by Nikki Loftin
I walked blinking into the sunshine, and circled the house to see if I could convince Gayle to come down into the Emperor’s cage.
Gayle wasn’t in her tree when I went to look, so I walked around the front of the Emperor’s house and over to the Cutlins’. They lived in a one-story gray brick house that had been built long enough ago to need serious repairs. The mortar was coming out from between the bricks, and the brass work by the door was covered with black grime. The doorbell was broken, too, a sharp wire poking out where the button should be. Nice, I thought. Really welcoming.
The house was about the same size as our house, except ours was wood and vinyl siding. But at least Mom had kept ours nice-looking, with serious spring cleanings twice a year, up until last year. Maybe I could do the spring cleaning for her this summer. Clean the gutters and the sidewalks. That might make Mom happy. Maybe we could do it together, like we used to.
I shook the thought away. I was here to get Gayle, not daydream.
I stuck my hand through a fist-sized hole in the screen and knocked on the wooden front door as loud as I could. I heard someone yelling inside—“Jeb, stop her! It might be the caseworker!”—and footsteps running toward the door, so I pulled my hand out of the hole—not carefully enough. The rusted wire mesh scraped against the top of my hand and left a pattern of bleeding scratches across the tops of my knuckles.
“Dang it,” I said, rubbing the scratched skin on the back of my jeans to wipe away the blood.
The door opened, and Gayle stood there, the cooler air from the hallway rushing out past her like it couldn’t wait to be outside, and tangling her hair as it went.
Her hair was even messier today than the day before, if that was possible. My mom would have said it was full of birds’ nests; she used to say that to Raelynn all the time, after we’d been playing in the fields all day. “A nest made out of burrs and beauty,” Mom would complain as she brushed out my sister’s golden-red hair.
Gayle smiled up at me, though I could see the tracks of old tears in the dirt on one of her cheeks.
“Hi, Tree,” she whispered. I wanted to remind her not to call me that, but Jeb Cutlin appeared behind her, his hand raised up, like he was planning to grab her—or hit her. Gayle saw him coming and ducked instinctively.
I took a breath and reached for the screen door latch—if Jeb hit Gayle, I was going to have to remind him what being hit felt like—but he stopped in time. “Oh, hey, Little John.” He put his hand on his hair like he was checking it, like he’d never been planning to do anything else with it.
Mrs. Cutlin’s voice interrupted. “Who is it?” Her tone was sweet—just in case it was Gayle’s caseworker, I guessed.
“It’s just Little John Fischer,” Jeb yelled back.
Her voice changed back to normal, harsh and grumpy. “What’s he here for?”
Jeb turned back to me. “Yeah, what are you here for?”
“I wanted to talk to Gayle,” I said.
“Who?” Jeb looked confused. “Who do you mean?”
Gayle had scooted away from the door, and she wouldn’t look at me. “Her,” I said, wondering what was going on.
“Oh, you mean Suzie? What for?” Jeb let out a hard laugh. “She told you her name was Gayle?” He turned to Gayle, who had wrapped her arms around herself tightly. “I thought Momma told you to stop calling yourself that. It ain’t your name, Suzie.” He rolled his eyes. “This one’s a crazy. You know that, don’t you?” he asked me. “Her real name’s Suzie McGonigal. This is her third foster home in a year.”
I looked down at Gayle. She was ignoring us as hard as she could. “Her third?”
“Yeah, she ran away from the others.”
I gave Jeb a look. “Maybe she had a good reason to.” If the other homes were anything like this one, I wouldn’t have blamed her.
“Nah. First she said she had to go find her parents, right? But now she says her parents are birds, and they’re going to fly here to find her. She even built a nest. We had to make her come down from that stupid tree last night.” He opened the screen door and motioned me inside.
“No, thanks,” I said. “Can you send her on out? Or are you afraid she’ll run away again?”
“You kidding? We’re so far out here, they figure there’s nowhere to run, right? That’s probably the only reason they let Mom have another foster anyhow—” He stopped suddenly, like his brain had just then caught up with his mouth, and flushed red. “What do ya want with her?” Jeb darted a glance at Gayle again. “She do something wrong?”
What was I going to tell him? That the Emperor had asked her to come sing? That I wanted to earn five hundred dollars? I remembered Verlie Cutlin’s voice the day before, calling Gayle’s music “racket.” I’d better not mention it, I thought. Probably it would get her into even more trouble. I had an idea.
“Nah,” I said, “My mom wanted to know how old she was, some other stuff. She’s putting together some school supplies for all the foster kids.” That was partly true; Mom did a drive every year for all the “unfortunates,” as she called them. “She said to ask if she needed a backpack, her favorite color. That kind of stuff.”
I shouldn’t have bothered to go on. Jeb’s attention had been drawn away by the blaring of a sports game from the television. Probably baseball, I thought, or maybe preseason football. For a second I wanted to go in and watch. I hadn’t been able to see the good games on ESPN for months. We had a television, but no money for cable.
It was my own fault, really. I could have gone next door and watched with Ernest; last year, we’d taken turns at his house and ours watching the whole Major League Baseball season. It was supposed to be our new tradition. But I hadn’t wanted to tell Ernest how bad things had gotten at my house, so I’d told him I didn’t like baseball anymore. That I’d outgrown it, just like video games.
I’d outgrown almost everything that cost money, it turned out, since we’d had to spend all of Mom’s savings on a four-foot-long pine box and a burial plot.
Jeb nodded. “Just keep an eye on her—Mom says she has to have a bath before the caseworker gets here. Don’t let her fly away or nothing.” He laughed like he’d made a joke, but it didn’t make me smile. It just made me want to punch him.
“Thanks, Tree,” Gayle whispered when we’d stepped outside and Jeb had slammed the door behind us.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. “And what’s the deal? Suzie? Your name isn’t Gayle?”
“It is,” she insisted. But she snuck a look back at the door to make sure it was closed, and ran a few steps away, around to the side yard. Once we were out of sight of the door, she started skipping and windmilling her arms. “Come on, slowpoke,” she called, and ran through the broken chain-link gate into the backyard. I followed, sighing. I’d seen my sister in this mood before. Hyper, like a kid who had sat in church too long.
There wouldn’t be any explaining, or asking about visits to the Emperor’s, until she’d run around a bit. I almost couldn’t remember feeling that way. Like a kid.
The Cutlins’ yard was huge, at least three acres. It was surrounded by a run-down chain-link fence on all the sides except the Emperor’s; he’d paid to have a tall wooden fence put up there. I’m sure he was trying to avoid having to look at their old house, even though he still must’ve been able to see it, what with his own house being up on a rise.
The Cutlins’ land itself was boggy, and mosquitoes buzzed in low-lying clouds near the squishy parts of the lawn in the evenings and late afternoons. But right now, it was ten in the morning, and the sunlight hit the wet places and turned the water on the grass into crystals that spun into the air as Gayle ran past.
Or whatever her name was.
I caught up to her on the far side of the property, near the base of an old pecan tree. Last season’s nuts and shells crunched under my feet as I approached, and Gayle he
ard me coming and looked up. I hadn’t noticed in the house—I guess it had been too dark—but she had a red mark on one of her cheeks. I leaned down and brushed my hand against her face. “Did Jeb do that?”
She shook her head but didn’t add anything more. She plucked a dandelion near her feet and hunkered down, blowing until all the fluff drifted away, sparkling in the sunlight.
“Who, then?”
She shrugged. “It was an accident,” she said after a few seconds and another dandelion. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Didn’t mean to what?” I tried to make my voice as soft as I could, even though the hard knot of anger in my belly made the words sound rougher than I intended.
Gayle leaned against me, and I felt her hair brush my arm. I reached down and petted her, my hand stroking once, twice, the way my mom used to do when I was little. The way she hadn’t done in almost a year.
But Momma had told me I was the size of a man now, and I should expect to be treated like one.
I was glad to be so much stronger, most of the time. My muscles were harder, and so were the calluses on my hands from helping my dad with the business. It was just . . . I didn’t know getting big meant the end of anything soft. Maybe if Raelynn hadn’t died, I’d still have one person who would hug me.
Gayle leaned in closer and said, “I’m not supposed to sing. But Mrs. Cutlin hurt herself on the stove, and I thought if I sang, it would help her. But . . . it didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure what Gayle meant—that she thought her singing would help. Maybe she imagined it would cheer Mrs. Cutlin up. I could have told her that wouldn’t work. Just last year, the woman had refused to let two other foster boys attend their own fifth-grade graduation swim party. She said they’d been acting up, and she wasn’t going to reward bad behavior.
I remembered Jeb’s slip of the tongue and wondered. Maybe the foster people knew Mrs. Cutlin wasn’t all that nice. Maybe something had happened with those two boys. Maybe Mrs. Cutlin—or Jeb—had marked them up and didn’t want anyone to see the signs of a beating. Gayle’s face had grown so sad and closed off, I knew it was time to change the subject. But first . . . “Gayle? Why did Jeb say your name was Suzie?”
“That’s what they call me,” she said and shrugged. She pulled three pieces of tall Johnson grass up and began to braid them together, winding blossoms from the pink evening primroses that sprinkled the lawn into the braid. “But it’s not my real name. I just pretend, so they’ll leave me alone. Sometimes I forget.”
“What is your real name?” I paused. Maybe Susan was her middle name, or something. “Your whole name, I mean.”
“I’m not supposed to tell,” she whispered. “That’s what got me in the most trouble yesterday, when the preacher came with the extra clothes.” She looked down and picked at the shirt she had on. It was a different shirt, I noticed, red and blue striped. Not nearly as worn out as the one from yesterday, even if this one didn’t fit her as well. “First he told Mrs. Cutlin I shouldn’t be so dirty. He’s the one who called the caseworker to come out today. Then he asked my name, and Mrs. Cutlin got so mad.”
“Why?”
Gayle shrugged again, and ran over to the base of the sycamore. “She says if I act crazy, I’ll have to live somewhere worse. She said to keep my mouth shut.”
I knew why Mrs. Cutlin didn’t want Gayle to act crazy. If she did, they might take her away and make Mrs. Cutlin foster some other kid, a bigger one that ate more, maybe even one she couldn’t shove around. Or they might not let her foster any kids at all, and then how would she pay the cable bill?
“Come on,” I said, standing up and pulling stray dandelion fluff off my shirt. “You can tell me your name. I won’t say anything.”
“I’ll give you a hint,” she said. Then she opened her mouth and sang. It sounded like birdsong, almost exactly, but some kind of bird I’d never heard before. I could tell the difference between dozens of calls—cardinals to crows, meadowlarks to mourning doves. But this? It was more beautiful than any bird I’d ever heard.
“Well,” she said, her eyes shining. “Can you guess my name now?”
Guess her name from a birdsong—one I didn’t even recognize? I felt like I had in sixth grade math, when Mrs. Clark would call on me even though she knew I didn’t know the answer. I rubbed the back of my hand against my face to wipe away a bead of sweat. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sorry.”
She shook her head, the light fading in her eyes slightly. “Fine. I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else, okay? If Mrs. Cutlin found out . . .” Her voice trailed off again, and she touched the red spot on her cheek lightly.
“I won’t tell,” I said, and meant it. What I didn’t say was that I had decided to tell my mom—maybe even my dad—about Mrs. Cutlin. There had to be something we could do to help Gayle out. To get her away from the Cutlins, at least some of the time.
Even though I promised, she looked worried. I’d seen that expression on my mom’s face before, when the landlord came to talk about late rent, but I’d never seen a kid look like that. Like she had all the weight of the world on her.
I wished there was something I could do to get rid of that anxious shadow behind her eyes. Then I remembered the candy in my pocket. “Oh. I brought this for you.” She nodded, smiled a little, and took the butterscotch, fiddling with the silver wrapper.
“Okay,” she said at last, like the candy had decided for her. “It’s a nightingale’s song. My mom told me it was the most beautiful sound in the world. That’s my name. Nightingale.”
“Nightingale?” I repeated as she unwrapped the candy and popped it into her mouth. Who named their kid Nightingale? I wondered what kind of parents she had had, and what had happened to them. A car accident? Of course, the kind of people who named their kid Nightingale probably didn’t own a car. It was sort of a hippie name; at least that’s what my dad would say. But I liked it. It suited her. “That’s a beautiful na— Hey, stop it!” She had started to climb the sycamore tree, one-handed, toward her nest, carrying her braided-grass crown between her teeth, and her candy wrapper like a treasure in her right hand. I had never seen anyone climb a tree so fast; she was like one of those wrens perching sideways, hopping from one branch to the next on her way up the tree, almost too fast to see how she held on. Watching, I felt sick, like I might throw up.
“Gayle!” I yelled, a little louder. “Get down from there!”
She must have figured out I was serious. She stopped and looked down at me. “Why?” she said, her head cocked to the side, burred lumps of hair swinging out as she did. “Aren’t you going to come up, too?”
Come up? I would have laughed, but I felt so queasy, I held my mouth shut. I took a few deep breaths, feeling the sick, clammy sweat gather on my neck. “I don’t climb trees,” I said finally, looking away, toward the Emperor’s house, and remembered the reason I was here in the first place. “Let’s do something else.”
“Little John,” she complained. For the first time since I’d met her, her voice didn’t sound like a silver bell. Her little-kid whining almost made me smile. “You gotta come up. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Well, bring it down here,” I said roughly. “I don’t have all day, you know. I have to go do some work next door.”
“Work?” she repeated. “What kind of work?”
“Well, I gotta pick snails for a bit. I’m supposed to be helping Dad with a couple of old pecans over at Mr. King’s,” I said, wondering if I could work the conversation around to her singing for him, possibly.
“Oh!” She almost fell off the side of the tree in her excitement. “You’re taking care of his trees?”
I chuckled. “More like taking them out. We’re supposed to cut down two this week, and trim up the rest.”
She was silent. “You’re going to cut them . . . down?” I looked up; there wa
s true horror in her voice.
“Yeah,” I said. “Dad says I’m big enough to do it myself—with him helping, sure. But he thinks I’m old enough.” I flexed a muscle. “And strong enough.”
“Don’t do it, please, Little John,” she said, clambering down from the tree at last. “I love the trees here. They’re . . . they’re the only things I can trust.”
“Trust?” I said, trying not to laugh. “Trees?” I shook my head. “Listen, Gayle. Trees are just wood that hasn’t been cut down yet. Old ones like those pecans at Mr. King’s are a hazard—the limbs get rotten, and then they’re dangerous.”
“Trees aren’t dangerous,” she said, like I was dumb. It made me mad.
“I know what I’m talking about,” I said, louder. “I knew a little girl who fell out of a tree no bigger than that stupid one you built your nest in. It’s not safe.” I let out my breath and walked a few steps toward the fence.
Behind me, Gayle was silent. And then I heard a soft word and felt an even softer hand on my arm. “Who?”
I knew what she meant. “My sister,” I said, feeling the back of my throat start to burn. I swallowed hard. There was no use crying; Dad had told me as much fifty times in the last ten months. No use crying now, when there was nothing to be done.
“I’m sorry,” Gayle said. She inched her fingers down my arm and held my hand, lightly brushing the scratches I’d gotten from the Cutlins’ screen door. “Here,” she said. “You’re hurt. Shut your eyes and let me sing you better.”
It was cute, I thought. She wanted to sing me a song to make me feel better. I hadn’t even asked her yet about singing for the Emperor, but I could wait a few minutes. Humor her. I heard the Emperor’s back door open, way off on the other side of the fence. Was he going in or coming out? I wasn’t quite tall enough to see that far over. “Go ahead, then,” I said, and shut my eyes.
The first notes that came out were sad, almost cries. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter as I realized she wasn’t singing birdsong now. It was just as high, but the notes were more . . . purposeful. More meaningful, it seemed like. She still didn’t use words, but the melody was the thing—her voice sailed and looped, like a swallow, up and over the sadness that had lodged in my throat, around my heart, loosening the tightness there, too, and even down my arms and into my hands.