Pablo and Birdy

by Alison McGhee

  “Why would it hurt my feelings?”

  “Because you’re my family, Emmanuel. You and Birdy and Lula and Pierre and Maria, all of you.”

  “We are your family, mi Pablito,” said Emmanuel. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not sad about what you lost. I feel sad because I wish I could help you, but I don’t have answers either.”

  Emmanuel leaned down and put his hands on Pablo’s shoulders. Pablo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The weight of his fingers wasn’t like Birdy’s talons, but it wasn’t that far off, either.

  “But one thing to remember, Pablito, is that others share your story.”

  “They do?” Pablo tried not to sound skeptical, but it was hard to imagine that there were other people out there who had floated in to shore on an inflatable pool, with a bird watching over them. Emmanuel smiled, as if he knew what Pablo was thinking.

  “Not exactly like your story,” he said. “But remember that there are many others in this world who had to leave their homes, for various reasons, and their journeys are long and hard.”

  Then, as big as Pablo was—almost double digits—Emmanuel picked him up as if he were little again and hugged him tight. “What do you say to a game of rummy?” he said.

  Pablo wasn’t sure how he felt about a game of rummy, to be honest. It wouldn’t be the same without Birdy hopping from one side of the table to the other, inspecting their cards and advising them with a point of her beak or a swat of her wing. But he nodded anyway. Emmanuel shuffled and Pablo dealt, and the Buena Vista Social Club played on in the background.

  It was the day after they all celebrated Pablo’s maybe-birthday—that was what they decided to call it—with chocolate cake and strawberry ice cream, that Pablo caught a glimpse of a new tattoo on Lula’s arm, peeking out from under her sleeve.

  “What’s that?” he said. “The special of the day?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Can I see?”

  She rolled her sleeve up and didn’t say anything. Pablo did, though.

  “Birdy,” he said. Because there she was, an exact replica of his new painted seashell necklace. His bird, her wings spread, soaring through the air, the pendant blessing flying behind her.

  “How did you know I gave it to her?” he said, pointing at the necklace in the tattoo.

  “Because the morning after she flew away, you walked into the bakery with that new necklace,” said Lula. “And I knew.”

  Pablo studied the tattoo. It was beautiful, simple black lines on Lula’s brown arm.

  “I told you I was going to make you a special tattoo for your birthday,” she said. “Remember?”

  Pablo nodded. Then he looked closer.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “This doesn’t look like henna.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in permanent tattoos.”

  She shrugged. “I was wrong. Some tattoos are worth keeping forever.”

  She rolled her sleeve back down and winked at him.

  “One, anyway.”

  Weeks and months later, Pablo sometimes woke in the night and automatically looked over at the old Cuba suitcase to check on Birdy. But there was never a bird perched on top of it, and then he would remember that she was gone. She would not be back.

  Pablo would lie in his hammock and pull his blanket tight around him. He would reach out to the wall and set the hammock rocking, just a little bit, back and forth, the way he had been doing all his life.

  Sometimes Osito, on the big cushion on the floor next to his hammock, would sigh in his sleep. Osito was a busy sleeper, one who often sighed or yelped or moved his legs as if he were running in his sleep. Pablo liked to think that he was dreaming of elephant ears, racing down the sidewalk to escape Pierre and his wrath. Maybe not, though. Maybe he was remembering a time before he came to live here in this town, with Emmanuel and Pablo. Pablo would never know.

  He would reach down and stroke Osito’s belly as he slept. Now that his fur was grown in, it was soft and silky. His ribs were no longer sharp sticks, about to poke through his sides. He stretched and sighed in his sleep as Pablo stroked his belly from chest to leg, over and over.

  Pablo also felt for his collar, half-hidden beneath the silky fur. He had made it for Osito himself, from the feather that Birdy had given him and a leather cord. Emmanuel had made a tag for it in the shape of an elephant ear. If you looked at it in a certain way, an elephant ear looked remarkably like a heart, Pablo thought. And that seemed right.

  Sometimes he lay awake for a long time, stroking Osito’s fur as he slept on, until the sky began to grow light and Rhody, far below, crowed. The grotesque across the way was in its usual position, talons gripping the edge of the ledge, its eyes shadowed and deep. Soon the baby birds would begin their perilous tumbles from the mud nests, their parents swooping back and forth nervously. Soon the block below would fill with people needing their coffee and pastry from Pierre’s Goodies, their henna tattoos from Lula Tattoo, their maps and T-shirts and Pablo’s Painted Parrot seashells from Seafaring Souvenirs.

  Yes, the block below would soon be bustling and noisy.

  But not yet.

  It was during that quiet time, neither night nor morning, that Pablo would imagine where his bird might be.

  Was she flying right now? Was she out there, far away, somewhere on the vast stretch of the ocean? Was she high up, almost to the clouds, as high as legend said Seafarers could fly? Was she lonely? Did she ever bring back his voice, to keep her company as she flew? Did she sometimes listen in on him now, when he talked with Emmanuel or Lula or Pierre or Oswaldo, or when the Committee got out of line and he had to reprimand them?

  “Birdy-bird,” he would whisper, there in the stillness of his room, in the back-and-forth hammock. “Birdy-bird.”

  Then he would tip himself out of his hammock, and Osito would stretch and yawn on his big cushion, and together the two of them would head to the kitchen to make strong coffee and bring a mug of it to Emmanuel.

  What Pablo had not expected was that Birdy’s voice would come back to him too. When he missed her the most—making quesadillas, or watching Emmanuel dance Osito around the room to the Buena Vista Social Club, or in the middle of the night—he would close his eyes and conjure up his mother’s words as Birdy had whispered them to him. Mi dulce niño. Todo va a estar bien. My sweet boy. All will be well.

  After a while, the sound of his mother’s voice became the sound of Birdy’s voice, and he didn’t know the difference.

  Sometimes Pablo got up early and went down to the shore alone, riding his bike to the boardwalk and then dropping onto the sand. At first he thought that he would take the basket off, since there was no Birdy to ride in it, but after a while he began to use it for other things. Coconuts. Sea glass. Pretty rocks that he could paint with pictures of birds, flying birds, and sell in the souvenir shop. He was branching out.

  He stood at the edge of the water, tiny waves lapping over his toes, and looked out at the horizon. It was usually calm, with the breeze blowing onshore as always, lifting his hair off his neck and forehead. No winds of change had come before or after that one night, the night that Birdy flew away.

  The winds of change mean fortune lost or fortune gained.

  Pablo considered that old saying. It wasn’t always easy to tell what was lost and what was gained. He had lost Birdy, her presence by his side. But she would have lost her freedom, maybe her life, if she hadn’t soared away on the winds of change. And that would have been the worst thing he could imagine, Birdy locked up in a cage. So, in a way, hadn’t he both lost and gained when she flew away?

  If Birdy had been there, he would have talked to her about it. She would have listened. He missed those days. Sometimes, after making sure he was alone on the sand, Pablo spoke aloud to Birdy. Not often, but once in a while.

  “I miss you, Birdy-bird,” he would say. “I hope the winds are strong and the sky is clear, wherever you are.”
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br />   She was a Seafarer, after all. Wherever she was, out there over the enormous ocean, she was listening.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel gathered itself together, over years, from different sources of inspiration. I thank Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker for “A Voice from the Past,” his fascinating article on the properties and preservation of sound. Thanks to Steve Snyder and Nancy Forrester of Key West, whose secret garden of rescue parrots inspired the Committee. Deep thanks to my many immigrant students over the years, from whom I have learned so much. My gratitude to Diane Evia-Lanevi, Mia Munoz Garcia, Aria, Moe and Kamu Dominguez, Art Klossner and Mobius Meadows Farm, and Ann Ramaley Garry, for their help with many details. Thanks also to Kathi Appelt, Marion Dane Bauer, and Holly McGhee for their generosity in reading a very early draft. I am grateful to my adoption group friends for their laughter and insight and support. Heather Alexander’s devotion, hilarity, and enthusiasm were invaluable to me from the get-go. Ana Juan’s magnificent artwork took my breath away when I saw it, and I am honored that she chose to illustrate this book. My gratitude to the extraordinary book designer Sonia Chaghatzbanian, who continues to work her magic on my books. Jeannie Ng, copy-editor extraordinaire, I so appreciate your eagle eye. I’m grateful to the lovely Sara Crowe for her grace, enthusiasm, and smarts. My thanks to Louisa Solomon and Jim Schnobrich for their patience, skill, and dedication with the audio edition of this book. My love and thanks to Mark Garry, who listened so patiently to the ideas and vision of this book the very first night I met him, and who has kept listening patiently over the years it took to write it. Finally, thank you to Caitlyn Dlouhy, who knows how to coax the spark in this book and others into flame, and who does so with such grace and insight. How lucky I am to work with her.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alison McGhee once met a parrot named Pickles that hopped onto her arm and squawked “Thank you!,” to which she replied, “You’re welcome!” Alison is the New York Times bestselling author of Someday and the Christopher Award–winner Firefly Hollow, as well as many other books for children, including Little Boy , So Many Days , A Very Brave Witch , All Rivers Flow to the Sea, and Snap. She is also the Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Shadow Baby. She lives in Minneapolis , Minnesota, and you can visit her at AlisonMcGhee.com.

  Ana Juan is a painter, sculptor, and illustrator. In addition to her many New Yorker covers , she’s also the highly acclaimed illustrator of Frida and For You Are a Kenyan Child, and won the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award for The Night Eater. Born in Valencia, Spain, she now lives in Madrid. You can visit her at anajuan.net.

  A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster • New York

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Alison-McGhee

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Ana-Juan

  ALSO BY ALISON McGHEE

  Maybe a Fox

  Firefly Hollow

  Star Bright

  So Many Days

  Little Boy

  Someday

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Alison McGhee

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Ana Juan

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  Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian and Irene Metaxatos

  The text for this book was set in Guardi LT Std.

  The illustrations for this book were rendered in pencil.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian

  Names: McGhee, Alison, 1960– author. | Juan, Ana, illustrator.

  Title: Pablo and Birdy / Alison McGhee ; illustrated by Ana Juan.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum, 2017. | “A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book.” | Summary: Pablo, nearly ten, has many questions about his origins and how he arrived at Isla as a baby, but finding the answers may mean losing his lifetime companion, Birdy the parrot.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016025250 | ISBN 9781481470261 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781481470285 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Identity—Fiction. | Parrots—Fiction. | Human-animal relationships—Fiction. | Talking birds—Fiction. | Foster parents—Fiction. | Islands—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M4784675 Pab 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025250