I stop spiraling, my line filling in the paper to the edge, and give Jimmie back her pencil. “No. I’ve never eaten octopus either. Well, I don’t think so. But usually it’s just about impossible to tell what it is we eat, so I guess maybe I could have.” I drink my hot chocolate in one go, letting it burn all the way down.
Jimmie thinks about what I’ve said for a while, chewing on the end of the pencil. “You’d know if you’d eaten octopus. Did you know that octopuses have three hearts and blue blood, and two thirds of their thinking is done in their tentacles? And if a predator catches hold of a tentacle, the octopus can lose it and grow another one back. They can also find their way through mazes and solve puzzles and they can tell the future.”
From my pocket, the duck says, “Does she know about ducks? Ask her what she knows about ducks. Does she know that ducks in different countries have different quacks? So a quack in Japan means something totally different to a quack in Hawaii. It’s true. Ask any duck.”
“Do you know about ducks?” I ask, then wish I hadn’t. Next time I’m leaving the duck under the pillow.
“Nah, not much. Ducks aren’t very interesting. But they taste delicious.” Jimmie licks her lips to prove it. The duck doesn’t say anything. I think he’s fainted. We didn’t know ducks got eaten.
Then Jimmie counts the spirals I’ve drawn on the paper. “Okay. So that’s six. Now on the other side of the paper, you have to write down P-R-I-V-A-T-E. Got that? All right. Now write down five letters and the numbers zero to eight, plus five things you might want to be when you grow up.”
I write. When I’m done, Jimmie looks at me again. “So? What jobs did you put down?”
“Um, an artist, a sailor, a poet, a storyteller, and a doctor. I don’t really want to be a doctor, but back in Burma my family were all healers and I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“I don’t think a storyteller is really a job…but whatever. Now, here, give me the pencil.”
Jimmie starts counting through my list and crosses off letters from P-R-I-V-A-T-E until she’s left with the V. She draws a big circle around it.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
Jimmie smiles at me. “It means you’re going to live in a Van,” she says, and then she laughs at the look on my face. I’m really thinking that a van would be pretty great. I just didn’t know people could live in them, was all. If you lived in a van, you could drive all over and never have to stop unless you wanted to.
“It’s better than living in an Igloo, or an Elevator, or a Tent. Not as good as living in a Palace though.” She’s moved on to crossing off the other letters I wrote until there is only one letter left circled. “And you’re going to live with someone whose name begins with…” Her pencil taps at the paper, showing me what letter is left. It’s a J. Jimmie says, “Aw, shucks. How sweet,” and pokes me in the ribs with her pencil. “Aaaaand you’re going to have…six kids! Or pets. Either way, that will be one crowded van.”
I’m beginning to feel a bit like the octopus. I don’t think I want to know my future.
Jimmie keeps going. “And it looks like storyteller is a job, because that’s what it says you will be. You’d better get some good stories, then.”
I don’t tell Jimmie that that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since I can remember. It’s just that the one who has the stories I want isn’t here yet, is all.
After that Jimmie looks at me. “So what did you do today? Anything fun?”
“Um. Queeny worked out that about one third of our time awake is spent standing in lines. And today that would have been longer because just when I got to the front of the line at breakfast, the Jacket saw I’d forgotten my ID card, so I had to get it and line up again. But then later, I won the Lice Race.”
Jimmie has her chin resting in her hands and her eyes wide open. “Lice racing? Are you for real? You race your lice?”
“Oh, yeah. Lice are fast. Not as fast as cockroaches. Cockroaches are better at finding their way out of mazes. Anyway, I won with a lice I called Itchy, which is the biggest one I’ve ever had. Itchy won by so much that one of the girls got angry and squashed him and ruined the game.” That happens with Lice Racing a lot. If I was one of the lice, I don’t reckon it would be worth running my hardest.
“Poor Itchy,” Jimmie says.
“And Queeny, she’s got a camera and is taking photos, and Eli is sending them out on the computers. She says she wants people to know about living in here. But I don’t like it. It makes me feel like there is something bad coming, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Jimmie punches me hard on the arm. “There. That was the bad coming. Now you can forget about it.”
Even though she’s joking around and trying to cheer me up, I still can’t get that creeping feel off my shoulders. So when Jimmie pulls out the book, I grab at it, knowing that it will stop my brain spinning over and over and thinking so much. I wonder how Jimmie knew.
Anka gave birth to their son two months early. He appeared in the world quickly and quietly during one of the wildest storms to hit the coast in the history of the country. Anka had never before seen color; the images in her mind were varying shades of light and dark, accentuated by their heaviness and bulk. But now, curled around her child for the first time, Anka’s mind exploded with bright waves of purple, green, blue, and red, as color after color washed across her, swirling and pulling, embracing her in their brilliance.
And from Anka’s mouth erupted a song of pure love.
Through the storm, over the mountains and all the way over the other side of the country, Oto stared at the sky. He would reach the cave soon and deliver the Bone Sparrow to Iliya. For now, he wore the necklace around his own neck, hoping that perhaps the sparrow would grant him the same luck and protection as its true owner, if only for a little while. Despite everything, Oto felt hope. He would listen to Mirka. He would travel wherever Iliya decided. He would cheat fate. With the help of the Bone Sparrow he would once again find Anka.
As Oto started up the mountain, the sky above him blossomed into waves. He watched the great ribbons of color ripple through the darkness. Oto listened to his wife’s love song, glowing in the darkness of the night just as it was glowing in the shadows of her mind. He held tight to the Bone Sparrow hanging from his neck and wondered if he would ever meet his child.
Two days later, when Oto found Iliya busy in his cave, scraping the walls and placing the green mold carefully into bottles, Oto realized that the healer had been waiting for him. That somehow he had known. Oto smiled. Mirka was right. He would find his wife and child. He was sure of it.
Oto handed the Bone Sparrow to Iliya and helped him pack up his medicine into his satchel. They set off before dawn, tracing their way across the mountain. Oto did not know where they were going, and he suspected Iliya didn’t either. But the farther they traveled, the more clearly they saw how war had ravaged their country.
One day, four weeks after setting off from the cave, the knot of leather holding the Bone Sparrow came loose. It fell from Iliya’s neck into the dirt. Oto stopped to pick it up.
It was then that Iliya stepped on the land mine.
The explosion catapulted Oto into the air, stunning him and turning the air still in front of his eyes. By the time he struggled to his feet, Iliya was gone. His severed foot lay precariously on the edge of the cliff, as if carelessly discarded by a passing traveler.
Oto leaned over the cliff face and called for his friend until his voice was hoarse, knowing as he did so that there was no chance that anyone could survive such a fall. As the sun’s heat lifted from the land, Oto closed his eyes. He picked up the Bone Sparrow. It was unharmed, except for the coin missing from its center. Although Oto searched the ground and the nearby brush, he could not find it. With a heavy heart, he put the Bone Sparrow around his own neck and continued along the path.
The story stops and there is a set of directions for how to get to Eva’s house. I wish Jimmie’s
mum had been more organized with her story keeping. I think of Oto, walking and walking to find Anka and their baby, but in my head I see my ba. I wonder how long he’s been walking. I wonder how much more walking he has to do.
I want to keep reading. To find out how long it takes Oto to find them. If he ever finds them. I don’t know if my ba can hear me, but my brain is shouting at him to continue along the path. To just to hurry up and get here, because Queeny is sick of being invisible. And I’m sick of waiting.
Jimmie has a kind of squirled-up look on her face. She takes the book from my hands and starts running her fingers over the letters. “I don’t know this bit. Maybe I’ve just forgotten, but I’d know, wouldn’t I? If I’d heard this before?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe she got distracted in the telling? Or maybe you were just too little.”
“But what if it’s not that? What if I’m forgetting? Sometimes…” She stops talking and looks up at the stars. She’s quiet for so long, I wonder if she forgot that she was even talking. But then she sniffs and looks right at me. “Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can’t even remember what she looks like. You know? Not really. I miss her, Subhi.”
I hold her hand and look up at the stars because I don’t know what to say. Even though the stars are the very same ones I’ve looked up at every night since being born, they look different. I remember Eli telling me that the stars we look at are already dead, we just don’t see it yet, is all. That should make me sad, but it doesn’t. It just makes them more amazing for the strangeness of it.
I give Jimmie’s hand a squeeze. “It doesn’t matter what you see. I think it just matters what you feel.”
Then Jimmie reaches into her pocket and pulls out three pieces of chocolate. “There’s one for each of us and one for the rats.”
We lie back against the bricks and look up at the stars, letting the chocolate melt slowly in our mouths.
I don’t even notice that sad-angry fog still floating on the air.
Maá won’t wake up. She’s just stopped. Sometimes her eyes open, but she isn’t really there. She isn’t really seeing. Queeny tries to feed her a bit and gives her water. She tells me to just be quiet. For god’s sake would I just shut up and stop asking questions and stop talking and stop. Just stop. Just stop and leave Maá alone and be quiet. Quiet quiet quiet. No one in the tent makes a noise. Not even the babies.
They brought in a doctor today. He’s a new one. The doctors in here come and go a lot. Sometimes there’s no doctor here for months, and when that happens, you just have to hope on not getting sick. Eli calls it a doctor shortage, just like the food shortages and water shortages. I used to imagine Harvey standing outside filling up a plastic pool with doctors until the sun shriveled them up to nothing and not a single one was left.
The doctor was here to see Maá. He looked at her and listened and told us to keep her cool and get lots of rest. That’s the cure for just about everything around here.
“Useless as teats on a bull,” I said. I said it loud so he heard. But he just looked sad and confused, and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all.
Then Harvey came in and said to Queeny that they’re putting Maá on HRAT Watch too. I don’t know why because Watch is for the people who try to hurt themselves into dying. Like Saleem, who used every bit of money he could find to buy a boat to save his family because bombs kept falling from the sky and killing everyone he knew. He left his country with his whole family but arrived here on his own. He even paid extra because he was promised a good boat with a motor and a roof and life jackets to fit his little girls, but all he was given was a rubber boat with no life jackets and a promise that the seas were good and calm at this time of year. That promise wasn’t any good either, and he said that now he’d lost everything he couldn’t see why he had to live anymore. He was put on HRAT Watch, but it didn’t do any good. Queeny told me he would be happy now, because at least he would be with his little girls and his wife again.
Mostly it’s grown-ups who go on Watch, but sometimes kids do too. Especially kids who have seen so much stuff on their way here that they can’t get it out of their heads. “Coming here is a bit like waking up from a nightmare and then finding out that you aren’t awake at all,” Queeny told me one time when we saw a boy try to hurt himself. I tried to tell the boy about the Pebbles of Happy, but he didn’t talk English like I do. I gave him the pebble anyway, but it just made him cry big, huge tears that fell without any sound at all.
Maá hasn’t tried to hurt herself. She’s just tired, is all. So tired that she won’t move, or eat, or drink much. But she’s not trying to hurt herself. Maá shouldn’t be on HRAT Watch. I told Harvey, but he said not to worry. He told me that the Jackets are just checking on her because she hasn’t eaten much or had much to drink and they just want to make sure she is okay.
I can’t remember the last time Maá was awake. I would have kept count if I’d known, but the last time she was awake I didn’t realize she wouldn’t be waking up for so long, so I didn’t bother remembering.
I can’t remember the last time Maá said anything either. Not even an “Ah, my love” and a kiss good morning. I think the last time was on my birthday when we watched the rain. I think that was it. I love it when Maá talks. Her voice is soft and buttery and honeyed like warm toast. We only get warm toast with butter and honey when there are Visitors, but when we do it makes me think of Maá’s voice. Especially when she sings.
When I was little, Maá used to sing all the time. Songs from everywhere she could find them, and all of them happy and bright. Some of them were in Rohingya, and even though I couldn’t understand all of the words properly, they were my favorites. One of them was about swimming through the stars and running with the wind. If we all sing together, our song can light up the dark.
And those songs, and that singing, it changed the heavy in the air, so that after, we keep that smiling and happy feel for days. But that hasn’t happened for a long time. Maá hasn’t sung for a long time. I don’t know if she even remembers the words.
I say maybe it was a snakebite, making Maá sleep like that. But Queeny says that is just about the dumbest thing she’s ever heard, and that if Maá had been bitten by a snake, then she would already be dead, and why couldn’t I just get out and find somewhere else to be?
There are lots of snakes in here. Sometimes they get confused and wind their way under the fences and into the tents. I don’t see why Queeny thinks a snakebite is so stupid. Once we saw a snake with a baby rabbit, eating it whole, right on the other side of the fences. Later Eli told me that the rabbit wouldn’t have known. Its eyes weren’t even open yet.
Maybe that’s the same with Maá. Maybe her eyes are shut so she doesn’t have to see everything anymore.
Eli is waiting for me over by the fence. He has angry pumping out of him and he won’t stop walking up and down that fence, jerking all over. I want to know where his strong walk is, but I don’t think I can ask him. Even Eli looks like he’s losing bricks.
“They say they’re moving a whole lot of us from Alpha. They reckon it’s getting too full in here, so we have to go to a Transit Center. In another country, Subh. Because this country won’t have us. Not ever. They’re sending us to a country that can’t even look after its own people. Where people die of starvation and disease. A country whose people don’t want us. They did it before—they put people into the Transit Center and they all got beaten up and told to go back to where they came from. The police were there and didn’t even try to stop it. Some reckon the police joined in. They can do anything to us there, anything at all. People have been murdered, and no one does anything. No one even tries. We can go Outside there, but we can’t work, or go to school, or anything. Even most of the people whose country it is can’t get jobs. And the doctors, and the hospitals, they’re like the ones back home. They aren’t safe. We won’t even have enough money to buy food. How are we supposed to live? How are we…”
Eli stops walking and
kneels down in the dirt, his face squashed up against the fence diamonds so he doesn’t even look like Eli at all.
“I’m scared, Subhi. I don’t want to go. I’m not a grown-up. I don’t want to be one yet.” Eli is crying. Eli who never shows his scared to anyone.
I kneel down and squash my head up against his through the fence, so our tears are mixing and falling together onto the ants running rings around us. I don’t know what to say to make it better.
Just when my whole body feels like tearing in two, and my head is burning with Eli’s sadness, a sparrow comes and lands right next to us. It eyes me just like that Bone Sparrow of Jimmie’s, and I wonder if it’s carrying souls too. Keeping people together. Bringing luck. I think of Oto, walking his way to peace. To freedom. And when that bird looks at me, all of a sudden, I see. I can see how I can help Eli.
I grab his hand through the fence and squeeze it hard, my voice so quiet I can hardly hear it myself. “Eli, there’s a way out. Through the fences. You just have to go sixteen steps and then the fence, and you can go and—”
Eli shakes his head and cries even harder. “Go where, Subhi? You’re my family. You’re all I’ve got.” Eli wipes his face to get the tears away, but it just leaves red muddy splotches instead. “We don’t know who’s going yet. All we know is that fifty of us are due to be moved next week. That’s all they’ll say. Beaver said fifty are moving and the rest are being sent back to their old countries. But that can’t be right. He has to be messing with us. Right?”
I give his fingers a squeeze. “But, Eli, if they’re going to take you, you should…There’s a girl. She can help. She could look after you or…or…”
Now Eli’s looking at me all strange. “What girl?”
But before I can answer, he shakes his head again. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t bugger off and leave everyone else, can I?”
He’s right. Maybe someone else could. But not Eli. Never Eli.
The Bone Sparrow Page 10