The Nature of Small Birds

by Susie Finkbeiner

“Oh, it appears he was shot in the face.”

  Mrs. Olds said it as if it was an ordinary, everyday thing to happen. Like, “Oh, I guess he went to the store,” or “Huh, I think he got caught in the rain.”

  When she turned the picture around and took another look at it, she shook her head.

  “You know, they didn’t have the same medical care as we do now,” she said.

  “Then what happened to him?” I asked.

  “He became somewhat of a recluse, Clinton did, as you might imagine,” Mrs. Olds went on. “From what I understand, folks in town weren’t so welcoming, even if he was a war hero.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I suppose it was hard to look at him. Wouldn’t you think?”

  “That’s so sad,” Mindy said.

  “Indeed.” Mrs. Olds shook her head. “He took to living in an old logger’s cabin deep in the woods. Well, they bulldozed that forest years ago, but in the twenties it was still quite overgrown. Wild. He didn’t venture into town except late at night. And only then to visit his mother, who lived by herself in an apartment over the barber shop.”

  “Did those belong to him?” I asked, nodding at the art against the wall.

  “My dear,” Mrs. Olds said, a sparkle in her eye. “He painted them.”

  “Really?” I whispered, stepping toward the frames and squatting down to see them. “Wow.”

  “Did he stop painting after he came back from the war?” Mindy asked.

  “Oh no. That was when he started.”

  I expected the paintings to be dark. Like, of death and war and bombs and blood. But to my surprise they were all pretty, with bright colors. Daisies in a vase and fruit in a bowl kind of art. And not bad. Like, I could imagine them in a gallery, that was how nice they were.

  Mrs. Olds showed us where to put the hooks and which painting she wanted on which wall. She had us carry a few benches upstairs from the basement so that when people came, they could rest and spend time looking at the Clinton Montgomery masterpieces.

  Last, we hung a framed photograph of the artist on the wall. Mrs. Olds had found one of him from before the war, his face whole. He was actually sort of cute back then.

  “How about we put this other away,” Mrs. Olds said, looking once more at the photo of his damaged face. “I’ve known my share of monsters. Mr. Montgomery wasn’t one of them.”

  I wanted to ask what monsters she could have known, but she turned and walked from the room, still looking at that picture.

  “How do you think he died?” Mindy asked once we were in the car and on our way home.

  “Who? Clinton Montgomery?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know,” I said, stopping at an intersection and hoping the engine wouldn’t stall out.

  The last thing I needed was to be stuck in the middle of nowhere on a day as hot as that. Heat waves ribboned up from the hood of the El, and I got nervous about the old beast overheating.

  “The sign under his picture said that he died in 1922,” she said. “That was only four years after the war ended.”

  “Huh.” I held my left foot on the brake and gave the engine a little gas with my right.

  “I bet everybody felt badly about how they treated him.”

  “I think you give people too much credit.” I drove past the stop sign once the way was clear, relieved that the car went without too much shaking.

  “It must have been hard for him to be so different from everybody else,” she said.

  “I guess.” I pointed at the Dairy Queen up ahead. “Let’s get ice cream.”

  “But we haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “It’s too hot for lunch,” I said.

  “Okay then.”

  I pulled into the parking lot just before the El Camino sputtered out. Coasting into a space, I worried that I’d never get the darn thing started again. Good thing the Dairy Queen had seating in the air-conditioning and I had Uncle Chris’s phone number memorized.

  “Can I tell you something?” Mindy asked before we got out.

  “Can you tell me in there?” I asked, nodding at the building. “It’s so hot out here.”

  “I’d rather not,” she said. “It’s personal.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m switching schools next year.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why? I mean, are you talking about going to public school?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Mins, you don’t know anyone there.” I half turned in my seat. “Listen, it’s so different from Christian school.”

  “That’s exactly why I want to go there.”

  I dropped my jaw and stared at her, not knowing if it was better to tell her she was stupid or to try and see things her way. Neither seemed like a good option in the moment, so I went with what was more reasonable.

  “Mom and Dad won’t let you do that,” I said.

  “Well, actually, they told me it was fine.”

  “What?”

  It came out louder than I’d wanted it to, and a couple of cute boys glanced over from a picnic bench. I smiled and pretended that everything was totally cool.

  “Aren’t you even interested in why I want to switch?” Mindy asked, completely unaware that the boys were looking at—and admiring—the two of us.

  “Sorry. Yeah. I want to know.”

  It was no small thing, but I gave her my full attention and tried to forget about the guys.

  “I think it’ll be good for me.” She looked down at the footwell. “It might be nice to be somewhere that I’m not the only person who isn’t white.”

  “Mindy,” I said, lowering my voice, “I don’t think that’s a very good thing to say.”

  “But it’s true.” She shrugged. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not Caucasian.”

  “Well, duh. I know that.”

  “It’s just that I get tired of being different.”

  “You aren’t different.”

  “Um, yes, I am.”

  I took the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into my little purse.

  “So, what, do you feel like you don’t belong in our family?” I asked.

  “I’m not saying that.”

  Using the tip of my pointer finger, I wiped a line into the dust on the dashboard. I jerked my hand back, it was so hot.

  “I’m just not like you,” she said. “You’re white and I’m Asian.”

  “I never think of you that way,” I said. “I don’t think of myself as white, either. I’m just Sonny. And you’re just Mindy. That’s it.”

  “Well, I think of myself as Asian every day. It’s who I am.” She shrugged. “I’m Vietnamese even if I don’t really know what that means.”

  “It means you were born in Vietnam. Right?”

  “Yeah. But culturally I have no idea what it is.”

  “So, I’m like part German and English and Dutch and whatever else,” I said. “I really don’t know anything about those cultures either.”

  “It’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  She wiped under her eye. Shoot. She was crying.

  I checked and, luckily, the boys had lost interest. I wouldn’t have wanted them playing lookie-loo at my sister while she was so upset.

  “Hey,” I said, softening the tone of my voice. “What is it?”

  “I have never fit in at our school,” she said. “Being Sonny Matthews’s adopted sister from Vietnam gets old fast.”

  “That’s not all you are.”

  “To some people, yeah, that’s it.”

  “They’re horrible, then.” I cupped my hand around her upper arm. “Mins, seriously. You’re so awesome. And if anybody doesn’t realize that, then they aren’t worth your time.”

  “Thanks,” she said, the space between her eyebrows creasing with a new wave of crying.

  “Do you need me to hug you?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Good,” I said. “Because it’s too stinkin’ hot
for that kind of nonsense.”

  That got a little bit of a laugh out of her.

  I grabbed a handful of McDonald’s napkins from the glove compartment and handed them to her to wipe her face on. Because I’m a good sister, I pretended to be totally grossed out when she blew her nose, even though I wasn’t really.

  “If you want to switch schools, I’ll support you, I guess,” I said.

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe at public school I won’t stand out like a sore thumb. Maybe I can blend in a little.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to blend in.”

  “Son, you get to choose if you want to stand out or be like everybody else,” she said. “I don’t. I hate being different for something I have absolutely no control over. It’s exhausting.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said again. “I’m really sorry that I don’t.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I just need you to know that’s how I feel.”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  She looked at the wadded-up napkins in her hands. “I’m going to be smelling French fries for the rest of the day.”

  “There are worse things,” I said.

  “Yeah, like your feet.” She laughed at her own joke. Of course she did. “Sorry for crying.”

  “It’s all right.”

  I opened my mouth to say something else but thought better of it and closed it again.

  “What?” Mindy asked.

  Swallowing hard, I thought through what I was going to say, wanting it to come out just right.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” I said.

  “I might,” she said. “It’s a risk I’m okay with.”

  “But if you do, I won’t be here.”

  “You can’t always take care of me.” She grabbed my hand. “I mean, it’s nice that you care, but I’m not fragile.”

  “I’ve never thought you were fragile.”

  She squinted at that, and I knew she didn’t believe me.

  Man, I hated it when she was right. Mom, Dad, and I moved around Mindy like we were afraid she’d shatter.

  Really, though, she was the strongest of all of us.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Five

  Bruce, 2013

  Halloween was my favorite holiday when I was a kid. Of course, I never gave that answer when they asked us our favorite in Sunday school. My mother was the teacher and there were four right answers and only four in that class. Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Fourth of July. Oh, Lord help the child who dared to give a different answer. He was bound to get a stern look from Mom.

  Still, Halloween was the best, as far as I was concerned.

  On what other day of the year did a kid get to wear a costume that let him be a superhero or cowboy or lion? Not only that, but to come home with a pillowcase full of candy for a reward? Now, how could any Easter Bunny beat that?

  I still look forward to Halloween every year. The costumes have changed a whole lot since I was trick-or-treating. In recent years the kids that stop by are either Captain America or Rapunzel. Sometimes we get a spooky one come through and it makes me chuckle to have a zombie thank me for an extra Kit Kat.

  Every year Linda takes one of my old flannels and a pair of Dad’s worn-out jeans. Stuffing them with straw, she makes herself a pretty creepy scarecrow to sit on the bench on the front porch. Suspenders hold his body together, and his head is one of those plastic jack-o’-lantern buckets.

  Living in the pinkie knuckle of Michigan usually means kids have to fit their winter coats under their costumes or over. Some of the braver ones go without, shivering all the way. This year, though, it’s just over sixty when we turn on the porch light and welcome the candy seekers.

  There’s not a hint of rain on the air, and that’s inspired all the kids around our block to come out, running up and down the sidewalks with their slower-moving parents ambling along behind.

  It’s a good thing too.

  Linda’s bought enough candy to keep them all sugared up until Christmas.

  At eight o’clock, sharp, we draw the curtains closed and switch off the porch light. The scarecrow we leave to be disassembled after the weekend. We’re having Sonny’s family over tomorrow night for a little party of our own. They’ll wear their costumes and we’ll have chili. Then we’ll eat popcorn and watch The Princess Bride.

  It still boggles the mind when I think that Sonny’s girls haven’t seen that one yet.

  Linda and I take the candy bowl, with just a couple Twizzlers and a Charleston Chew left in the bottom, to the kitchen. Mindy’s at the table, her laptop open. She pushes a button and pulls her earbuds out when she sees us.

  “Did you have lots of kids?” she asks.

  “Yup.” I nod. “I’d say a hundred maybe?”

  Linda lifts her hands as if to say “your guess is as good as mine.” “They sure were cute, though.”

  “What’re you working on?” I ask, holding out the bowl for Mindy.

  “Oh, I found a documentary on YouTube.” She takes the chocolate. “It’s about a woman from the Babylift who got reconnected with her birth mother.”

  “Is it okay?” Linda asks. “I mean, is it encouraging to you?”

  “I kind of thought it would be.” Mindy shakes her head. “But I’m not so sure I’m ready for this. I just started it.”

  “Take your time, honey,” I say. “If it’s gonna upset you . . .”

  “It’s not that, Dad,” she says. She points at the computer screen. “This woman had it so much different than I do. Her adopted mother was horrible.”

  I nod. One thing we’ve learned about the Babylift over the past few weeks is that some folks who couldn’t get approval to adopt in normal circumstances were allowed to adopt one of the babies from Vietnam. Mindy’s shown me some of the stories from the adult children on the websites she frequents. They write about being abused and neglected. Some of them were made to feel like they were less worthwhile than the other kids in their American families.

  At first the stories got my Irish up and I regretted that we hadn’t been better advocates for these kids. Then I realized that we’d made our share of mistakes in raising Mindy. It was enough to keep me up a whole night, chewing on my regret.

  One of the most humbling things a man can do is go to his kids for forgiveness.

  But, when they forgive and that burden is lifted—whew—it’s what I imagine heaven to feel like.

  “I guess her story reminds me of how good I have it,” Mindy says. “You guys never made me feel unloved or like I wasn’t wanted.”

  Well, hearing that doesn’t hurt either.

  “If you’re going to watch it,” I say, nodding at the seat beside her, “would you mind a little company?”

  Mindy’s eyes go watery and she smiles. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Oh, me too,” Linda says. “Should I boil some water for tea?”

  “That would be nice,” Mindy answers.

  I sit on one side of her, and she scoots her chair a little so I can get in closer to the laptop. I think about suggesting we watch it on the computer in the study that has a larger monitor, but by the time I’m about to open my mouth, Linda’s asked us what kind of tea we’d like and delivered a plate of store-bought cookies.

  The three of us sit as close together as we can manage, and Mindy starts the documentary back at the beginning.

  The woman in the film—Paula—smiles easily in the first scene while someone on the crew clips a lapel mic onto the collar of her red polo shirt. Sitting on the edge of a plaid couch, she rubs her hands against the thighs of her light-blue jeans.

  “You got it?” she asks, and I’m surprised by her sweet Southern accent. “Where do y’all want me to start?”

  A mumbled voice off camera asks her to tell a little bit about herself. This movie’s in that casual style most documentaries have these days. Less polish makes it feel more real to me, as if we’re sitting
on the other side of the room, waiting for this woman to tell us her story.

  “Well, I’m Paula and I live just outside Louisville,” she says. Then, with a shy smile, “I’m not used to talking about myself so much. Y’all stop me if I’m boring you.”

  She talks for maybe a minute about her family—husband, a couple of kids—and what they like doing, the camera cutting to a clip of her pushing a little boy on a swing and another of her catching a small girl at the end of a slide.

  “I’m just a normal housewife, I guess,” she says. “I like my life now. It’s good.”

  “What about your mom?” the off-camera voice asks.

  “You mean my adopted mom?” Paula asks. “Oh, we don’t get along too good. I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . .” Paula looks to the right. “She disowned me a couple years ago, so I don’t think she wants to hear from me. It’s okay. She never did right by me.”

  The scene changes to several short clips of old footage from Vietnam. Choppers and soldiers and people running along a street. A close-up of a little boy crying.

  Mindy clenches her fists, and Linda puts an arm around her.

  A woman speaking Vietnamese cuts in, subtitles appearing at the bottom of the screen to translate.

  I was frightened, the subtitles read. I didn’t want to send her away, but we all heard that the Communists would come and slaughter the babies of the Americans. Chau was from an affair I had with an American soldier, so I had to let her go. I couldn’t keep her safe, so I had to let the orphanage have her. I knew she’d have a good life in America. I could do nothing for her here.

  The close-up face of a woman fills the screen. She’s crying, mouth open and eyes shut. Her wails reach right into the heart of me. The angle widens to show a girl rush across the room to the crying woman, using her entire hand to wipe the tears from the old woman’s face, her tiny voice cooing.

  Grandmother, Grandmother, the subtitles say. Don’t cry. It’s okay.

  “I don’t like to remember that day too much,” Paula’s voice comes in. “I wanted to stay with my birth mother, but the people from the orphanage picked me up and forced me to let go of her hand.”

  Now it’s Paula’s face in the picture. She’s not crying, but her eyes shift with each blink.