Bird

by Crystal Chan

  I thought for a long, hard moment. “Okay,” I said finally. When I said that, his moon-teeth smile opened up, and I got all shiny inside.

  We climbed down from the tree, and when we reached the bottom, Eugene said, “You can still call me John if you want.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said slowly. “But you won’t get mad at me if ‘John’ slips out every once in a while, will you?”

  “Only if you don’t get mad at me for never eating Reservation Chicken again,” he said.

  I instantly remembered the look on his face at the dinner table. He’d never have to worry about eating Mom’s cooking, but I could tell him about that later. So I laughed hard instead and felt lighter, like I could breathe again. Like I was coming home.

  The next day when I looked out my window, I was startled to see that Dad’s tree saplings weren’t doing so well. In fact, they were drooped down and withered. With all the hours Dad had been putting in at Max’s Appliances to make more money for us, he hadn’t had time to take care of his garden.

  What was worse, the rosemary was dried-up, dead. Every last bit of it.

  No one seemed to notice that besides me. I even caught Grandpa taking the red sweater and socks and the horseshoe down off the wall, as if no one needed the extra layers of protection anymore.

  My parents didn’t notice much of anything because they were too busy acting strange, as if I was going to break at any minute, like I wasn’t a jewel, all tough from being in the ground for hundreds of thousands of years. Instead, they talked quietly and made sure not to look at me more than usual. I wished I could be who they wanted me to be, the good kid who didn’t give them any problems, but it was too late for that.

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t do much, but at least I could water what remained of Dad’s garden. I lugged the hose across our backyard and made little pools of water around each sapling, then around the tomatoes and cucumbers. Then I pulled up the dead rosemary, all the way down to the roots, and threw it in the garbage. Grandpa must have been watching me from his window because he came out there and stood with me under the cloudy sky.

  I was thinking about the rosemary I’d just torn out, and how I felt kind of ripped up, and how Grandpa must feel that way sometimes when he wants to use words to speak and can’t. We were quiet for a while when I turned to him and said, “Grandpa, why don’t you talk?”

  He jolted a little bit, startled. Like I asked a question I wasn’t supposed to ask. Or maybe it was because I was talking again.

  “Your tapes were fantastic.” I gave a little smile. “I really liked the part where you were at the river, splashing and yelling up a storm.” Mom had pulled up some river weed from the mucked-up bottom and put some down Dad’s pants. Dad screamed like a lunatic. So did Mom, but in the victorious way.

  I moved the hose to the next plants. It was good I was watering the garden; I didn’t have to look at him. “And I loved how you and Granny were always joking around, telling stories about each other.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Grandpa sucking in his breath.

  “And I know that Bird dying was really sad and all, but why don’t you talk?” I lifted my eyes to his, finally. “What happened that night?”

  Grandpa’s lips twitched, and a sadness covered him, as if he were suddenly back at the pond.

  “You can tell me, Grandpa,” I said. “I won’t say anything—”

  He tensed, and I followed his eyes. Mom was coming down the sloping grass to where we were. “Jewel, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said, but her eyes bugged out at Grandpa and me together.

  “We’ve been here this whole time,” I said.

  Her head jerked back. This was the first time I’d spoken in days. “That’s so great, honey,” she said, all happy. Then she realized that she wasn’t making sense. “I mean, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  I shrugged. “A little.”

  “Well, that’s terrific.” She glanced at Grandpa again. “I’d like for you to get ready. We have an appointment to go to.”

  I gave her a look. “We do?”

  “Well, you and me,” she said quickly. Why was she acting like Grandpa wasn’t standing next to me? She hadn’t even acknowledged him. “And we need to get going if we’re going to be on time.”

  “Okay.” I turned to Grandpa. “Could you finish watering the garden?”

  Grandpa took the hose.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Mom’s jaw dropped. Then she blushed.

  It served her right, being so rude like that.

  The appointment happened to be with a priest in a church forty miles away—far enough so no one would know about us.

  “But why?” I asked as we pulled onto the highway. “We don’t go to church anymore.”

  “I know, honey,” Mom said. “But Dad and I thought it best that you . . . talk with someone.”

  “About what?”

  “There have to be other people,” she continued, ignoring my question, “but he wanted to try this first.”

  I sighed. Rain streaked against my window. It came down pretty steady, and it turned the land soft and gray. I suppose we didn’t need to water the garden, I thought, picking at the peeling vinyl on the side of the door. Even though it had been nice to spend some time with Grandpa.

  But Grandpa would be really upset if he found out that I was friends with Eugene again. I got scrunched up inside thinking about yet another secret. But seriously, if Grandpa found out I was talking with Eugene, he’d run and get a fresh bushel of rosemary, straightaway.

  Somehow I just kept messing things up.

  “Jewel, don’t pick at the door,” Mom said as she pulled into the parking lot of a church. A sign in front said ST. MICHAEL’S PARISH WELCOMES YOU!

  “Can I help you?” asked the receptionist as we stepped inside. She had poufy blond hair that couldn’t be a real color. I mean, hair like that doesn’t just happen to people.

  She stared at my hair. Maybe she was thinking the same thing.

  “We have an appointment with Father Jim,” Mom said.

  “Ah, yes,” she said, her eyes going back and forth between Mom and me, as if trying to figure out how we’re related. Then she smiled. “Let me get him.”

  She led us into a little room with a cross and a lot of books and some comfy chairs. After a little while a man stepped in and shook our hands. “Good to meet you, Mrs. Campbell,” he said. His nose had a bump on it, like a tiny turtle had dug under his skin, but his smile reached all the way into his eyes.

  “This is my daughter, Jewel,” Mom said. “And we’re here because she has . . . a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” Father Jim asked, settling back into his chair. He looked at me expectantly.

  This was what they wanted? For me to tell some stranger that I have problems with duppies and circles and rocks? My chest burned with anger, and I gripped the sides of my chair, hard.

  “We all have problems in our lives,” Father Jim said, his voice calm and nice. “Sometimes it’s good to talk about it.”

  We’ll see about that, I thought.

  “Jewel, tell the priest about what happened,” Mom said, her voice sharpening.

  I sat for a moment, trying to figure out what Mom wanted me to say. Then it hit me. I was sick of trying to make Mom happy. Dad too. They’re not trying to make me happy, I thought. They threw my stones over the cliff and forbade me from going there again. They treat Grandpa like an idiot. They don’t want me to dig for arrowheads or talk about anything important or do anything that makes me truly, truly happy.

  I looked straight at Father Jim. “There are a lot of problems,” I said.

  He waited.

  “Like, Mom doesn’t make us go to church anymore because she says religion is a bunch of lies to keep people obedient.”

  “Jewel!” Mom cried.

  “But I think there are a lot of things out there that we don’t know about, and they’re out there and they
sure know about us.”

  Mom stood up and grabbed my arm. “We are going,” she snapped.

  Father Jim raised a hand. “Mrs. Campbell, don’t you think it’s worthwhile to hear your daughter’s perspective?”

  I didn’t wait for Mom to answer. “And Dad is a Christian too, but he believes in other things, like duppies and bad luck and good luck, even though he doesn’t talk about it in front of others because in this country people would say he’s superstitious,” I said.

  “Please, Mrs. Campbell,” Father Jim said, gesturing to Mom’s chair.

  Mom’s face got dark. She sat back down.

  “And my parents are really mad at me because I go to the cliff where my brother tried to fly.”

  “Tried to fly?”

  Mom put her head in her hands.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but instead he fell and died. He was five.”

  Silence.

  Father Jim’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m so sorry about your brother, Jewel,” he said, and he meant it. “That’s tragic.”

  I shrugged, but my throat got tight.

  Father Jim crossed his legs. “And you go to this cliff? What kinds of things do you do there?”

  “I talk to my rocks—or I used to,” I said, shooting a murderous look at Mom.

  Mom exhaled loudly.

  “Rocks.” Father Jim peered at me intently.

  “Well, and to the grasses and the sky and the sun. They talk to me.” I was on a roll now. And Father Jim looked really interested, which made me want to keep going. “The cliff is special,” I said. “There’s something there.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But the moment you go there, you know it’s different—it doesn’t feel like how a gas station or a grocery store feels.” I shifted in my chair. “It’s . . . special. Like how the inside of a church is special.”

  Father Jim leaned forward. “What do your rocks say?”

  I thought about that for a bit. They don’t use words, exactly, but I can hear them anyway. Like Grandpa. It’s a different kind of talking, a different kind of listening. “They say something like, ‘We care about you,’ ” I said.

  The grandfather clock in the room ticked loudly, and each swing of the pendulum measured out the seconds that no one spoke. I really wanted to tell Father Jim about how I bury my pebbles too, but Mom was jiggling the foot that was crossed over her leg, which meant nothing good.

  Father Jim finally turned to Mom. “When was the last time you came to mass?” he asked gently.

  Mom’s lips pursed, like she would bolt out of there if it wasn’t for me. “Five years,” she said. “Maybe six.”

  “And you’re worried about your daughter’s experiences at the cliff,” Father Jim said.

  “Her father and I both are, for different reasons.”

  Father Jim stood up and crossed over to his shelf of books. “There are a lot of ways that God talks to us,” he said. “Many times, it’s through the church. But if Jewel hasn’t been raised in the church, then God will talk to his children in other ways.”

  Mom sat stiller than a statue.

  Father Jim pulled out a book. “There was a great man who talked to stones too,” he said to me.

  “Really?” I asked. This time I was the one leaning forward.

  “He talked to the sun and the moon and, well, everything.”

  “Where does he live?” I asked.

  Father Jim chuckled. “He’s been dead for a good couple centuries. His name is Saint Francis.”

  “Excuse me,” Mom said sharply. “My daughter put a circle of stones at the cliff. I have lost my job over this.”

  Father Jim’s shoulders straightened.

  “My husband thinks evil spirits are there. I’m not going to sit in this room and hear you tell my daughter she’s a saint because she talks to rocks.” Mom leaned over and grabbed her purse.

  “Saint Francis endured much pain and poverty,” Father Jim said.

  I nodded my head vigorously. “We can’t pay our bills.”

  A small sound came from Mom’s throat. “Enough. We’re going.”

  But I didn’t move. “Father Jim, do evil spirits exist? Do duppies trick us?”

  Mom froze. Father Jim sat there awhile and rubbed the underside of his chin. Finally he said, “There are spirits out there, angels and demons, good ones and bad ones. We need to be vigilant about what kind they are and what kind we trust.”

  “How do we know what kind they are?” I pressed.

  “It can be hard to discern because they come in many different forms,” Father Jim said. “The best way is to notice what they want us to do. Are they asking us to glorify God? Or ourselves?”

  I wasn’t sure if talking to my rocks was glorifying anything, but they always felt like home to me.

  “Sometimes God talks to us through humans,” Father Jim continued, “but he can use all of creation.”

  “Because God is everywhere,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So my rocks are beautiful because I’m seeing a part of God.”

  Father Jim smiled. Then, because Mom really wanted to leave at that point, he said a quick prayer, that God would protect us from evil and that we could find God’s blessings all around us. He also thanked God for remembering to make stones, because stones can teach us how to endure.

  I liked that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MOM didn’t say anything on the way home, which was fine with me. That gave me time to think about what Father Jim had said. And the more I thought about it, the more questions I had. Do angels and saints have to be human? If not, then Mr. McLaren’s tree had to be an angel, the way it brought Eugene and me back together.

  But angels and saints felt a long ways away as Mom pulled into our driveway. The sun hung above the trees.

  “Well?” Dad asked, coming out to meet us. The angle of the sun made a golden outline around him. He wiped his hands on his pants. They were covered with flour.

  “It was a splendid time,” Mom said dryly. “The priest says that saints talk to rocks too, so there’s nothing to be worried about.”

  “He said that?” Dad shifted, and with him, the light.

  Mom smirked. “In fact, he and Jewel got along quite well.”

  “Did he pray over her?”

  “He said a prayer.”

  “No,” Dad said, his forehead wrinkling up. “I meant—”

  “Did he exorcise the demons?” Mom asked. She readjusted the purse on her shoulder. “No, Nigel, he did not. I guess he didn’t see the need. Maybe next time, before I do you a favor, we should talk about exactly what you want me to demand of a priest.”

  I left them to argue in the driveway, blinking back tears. I wasn’t sure which was worse, slicing into someone with silence or with words.

  I knocked on Grandpa’s door. When there wasn’t any answer, I peeked inside. He wasn’t there. Back in my room, I slipped in one of Grandpa’s mento tapes, but even his music couldn’t lift the weight off my chest, not with Dad and Mom’s comments seeping into our walls. So I went into the kitchen and put on my shoes again.

  “Where are you going?” Dad asked. He looked directly at me, like I was a thief.

  “Out,” I said.

  “Don’t talk to your dad with that tone of voice,” Mom said.

  “I’m not going to the cliff,” I said. And before they could get on my back about that tone of voice, I left the house.

  It was just as I thought: There were footprints through the grasses on the deer path. I followed the trail around until it opened up and revealed the pond. And Grandpa. He was sitting exactly where he had been before, his head in his hands, his back deeply curved. The pond was a soft pastel, almost a mirror to the sky.

  I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Hey, Grandpa,” I called.

  Grandpa’s head lifted, and he looked at me for a long while, like a deer that doesn’t know if it should stay or flee. I waved a little. He raised his
hand awkwardly, and I walked down the grassy slope to where he was. He scooted over so I could sit next to him.

  The cicadas were loud. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time. How could something so small make so much noise? Or someone as large as Grandpa make no sound at all?

  But an entire universe full of silence was still better than how Dad and Mom were now talking to each other, each word awful and cold. Where was the laughter and happiness from that Valentine’s Day on the tape? Joy is like a child, I realized, as I picked at the bark by my thigh. You feed it or it dies.

  “Grandpa,” I said, “why are my parents so angry all the time?”

  I knew better than to ask him something other than a yes-or-no question, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Grandpa exhaled through his nose and shook his head. I didn’t quite know what he meant by that.

  “And why are you so sad?” I asked.

  He turned to me. I never realized how deep and full and dark his eyes were until that very moment. They were soft and endless, in an awful way, like those black holes that go on and on, never stopping for forever. I wanted to cry just looking at Grandpa. Maybe that’s why he made sure never to look at anyone.

  “You made so many tapes,” I said, a little shaken. “I like the way you laughed.”

  Grandpa’s face grew even longer, and he turned toward the pond. Then he stood up, and after a while I did too, and we watched the pond grow pink and orange and purple, until it looked like it was on fire. I was sure then that this pond knew Grandpa as well as my cliff knew me. As I was marveling at how the earth holds our sadness in many kinds of ways, Grandpa put his arm around my shoulder. Then it was my turn to turn into a deer, startled and not knowing what to do; his arm was warm and awkward and gentle, though, and my heart was beating a million times a minute because this was Pooba.

  “It’s all about Bird, isn’t it?” I said, and it wasn’t really a question.

  Grandpa kept looking away from me in a way that said yes.

  “You mean he’s actually nice?” Eugene asked later that night. We were at Event Horizon. Eugene clicked his flashlight on and off, on and off, like he was a big lightning bug.