Winter Birds

by Jamie Langston Turner

  Meanwhile Rachel was cutting the pizza into squares. She served me first, then Patrick, then herself.

  As we ate, Patrick told me that Veronica was “slipping away,” that the doctors were not expecting her to “come around this time.” They thought she had “gone” at one point while they were there, but then she shuddered and began breathing again, shallow ragged breaths. Mindy was there, too, he said, sitting in a chair by the bed, not saying a word, looking “like death warmed over.” It would not occur to Patrick that such an expression was tasteless.

  “It was the strangest thing, though,” Patrick said. “Mindy reached over one time and started rubbing the back of Veronica’s hand, and—You saw it when it happened, didn’t you, Rachel?” Rachel nodded and Patrick continued. “And Veronica all of a sudden went stiff and held her breath like she was surprised—” Patrick paused to reenact these details—“and then she turned her hand over.” He stopped, took another big bite of pizza, and chewed for a while. “Maybe it was just a reflex or something,” he said, “but it looked for all the world like she wanted to hold Mindy’s hand. Didn’t it, Rachel?” Rachel nodded again.

  “I never noticed before that she didn’t have a thumb on that one hand, did you?” Patrick added. He looked at Rachel, but she gave no response. Perhaps she was thinking, as I was, that a defect of that nature in a child like Veronica was hardly worthy of note.

  We ate in silence for a while before Patrick resumed. “Anyway, Mindy put her palm against Veronica’s, and she sat there like that for the longest time. And then you know what she said?” It was a stupid question. Of course I didn’t know what she said. I was not there.

  “She said, ‘I felt her push against my hand.’ She said it real soft, like she was talking to herself, but we all heard her. And Steve said she had probably just jerked a little, and then Mindy got mad and said she knew the difference between a push and a jerk and what she had felt was a push.”

  I tried to see it from Mindy’s perspective. Watching your sister die, you might want to believe something impossible. And Steve’s perspective was just as easy to see. With his man’s mind, without stopping to think, Steve had merely stated the obvious. A child with such neurological impairment, a child who had never once shown receptivity to human touch or registered recognition of faces or voices, could not be expected to respond to her sister’s touch on her deathbed.

  Did Veronica press Mindy’s hand or not? Who can tell? One believes what he wants to believe. There are mysteries past explaining.

  But man seeks explanation. Ambiguity—this is what it is called in literature. An author leaves a matter open for multiple interpretations. It could be this, or it could be that. “Ambiguity of Purpose in Measure for Measure.” This was a paper of Eliot’s rejected for publication many times. It was a paper I typed many times, making minor alterations as instructed. But still it was rejected. It was the cause of many of his black moods. I found it among his things when I destroyed the contents of his desk. And though I burned the paper years ago, I remember well the sentence with which Eliot had ended it, a sentence he retained through each draft. Quoting from, and agreeing with, another Shakespearean scholar named G. B. Harrison, he concluded that Measure for Measure was “a flawed play, the soul of which became too great for its body.”

  Rachel hangs up the telephone in the kitchen and appears at my doorway. “Aunt Sophie? That was Teri calling from the hospital.” She speaks loudly, over the closing music of Bewitched.

  I open my eyes and look at her. Her hair appears not to have been combed this morning, the crest above her brow standing on end as if electrified. “Veronica has died,” I say.

  Rachel bows her head and presses her hand against her mouth.

  “Her soul became too great for her body,” I say. The words fall from my lips; I do not mean to be flippant. Rachel raises her eyes and looks at me briefly, then shifts her gaze to the window, her forehead wrinkled. I imagine her later tonight saying to Patrick, “Do you know what Aunt Sophie said when I told her? What do you suppose she meant by that? Or maybe I misunderstood her. The television was on loud.”

  A soul too great for her body. It is the kind of thing Patrick would latch on to, fitting it to his idea of a transfigured Veronica floating about heaven as one of God’s prize angels. I can imagine him volunteering to say a few words at the funeral, then standing, pausing dramatically, lifting a hand as if pronouncing a benediction, and saying solemnly, “We gather today, dear friends, to pay tribute to a precious child whose soul became too great for her body.”

  “The funeral will be on Wednesday,” Rachel says, and then she turns and leaves, wiping her eyes with the loose end of her bathrobe belt. A few minutes later she comes to my door again, wearing her denim jeans and a T-shirt. “I’ll be back,” she says. “I’m going over to feed Stonewall and let him out for a little while.” She dabs at her nose with a tissue.

  “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?” These were words I heard Patrick read from the Bible last night. The pizza finished, Patrick dished up bowls of vanilla ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup. When we were done, he said, “You know, it just doesn’t feel like Easter Sunday when you don’t go to church. Why don’t we read the resurrection story from the Bible?” I rose at once and walked out of the kitchen. I could have closed the door to my apartment, but I didn’t. I went to my recliner and sat down. It was growing dark outside by now, but I didn’t turn on a light.

  Why did I leave my door open, knowing what was to come through it? And why did I sit in the dark? Why did I accept sound but refuse light? These, too, are ambiguities. Perhaps sound and light are symbols, perhaps not. But this I know. I heard Patrick read the Easter story from the book of John. As before, I could tell his reading was not for Rachel alone but for me, as well. I heard the story in the dark—that Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb, that the disciples and Mary Magdalene were distressed to find the tomb empty, that Mary recognized the voice but not the face of Jesus in the garden, that she did not answer the questions he asked her, that when she knew he was Jesus she called him Master.

  Patrick read until he came to these words: “‘But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.’” Then he stopped. Unlike Shakespeare in Measure for Measure, there is no ambiguity of purpose in John’s Gospel.

  In Measure for Measure the duke disguises himself as a friar and visits Claudio in prison. Life, he says to the convicted man, is not a thing to be counted dearly. Let it go and you will spare yourself the disappointment of seeking things you cannot keep, of growing old yet finding no pleasure in the wealth you have accumulated. This thing called life, says the duke, is greatly overrated. Death—that is the better way, he says, for it is death “that makes these odds all even.”

  And so I sit in my recliner in the middle of the day, a rich old woman, thinking about Veronica, a poor dead child. I close my eyes and try to imagine her small body fitted with the wings of an angel. I see her lift her arms and spread her hands to fly, hands that now have ten fingers instead of nine.

  Chapter 26

  The Web of Our Life Is of a Mingled Yarn

  Much of the purple finch’s territory is shared by its cousin the Cassin’s finch. Because of their close resemblance, bird watchers often confuse the two. An experienced watcher, however, knows that the back of the male purple finch has a more reddish cast than that of the Cassin’s finch.

  For the first time since coming here to live five months ago, I have left Patrick’s house. If spring were to choose a single day to showcase her beauties, this might be the day. The sun is shining in a blue sky. The air is mild and fragrant. The occasion is no picnic, however, no shopping trip, no celebration dinner, but a funeral. Not the funeral of a family member or close friend but of someone with whom I never exchanged a word. No need to chronicle the standard formalities, the funereal trappings, the trite words spoken and sung, the tears she
d, yet I will say that Patrick was indeed asked to take part.

  “We want you to read some verses from the Bible,” Steve had said to him in the kitchen on Monday night. “You pick them. We don’t really have any suggestions. Just read something you think would be good.” Steve’s voice was weary.

  And now I am present to hear what Patrick has chosen. It is from the book of Revelation. This is a book I have read from the red Bible I found on the bookshelf in my apartment. The first twenty chapters of Revelation are not happy ones, nor even comprehensible at times, with their visions of beasts, trumpets, scrolls, and fowls that swoop down to devour the flesh of men great and small.

  But Patrick reads from the twenty-first chapter. I suppose these are verses often read at funerals, for they speak of old things passing away—things such as tears and sorrow and pain. And death, of course, although for now death has not passed away. It is all too real for those hearing the sound of Patrick’s voice.

  Patrick stands on a platform of the small chapel inside Wagner’s Mortuary for his reading. He is wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a tie with gray and red stripes. His shoes are shined, and his hair, thinning on top, appears to have been treated with some of his grandfather’s Magic Hair Tonic and combed wetly to one side. He holds the Bible aloft, a large black one, and speaks importantly, as if addressing the United States Senate. As he reads, I think of another verse in the book of Revelation: “And I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.”

  Perhaps Steve intended for Patrick to read a brief passage. If so, he should have told him. On and on he reads, not bothering to omit parts that offer no comfort. He reads of murderers and whoremongers and idolaters, all of whom “‘shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire.’” He reads of “‘seven vials full of the seven last plagues’” and of the length and breadth and height of Jerusalem.

  But he also reads of the fountain of the water of life, of twelve gates of twelve pearls, of trees with healing in their leaves. At last he finishes: “‘Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.’” He stops and bows his head, as if preparing to pray, or as if allowing time for others to stifle the urge to applaud, and after a brief silent moment he dismounts the platform and takes his seat beside Rachel and me on the third row.

  The funeral ends, the coffin is left behind at the graveyard, and we return to Edison Street, where Rachel and Patrick open the doors of their home to Steve and Teri for a family dinner. It is nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. Besides Teri’s parents and Steve’s father, the only other out-of-town relatives are Teri’s sister and her aunt Helena from Yazoo City, whom I remember from Christmas dinner. Helena’s friend Della Boyd, strangely quiet today, is with her. I can’t help wondering if the family turnout would have been larger had Veronica been a normal child.

  I think about the headstone Steve and Teri have chosen for Veronica’s grave. It is “on order,” I have heard them say. The one they selected features an engraving of a lamb and the words “A little child shall lead them.” I think about the fact that no one will know from looking at the headstone on Veronica’s grave that she was deficient in any way. Death equalizes all children in a cemetery. A bystander may see the stone, may take note of her beautiful name, of the four short years of her life, and may think, “How sad—such a sweet young child plucked from the vine, denied a full and fruitful life.” He will have no way of knowing that she could not laugh, hold a spoon, or run into her mother’s arms. This little child could lead no one. She was denied a full and fruitful life from the day she was born.

  A few friends have been invited for the dinner, also—one of Steve’s co-workers at the catfish plant, two of the therapists who had worked with Veronica, a former neighbor from the trailer park. Patrick has taken the afternoon off work for Veronica’s funeral, and Potts also attends.

  Steve and Potts have become friends over the past few months, ever since discovering that they share two interests: guitar and chess. Some nights they get together to play their guitars and sing. For many weeks they have had two running chess games in progress—one at Steve and Teri’s house and one at Potts’. I have heard Teri tease Steve about something she read in a magazine. People who play too much chess, she said, often “go off the deep end.” She cited a story about a former world chess champion who became convinced that people were trying to frame him for crimes he didn’t commit. Walking down the street, he would whirl around and accuse total strangers of following him in hopes of collecting samples of his DNA. I doubt that there will be much singing or many chess games in Steve and Teri’s house for some time. I doubt that Teri will be teasing Steve about going off the deep end.

  Because Steve and Teri have been visiting the church where Patrick and Rachel are members, the women’s Sunday school class has prepared food, many platters and bowls of it, and have brought them to Rachel’s kitchen. During the funeral two of the church women came to set up extra folding tables and chairs in the living room, to lay out plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins for fifteen or twenty people.

  When we arrive home from the cemetery, all is in readiness. Patrick hurries ahead so he can stand at the front door and direct the guests to gather in the kitchen. Averse to being part of a herd, I prefer to wait in the car until the others have gone in. Rachel waits with me and then accompanies me slowly along the front path marked by large paving stones, which is Patrick’s idea of a sidewalk. She is at my elbow as I mount the three steps to the front door.

  The food is arranged on the kitchen table. After everyone is assembled in the kitchen, Patrick thanks the church ladies for their help, then announces that after prayer the guests may serve their plates and sit anywhere they like in the dining room or living room.

  Instead of the men’s clothes she usually wears, Teri is dressed in a black skirt and a pale blue blouse. Whereas the men’s clothes hide her body, the skirt and blouse reveal the fact that she has put on weight. The skirt puckers at the waist, is tight around the hips. Steve is solicitous of her, standing behind her like a wall during Patrick’s speech and prayer, his large hands on her shoulders. Teri’s eyes, void and unfocused, look like the eyes of a blind person.

  Mindy stands behind her parents, staring at the floor, a small crease between her eyes. I wonder if her mind is here in Rachel’s kitchen or if it is in a cell in the county jail. I wonder how Veronica’s death has touched her, if it has drawn her heart to her family. Nothing has been said about the resuming of our daily lessons. I wonder if after this week Teri will take up her duty of guarding Mindy during the day or if she will give it up as a game for which she has forgotten the rules.

  When a woman loses a child, does grief sap her love for a remaining child? Or does her love for that child double? And when a woman loses two children at the same time, where does all that love go? These are the thoughts that circle through my mind as Patrick begins his prayer.

  Today Mindy wears a short black knit dress that clings to her body, her hip bones visible. Having never been thin, I try to imagine what it would feel like to live inside such a body. Her long blond hair is pulled back in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck, but shorter ragged strands hang loose around her face. She wears no makeup, no jewelry except for a brown leather strap around one wrist. There are hollows under her eyes and cheekbones. Still, she is beautiful.

  As Patrick prays, I look at the other people standing in Rachel’s kitchen. Teri’s parents are standing beside her. She and her mother, who is wearing a childish-looking dress with a large white Pilgrim collar, are holding hands. Her father has a full head of gray hair and a gray beard, which he strokes absentmindedly. His eyes have the hard look of someone brooding over a misfortune. They are not closed.

  Teri’s aunt Helena is wearing a brown hat on her head. It is an old-fashioned hat with several long brown feathers sprouting from the band on one side. Della Boyd’s hair looks as if small animals have been nesting in it, but she is dresse
d neatly in a dark blue dress with a large, floppy red flower pinned at the neck. Teri’s sister has a fleshy cheerful face that looks out of place among a group of mourners. She is wearing a large flowing dress in a floral print and long twisted strands of turquoise beads. Her eyes have the innocent look of someone not attuned to reality, perhaps of an adult child still dependent on her parents. But perhaps I am reading too much into people’s eyes today.

  I have studied everyone before Patrick has finished praying. There is not a distinguished-looking person among them. Potts is wearing the same maroon sport coat he wore when he came for Christmas dinner. Perhaps he looks at me and says, “Aunt Sophie is wearing the same sweater and the same bird pin she wore at Christmas dinner.” I am wearing a different dress, however, and for the first time in many months I am wearing shoes instead of bedroom slippers.

  But of what importance are the things one wears on his body? I look at Rachel standing beside me. No denim jeans today, no T-shirt or sweat shirt, no brown bathrobe. Her dress is of a dark green crinkly fabric with a high ruffle about the neck, which hides the fading bruise from the ides of March incident. It is the dress Patrick gave her for Christmas. Some women would look pretty in such a dress, but an objective eye would note that Rachel does not. Mine is not an objective eye, however.

  “And so, as we gather ourselves to partake of this food so lovingly prepared,” Patrick says, “we thank you, our wise and loving father, for being in our midst, for ministering to our grieving hearts with the salve of your merciful kindness.”

  There is no telling how long he could go on in this vein, but a bird interrupts him. It is not a bird I can identify by name. It flies at the kitchen window over the sink, near where Rachel and I are standing. It strikes the pane with its long hard bill, then retreats to the bush beneath the window. Almost immediately it launches a second attack. The noise is a loud thunk, like that of a stone thrown at the window. Several others open their eyes to search out the source of the sound, and even Patrick halts momentarily, as if wondering whether to stop or keep going. After the fourth thump, he closes his prayer. By now everyone else is staring at the window.