouting or all the silence. But this time, though Grandpa and I didn’t say a single word, I could still make out his message, loud and clear: I’m still here.

  We sat like that for a long time in that warm and comforting room, our hearts hanging wide open. I learned then that hearts don’t speak with words like how we think they do in movies or in songs; I think they need a lot more space than that. Anyway, all I really knew was that my heart had an awful, raging fever that day, and in the silence, Grandpa brought with him the cooling rain.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I SNUCK out a couple nights later and went to McLaren’s tree. I couldn’t help it. I missed my cliff—it was like I was missing an arm or a leg—and I figured that a tree in the middle of a field couldn’t be all that bad. Dad didn’t say there were any duppies around those parts. To tell the truth, though, I was sick of hearing my parents say they were doing things for my own good, when really I was getting suspicious that they didn’t know very much at all.

  Anyone could hear him approach from miles away, he was so loud.

  “You up there?”

  Just hearing Eugene’s voice made me tense up.

  I looked down. “Yup. And I don’t want to hear anything about how I’m not supposed to be in this tree because you were never, ever supposed to tell and I’m never going to talk to you again, Eugene.” And just as soon as those words tumbled out of my mouth, I realized I was speaking again, and I was speaking to him, which I just said I wouldn’t do.

  “I’m really sorry about my name.”

  “I’m not talking about your stupid name. I’m talking about the cliff.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” I said, peering down at him. I half wanted to run down and give him a huge hug because I missed him and half wanted to take one of those tree limbs on his hill and give him a good whack.

  Eugene scratched the back of his neck. “What about the cliff?”

  He was doing a good job at faking it, that was for sure. But he wasn’t going to fool me again. “Stop it. And now my mom doesn’t have a job because of you and they’re blaming me and we might be kicked out of our house, so thanks for nothing.”

  “Jewel, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Who did you tell?” I demanded. But I was starting to get confused inside.

  “About the cliff? No one,” he said simply. “But your mom lost her job?”

  I was so stirred up I didn’t trust myself to speak, and in that pause Eugene climbed up the rope. He sat on the second branch, the one right below mine.

  “Either tell me or get back down,” I said. I was surprised at how bossy I sounded.

  “Is your mom okay?” Eugene asked.

  “Just tell me who you told,” I said loudly. “And then go and tell everyone that it was another of your big, fat lies.”

  Eugene didn’t say anything for a long time, and the crickets whirred through the night, shivering the air around us. I thought he was going to slip back down the tree and head home, but instead he said, “Jewel.”

  “What?” I said, agitated.

  “I’ve been coming out here every night since . . . you know,” he said. His voice was tentative. “So I could apologize to you about my name.”

  A lump suddenly formed in my throat. “Really?” I asked. “Is that the truth?” My voice caught.

  “Sure is. I would stand at the base of the trunk and say, ‘You up there?’ and if you weren’t, I’d head back home. I have the mosquito bites to prove it.”

  A dam that I didn’t know was in me burst open, and I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to stop the tears, but it didn’t help. “How can you apologize about your name but not about the cliff?” I asked. “Don’t you know what you did to us?”

  “Jewel,” Eugene said quietly, “I didn’t say anything about the cliff.”

  “But they know,” I insisted.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Robinson, everyone.” Tears flowed off my chin. “People are talking about me spending so much time at the cliff, with my stones,” I said, “and Mr. Robinson didn’t want one of his employees to be the cause of so much talk.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “So Mom told him she didn’t want to work for someone who didn’t have the courage to stand up to gossip, and left.”

  “She did that?” Eugene sounded impressed.

  That upset me even more. “She doesn’t have a job because of you!” I said.

  “But I didn’t say anything about your cliff,” he insisted. “Not a word.”

  “How can I trust you, John?” I cried.

  He shifted on his branch.

  “I mean Eugene,” I said quietly.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “Look, Jewel.” He took a deep breath. “I said I was John as a joke, at first. I didn’t know you at all; you were just the girl in the weird family whose kid brother died and there was this strange talk about curses and spirits. I knew you were the Campbell girl the moment you came walking to this tree.”

  “You knew it was me from the road?” I asked, confused.

&
nbsp; “Who else would be walking from the direction of your house, looking like no one around here?” he asked.

  “Oh.”

  “So I said my name was John.” He paused. “To freak you out a little, maybe, okay. Because my uncle said your family is superstitious. But I didn’t think you’d be so smart or fun. And the longer I was John, the better it felt. The better I felt.”

  “But how did your uncle know about . . . your name?” I asked.

  “When my uncle first told me about you guys, I laughed and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I pretended my name was John?’ and my uncle said, ‘Don’t you dare,’ and I told him I was just talking. Nothing serious. He had no idea what was going on until you came over that night and asked for John.

  “And anyway,” he continued, “what’s the big deal lying about a name?”

  I looked at him, confused. That seemed pretty big to me.

  “I lie all the time to my parents—in fact, they like it when I lie to them.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” Eugene replied.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. He sounded so certain—but how could that be, his parents like it when he lies? The lightning bugs were coming out, little lights scattered all over the earth. Lights above, lights below.

  “Are you really adopted?” I asked.

  Eugene paused. “Yes.”

  “And your real name is Eugene.”

  Another pause. “Yes.”

  “And Mr. McLaren is really your uncle,” I said.

  “Yes,” Eugene said. “I’m visiting him because Mom is having a baby. Of her own.” His voice got tight. “And my parents dumped me off at my uncle’s house while they got the nursery ready.”

  My stomach sank. No wonder he didn’t want to talk about his uncle. Or his family. How could they do that to him?

  “And everyone wants me to say that I’m happy about the baby. So I do. Even though it’s all a lie. And the more I say it, the more they like it, even though they know it’s a lie too.” Eugene stopped for a while and watched the lightning bugs. “That seems like a lot worse than just lying about a name.”

  A slight breeze blew, and it quivered the leaves like rain. “I don’t know what happened about the cliff,” Eugene said. “But I want to help.”