The Nature of Small Birds

by Susie Finkbeiner

He nodded and kept his eyes on Hilda. Covering for me, I guessed.

  “After you,” Ivan said, nodding toward the parlor and then following me down the hallway.

  There wasn’t a sign on the door or velvet rope to ban admittance; still, Bruce had grown up understanding that the parlor in his mother’s house was off-limits to children. That room contained the best furniture in the house. Antiques either purchased at a flea market or passed down by some dead relative. That was where Hilda hung the finest art and an old, gilded mirror that she claimed someone had brought with them all the way from Germany.

  Years ago, I’d risked a look at the back of the mirror to find “Made in the U.S.A.” stamped on the back.

  Whenever I thought about it, I ended up with a bout of the giggles.

  Bruce patted the seat beside him, and Hilda eyed me the whole time I crossed the room. I was already nervous enough; her scrutiny only made my hands shake more.

  Hilda lifted her chin at me as I sat down, and it seemed like she was willing me to spill just one drop of coffee on her rugs. Rugs that had, no doubt, received a thorough beating recently at her hand.

  Bruce always told me that she wasn’t much of a hitter when he was a kid. Just a few spankings that he said were well deserved. And even those hadn’t carried too much of a sting. According to him, she let loose her wrath on the various rugs around the house. He’d once told me that it wasn’t altogether uncommon for her to break a carpet beater.

  I let out a sigh of relief when I got my bumper into the chair without so much as a slosh.

  “So, what brings you two over?” Ivan asked before slurping his coffee. “And where’s my Sonny-Bunny?”

  Hilda cleared her throat in his direction, and he looked into his cup as if something very interesting was at the bottom of it.

  Sugar cube sludge, if I was to guess.

  “She’s with a friend from school,” I said. “We thought we’d come just the two of us this time.”

  “You have something to tell us?” Hilda asked.

  “Yes, actually,” Bruce started.

  He took a sip of his coffee before putting the cup on the table in front of him. I nearly gasped when I noticed he hadn’t used a coaster. From the way Hilda’s eyebrow jutted up, I didn’t think it had escaped her notice.

  I leaned forward and slid one under his cup in hopes of keeping the conversation as smooth as possible.

  “Well, Linda and I have been talking about adding another little one to our family,” Bruce continued.

  Hilda wasn’t a woman prone to displays of emotion. But there was a certain warmth that glowed behind her deep brown eyes whenever something greatly pleased her. The corners of her lips turned up and she sat straighter in her chair.

  She gave me the same look she had on her face when we told her we were expecting Sonny.

  “Are you in a family way?” she whispered.

  Bruce turned toward me and put his hand on my knee, and I nodded for him to go on.

  “Well, Mom,” he said. “We decided to adopt this time.”

  Hilda held her smile a little too long. Instead of bright and happy, it was dull and uncertain, her eyes darting between Bruce and me.

  “Is there something wrong with having one of your own?” she asked through her teeth.

  I grabbed Bruce’s hand.

  “No. There’s not,” he said. “But remember how we were working at getting pregnant a few years ago?”

  Hilda cringed at the word pregnant and lifted a hand to finger the hairline at the nape of her neck. I could almost hear her internal scream of “Well, I never!”

  “Working at it?” Ivan asked, chuckling. “I never thought it was work. Did I, Hildie?”

  “Ivan,” she gasped.

  All traces of a smile dropped from her face and I thought for certain that she would have slugged Ivan right in the arm if we weren’t sitting in the parlor. She angled her shoulders from him and set her jaw.

  “Anyway,” she said, prompting us to go on.

  “Uh,” Bruce said, rubbing at his beard. “Well, we filled out all the paperwork and went to a couple of meetings with the adoption agency.”

  He stopped to take a breath, and I wanted to fill the void with my pleas for Hilda to soften her gaze. I desperately wanted to beg her to stop looking at him as if he was a boy in need of a stiff scolding and being sent to bed without supper.

  Bruce had told me more than a dozen times that she wasn’t so stern and cold when he was little. I wasn’t entirely convinced of it, though. In my opinion, it would do the woman some good to have someone give her what-for every once in a while.

  Tightening my hold on Bruce’s hand, I thought of all the things I would say to Hilda if only I was a bolder woman and not quite so afraid of her.

  When she fixed her eyes on me with her most withering gaze, I knew I’d do no such thing.

  “And?” Hilda prompted, lifting her chin.

  “The short of it is that we got a call from the adoption agency a few hours ago.” He lifted his eyebrows. “We get to meet our second child tomorrow.”

  “Hot dog!” Ivan slapped hands to thighs and stood up, reaching across the coffee table to shake Bruce’s hand. “Congratulations, son.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Bruce cupped both hands around his father’s.

  “Hilda, isn’t that something?” Ivan asked, turning toward his wife. “Bet you didn’t expect this news when you got up today.”

  “I did not.” Hilda pulled her lips into a smile. “I’m very happy.”

  “Boy or girl?” Ivan asked, sitting back down and resting his arms on his thighs.

  “A little girl,” I said.

  “A baby?”

  “No. She’s between four and five years old.”

  “Between?” Ivan asked, squinting. “You don’t know?”

  “Why don’t they just ask her?” Hilda asked, putting her half-full cup of coffee on a coaster. “She might know how old she is.”

  “She doesn’t speak English,” I said. “Not yet, at least.”

  Hilda turned her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “What does she speak?” Ivan asked.

  Panic zipped through me, starting behind my sternum, and I put a hand to my chest, taking in a sharp breath in hope of clearing it. But that only added dread to the anxiety.

  “Vietnamese,” Bruce said. “She’s from Vietnam.”

  Hilda got out of her chair, smoothing the front of her smock-shirt.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

  “Mom.” Bruce moved to the edge of his seat and dropped my hand. “Say that you’re happy for us. Please.”

  “No.” She put her palm up as if to hold him back from her. “Think of your brother. What would Dale say about such a thing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They killed him, Bruce.” Her voice caught as if she was near to breaking. “And now you want to bring one of them here? Into our family?”

  “Mom.”

  “No,” she said again. “What will happen when Chris sees her? Don’t you know that he has nightmares still? And you want him to play uncle to one of their children.”

  “Now, Hilda,” Ivan said.

  “I will not have one of them in this house.” She set her jaw. “That child won’t be welcome here.”

  “She’s just a little girl,” I said, trying so hard to keep my voice calm.

  “Don’t you think I’ve heard the stories of what they make children do there?” Hilda’s eyes sliced right through the heart of me. “They turn them into soldiers and make them kill our people.”

  “That’s enough of that.” Ivan tugged on the hem of her skirt. “Sit down, dear.”

  “I will not sit down!”

  Her voice filled the room and spilled out into the hallways, up the stairs, soaking into the floorboards. It was rage and grief and hopelessness all mingled together.

  The thickness of emotion paralyzed me past even shaking.

/>   “Mom, we don’t need your blessing,” Bruce said, his deep voice soft. “It would be nice to have, but I won’t beg for it.”

  Hilda drew back her shoulders and looked down her nose at us. From where I sat, I felt like a little child who had been caught doing something bad.

  “She needs a family,” I said, choking on the lump in my throat.

  “Then let her be with some other people,” Hilda said. Then she walked out of the room.

  “Now, see here,” Ivan called after her.

  But she didn’t turn back to us. Her footsteps got quieter as she went toward the kitchen.

  Bruce dropped his head into his hands, pushing his fingers through his hair. I still didn’t move, not knowing what I could do to ease the tension in that house.

  As for Ivan, he slung back the last of his coffee as if he was hoping it was something even stronger. Then he looked up at Bruce and me.

  “Does my new granddaughter have a name?” he asked.

  “Her name’s Minh,” Bruce answered.

  Ivan touched his ear. “Minnie?”

  “Just Minh.”

  “When will she be here?”

  “Tomorrow,” Bruce said. “Three in the afternoon.”

  “That fast, huh?” Ivan nodded. “I’d have thought it would be a longer flight from Vietnam.”

  “Well, she’s already in the States. She’s coming in from Lansing,” Bruce said. “Maybe you could come over and meet her on Monday. If you want to.”

  “I’d like that.” Ivan cleared his throat.

  I finally took a sip of coffee, wishing I’d stirred the sugar into it, knowing it was all settling at the bottom.

  Ivan got up from his seat, lowering his cup to the side table as careful as could be. Not bothering to use the coaster seemed more an act of defiance than absentmindedness.

  “Your mother’ll come around,” he said. “Just give her a little time.”

  Patting his son on the shoulder a few times, he sighed.

  “I’m sure proud of you,” he said.

  Bruce reached up and covered his dad’s hand with his own.

  We sat in our lawn chairs in the backyard after Sonny was in bed. It had been a long day and we were both beat.

  Not so tired that we wanted to go to bed, though.

  “She wasn’t always such a hard woman,” Bruce said, resting his head against the back of his chair and shutting his eyes. “Losing Dale broke her heart.”

  “I’m sure it did.” I wanted to add that she didn’t have to be mean to everybody else, but I didn’t.

  Bruce already knew that and didn’t need me stirring the pot for him.

  “He was her favorite.” He crossed his arms. “But that didn’t mean he got special treatment. It just meant she was tougher on him.”

  The light was beginning to fade from the sky. A couple of bats zipped here and there, and I silently cheered them on, hoping they’d thin the mosquitoes so we’d have a less buggy summer.

  “I was at Michigan State, protesting the war, when they got the news about Dale,” Bruce said, opening his eyes. “They didn’t know how to get ahold of me, so I didn’t find out until five days later when I came home to do my laundry.”

  He lifted a hand to cover his eyes, and his shoulders shook. I got up and put both hands on his shoulders. Pulling me to him, he pressed his face into my stomach and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  “You couldn’t have known,” I said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I miss him.”

  “I know.”

  I held him like that until he let go. He tipped his head back and looked up into my face, his shaggy hair a mess.

  “You need to make a trip to the barber,” I said, pushing his bangs to one side.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sort of scared.”

  “Me too,” I said. “But I can’t hardly wait to meet her.”

  The sky was clear that night and I was glad to live far enough away from the streetlights of Bear Run so that nothing dimmed the bright twinkling of the stars.

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  Sonny, 1988

  We usually went to church on the other side of town from the one that Grammy and Grumpy attended. Apparently, somebody said something that really offended my mom a long time ago and that’s why we switched.

  Whatever.

  At least a lot of kids from school were in my youth group. That was, like, all that really mattered to me.

  But the Sunday after my graduation, my cousin Teddy was getting baptized, so we all had to go to First Baptist Church and stay for the potluck after the service. Grammy said so.

  It wasn’t too different from our church. We sang three hymns, passed the offering plates while some lady did her very best Sandi Patty impersonation along with taped accompaniment, prayed, then listened to a sermon. Teddy got baptized in the tank behind the altar and we all cheered, singing “Now I Belong to Jesus.”

  After the service we joined the long line for the potluck. Somebody had already invited Mom to get first crack at the food, scooting her all the way to the front, claiming that pregnant women should never have to wait to eat. When Mindy and I tried to join her, Grammy gave us the evil eye, telling us to wait our turn.

  That was all right, I guessed. It wasn’t like I was in a hurry to see how many gross ways people in that church had of making tuna casserole.

  “Good heavens,” Grammy said under her breath. “Here comes Winifred.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the smallest woman I’d ever seen coming toward us with the speed of a mall walker. She had the brightest carrot-orange dye job and didn’t seem to care that it was fooling no one.

  “Oh, Hilda, Ivan, you have visitors this week,” she said in a trembling voice. “Who are these beauties?”

  “These are Bruce and Linda’s girls,” Grammy said, touching my arm. “Sonny and then Mindy, who they adopted from Vietnam.”

  Mindy put her hands into the pockets of her skirt and turned her eyes to the tiled floor. She always got shy like that whenever somebody mentioned that she was from Vietnam.

  “Yup,” Grumpy said. “These are our granddaughters and we are so proud of them.”

  Mindy tilted her head and leaned toward him, nudging his arm with her shoulder.

  Leave it to Grumpy to ease her bashfulness.

  “I bet you are.” The tiny woman smiled up into our faces. “Mindy and Sonny, I am glad to meet the two of you. I’m Mrs. Winifred Olds.”

  She offered her thin hand and I took it, surprised by how firm her grip was. Then she took Mindy’s hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” Mindy said.

  “Now, tell me, girls,” Mrs. Olds said. “Are you hard workers?”

  Mindy and I met eyes before nodding.

  “And do either or both of you need a job?” Mrs. Olds shifted her eyes back and forth between Mindy and my faces. “Just for the summer, of course.”

  “Um, I guess so,” Mindy said.

  “Good. Here’s why I’m asking,” Mrs. Olds said. “I’m turning the old Huebert house into a museum. I need quite a bit of help.”

  “Well, I . . .” I started, trying to decline politely so that Grammy wouldn’t be embarrassed.

  “Tell you what.” Mrs. Olds squeezed my hand, and I had to stifle a grimace. She really clamped down on my fingers. “How about you two stop by tomorrow after lunch? I’ll show you around and you can decide then. All right?”

  I didn’t answer because I was too busy trying to slide my hand out of her hold. Once she let go, I crossed my arms so she couldn’t grab it again.

  “Sure,” Mindy said. “We’ll be there. Is one o’clock okay?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Olds answered.

  I tried giving my sister the hairy eyeball, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy beaming at the little old lady.

  It w
as the first official day of summer and my only plan was to do a whole lot of nothing all day long. I spent the morning watching reruns of The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch before going upstairs to do my nails and blast my Madonna tape in my boombox.

  I didn’t hear Mindy come into our room, so when she tapped me on the shoulder I jumped, wrecking two of my nails.

  “Sorry,” she said, covering her mouth in a lame effort to hide her laugh.

  I sighed and turned down the volume on “Papa Don’t Preach.” “What do you want?”

  “Remember we’re supposed to go see Mrs. Olds today.” She shrugged. “We said we would.”

  “Nope. You said we would. I never agreed to anything.” I grabbed my nail polish remover and a tissue to try to fix my nails. “I’m going to look for jobs with Amelia tomorrow.”

  “Sonny, come on.”

  “Why?”

  “The least we can do is go and see what the job’s like,” she said. “It could be fun.”

  “Go ahead without me,” I said. “Nobody’s stopping you.”

  “Well, I need a ride, and Mom’s taking a nap, so . . .”

  I made a really big show of rolling my eyes and sighing before saying, “Fine.”

  I had to make quick work of taking the polish off all my nails.

  Every year the fourth graders at Bear Run Christian School performed a play about the history of our town. There were catchy little songs about chopping down trees and a few about women making butter on the porch.

  It wasn’t exactly Broadway, but it was fun for the kids who got to play in it.

  In the background of each performance was a board of plywood cut out to look like an old house with spires and a purple paint job, and pink and teal trim around the peaks and windows.

  When Amelia and I were in fourth grade, I got the part of Eliza Huebert, wife of the old lumber baron himself. I stood in front of the purple cutout building and delivered my lines, wearing a dress that had been worn by other lucky ten-year-old girls for over twenty years. Unfortunately, it was held together by safety pins and smelled like mothballs.

  Even all those years later, I still remembered my lines.

  “My husband, Johannes Huebert, built this house for me and our eight children,” I’d recited. “There were also servants’ quarters for our butler, maid, cook, and nanny.”