Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel

by Oyeyemi, Helen

  He rested an elbow on the top railing and stood at a slant that made me think of the crooked man who walked a crooked mile. How does the rest of that nursery rhyme go? Something to do with this crooked man journeying farther and farther along and coming across crooked things that he takes for his own because nobody else wants them, and then he finds a crooked wife and the two of them have a crooked whale of a time ever after . . . ?

  It began to look as if he was just going to stand like that without saying another word for the rest of the boat trip, so I said: “I didn’t know you had to change friends when you change jobs.”

  I think he smiled. “You don’t, I guess. I don’t know . . . I sometimes go to dinner with those same people now and I feel like a poser. I get what they’re saying but I’m not as invested in their bickering. I’d rather talk metals. Anyway, back when I was still a professor, I think my wife got wise to me before I even said anything about quitting. She sat me down to tell me, quite urgently and emphatically, how proud she was of all my achievements . . .”

  “I think I get the picture. But you said there were two reasons.”

  “Right. Good memory. The second reason is that I met a jeweler on the train from Boston to Flax Hill one evening, and we got talking. Making baubles wasn’t something I’d ever thought about before I got talking to that man. Why feed vanity? He said: “Oh, come on now. What do you think you are, a Puritan?” He said any Puritan worth his salt knows that vanity isn’t fussy; it’ll eat almost anything. He said it’s a matter of fact that there’s no way to avoid feeding vanity, no matter what line of work you’re in. He seemed to be doing okay, much better than I was. He was happy with his work. He mentioned that he’d recently left his wife, not for another woman, just for peace of mind, but he continued to look forward to the future and saw no reason why it shouldn’t bring him good things. I picked up his briefcase by mistake as we were getting ready for our stop. We swapped back almost immediately, of course, but—his briefcase was so light. It was one of those cases that looked heavy—it looked like mine, which was full of printed matter—but its lightness was tempting. It made me want to walk away with it, walk all the way out of my existence and into his. He was going home to eat beans out of a can and sketch fractals into his design book. There were no flea circuses in his life.”

  “No Julia in his life, either,” I said, wishing for a cigarette or something to do with my hands. I was learning the ways of the world; one of them being that the presence of a certain type of curly-haired man—your type—will cause you to fidget and fidget until the only way to reach some level of calm is to touch him.

  “Right,” he said.

  I waited seven heartbeats and then I said: “Yeah, your kind isn’t so rare. Spoiled brat. When he’s a bachelor, life’s tough because he has everything he needs except Miss Right, and when he finds a sweetheart with the full package—beauty, brains, sweet temper—she’s too much, she’s smothering him.”

  He poured the rest of the glass of water into the harbor. “Guess I wasted my breath, huh?”

  “Guess you did.”

  —

  at seven a.m., as the three of us walked back along the dock in Worcester, the sun shone onto us through wooden slats and Mia pulled off her wig, ran her fingers through her bouncy black hair, and laughed at my expression. She was writing a piece for the Telegram & Gazette. She was going to call it “The Secret World of Blondes.” I wondered aloud what she’d managed to find out.

  “It’s going to be the final nail in the coffin for blonde-brunette relations,” Arturo predicted. “That or she’ll win a Pulitzer.”

  “Very funny . . .” Mia blew him a kiss. She’d promised to give me a lift, so we climbed into her pink roadster and sped away. The road got brighter the farther east we went, and we passed trucks coming into the city. I think Mia wanted to swap some tales about the experience of being blonde, but I didn’t feel like doing any more talking, so I pretended to be asleep. Then I guess I got too committed, because the next thing I knew we were parked outside the boarding house and Mia was tickling me under the nose with a feather.

  —

  back in my room I used the windowsill as a desk and wrote a brief and painstakingly breezy note to Charlie Vacic from home, just to tell him that I was still looking after his flag, and to give him my address in case he wanted to write to me. I’d appreciate it if you kept this address to yourself.

  I read it over through the steam from my coffee cup. Over the years there’d been long moments when Charlie and I had looked at each other without blinking, and I’d wondered what it was that was separating us and whether he or I could make it disappear. For my part I was always a little disturbed by him because I’d never heard him tell a lie. That was horrifying to me, like living in a house with every door and window wide open all day long. When I was in a reasonable mood, I knew Charlie wasn’t for me. The note was only a few words long, but it took me the best part of an hour to get it written because I was aware of how closely he would read it.

  The other girls were at work, so the bathroom was all mine. I ran a bath and walked back and forth before the mirror as I tugged at buttons, slowly removing my clothing piece by piece. The sight was unfamiliar, and I imagined I was watching a lover undressing just for me. My lover wasn’t shy. Her motions were calculated, intent. Naked, I gathered the white mass of my hair up in my hand and turned my face from side to side, trying to see what Charlie, or Arturo, or Mia, or anyone saw. Then I moistened my lips with my tongue and walked toward the mirror, not too fast, giving myself time to change my mind, to stop if it felt too peculiar. But it was just peculiar enough. I kissed the glass with my fists against it, kissed wantonly until I felt an ache in my breasts and a throbbing between my legs. There was a taste of blood where my mouth met my mouth, as if our lips were blades.

  4

  charlie Vacic’s reply to my note contained a lot of guff about his sincere hope that I didn’t consider myself under any obligation to him, not even as a pen pal. I happened to know that he’d soon be returning to the city from Albany, so I figured he was sweet on someone else. I considered all the girls we both knew and picked one at random—Jane-Ellen Nugent, she would do—and I wrote to Charlie that I didn’t see what was so great about Jane-Ellen Nugent but I wouldn’t dream of interfering with his happiness and have a nice life.

  He sent a telegram: Cut it out Boy you know where I stand when it comes to you—C.V.

  I didn’t know, and said so by return.

  His reply: Can’t believe you’re making me say this am willing to fill any role required by you i.e. buddy best buddy laborer unpaid driver unpaid gardener unpaid father of your children coat etc just tell me which and how we’ll manage come home will square things with your Pa—Charlie

  Alarmed, I changed my tune. You really don’t know that man at all let’s stick to letters from now on you nut—Boy.

  He wrote letters, but I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a genuine attachment. We didn’t even have photographs of each other. Charlie’s telegrams were meant for the Grace Kelly look-alike in his mind’s eye, and I—I had written a jealous letter directly to his freckles.

  He kept up the letters for three months, then wrapped up his one-sided correspondence with a note that was so . . . like him that I had to show it to Mia.

  All right, Boy. You win. I won’t be bothering you anymore. This fella you’ve met out there, whoever he is . . . I was going to write that he’s lucky, but actually I don’t think he is. Because . . . with all due respect . . . I think you’ve got something that looks an awful lot like an attitude problem, and that’s quite aside from the matter of whether or not you left the city with a roll of your Pa’s cash like he says you did. Sorry. I had to be honest. Doesn’t stop me wishing you were my bad luck, though.

  So long,

  C

  We were having a little picnic at the park, Mia and I, wearing daring hats
we’d made out of sheets of newsprint. Mia read the note slowly, placing a finger beneath each word, opening her mouth wide every now and again to indicate that I should place a pitted olive in there. That girl was suspiciously good at being waited on. I’d expected, even wanted, her to laugh at the note, but she didn’t. She touched the letter C at the end.

  “Huh,” she said. “Did you really take the money?”

  “It wasn’t as much as he makes out. It was practically peanuts.” She refused the next olive, so I ate it myself. “Also I’m going to pay it back.”

  “You’re going to Hell, you dirty thief,” she said, in a very mild tone of voice. “But this C—he’s not like you?”

  “No. He’s just . . . Charlie.”

  “Charlie,” Mia said, around a strawberry. “Charlie. Char-lie.” She pushed her sunshades farther down the bridge of her nose so that I could see her serious eyes. “I think Charlie could really love you,” she said.

  “Oh, please,” I said. “What do you think you know about him?”

  “All I know is I’d think twice before counting out someone who could really love me.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe you’re a sap.” I tapped a corner of her hat and it collapsed.

  —

  i got work as a telephone operator—they said they’d train me up because I had the right voice and manner for it. I counted myself lucky apart from the fact that I kept seeing Arturo Whitman on the way to work. He went running every morning, and I walked to the telephone exchange to save bus fare. Our routes coincided for about half a mile, along a road that swirled around one of the hills like a helter-skelter. That road was called Ivorydown, and I was always glad when I reached the turn onto Willoughby Street. Not just because of having to observe Arturo running up ahead or approaching from behind (there’s something about being chased by a big strong man with yellowish eyes that makes you feel like an antelope in a bad situation), but because I’ve never liked roads that take you down from steep heights too quickly. Ivorydown was like that, the tyrannical kind of road that makes you take quick little step after quick little step until you’re all the way at the bottom. Cars and buses flowed down the hill with ease, and the people in them watched you placidly through the windows. The road was lined with saplings, but they weren’t there to help, they just stood there making pretty frames for the landscape with their branches. Arturo slowed down to speak to me.

  “Hey,” he said, as if he’d completely forgotten that we despised each other. “So when’s our next double date?”

  He may have been told that a rakish grin works wonders. If so, he’d been getting bad advice.

  I became extremely conscious of the sound of my heels tapping on the concrete. I wanted to stop walking, but the road was forcing us both down it as fast as it could, and he was already a few strides ahead, looking back at me. And so, hurrying after him with only a bunch of saplings, a couple of cars, and a truck to see us, I told him I never wanted to see his stupid face again.

  He said: “Oh,” and continued his run. After that he’d pass me on the road without seeming to see me. And I went merrily on to the telephone exchange. I don’t even know what happened to that particular job. I can’t remember if I really tried at it. All those voices buzzing up and down wires, all those switches and dials, a single shift was like a long day out in dry rain. Of all the things that got to me, I never expected it to be that operator job. I couldn’t work out why, either. It was just people saying hello to each other.

  Then there was the usherette job—that one lasted three weeks and a day.

  When the ax came, it was because I watched the movies too much. I’d already been given three warnings, two of them in writing. Then, half an hour after I’d received the third warning, the manager himself caught me sitting down and watching a movie like a regular audience member. To be honest I wasn’t even really watching the movie. It was one of those ones they call screwball comedies, where people mislead and ill-treat each other in the most shocking and baffling ways possible, then forgive and forget about it because they happen to like the look of each other. Only they call it falling in love. Those movies are the equivalent of supernatural thrillers for me—if I watched them too closely, I’d shriek uncontrollably. So mainly I was just sitting.

  The manager stood over me and asked me to explain myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to speak; it just seemed smarter not to. All of a sudden it felt as if I had far too many teeth, more teeth than it was decent to show.

  “In that case I’m afraid we’ve come to the end of the road, Miss Novak,” the manager said.

  I was a little sad on my last day.

  I wasn’t going to miss being an usherette—the uniform itched, and identifying couples who were sitting too close together and assaulting them with a blast of light lost its charm surprisingly quickly. But I’d miss the cool, fresh, all-day darkness of the screening theaters, and the way light played across the screen with a staggering indifference. The men and women up there would speak, and laugh, and sing, and cry, walk away, stand still, and as long as the reel ran, all this would go on whether the audience was there or not, whether they watched or not.

  I left the cinema with a tailor who took me to dinner, then stopped me in the midst of some bushes in the park and pushed his tongue into my mouth. The weak wriggling made me so extravagantly sad that I gagged. He looked stricken, and I was sorry. I took an “Are you frigid?” quiz in a magazine once and got the highest score. You are: Winter in Siberia. Few survive you, and those who do are . . . changed! I mentioned this to my date, just to let him know he was dealing with a frigid woman. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear; he left me at the front door of the boarding house and walked around the corner at a pretty fast pace. I’ll bet he started running as soon as he was sure he was out of sight.

  The following day Mia came over to the boarding house to celebrate the six-month anniversary of my escape from the rat catcher. Following an ancient Cabrini recipe, she filled a stew pot with cold champagne, stuffed in as many handfuls of chopped fruit as it would hold, and served it up. We clinked bowls at the dining room table, which was otherwise empty because it was eleven in the morning, and Mia said: “This, my friend, is champagne soup. Make a wish.”

  And I did.

  It was standard-issue stuff. I wanted a family. But it was just as Arturo said—I didn’t know how to start anything from scratch, and I didn’t want to know. Getting pushed around as a kid had made me realistic about my capabilities. I know some people learn how to take more knocks and keep going. Not me. I’m the other kind. That’s what stopped me from telling Charlie Vacic I’d marry him. See, I’m looking for a role with lines I can say convincingly, something practical. And I know Charlie, or at least I know that he’s some kind of idealist. Charlie’s woman probably wouldn’t be able to complain that he didn’t love her enough. She’d be getting his all. Not worship or anything weird, just a certain way he looks at her, something in his voice when he speaks to her, he’d let her know that he’s ready to be asked anything, ready to ask anything. No games, no rules, no about-turns, no limits, by my side when rainstorms sound like serenades, by my side for flat hours of word tennis, each of us guarded, exchanging little comments that are so wretchedly banal that all we want to do is turn away from each other and throw up every single one of our internal organs. It’d be a love like the Siege Perilous. Nice work if you have the constitution for it, but otherwise the harshest of all tests, eliminating everyone who attempts it until the purest of heart happens along. And okay, it’s just about conceivable that you could have a heart that pure and never suspect it until the crucial moment. Maybe I’d give it a shot if the conditions were the same as in the story: You sit in the chair and you die faster than your feet can touch the floor, and that’s how you find out you’re not the one. But in real life the finding out can really drag on, can’t it? Mrs. Boy Vacic was a nightmare of mine. She hit her fortie
s hard and fell to pieces. She had a gushing, anxious laugh that took a while to trickle to a stop (krrr krrr) and made her children ask her if she was okay. She babied herself, rewarding her own good deeds with candy and spoonfuls of grape jelly. That woman—the me that had married Charlie—had tried and failed to find a gap in all of this that was so ordinary, to take some instrument to the gap and shape it, widen it until it got big enough to slip through. She’d wanted to make a beautiful thing, like the Flax Hill natives did. But not a lantern or a bookcase, a life. Not to have what it takes, and to be surrounded by witnesses too. The man you tried with. The children. A boy version of you, or a girl version of him, or both, looking at you with clear, pitiless eyes. These are thoughts that come to you while you spend however long you spend holding icepacks to your eye, or tilting your head back against the wall to try to do something about the way your nose is bleeding, letting your mind work on the question: What reasons might somebody have for leaving her kid in the care of a man like Frank Novak? Don’t ever try to find her. Don’t even try to find out if she’s alive. This way my mother’s alive, she’s dead, she’s whatever she deserves to be on that particular day.