The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

by Suzanne Harper

  “Don’t go hide in your room!” she called. “Come over here and talk to me!”

  I sighed and cast a wistful look at my bedroom windows, golden with reflected sunlight, high up in the trees.

  “Sparrow!”

  “All right! I’m coming!”

  I headed in her direction, cursing a bit as thorns from vicious raspberry bushes scratched my arms. Finally I stepped out into a small clearing. Grandma Bee was sitting on a boulder, looking mournful and (incidentally) presenting her best profile to her audience (me).

  There were four small granite headstones arrayed in front of her. Each one bore the name of a former husband. My sisters and I had given each a name based on the epitaph he had been assigned. The Dearly Departed was Grandma Bee’s first husband, whom she married at a very young age (“I was a mere child!” she always said. “A babe in arms, practically!”) after a dramatic elopement that involved climbing down a drainpipe from her bedroom window. The Beloved Husband was William Charles Emerson, my grandfather. The Sadly Missed was her third husband, an irascible oil baron whose fortune turned out to exist largely in his own mind. The Late Lamented was her fourth and (so far) last husband, a sickly man who could take Grandma Bee’s forceful personality for only eighteen months before turning up his toes and joining his predecessors in the backyard.

  My grandmother sighed deeply, wiped a nonexistent tear from her eye, and said, “I do so hate coming out here to tend their graves, my poor dead darlings. It’s such a mournful thing to do. But after all”—she leaned down and delicately plucked a strand of crabgrass from the Late Lamented’s grave site—“it is my duty.”

  She turned her magnified gaze on me. “Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “I could find a loyal and loving granddaughter who was willing to shoulder this burden for me.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I admit this heart-tugging performance used to work on me, but by now I had now spent far too many afternoons on my hands and knees, pulling up weeds and scrubbing headstones with extra-strength kitchen cleaner. “No one wanted them buried in the backyard in the first place! They should be in the cemetery where they belong!”

  “But I wanted my darlings close to me,” she said mournfully. “It’s such a comfort to know that they’re nearby.”

  I sighed and dropped resignedly to my knees. I began pulling up weeds in a desultory fashion as Grandma Bee sat back, content now that she could direct operations from her rocky throne.

  “You missed a dandelion, Sparrow,” she said. “Over there, by your hand. No, your left hand. That’s it, dig those rascals out by their roots! Oh, and as long as you’re down there, here are the garden shears. Trim that grass in front of Everett’s stone, dear. I can barely make out his name.”

  I started clipping as quickly as I could, totally focused on getting to the privacy of my bedroom as soon as possible. Unfortunately I was going so fast that my hand slipped, and the shears accidentally scraped the Dearly Departed’s headstone.

  “Sparrow! Watch what you’re doing!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you these days,” Grandma Bee commented. “You’ve had your head in the clouds for a week now.”

  I muttered something about having a lot on my mind.

  She leaned closer, her eyes fixed intensely on me. “Mmm. And what kinds of things do you have on your mind, I wonder?”

  I moved on to the Beloved Husband, conveniently allowing me to edge away from her stare. “Just the usual. Nothing much. You know.”

  “Mmm.” I could tell she wasn’t buying this. “How old are you now, Sparrow?” she asked ever so casually.

  I sat back on my heels. “You know I just turned fifteen!”

  “Well, I am getting older, you know.” She tried adding a pathetic quaver to her voice, but her glance at me was sharp and glinting.

  “Don’t try to sound like you’re about to go to Summerland. We had my birthday party two days ago!”

  She dropped the act and flapped a hand dismissively. “Well, there are so many of you girls. And when you get to be my age, you’ve been to so many birthday parties. It’s hard to keep track.” She took my chin in her hand so that she could peer into my eyes. “Hmm.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that hmm. I pulled back and scooted to the next headstone.

  “Fifteen,” she said. “A tricky age.”

  I bit my tongue. I would not ask.

  “Very, very tricky.”

  I refused to ask.

  “Quite dangerous, in fact. Full of perils big and small.”

  I Absolutely Positively Would Not—

  “Especially for someone like you.”

  She lifted her veil and fanned herself with it as she gazed over the fence at Mrs. Winkle, who was pouring milk into the saucers she had set out in her backyard. “I see Mary Ann Winkle is still suffering from delusions. Quite sad, really,” Grandma Bee said conversationally. Unfortunately her conversational voice is extremely loud. One might even call it booming.

  “Shh!” I hissed. “She’ll hear you!”

  “Oh, who cares? The woman’s certifiable. Always has been, from the time we were children.”

  Grandma Bee and Mrs. Winkle have been archrivals since third grade, when Mrs. Winkle first piped up with tales of fairies in her garden and Grandma Bee countered with stories about ghosts in her living room. They’ve been waging a pitched battle ever since over who is the most sensitive, the most spiritual, and the most sought-after medium in both this world and the next.

  “Only sentimental fools who have never grown up believe in fairies,” Grandma Bee went on. Her voice, I noticed, was not just loud; it was penetrating.

  “Grandma Bee, please!” I whispered urgently. “Keep your voice down!”

  “Why, hello, Sparrow!” I looked up to see Mrs. Winkle standing a few feet away, next to the fence. She glanced at my grandmother and said, rather distantly, “Bee.”

  Grandma Bee nodded regally but didn’t speak. “How was your first day of school?” Mrs. Winkle asked me.

  “Um . . . fine.”

  “Oh, I wish I were your age again! I loved my school days!” Mrs. Winkle’s round face flushed rosy as she stared into the distance, a remembering look in her eye. “My favorite subject was science.”

  This inspired a disbelieving snort from Grandma Bee.

  Hastily I indicated the still-empty saucers near the fence. “The fairies must have been hungry last night.”

  “Even more so than usual.” She beamed. “Do you know, I put out a dozen saucers? And this morning they were all empty!” She lowered her voice. “I think my fairies are starting to bring friends!”

  She smiled down at me, her blue eyes round with delight.

  “Mary Ann, have you ever noticed the dozens of cats that roam wild through Lily Dale?” Grandma asked tartly. “I’m just curious what conclusion you might draw from that. Given your scientific mind-set and all.”

  “Um, I’m sure the fairies really appreciate everything you do for them,” I interjected quickly. I put an extra ounce of sincerity in my voice to make up for Grandma Bee.

  “Oh, yes, they do,” she said. Mrs. Winkle turned to go back into her house, then stopped, a little frown creasing her forehead. “Well, that’s odd. I just had a little vision. I don’t usually have those, you know, dear.”

  “Oh, really?” I wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “Oh, please,” my grandmother muttered.

  “You’re not the only one around here with talent, Bee!” she snapped. Then she turned back to me. “I saw you standing at a crossroads. You have to make a choice about which way to go.”

  “Not a very specific vision,” Grandma murmured, adding sweetly, “After all, wouldn’t that apply to most teenagers?”

  Privately I agreed with Grandma Bee, but Mrs. Winkle had a strange look in her eye that made me uneasy. This was not the cheerful, ditzy Mrs. Winkle I had always known. This was a seer, a prophet, a woman who could se
e into the future and predict all kinds of strange and wonderful and dire outcomes. The fact that her frizzy gray hair was held back by tarnished bobby pins or that I could see a dab of toothpaste at the corner of her mouth did not lessen her authority as she stared intensely into my eyes.

  “I see a young man,” she intoned. “He is pointing down a road.”

  Mrs. Winkle looked past me, narrowing her eyes as if to bring the vision into greater focus.

  “He is watching out for you.”

  I blinked.

  “Hmm. You don’t want to take the path he is showing you, but he wants you to know that you should not be afraid.”

  A little thrill of dread ran down my spine.

  Then Mrs. Winkle blinked distractedly several times, as if she had just come out of a trance and needed a moment to readjust to the ordinary world. She smiled sunnily at me, as if nothing had happened.

  “You see, dear, there’s no need to worry. You’ll have help with whatever the future holds. Well, we all do, don’t we?” she said. “Now, I’d better get back to work! Have a nice day, dear.” She nodded coolly to my grandmother. “Bee.”

  She waved merrily and floated back to her own backyard.

  “That was so strange. What do you think it meant?” I asked my grandmother. My mind went back to what she had been saying before Mrs. Winkle came over. “And why is fifteen a tricky age? And what do you mean, for someone like me?”

  Grandma Bee cast a disdainful look at Mrs. Winkle’s garden and muttered, “Fairies!” in a tone of utter scorn. “That woman is a complete noodle.”

  “Grandma Bee!”

  She turned her attention back to me. “Yes?” she asked, the picture of innocence.

  “Why is fifteen such a tricky age?”

  “I’m so glad you asked,” she said smugly. “Most mediums have realized their talent by the time they’re sixteen. So, someone like you, who hasn’t shown any signs of psychic talent whatsoever—” She pursed her lips, as if daring me to contradict this statement.

  “Right,” I said tensely. “Not one iota.”

  “Mmm. Well, either you are supremely untalented, in which case this year will be one of waiting with less and less hope as the months go by, or you are simply repressing your gifts, in which case this year will be one of upheaval and tumult and disorder and confusion, as all that spiritual energy comes to a boil and then”—she flung her arms wide—“bursts out into the waiting universe!”

  This dramatic gesture was ruined only slightly by the fact that one arm had become tangled in the netting that hung over her shoulders, which then pulled the beekeeper’s helmet off her head. She picked it up, dusted it off, and settled it back on her head with aplomb, despite the twigs and leaves caught in the veil.

  “You make me sound like a volcano,” I said, feeling even more uneasy.

  “Well, according to you, you have nothing to worry about.” Grandma Bee pointed to the Sadly Missed. “Now would you mind brushing those maple leaves away? Poor dear Johnny always had such terrible allergies in the fall.”

  Chapter 6

  I went inside and tossed the bills on the kitchen table. My mother was sitting there, sipping a cup of tea and talking to the ghost of Mr. Tillman, a local farmer who had Crossed Over in April.

  “I don’t think you have to worry anymore about Eddie,” she was saying calmly. “I was at Rita’s house just the other day, and he’s doing fine. Back to eating table scraps and running all over the lawn.”

  I carefully didn’t look in his direction. “Mr. Tillman?” I mouthed at my mother. She nodded yes, then took another sip of tea as she listened. Mr. Tillman was a burly, red-faced man who wore faded overalls and a constantly doleful expression. The latter was due to the fact that, as my mother said, he just Could Not Let Go. For the last six months they had covered everything from whether the chickens were laying to how the old barn was holding up. His current fixation was a pig named Eddie, who, I gathered, had been much more than a pig. More like a member of the family.

  “I don’t trust that Rita,” Mr. Tillman said. “I don’t know why Frank married her. And she never liked Eddie. I wouldn’t put it past her to have him butchered!” He added darkly, “That woman craves pork chops, you know.”

  My mother glanced through the mail as she said,

  “Oh, no, she knows how much he always meant to you.” She shook her head at the bills and then absent-mindedly stuffed them in a cracked sugar bowl.

  “Well, if you say so.” Mr. Tillman didn’t sound too convinced. “Maybe you’d let her know that Eddie loves potato peelings in his dinner—”

  I ran up one flight of stairs and heard doors banging and voices yelling, sure signs that at least two of my sisters were already home. I dashed up another flight, darted into the sanctuary of my bedroom, and closed the door with a sigh of relief. As I walked over to open a window, I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the tarnished dresser mirror.

  I stopped and looked more closely. In the last year or so I’ve found myself doing that more and more often, frowning into mirrors, turning my head this way and that, trying to answer an imponderable question: What do I really look like to other people?

  My mother says that I’m pretty, but she has to say that; it’s her job as a mother. I’m afraid to ask my sisters. Some of them (Oriole, Wren, Dove) would reassure me, but I would suspect that they were just being kind and then I would sink into a depression at the thought that I was really ugly but no one wanted to tell me. Others (Raven, Lark, Linnet) would laugh and joke or make some sarcastic comment that would make me both angry and insecure, and then I would sink into a depression at the thought, etc. etc.

  The weird thing is that sometimes I think I look, well, maybe not pretty pretty, but pretty enough. On good days I like my eyes because they’re large and fringed with dark lashes and an unusual color (gray), and I like my dark brown hair (even though I wish it were curly, instead of straight as string), and I like my pale complexion. But on bad days I think I look like a troll: pasty-faced from living in some underground cave, with googly alien eyes and lank hair in a particularly boring shade of brown.

  Obviously, both propositions can’t be true at the same time. One must be true, and one must be false. But how to know which is which?

  Normally I can spend hours contemplating this philosophical problem, but today I had other things to think about. I threw myself on my bed and looked around my room, gloating (for the hundredth time) about the sweet deal I’d made last year when I moved to the attic.

  Before that I had a room on the second floor, along with all my sisters. After one too many nights spent listening to the endless family drama—shouting, tears, graphic threats of death and dismemberment—that echoed through the halls on any given night, I’d grabbed my pillow, sheets, and quilt and traipsed up the stairs. Now I was farther away from our one bathroom, and I had another flight of stairs to climb every night, but that was a small price to pay for being able to live in solitary splendor, high under the eaves of our rambling old house.

  There was enough room for a huge oak bed and dresser, an old rocker, a wall of bookshelves, and a castoff kitchen table that I use as a desk. True, none of the walls is exactly square, it’s drafty in winter, and there’s an eccentric alcove to the right of the closet door that serves absolutely no purpose, but I love it.

  The very best part, though, are the two large windows that look out over the backyard. Our house has a double-decker porch that runs around two sides of the house. Soon after I had moved into the attic, I discovered that I could crawl out onto the roof of the second-story porch. From this lofty perch I could survey the houses and yards and streets for blocks in each direction.

  The sky was darkening already, and I had a lot to think about, so I grabbed my dad’s binoculars and slipped out the window. I raised the glasses and focused on the evening star.

  If only Mrs. Winkle wasn’t always so vague. Her sudden backyard vision had raised more questions than it had answered.r />
  Like, for example, who was the young man who was pointing out the right direction for me? The first person I thought of was the ghost that had mysteriously appeared in the midst of an otherwise ordinary history class.

  Then I had another thought that wasn’t quite so cheerful. What if the young man was my father? That would mean my father had actually—I forced myself to think the unthinkable—died. The fact that Mrs. Winkle said he was young didn’t mean anything. First, everyone under the age of fifty looked young to her, and second, many spiritualists swore that in the afterlife you got to return to the age when you were happiest in this life.

  And it would make a horrible kind of sense that my father had been happiest when he was young, before he got married and had seven daughters.

  I shivered. The air was getting chilly, and my thoughts weren’t exactly warming. I scooted back inside and flopped down on my bed. Staring at the ceiling, I tried to turn my mind to more cheerful topics, but it was no use. All the old tapes about my father’s disappearance started playing in my head with tedious monotony.

  It happened when I was very young, so I can’t swear to his motives, but this is how the story was told to me: He was an amateur naturalist (people often wonder why my sisters and I are all named after birds; that’s one mystery solved). He was lured out west by a roaming band of graduate students from a nearby university. They had a grant, they told him; they wanted to study a rare ornithological species rumored to be nesting in Colorado or Wyoming; they needed someone to help them take notes, drive the pickup, and cook their dinners by the campfire. Would he join them?

  He packed his suitcase in five minutes. As he ran out the door, he called good-bye to us all and promised to write. Eight postcards, with barely legible but cheerful scrawls on the back, came that first year. Three postcards, even less legible and perhaps a touch more desperate, arrived in year two. One more postcard, postmarked Paraguay and stained with what looked like either blood or cherry cough syrup, arrived the next year. And then nothing.

  I asked my mother to tell me that story so many times that sometimes I think that I can actually remember it all happening. My own memories of him can be counted on the fingers of one hand.