Be Light Like a Bird

by Monika Schröder

  * * *

  The next morning I buried my first roadkill. It was a cold, clear day, and I was biking back from the grocery store. I had seen roadkill before and always turned away. But this time it was different. When I saw the kitten by the side of the road, already bloated, its hind legs and tail a bloody mess, it felt like when you read one of those word problems in math over and over without any clue how to solve it, and then, suddenly, you know exactly what to do.

  I got off my bike, stuffed the contents of one of my shopping bags into the other, and picked up the kitten with the empty bag. Then I pedaled home, the bag with the dead cat dangling from my handlebars. Ma was at work, so I knew I wouldn’t have to explain myself. I dropped the groceries on the counter, took a large serving spoon from the kitchen drawer, and went back outside. I chose a spot under the manicured hedge in the far corner of the parking lot to dig a hole.

  Once the kitten was buried, I took a deep breath. For a moment the cloud disappeared, and I didn’t feel so lonely anymore. It gave me hope. Maybe my thinking would get clear again if I just kept doing what I felt I had to do. But I could already feel the cloud’s shadow creeping closer. To escape for a bit longer, I ran as fast as I could all the way up the stairs to the eighth floor.

  By the time I was back in the apartment my heart was pounding. Every breath felt like a stab with a sharp blade. But as I washed my hands, watching the dirty water swirl into the drain, a tiny piece of my sadness disappeared.

  5

  Two days later I did it again. I buried a robin I found by the side of the road, already picked over by crows. Now that I had started paying attention, I suddenly saw roadkill much more frequently than I used to. To be prepared for their burials, I started carrying gloves and a trowel in my backpack at all times.

  Three days later Ma wanted to leave Chattanooga.

  “It’ll be a new start,” she said.

  “Another new start?” I asked. “We’ve been here for less than three weeks.”

  But Ma just ignored me and started to pack up the few things we had brought with us from Georgia.

  “Why are we moving all the time now?” I asked as I began to throw my clothes into my backpack. “When we lived in Marietta you never even wanted to go on a weekend trip.”

  “That’s because we didn’t have the money,” Ma said. “And this is not a vacation. We have to find another place to live.”

  I didn’t want to ask about her boyfriend — or whatever you call a man who dates your mother only three weeks after she becomes a widow — but I figured he was probably one of the reasons she didn’t want to stay in Chattanooga. I actually didn’t mind leaving too much. I hadn’t gotten used to the new school yet, and I didn’t like the apartment. Plus, it was easier to think about Dad in the car than at school, where the teacher would interrupt me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

  Back in the Volvo, I searched the glove compartment where Dad used to keep his mints.

  “I threw them out,” Ma said.

  As we turned onto I-75, Ma switched on the radio while I replayed our last morning together with Dad. I used to love our Sunday mornings, but that one had been different. Dad had made pancakes, and Ma had complained about the mess he’d left in the kitchen. After I’d helped him clean up, they’d gotten in a fight over a splash of batter on the microwave door. She wasn’t usually that picky, and I wondered if she felt bad about that now.

  “Do you ever think about the last time you saw him?” I asked, turning the volume down on a Beatles song. “Dad, I mean.”

  “No,” Ma said. “And you shouldn’t either. It only hurts you more.”

  “You had a fight that morning before he left for flight school,” I said. “You got mad at him about pancake batter.”

  I could see by the way Ma’s knuckles turned white that she was gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Did you hear what I just said? I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Why are you so angry?” I pressed. “You can’t be angry at him for dying. It wasn’t his fault.”

  “I am not angry,” Ma said. She turned the volume back up, leaving me under the cloud, thinking about Dad. I was lonely, even with her sitting right next to me.

  * * *

  At a rest stop in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Ma ripped out an ad in the paper for a job in a nursing home. They hired her that afternoon, and a few hours later, we moved into Fountain Hills, Apartment 4B. The next day I was the new girl at a new school once more.

  Father — deceased, Ma wrote on the school application form this time. Once they found out it was a “recent loss,” they made me see Mrs. Gonzales, the school counselor. I didn’t want to talk about how I felt with someone who didn’t even know me. She wouldn’t understand the cloud, and I didn’t think Mrs. Gonzales really cared for me anyway. Her phone pinged constantly, and I could tell she would rather be checking her messages than be with me. But she told me about stages of grief, and when she said one of them was anger I listened up.

  “Why would someone get angry at a dead person?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, peeking at her phone one more time, “after the grieving person realizes that they cannot deny what happened, they often become angry that this happened to them.”

  “But you can’t get mad at a person for dying in an accident. It makes no sense,” I said. “It’s not his fault that he died.”

  “Things don’t always make sense when it comes to grieving,” Mrs. Gonzales said.

  “How long does a person stay in the anger stage?” I asked.

  “That depends,” she replied.

  “On what?”

  “On the person. You might be angry for a week, while your mother might be angry for much longer.”

  During my next class, social studies, I thought about what Mrs. Gonzales had said, but I still couldn’t make any sense of it. According to her, the first stage of grief was denial — pretending it hadn’t happened. Neither Ma nor I had experienced that. I knew for a fact that Ma wasn’t pretending Dad hadn’t died. She’d very clearly known the accident had happened when she’d thrown away all his stuff, burned the papers, and made us leave our home.

  I wondered if the stages were just something people who’d never lost someone had invented.

  I tried to focus on the lesson my class was working on — a unit about the difference between needs and wants — but the lists the teacher made didn’t really include the things I needed or wanted. I wanted to talk with Ma about what had happened, but she avoided the subject. I needed the cloud to lift so I could think clearly and make her talk to me. But for now my head was full of memories of Dad that swirled around like dead leaves blown in the wind.

  At least I didn’t need to work hard to keep up in school. I’d always been a fairly good student — not the best in class, but with grades that caused no concern among my teachers or parents. Dad had always teased me when I showed him an A. He would tickle me gently and say, “Look at you, Little Lady Genius. You must have gotten that from your mother.” Ma would laugh at him and tell me that she was proud of me. Sometimes she’d add that I shouldn’t pay any attention to a slacker like Dad, but she’d say it with a smile so we knew she was kidding.

  But then I remembered a few weeks before Dad had died, when I’d gotten an A+ on my science test. Dad had held up my test and said, “Karen, look at this. We might have a future Nobel Prize winner on our hands.”

  Ma had lost her sense of humor and her response had been harsh. “I really don’t know what your problem is, Derek,” she’d shot back. “It wouldn’t be too bad if someone in this family had a successful career.”

  They’d both been quiet for a moment before Dad had left the room. I’d felt bad, because I could see that he was hurt by her comment. I wasn’t sure why Ma had said it. Maybe she’d been disappointed that he hadn’t gotten the promotion he’d talked about. When I’d mentione
d it to Dad at our next bird-watching outing he’d just said, “Don’t worry about it. Your mother and I just have to duke out some issues. That’s all. Happens to the best of people.”

  Now I wondered if they’d ever duked it out. But I knew better than to ask. Ma wouldn’t want to talk about that either.

  6

  We had only been in Ohio for a week when I saw Ma with a new Mr. Someone. This man was also older than Dad, and he picked her up in a black BMW. As they drove off, I noticed an Audubon Society sticker on his rear window. That piqued my interest for a moment as I thought he might be a bird-watcher, but then I realized that didn’t matter. I wouldn’t talk to him anyway.

  But then the next day I met him. My after-school activity got canceled, and I came home earlier than usual. Ma was home, and Mr. Someone was just about to leave. From close up he looked really old, with gray hair and wrinkly skin on his neck.

  “This is George,” Ma said. I was so surprised to see him that I couldn’t say anything.

  “Hi, kiddo,” George said. On his way to the door he gave me this look of sympathy, like he wanted to say, I know what you are going through. It’s really hard. I’m sorry.

  The look and what I thought it meant made the cloud so heavy it almost suffocated me. I didn’t want this man feeling sorry for me. I didn’t want this man in our apartment. Ma must have told him about Dad. Maybe she’d told him how she felt. How could she talk to a stranger about him but not me?

  After the man was gone, I looked at Ma. For a few seconds I imagined her face was melting — that she would now cry with me and we would share memories of Dad and things would get better and Mr. Someone would never come back. I loved her so much in that moment.

  I stepped toward Ma, but the softness disappeared, and she checked her watch. “I’d better hurry, or I’ll be late for work. There’s lasagna in the microwave for you.”

  After she left, I thought again about what Mrs. Gonzales had told me about the stages of grief and how time was supposed to heal all wounds. Time hadn’t healed anything for me. If there were any stages of grief, I was stuck in the one that hurts and hurts and puts you in a sticky cloud that muddles your brain. For Ma, time seemed to have healed all wounds already. She only seemed to experience two stages of grief — falling in and out of love as quickly as she could.

  * * *

  Three days later, I heard Ma yelling at Mr. Audubon outside. Soon after, she stormed into the house, locked herself in the bathroom, and blew her nose.

  I knew what was coming.

  When they teach cause-and-effect relationships in social studies class, this would be a perfect example. Soon after Ma’s first date, there’s some kind of drama, followed by a breakup — cause — and we move — effect.

  The next day we headed back out onto I-75.

  7

  “Where are we going now?” I asked, looking at the map. We had been driving for five hours and had just passed Grayling, Michigan.

  “I don’t know,” Ma said. “I guess we’ll just keep going.”

  “If we keep driving north we’ll end up in Canada,” I said.

  “We won’t go to Canada,” she said.

  By the time we crossed the Mackinaw Bridge it was getting dark. I checked the map again. Soon we’d reach the end of I-75, all the way up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, at the city of Sault Ste. Marie. From there it was only a short drive across a bridge to get to Canada. But just a few miles west of Sault Ste. Marie I noticed a town called Pyramid.

  “There’s a place called Pyramid,” I said. “We could stop there.”

  To my surprise, Ma nodded. “All right.”

  * * *

  You’d think someplace named Pyramid would at least have a hill that looked remotely like the ancient monuments in Egypt. But this close to Lake Superior, the landscape was just flat. A marker on the way into town explained that a French explorer and missionary named Pére Amide had come here in the seventeenth century to trade pelts and convert the natives into Christians. Somehow his name had been rolled into Pyramid.

  We headed down Main Street, and there was everything we needed: Buzz’s Diner, Suomi’s Quick Stop and Gas Station, Amide’s Coffee Shop, and the By Gone Consignment Boutique. There was even a health food store down on South Main.

  The Pyramid Motel was closed, its windows smashed, but a newly opened Best Western offered $99 suites with Jacuzzi. We pulled into the parking lot, and Ma went inside to get us a room for the night.

  I stepped out of the car to stretch my legs. It was the beginning of April, and there was only a touch of spring in the air. There would be no sticky summer heat here like in Georgia. This far north the sky was darker blue, the clouds faster moving.

  Dad was from Minnesota, I thought, looking around. He might have liked it here, too.

  * * *

  The next day was Monday. Ma found work at the Golden Acres Retirement Home, and we moved into #8C, third floor, Century Terrace Apartments. It was the beginning of spring break, so school wasn’t back in session yet, and I spent the day alone. I worried that Ma would soon be with another Mr. Someone. I knew I couldn’t really prevent that, but during the long hours in the Volvo, I had come up with a plan — I wanted us to buy a house.

  Back in Georgia, before we’d moved into our house in Marietta, I remembered Ma and Dad talking about coming up with the down payment and paying a mortgage instead of rent. Ma had done the math and said it would be cheaper in the long run to own a house. Dad had expressed some doubts and called it a “serious commitment,” but in the end, he had agreed to it.

  That was exactly what I needed now. I needed Ma to commit to Pyramid by buying a house.

  At the health food store I found a brochure with real estate listings. But when I brought it home and showed it to Ma that evening, she didn’t seem interested.

  “I think we should look for a house and put down some money,” I said while she was getting ready for her new evening job at the diner.

  “Truth be told, I don’t even know if I want to stay here,” Ma said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “There might be a better place out there.”

  “Pyramid is as good a place as any,” I argued. “You’ve already got two jobs. And there’s a middle school here. Spring break will be over soon. You could register me tomorrow.”

  “They have snow here from October to May.”

  “I don’t mind snow. I don’t want to move around anymore,” I said. “And I’m looking for a job to add money to our savings account. I asked at the health food store and —”

  “We’re nowhere close to having enough money for a down payment on a house, even if you did get a job, Wren,” Ma interrupted.

  “We have three thousand four hundred and thirty dollars in the savings account,” I told her. “I saw the statements you withdrew from the ATM in Ohio.”

  “That’s barely enough for the closing costs.”

  Anticipating trouble, I had looked this up at the library earlier and done the math. I’d asked the librarian and learned that the minimum we needed to put down was five percent. My plan was to find a decent house we could afford and make Ma sign the mortgage papers before she could start dating again.

  “It’ll put us only about five hundred and seventy dollars short of what we need for a down payment,” I explained. “We could get a decent two-bedroom one-bath house here for about eighty thousand dollars.”

  Ma ignored me, looking through her purse for her car keys.

  “I think Dad might have liked it here,” I continued. “He used to tell me the sky in Min—”

  “You know that I don’t want to talk about your dad,” Ma interrupted with a warning look.

  “Why can’t we talk about him?” I whined, hating my teary voice.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  �
��But…” I couldn’t finish. The cloud crushed what I wanted to say, and I could feel tears welling up in my throat. I didn’t want to cry.

  Ma sighed. “We’ve been through this.”

  “I miss him. You must miss him too.” I choked up. “I miss him every day. Don’t you…” I couldn’t say any more.

  Ma took a deep breath and picked up her jacket. “I have to go to work.” She left without even turning around.

  That’s when I made a decision. Ma might not ever want to talk to me about my dead father, but I didn’t want us to continue hopping from place to place. I was determined to make my plan work.

  I took the map of Michigan from my bag, drew a red arrow pointing directly at Pyramid, and taped it on the refrigerator door. Then I circled Pyramid.

  This was where our journey would end.

  8

  I swear the crow wanted me to find the pond.

  The day after we moved into the apartment, I went out on my bike early in the morning. It was still spring break in Pyramid, so I had lots of time to explore while Ma was at work. Passing a stretch of forest, I had trouble with my front tire and got off to check if it needed air. That’s when a crow landed in a tree next to me, drawing attention to itself with loud caws. It had a tiny white spot between its beak and right eye. After making quite a racket, it flew off, swooped around in a tight curve, and landed right back on the same branch.

  My tire was fine. I stood and looked at the noisy bird. It appeared to be studying me. I thought of Dad and how he would have said, “She’s watching you, Wren.” It really did seem that way. Every time our eyes met, the crow let out a deep caw and started another swoop, as if saying, “Follow me.”

  I dropped my bicycle in the grass and followed the crow into the forest. For a while, we played a game of hide-and-seek. When I pulled out my binoculars, it flew off with shrill calls. That’s how I discovered the pond.