Silhouette of a Sparrow

by Molly Beth Griffin

  I’d excused myself after Sunday breakfast in the dining room, telling Mrs. Harrington I was off to wander the town for the morning. “My legs need a good stretch,” I’d said. Hannah cast me a knowing look as I left but I knew she’d keep her word. I made my way to Isabella’s apartment, which was situated above the bakery on Main Street. Following the directions on her note, I climbed the back stairway and knocked at number four. As I waited for her to answer, I wondered what was behind that door. What would her apartment look like—a young woman living alone? Then she bustled out the door and closed it behind her, not giving me a chance to find out, and I didn’t want to snoop. Another time.

  Since she’d worked late the night before and was slow getting started that morning, she suggested we pop down to the bakery for a treat before heading out. So there we sat, presiding over Main Street and finishing off two warm croissants.

  “Your note said, ‘It’s safer now.’ Whatever did you mean by that? Did Mrs. Harrington die or something?”

  “No, no.” I crumpled the empty bag in my hands and I told her, in hushed tones, about my conversation with Hannah.

  “Well, how’s that for a juicy bit of drama!” She licked the crumbs off her lips.

  “She called you some terrible names.”

  “Oh, never mind about that. Hannah Harrington can call me whatever she wishes. And if these people want to snub me,” she gestured into the street and called out, “so be it!”

  “It must be marvelous. I mean, how wonderful not to care what anyone thinks of you.”

  “But I do care, don’t you see? The uptight people are supposed to think I’m a threat, just like the crowd at the dance hall is supposed to think I’m . . .”

  “Beautiful? And carefree and youthful and—sexy?”

  “Yes. See? It’s all about what people think of me. Sometimes, to tell you the truth, I lose track of myself under all the makeup and the glittery costumes. It’s an act. I love the dancing, but the rest of it kind of wears me out. That’s why I like to be with you.”

  She must’ve seen the question in my eyes. I’d been wondering for ages why she enjoyed my company.

  “With you,” she said, “I know who I am. Or at least, I know who I want to be.”

  I couldn’t kiss her there, in the middle of town, so we sat in silence a moment as the grocer across the street watered his flowerpots and a group of vacationers passed us, chattering, on the sidewalk.

  “Would you like to see the dance hall in the daytime?”

  “Oh, please take me,” I said, leaping up.

  I tossed the bag in the trash can next to the bench as Isabella brushed crumbs from her skirt. Then she stood up and offered me her arm, like a gentleman would offer his arm to a lady. I giggled, took it, and marched off down Main Street at her side.

  If people gawked, so be it!

  The dance hall was dark and ghostly during the day. Our footsteps echoed as we walked through the empty space, and a musty smell of dust and sweat lingered in the air. When Isabella spoke, she whispered, as though we were in a church.

  “Would you like to see my dressing room?”

  I nodded. I followed her through a door to the side of the stage and down a dark hallway. She pushed open a door at the end and motioned me inside.

  Racks and racks of bright costumes stood against the walls of the close little cubby. Hats rested on head-shaped stands that stood on high shelves, and a mess of makeup covered the top of a scratched-up vanity at the far end. Mirrors bounced all the colors back, making the tiny room seem twice as vibrant as it was, and twice as crammed.

  “What do you think?” Isabella asked, her voice returning to its normal tone. She picked a filmy scarf up off the floor and hung it on a hook behind the door.

  “It’s fabulous. It’s just like the show was that night: bright and loud and dazzling.” I ran my hand along the rack of fringed and beaded costumes.

  “Do you want to try one on? Here, how about this?” She pulled a black and orange one off the rack and held it up. It was shimmery and bold, like an oriole’s stunning feathered breast, and it would seem ridiculous on me.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” I said, feeling heat jump to my face.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s a dress for an oriole, Isabella, not a sparrow like me.”

  As soon as I said it, I remembered the nuthatch. I remembered Mary Elizabeth. And I wondered—

  “Oh, come on, just put it on.”

  Then her hands were on me, lifting up my dress. I inhaled sharply, surprised, embarrassed, realizing too late that I’d scared her off. Her hands were gone.

  “No, I couldn’t,” I said, flustered, as I resettled my dress. “But there’s one thing I would like.”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “Could I stand up on the stage?”

  “Of course,” she laughed. “Come with me.”

  She led me out of the dressing room, down the hall, up three steps, and through a different door.

  “And now,” she said in a booming voice through the open door, “the act you’ve all been waiting for—the lovely, the talented, the legendary, Garnet Richardson!”

  With a little push, she had me through the door and out on the platform. I took three small steps forward, and just stood there. I looked back to Isabella and she nodded. With three more steps I was in the middle of the stage, where I stopped to look out over a sea of imaginary people. All of their imaginary eyes were on me. And what did they see? That was the question. I had no desire to perform, but there was a burning wish in me to be seen. I wanted someone to look at me the way I looked at birds—without thinking they knew what they’d find, without trying to fit me into a mold they’d already formed in their head.

  When I turned back to Isabella, she was looking at me that way. If she could, and if I could, maybe that was enough for now. I had her for only another six weeks, and six weeks suddenly seemed like no time at all.

  I jumped off the stage and Isabella and I headed toward the park, together.

  “The ori-ole is common in open deci-decidu-deciduous wood-lands or am-among scattered small trees.”

  “Hannah, you’re doing wonderfully. Why on earth did you think you couldn’t read?”

  “This book is a lot simpler than what my tutors have used. The pictures help me figure it out, and there isn’t too much text at a time. Since my teachers think I should be proficient by now, they’ve been pushing all kinds of impossible books at me—Greek philosophy and Old English poetry.”

  “Do you read your mother’s magazines? The newspaper?” After I said it I realized I knew the answer. I hadn’t seen her pick up a magazine or newspaper all summer.

  She blushed. “Sometimes,” she said, “but I’m just, you know, intimidated. Since I’m not very good.”

  “We’ll practice, Hannah, with easy books at first. Then you won’t be so scared. Now, go on. You were reading about the northern oriole.”

  Mourning Dove

  (Zenaida macroura)

  “It’s charming, Isabella.”

  “Well, I cleaned . . . a little.”

  I ran my hand over a fringed curtain that rippled scarlet under my fingers. The apartment was small, with a tiny kitchen and bathroom and living space, a door to a single bedroom, and a narrow window overlooking Main Street. The carpets were dingy and the paint chipped, but she had covered as much of the place as she could with costume fabrics and dance hall posters. It was perfect. It was all hers.

  “Would you like a tour?” she said, laughing. We could see the whole apartment from where we stood.

  It was a Sunday evening, the first of August. Two wonderful weeks had passed since the day we’d visited the dance hall together, and with my arrangement with Hannah working out so well, I felt it was safe for me to spend some time at Isabella’s apartment. Isabella didn’t have shows on Sundays, and the Harringtons were out for the evening at another lady’s summer cottage on the other side of the bay, so tonight we were free to
spend some real time together. Alone.

  After my “tour,” we settled on the little sofa in the living room. Within moments, the mood turned melancholy. In three and a half weeks I’d be going home, and our impending separation colored everything we did together now.

  “How about a record?” Isabella asked.

  Music seemed like a great idea.

  “Sure.”

  “King Oliver?”

  “Is that jazz?”

  “Of course, what else?” She leapt toward the cabinet in the corner. It was a well-worn record player; she touched it lovingly. She fished the King Oliver record from a disorderly pile and pulled it out of its folder. The motion was almost like a knight drawing a sword from its scabbard. Jazz was Isabella’s weapon—with it she fended off all the monsters the world threw at her. The monstrous thought of August twenty-sixth was definitely something to combat with jazz. She carefully set the record on the turntable and flicked the “on” switch. It hummed and then popped and crackled as she lowered the arm. Then the room filled with the scratchy swing and swell of King Oliver’s Orchestra.

  A grin leapt to Isabella’s face and she started to shimmy and shake as though King Oliver himself was using her as a marionette. She kicked and twisted and stepped and stomped freely, impulsively, like it was more natural for her to dance than to stand still. I perched awkwardly on her sofa and watched.

  “Dance with me, darling,” she said, beckoning me over with a flutter of her fingers.

  I stood but hung back, timid, feeling the weight of my lanky arms and legs anchoring me to the floor. Isabella looked like she could take off at any moment, but I didn’t know how to shake off my clunkiness. I wanted to learn; suddenly I desperately wanted to learn, and this was my chance to learn from her. I might never get another. “Will you teach me to Charleston?”

  “Come here, girl.”

  I moved toward her, biting my lip.

  “Like this,” she said. “Follow me.”

  I tried to copy her movements, but mine came out awkward and jerky We kept at it—step, kick, step, step, step, kick—until we were doing as much laughing as dancing. Then she threw in variations: thigh slaps, foot slaps, hip slaps, trotting, jumping, knee holds . . . She taught me to scooter and to charge, to do the coffee grinder and the Suzie Q, all in the tiny space of her sitting room. Gradually my limbs freed up and the rhythm found its way into my heartbeat.

  “Keep with it, Garnet. You’re doing great,” Isabella panted after four or five songs, smiling at me. We jiggled and jived, laughing with tears in the corners of our eyes. The little apartment shook with the sheer joy of it, like it was about to fall apart, but I wasn’t worried. At that moment, I felt ready for anything. And if the building crumbled to the ground, the two of us would’ve lifted up into the air and danced away.

  When the record ended, Isabella put on some Louis Armstrong and we collapsed onto the sofa. The raspy, throaty voice and the smooth cornet seeped into our lungs and our veins and the world’s turning slowed down. He was a mourning dove, with that soulful call. We were spent, exhausted, and the wild joy of the dancing settled into a quiet calmness. I was afraid that the lightness would leave me if I stopped moving, that the worry and the melancholy would sink back in, but they didn’t. Even in rest, I could feel that the dancing had changed me—the lightness was part of my bones. I traced the leaves that twisted up the faded upholstery of Isabella’s sofa with one finger, imagining the Louis Armstrong dove gently crooning from the brush as it foraged for seeds. Isabella hummed along to the music with her head resting on the back of the sofa and her eyes shut.

  As one song melted into another, we drifted closer together till we were holding each other on the sofa. The sun had set, and as darkness spread out over the street outside the lamps were lit one by one. There wasn’t much to say, so we just held each other. Then the energy between us shifted, just slightly, and the holding became touching. We kissed silently as the room grew dark. What happened then surprised me, but didn’t. She pulled my dress up and up and over my head. With deft fingers she unlaced my camisole and I didn’t stop her as she removed every stitch of my underclothes. I was exposed.

  In my sudden nakedness I glanced nervously at the door and then the open window. All was quiet—no one would disturb us. When I turned back, Isabella’s dress was gone and her slip was halfway off, her pale skin like powdered sugar sifting out of it as she worked it over her head. I caught my breath at the sight of her. No going back. My hands were on her then, before the slip had even fallen to the floor. All hesitation evaporated into the hot summer air and we became a moving tangle of arms and legs and hands and lips. It was a slow, silent carousel ride, and I gave in completely to the dizziness.

  Afterward, we dressed and cuddled up together as the spinning world settled back into calmness. Isabella fell into a soft sleep, and I found my scissors on the end table and snipped out her silhouette. It was the first one I’d done of a person, but I just pretended she was a bird and found her borders. I’d traced them often enough with my hands and my eyes that the lines of her face were familiar to me. She slept peacefully, and her stillness made it easy for me to capture the subtleties of her high cheekbones and full lips. Sure enough, the finished cutout looked just like her. On the back, in white chalk, I wrote, “Never forget who you are.”

  Did I know who she was? I knew a lot, but not everything. There were things she never talked about, and I’d never pressed her for them. I’d almost forgotten about the gaps in her history, too intrigued by what she did tell me to worry about what she didn’t. But her practiced hands on my skin reminded me of the things she didn’t say, and now I had to wonder: who had she been with before me? She’d been my first, but I was obviously not hers. Harlot, Hannah had called her. Could the rumors be true?

  “I don’t care,” I whispered to her sleeping form. “I love you.” Then I left the cutout on the coffee table and slipped out of the apartment and into the night.

  I crept in through the kitchen door of the Galpin—I had no idea how late I was or if I’d be in trouble. The kitchen was safer. A cook was chopping vegetables for the next day’s meals as I came in, and someone was washing dishes amid a cloud of steam, but the kitchen was pretty quiet at this time of night. Avery leaned against a counter, talking softly to a young colored woman whose face I couldn’t see. He saw me and smiled.

  “Are they back yet?” I asked.

  “No, I haven’t seen them.”

  Then she turned. It was Charlotte. I gasped.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Garnet,” she laughed. “If my mistress finds out about all this, it won’t be from me.” She shook her head and looked at Avery. “The things that woman doesn’t know . . .”

  “Thank you,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll go up then.”

  “Anything you need?” Avery asked.

  I shook my head and moved toward the lobby. They went back to their whispered conversation.

  Sure enough, the suite was empty when I let myself in. I was safely in bed by the time the Harringtons returned, and dreaming of mourning doves.

  Great Blue Heron

  (Ardea herodias)

  “Garnet, come here, listen to this,” Hannah called. The book I’d given her to study lay open in her lap, her finger resting on the place she’d left off reading. We’d been working together three weeks, and although silent letters and diphthongs still tripped her up, she did pretty well as long as she had some context for what she was reading and some interest in it. I’d offered to find her books on an interest of hers, but she seemed reluctant to give up the bird books when she was just starting to get comfortable with them, and I didn’t want to push her.

  When I abandoned my letter to Alice and moved down the veranda to join Hannah, her finger tracked up the page a bit and then resumed its travels across the words she thought might interest me. Her halting voice read the passage aloud: Crane Island is situated in the upper portion of upper Lake Minnetonka, and has received its name f
rom the circumstance of its being the breeding and roosting place of the “Blue Cranes” as this species is popularly called. How long it has been thus occupied is not even traditional, for it was a heronry earlier than the Indian traditions began . . .

  “Keep reading, Hannah. You’re doing wonderfully. I can’t believe there is a heronry here—right here-and I didn’t even know it. Read me some more.”

  “You take a turn, Garnet. My eyes are starting to cross.” She passed me the book and pointed to where I should begin. I continued:Early in the mornings, between the 5th of May and the 20th of October, they may be seen flying far away in all directions till all have departed. Then from four in the afternoon until dark, the birds return . . .

  I took a moment to skim over the herons’ mating rituals and nesting habits, forgetting Hannah’s reading lesson entirely in my excitement. A little farther down the page, I began to read aloud again:Since that lake has become a great summer resort, and is constantly plied with steamers, yachts, and row-boats constantly flitting back and forth at all hours of the day and night, it is a standing surprise that these birds (and their copartners, the cormorants) still continue to return year after year to the same familiar spot. However, it must be confessed that from these disturbing causes, to which should be added a long-continued practice of firing pistols at them from the steamers’ decks to see the females rise in clouds from their nests, and the robbing of their eggs by men and boys by the employment of telegraph pole climbing irons to reach them, their numbers became so sensibly reduced as to call in special legislation, or all would have been destroyed or driven entirely away.

  “Blue cranes . . .” I said, gazing out toward the lake and absentmindedly handing the book back to Hannah. “‘Special legislation’ means they’ve passed laws to protect them—that means they might still be out there! When was this published? Must have been during the time of the great steamers with that reference in there. Look in the front of the book for the copyright information.”