What the Wind Can Tell You

by Sarah Marie Jette

  My mother’s forehead wrinkled, and my father frowned.

  Tía Lucy broke the silence.

  “I’ve decided to take Isabelle for the day tomorrow—a girls’ day out.”

  Her nails drummed a rhythm on the tabletop. She smiled broadly and turned to look at me.

  “We’ll take the babies and go exploring. You won’t have to worry about helping out. You won’t have to think about Julian or his seizures for a whole day. How does that sound?”

  “You’re leaving us for the day?” Papa’s smile was a little too big. “And you’re taking your babies—I mean, dogs?”

  “Because of Julian?” I asked, but Tía Lucy didn’t hear me. She was already telling a story about the time Sanchita and Big Betty had snuck into her purse before she’d left for the cinema. During the scariest part of the zombie movie, the Chihuahuas hopped out of her purse and nipped at the heels of the moviegoers, sending the entire cinema into hysterics. Tía Lucy laughed at the memory.

  “Sadly, we are now forbidden from that theater,” Tía Lucy concluded woefully, shaking her head.

  Dinner dragged on. Papa ate too many tacos; Tía Lucy told too many Chihuahua stories. Julian had a tiny seizure while Mama praised Tía Lucy’s Taco King Tart.

  When the meal was finished, Mama followed me up to my room and helped me set up my sleeping bag.

  “Did Tía Lucy tell you where we’re going tomorrow?” I asked.

  “No, it’s a secret. I didn’t even know she was planning it,” Mama began, unrolling my sleeping bag and smoothing it out with her palms.

  “She surprised me, too,” I said, laying my pillow down.

  “Isabelle . . . ”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  She pulled the zipper open and looked over at me. Doubt and worry created wrinkles around her eyes.

  “Never mind.” Mama kissed me on the forehead. “Get some rest.”

  I slipped into my sleeping bag while Mama turned off the lights. When she reached the door, she hesitated.

  “Isabelle, you’d tell me if you felt overlooked. If you felt we asked too much of you. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “You promise?” she asked.

  “Promise,” I said. Mama nodded, more to herself than to me, and then shut the door carefully behind her.

  The next morning, Tía Lucy met me at the bottom of the steps, a cooler in one hand, a Maine guidebook in the other.

  “Ready for our road trip?” she called out. She wore a string of pearls, and her perfume rose up around her like a cloud of floral exhaust. “I packed breakfast and lunch.”

  Mama was still in her pajamas as she prepared Julian’s meds. Papa sat at the table filling a mixing bowl with cereal and milk. I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile looked even larger than the night before.

  “Hurry up, Isabelle. The Taco Queen is ready to go.” He chuckled.

  Tía Lucy frowned only momentarily.

  “I’m ready,” I said, slipping my shoes on.

  Tía Lucy adjusted her hair in the mirror before turning back to me.

  “I don’t want you worrying about seizures, or tubes, or medicines, or anything today. You need to be free to have fun. You deserve a day that is just for you, Isabelle.”

  Mama said nothing and continued sorting Julian’s meds. Papa’s smile faded a little. And then he stood, placed a hand on Julian’s shoulder, and cleared his throat.

  “Isabelle, think of today as an adventure. It’s not every day you get to go on a road trip with a Taco Queen and her two pet rats.”

  “Rats! I’ll have you know that my Chihuahuas come from prize-winning parents, even though Big Betty’s belly is a bit outside the typical pedigree norms.”

  Papa didn’t say anything else, but instead, wheeled Julian over to the back door so he could look outside at his wind toys.

  “What if Julian wants to come?” I asked.

  Tía Lucy handed me my jacket. “Don’t worry, Belle. He won’t even know that you’re gone,” she said.

  I pulled away.

  “Of course he will. Julian knows when I’m around.” I zipped my coat. “And please don’t call me Belle. I only want Julian to call me that.”

  Tía Lucy pulled back. “What?”

  “If . . . if he could talk, I would want him to call me Belle.” My cheeks felt warm.

  “She’s so neglected that she’s developed an overstimulated imagination, too,” Tía Lucy said. She bit her lip and looked over at my mother.

  “There’s nothing wrong with pretending,” Mama said.

  Before we left, I pulled Julian’s favorite toy from his bin—the hand-carved maraca Papa had bought in Oaxaca years ago. I brought it over to Julian and placed his fingers on the carvings. He followed them around the bulb until his hand slipped down to the handle. The sound of dried beans filled my ears. Julian could play that maraca for hours.

  Reluctantly, I followed Tía Lucy out of the house and buckled myself into her rental car.

  I munched a bagel as we rode along the empty highway. Sanchita and Big Betty sat on Tía Lucy’s shoulders like parrots. They wore matching leopard-print sweaters and only shivered out of habit. We eventually turned onto a side road. Out the window, I saw waves of long grass wrapped around inlets of salt water. A blue heron turned to watch our car drive past. Soon, the grass gave way to rocks and sand as the ocean came into view.

  “How old are Sanchita and Big Betty?” I asked, breaking the silence in the car. The Chihuahuas turned their tiny, pointed noses in my direction.

  “Three years, four weeks, and one day old,” Tía Lucy replied.

  I had forgotten that Tía Lucy also shared my mother’s magic memory. They were so different in so many ways, it was easy to forget they shared this special gift.

  Eventually, Tía Lucy pulled into a gravel parking lot. Off in the distance stood a lighthouse.

  “Isn’t that a sight?” she exclaimed. “Come on, Isabelle, let’s explore.”

  Tía Lucy delicately stepped from her car and went to the trunk. She unfolded her dog stroller in one smooth motion. Sanchita and Big Betty hopped down from their perch and curled up inside. As we walked up the path to the lighthouse, more than a few people stopped to stare. It wasn’t every day you saw a woman marching up a hill wearing red high-heeled sandals and pushing a doggie stroller.

  The lighthouse sat at the end of a long peninsula, with cliffs on either side. The wind whipped and tugged at my jacket. My hands balled up in my pockets as we reached the top of the hill.

  “My, my, my. This is so beautiful,” Tía Lucy declared, gazing up at the lighthouse.

  Families streamed in and out of the small wooden door. Dads paused to take photos with cameras slung around their necks; moms reminded their children to keep away from the bluff’s edges. Tía Lucy parked her stroller beside the lighthouse and nestled her dogs inside her purse.

  Once we stepped inside the doorway, everything felt different. The air was no longer warm with sunshine. The space was raw and clammy. Light squeezed through the narrow windows. Sanchita and Big Betty trembled.

  Trudging up the steps behind Tía Lucy, my thighs burned. The tap, tap, tap of her shoes kept up a steady rhythm, never missing a beat.

  I paused and looked up. The staircase twisted like Julian’s feeding tubes. My arm brushed against the stone wall. I scooted over as an elderly man with a cane inched his way down. I frowned. The staircase was too narrow and too long. There was no way Papa could carry Julian to the top. I shook my head and pushed the thought away.

  We stepped out of the stairwell and onto the landing. It was like walking out of an underground dungeon and into Oz. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the ocean poured out before us. Thundering waves slapped the stones below. Gulls swooped, trying to catch the rising white caps before they fell.

 
“¡Que linda!” Tía Lucy said. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and squeezed me tight.

  “Yes, it is so beautiful!” I exclaimed as I took a deep breath. The wind blew my hair around my face, and for a few seconds, I felt it lifting me up.

  Tía Lucy pulled a small digital camera out from her purse, where it had nestled between Sanchita and Big Betty.

  I posed against the railing and smiled.

  “You have such a lovely smile—it looks so much like mine!” she said, pulling me in for a hug. “Now, isn’t this a great way to spend the day?”

  “It sure is,” I said, and her arms tightened around me.

  “I’m sure anything beats sitting at home playing nurse for your brother.”

  I wiggled my shoulders and drew her arms back. Her hug suddenly felt stifling—like too many scarves wrapped around my neck on a March afternoon.

  “I don’t play nurse,” I said.

  Tía Lucy looked down at me. Her skin glowed, dark and rich from the California sunshine.

  “You’re right. Isabelle, you help out too much for it to be considered playing. Julian is a lot of work. You can’t let his seizures hold you down. Just because he’s disabled and can’t do anything doesn’t mean you need to suffer, too.”

  I blinked my eyes a few times and rubbed the wind out of my ears. When I found my voice, the words tumbled out.

  “That’s not true. He’s not disabled. He just can’t do certain things.”

  “It is true, Isabelle. Your mother spends her whole day tracking and counting, and so do you.” She took a deep breath and stooped close to me. “I brought you here so you could have a fun day just for you. Would Julian be able to experience all this? No. No, he wouldn’t.”

  “That’s not true,” I said again, my voice louder.

  I shivered even in the warmth of the sun. Standing at the top of the lighthouse no longer felt magnificent. The piercing wind and the smell of the ocean blowing in from lands so far away made me feel alone. Sanchita and Big Betty peered up at me, their dark brown eyes watering in the wind.

  “Just because Julian has seizures, that doesn’t mean he can’t do things. If he was here, he’d love to smell the salt air, he’d—”

  “Julian can’t climb the steps,” Tía Lucy pointed out as she brushed hair out of her eyes.

  “It’s not just about the stairs,” I said.

  “Of course it’s not just about the stairs.” Tía Lucy’s voice was growing impatient. Her words were crisp and sharp and a little too loud. “If Julian were here, you’d be worrying about his seizures. You wouldn’t have climbed up those steps. You wouldn’t be looking at this incredible view.” Sanchita and Big Betty ducked inside the purse until only their noses were visible. “Our time together would be interrupted.”

  I thought about the twisty, uneven, spiral steps. I looked past Tía Lucy, to the water stretching out into the distance, waves over waves melting into a haze of blue.

  “Well, you’re right. If Julian were here, I might have stayed down at the bottom.” As I spoke, from the corner of my eye I saw Tía Lucy nodding. I looked at her and continued. “But maybe I would have climbed up and taken photos to share with him.”

  Tía Lucy still looked doubtful. She tapped her foot impatiently.

  “Yes, I suppose.” Big Betty and Sanchita swung their front paws over the top of Tía Lucy’s bag. Their eyes squinted and their long eyelashes blew in the wind. Tía Lucy cleared her throat. “Come, the girls are hungry. Let’s eat.”

  We wound our way down the steps and pushed the dogs back to the car in the stroller. Tía Lucy pulled a blanket out from the trunk. I carried the cooler.

  “Peek inside, Isabelle. I made your favorite torta,” she said with a wink.

  I unzipped the cooler and pulled out a sandwich carefully wrapped in wax paper.

  “With avocado and pineapple?” I asked.

  “Just the way you like it.” My stomach rumbled like Papa’s.

  I helped Tía Lucy spread the blanket on a hillside. While Tía Lucy ate fruit salad with a toothpick and hand-fed her Chihuahuas bite-size strips of boiled chicken, I devoured my torta and picked buttercups. As I picked, I thought of all the birthday parties and playdates I’d been to, surrounded by friends and, often, their brothers and sisters. Julian was never able to join me. Maybe it was because Mama wanted to give me some me time, like Tía Lucy said: time to play with my friends and not worry about Julian’s seizures. Maybe Julian never came because my friends’ houses weren’t accessible. They had too many steps leading up from their driveway, or their doorways were too narrow. Maybe he just wasn’t invited, plain and simple.

  Julian couldn’t eat cake or tell funny jokes, but he could swing a bat at a piñata, he could help blow out candles, and he always smiled when he heard laughter. I guess my friends didn’t know that. Maybe my aunt didn’t know it either.

  I pulled my hair elastic off the tip of my braid and wrapped it around the stems on my buttercup bouquet.

  “There,” I said, with satisfaction.

  The crisp air blew across the long sea grass, brushing against my toes and my legs. I wondered if the breeze felt the same to Julian, if it felt as soft against his skin and sent goose bumps up to his shoulders. Big Betty snuggled in beside me and Sanchita sniffed at my buttercups.

  “Tía Lucy . . .” I began.

  “Sí?” She turned and focused the camera on me and her dogs.

  “Papa used to carry Julian out into the woods when we chopped down our Christmas tree—his wheelchair isn’t too good in the woods. When Julian got too big, I had Mama buy a special sled, so we could continue the tradition.

  “Sometimes the best trees are tough to get to. Julian’s sled can’t fit, or the ground is too bumpy, or there’s not enough snow on the ground. So, I go on ahead and Papa cuts off a branch for me. I bring it back to Julian. Julian smells the pine needles and feels how sharp they are. I tell him how the tree looks—how tall it is, and what shape. Julian gives me a thumbs-down if he wants to keep looking. We usually spend an hour searching for the perfect tree. When we find it, Julian gives me a thumbs-up.”

  Tía Lucy’s camera slipped down, away from her face. She stepped closer, her eyes scanning the ocean.

  “And then what happens?” she asked.

  “If Julian can’t be next to the tree when Mama and Papa cut it down, I tell him what I see. He can hear the saw. He can smell the pine. He can feel the December air. Once it’s cut, Mama and Papa lay it on his sled and then we pull Julian and the tree back to the car.”

  Tía Lucy flicked off her shoes and sat down beside me.

  I looked at her closely. “Maybe next year, Julian can come here with us.”

  “Would you have enjoyed this more if Julian had come?” Her voice didn’t question the way her words did.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s not just that Julian isn’t here; it’s that you didn’t even invite him. There are so many things that Julian can’t do, like climb up those steps. But—”

  “I get it, Isabelle.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I think so. If Julian were here, he’d be enjoying this hill with us right now,” Tía Lucy said, as she simultaneously scratched Sanchita’s and Big Betty’s ears. Both dogs looked unhappy, as their preferred style of ear scratching involved two hands. I grabbed Big Betty and began her counterclockwise scratching.

  “So . . . we’ll come back again next year with Julian, Taco Queen?” I asked.

  “Only if you promise to never call me that again,” she said with a grin.

  But all that was last year, before Julian's big seizure. Now, tonight, in Las Brisas, there was no ocean view when Julian and I reached the top of the lighthouse—just ever-expanding darkness that swirled and lapped at the sides of the tower like tongues of smoke. The sky was empty of stars. A film of black clouds
masked the moon.

  Julian leaned into me. “There’s no view,” he whispered.

  “Maybe because you’ll be coming with me and Tía Lucy this year.”

  “But, Isabelle,” he said, pausing, “I’ll never make it to the top.”

  My throat burned and my eyes stung. “You can still feel the ocean breeze on the hill.” I put my hand on his. “You can feel the buttercups, hear the waves, and smell the salt air. Maybe I can take Papa’s phone to the top and you can have Mama’s on the bottom, and we can do a video chat so you can see what I see.”

  Julian’s eyes filled with longing as he stared out into the distance. His face grew serious and thoughtful, with furrowed brows and a strained smile.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Julian blinked away some tears as his hands gripped the railing. His knuckles turned white.

  “Julian . . .”

  “Tía Lucy was right, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?” I moved in closer.

  “When you stay home and watch me, you aren’t doing something for yourself. I don’t want to hold you back.”

  “I make my own choices, Julian.”

  “I don’t want to hold you back,” he repeated.

  In a heartbeat, I was back in Julian’s room leaning against his mattress. Our hands were nearly stuck together with sweat. His breathing was deep. I straightened my stiff knees and took a few staggering steps.

  Soft morning light poured into Julian’s room. The sun peeked through the leaves, casting an orange glow on the new morning. It felt like we’d only been in Las Brisas for a short time, but I could hear Mama’s footsteps heading down the stairs.

  7

  Each Tuesday when Mrs. Pemberly came and made music with Julian, his eyes caught fire. He emerged like a cicada from beneath the earth, fresh and new, shiny, wriggling, and alive. Her voice ached with beauty. Her high notes were like marionette strings lifting Julian’s spirits up to the clouds. The deep notes rumbled inside his body, like the hum of tectonic plates.