Imperfect Birds

by Anne Lamott

  “Maybe the worst is over,” Elizabeth said to James one day.

  “Oh God, don’t ever say that again. It’s the worst possible bad ju-ju. Go get a chicken bone, wave it over the both of us.” They continued to wait for the outpatient rehab people to call.

  On the second Saturday of Rosie’s confinement, her mother dropped her off at the theater to see a movie with Fenn, who stood there like a young Amish man in a white dress shirt. They waved good-bye and turned toward the door. Elizabeth drove away. One of Fenn’s roommates had seen the movie, and he told Rosie the high points while they sipped cold canned piña coladas in Fenn’s living room on the way to bed.

  The movie the following Friday was two and a half hours long, plus trailers, so they took a light dose of mushrooms and sat in his backyard. House finches, goldfinches, song sparrows, wrens; the weather was bright and warm and sweet and cold all at once. He brought out a sleeping bag and they lay on it and looked at the stars, and then they climbed inside to hold each other.

  He wanted to make love but she felt shy and cold, and the mushrooms had kicked in hard. It was like the K-hole you hit with ketamine, when you peaked and felt yourself a few feet away from your body, and your body got paralyzed, in a good way. They talked about how he wanted to live in Humboldt County, grow great weed to get ahead, and then convert the soil to organic farming and maybe grow apricots or something. She could go to Humboldt State, infinitely mellower than the colleges her mother was trying to coerce her into applying to. Rural, coastal, close enough to visit her parents.

  They tripped without speaking for an hour or so, listening to the birds in the redwood. Fortunately, they began to come down; she had only an hour until she would be picked up at the theater. He made them fresh-squeezed orange juice, with a bit of vodka to soften the edges. It was funny that her parents hadn’t figured that they needed a Breathalyzer.

  Over drinks, Fenn looked deep into her eyes, and said, “I want us both to live by different codes than our parents did. This is my only dream. I’m reading a book called Songlines, about Aborigines, and I think it may be what I’m looking for. They had a system to communicate throughout the vast lands, which was so alive to them. Like birds do, right? There were invisible paths the Aborigines traveled by, that crisscrossed Australia because the Ancestors taught them that geography had a song—it’s alive and singing, and you are never lost or alone, because you can hear it telling you where you are.”

  “Hey, we’re having Ancestors’ Day soon at Sixth Day Prez if you want to go,” she said. God, how stupid that sounded after what a brilliant thing he had just described. He did not respond for a while, but stroked her shoulders. “Don’t you totally love Aborigines?” he asked finally. She guessed she did. They came down gently as clouds.

  James,” Elizabeth whispered in the dark one night, “Rosie really is doing better.” They held each other tightly in bed, and she was about to drop off. She had begun to recognize her life again but still lived for bedtime. The dark was warmer than the light of day had been, skin to skin: it was nice not to see each other’s worn faces and flaws. He yawned loud as a dog. She knew every single personal noise James made—grunts when he got up, light snores when he went to sleep, medium snores throughout the night, groans from repositioning, occasional farts, all part of the marital soup. They hadn’t made love in so long. She had the sex drive of a haggis, but when he slid his leg between her legs that night, she smiled and climbed on top of him. It was a temporary but very sweet fix. He knew the moves, the combinations, and it was lovely once they started. Then she was able to fall asleep, all thoughts chased from her head.

  Elizabeth spent the next few days killing time as pleasantly as possible while waiting for the county rehab to call. One Thursday, she went to an early AA meeting after dropping Rosie at school, and took the ferry to San Francisco afterward with Rae to see a new exhibit at the Asian. Rae looked like a buttercup in the drizzle, wearing a soft yellow parka and a knit cap. Elizabeth enjoyed the boat ride, although the whole time they were on the water she thought about jumping overboard. Her psychiatric meds dulled this desire but did not take it away—she had always wanted to jump out of any window, fall overboard and be done.

  Rae’s cheeks grew red on the windy deck, and after a while they went inside. Elizabeth bought two cocoas with whipped cream from the bar, and as they sat nursing them below deck something leapt onto Elizabeth’s pant leg. It scared her out of her mind. But it was just a grasshopper. She pointed it out to Rae. It looked like a husk, desiccated and vigorous at the same time, a seedpod that could spring way high.

  The grasshopper quivered a moment on her knee. “Wow,” said Rae, bending down low to peer at it. “It’s so pretty, isn’t it, like dry grass or foxtails.” It leapt off Elizabeth’s leg to the floor and then into the shadows. Elizabeth clutched her heart as if she felt faint.

  “Oh my God,” Rae exclaimed. “Do you even understand what a great omen that is? It’s almost as auspicious as encountering a cow.”

  Wary but game, Elizabeth said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What does it mean? Money, I hope.”

  “Someone helpful and distinguished is about to enter your house. True!”

  Nothing happened the first night, or the second. But on the third, while heating up soup, Elizabeth heard someone at the door. It was probably Witnesses, or maybe Rae was right and the grasshopper person was here. Maybe it was Ed McMahon. She smoothed her hair behind her ears, and went to open the door.

  She found a tall person of nonspecific gender standing or rather jouncing on the stoop, beaming, chubby and beautiful, and it took Elizabeth a moment to recognize Jody in the punk shirt and pegged black jeans, long straggly blond Kurt Cobain tresses and kohl.

  Jody cried and threw herself into Elizabeth’s arms. Elizabeth half lifted her in a hug. “My grasshopper girl.” Jody stepped back and peeked, puzzled, through unkempt bangs. Elizabeth yelled for Rosie:

  “Rosie, Jody’s home!”

  Rosie came barreling down the hallway toward them, shouting, “Jody!”

  “Ro-Ro.” They hugged as if someone had told each of them that the other was dead, and Elizabeth joined them in a group hug, so there were six long arms, women’s arms, everywhere, cries and chirps of disbelief. Jody said not to look at her, because she was obese; she looked healthy and soft and sturdy.

  “I quit smoking,” she announced. “Oh my God, and look!” She pulled up the T-shirt, and Elizabeth thought she was displaying the baby fat on her stomach, but something dangled from her belt, a chain of colored plastic key tags, strung together like soda-can pop tops, whites hooked onto white, then orange, then green. “I have sixty days clean in NA.”

  Elizabeth gaped. Each key chain was stamped “NA” in black; the white ones said “Just for Today,” the orange one “30 Days,” the green one “60 Days.”

  Rosie claimed her. “Come into my room! Mommy, can she stay for dinner?”

  “Of course. And call Alice. Rosie’s clean, too, Jo!” Elizabeth hugged Jody again and let her go. “Can I ask you something? Are you still with your soldier?”

  Jody shook her head. “He shipped out. A month ago, but it’s okay.”

  “Can you believe you fell in love with a soldier?” Rosie asked.

  “You love who you love, Rosie. Like you should even talk.”

  “I know, but I mean, Claude wasn’t even a Democrat.”

  “One more question,” Elizabeth said. “Why so many white key chains?”

  “I kept slipping. I’d get a week, then Claude would get paid, and we’d buy blow. But we got a month clean together, and now I have sixty days.”

  “Sixty days!” James shouted when he arrived. “You don’t get shit at my Al-Anon meetings. You get wrinkles, tear tracks, and a knuckle sandwich.” Elizabeth was serving up black bean soup with dollops of sour cream, a garnish of cilantro.

  “Are you going to finish up high school?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I told you, Mom. She’s getting her GED.
Which is exactly what I want.”

  “Do you go to AA, or just NA?” Elizabeth asked.

  “NA. Alcohol counts as a drug, so I’m sober, too.”

  Elizabeth reached forward to stroke her cheeks. “Oh, Jody. Will you go to College of Marin in the spring—or get a job?”

  “Both.”

  Rosie gave Elizabeth the evil eye. “Mom, what do you think this is, Special Ops?”

  Elizabeth ignored her. “Well, want me to ask Rae if they can use help at church? Maybe they need to fill Rosie’s old job.”

  Rae called while Elizabeth and James did the dishes—it was that sort of grasshopping day. Elizabeth caught her up on Jody’s surprise arrival, and asked if there might be part-time work. Rae said Jody should call her. Elizabeth headed to Rosie’s room, where Alice had joined the other two girls. They were in bear-cub mode, sprawled all over one another on the bed, that thick glossy hair a blur of dirty blond, reddish, and black. Alice was saying, “Are you like a lesbian now?” and Jody said she didn’t even know at this point. Maybe, maybe bi. Or celibate. But single.

  “I mean, who cares, what ev,” said Alice. “I love that you cut bangs. It’s so hot.”

  Elizabeth brought them sundaes to eat in Rosie’s room, then threw Alice and Jody out at nine so Rosie could finish her homework.

  Within a week, Rosie’s coloring and Elizabeth’s confidence were restored. Rosie put on five more pounds in Jody’s company. They ate cookies at the young people’s meetings, doughnuts at NA. Elizabeth went along some nights, and watched with pride and profound relief as Rosie inhaled cheap cookies. Elizabeth lived by the adage that expectations were disappointments under construction, and savored the family’s progress from frequent angry chaos all the time, to mostly peace and quiet.

  But then, in November, everything came crashing down. Elizabeth fell hard in the middle of the night. She had gone to the bathroom to pee, so tired that she didn’t bother with the lights, stepped into the bathroom, and tripped, falling against the rim of the bathtub. She smashed her shoulder on the faucet, her head against the tiled wall, and dropped through pitch-black outer space until she finally landed on the floor.

  She heard James cry out in the distance, and some old woman mewing like a hungry cat. James turned on the lights and helped her sit up. Her head, shoulder, and arm were radiant with pain, but after ten minutes, she felt normal again. Her head and shoulder hurt, though not enough to go to the hospital. James wanted her to go, but she refused. They compromised and stayed awake for an hour, icing the worst of her injuries, waiting up in case she got a headache. In the morning, she looked like the Elephant Man, and her shoulder was badly bruised.

  Rosie fawned over her at breakfast, calling her hon as she held an ice pack to her shoulder. James had to leave at ten to record his latest piece at the studio in the city, but first he called Rae and asked her to stop by. Rae finally arrived, with a homeopathic ointment for deep bruising, lemon mousse, and the National Enquirer. She stayed until noon, then had to leave, as the yearly ancestors’ ceremony was scheduled for this Sunday. Jody was gathering sticks for the service as they spoke. Rae helped Elizabeth get dressed in her prettiest blouse, like someone’s auntie in an old folks’ home. And the next few days Elizabeth felt more scared than ever. She could not shake her conviction that something was up with Rosie, or going on below, in a subterranean realm, although it was nothing she could put her finger on. Yet she could tell, just as she would know if James ever had an affair: it was as if Rosie were impersonating herself, but with only a crescent of her showing, a whole side of her in the dark. Elizabeth wrote on a card in her tiniest script, “Now I am afraid all the time,” and tucked it into a book by her bed. The lump on her head receded and the bruises turned to gold, but her shoulder still ached and she felt old and in the way. Worries felt like fishhooks sticking out of her solar plexus, connected by almost invisible lines to Rosie, and she couldn’t jiggle them loose.

  James said you had to let people sink or swim, but he hadn’t let Elizabeth sink. And how could you ask a mother to let her child sink?

  Even if things were looking better, all the months of cumulative failure were pulling Elizabeth under. Release might mean that you didn’t drown, but what if your child did? She knew that fishhooks connected people only to one another’s disease. But that was better than nothing.

  Rae said, “Let’s see her rising up, okay?” Elizabeth tried; some days went better than others. James said, “We need a united front. Next time she blows it, we put her in rehab—no negotiations, no enabling, and no matter her excuses, promises, hysteria.”

  On Sunday, James and Elizabeth hiked up the hill to Sixth Day Prez. Below them, fog was burning off, rising in a thick mist through the trees of orange and yellow and red.

  But the wild field behind the cottage of worship was almost warm with a low autumn sun; two dozen people in sweaters and jackets milled around a circle of branches in the center of the meadow, while children played at the periphery. Rae waved from a table covered with ribbons and strips of cloth, where the church grandmothers sat.

  Not knowing anyone there except Rae, James and Elizabeth walked over to where children were playing Frisbee basketball with yogurt lids and the bucket-kid buckets. Jody was to be in charge of them today, with Rosie as backup, but Rosie was not there. She had borrowed Jody’s car to pick up Fenn, Jody explained, and had said she’d be right back. Elizabeth’s heart opened and closed like gills. She fiddled with Jody’s hair as they talked, and Jody fiddled with the ends of Elizabeth’s. Still, no Rosie. Jody’s small face pulled closed, like a purse. She stared off at the children, sad, thoughtful, but then her face softened, opened with relief. “Look, there’s Rosie,” Jody said, pointing.

  Rosie had stepped into the field alone, and was standing by a hollowed log in all her towering glory, looking around through the crowd for them. She might have been arriving at a beach party, in dark glasses and a dress with spaghetti straps over a tank top. Most of the grown-ups turned to watch her approach. She had this effect on people. There was just so much of her. She moved so big. Elizabeth smiled and waved, happy and relieved.

  Her daughter had an earthy gloss you might find in a garden; everyone else seemed tidy and dry by comparison. Elizabeth had seen dignified men start talking like crickets when they spoke to her, too fast and high.

  Rosie waved to her parents and Jody, and came over to embrace them. She handed Jody the keys and said that Fenn had to work all day. Jody headed back to the kids. Elizabeth reached forward to take off Rosie’s sunglasses, but she flicked her head to the side. “Hands off,” she said. “Don’t be touching the princess.”

  “Aren’t you freezing?” Elizabeth asked. Rosie shook her head no.

  “I brought one of Rae’s shawls if I get cold,” she said, and as proof, she tugged at the top of her satchel, and a loosely woven band of lavender rose like tissue.

  “Please, baby girl, put it on, I’m so cold!”

  “Mommy! Leave me alone. Work your program. Call your sponsor.”

  Anthony, in a gold and black cap, stepped out from a door in the back of the cottage, and the ceremony began. People made a half-circle around him. He looked at Elizabeth right then, and winked. “We are here to celebrate the ancestors, to thank them for their company and guidance, and to give of ourselves, to be not of the world we see, but of the whole world before us and behind us and around us and above.”

  Elizabeth looked at her daughter beside her, who watched, enrapt, amused. Elizabeth turned back to Anthony. “ ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there,’ ” he quoted Rumi. Then he showed everyone how to carve sticks, scraping off bark with penknives. When his stick was smooth, he wrapped it with threads, ribbons, and strips of cloth. The only sounds were from the children, and from meadow grasses blowing in the breeze. He took bits of paper and announced the names of his ancestors: “Jonathan, loving father, I forgive you. Eva, my mother, singer of songs, rocke
r of chairs. Louis, beloved grandfather, who taught me to whittle at the lake.”

  His deep, beautiful voice soothed Elizabeth. He stuck his stick into the ground amid weeds and grasses, some golden, some green. “To rot,” he said, like a toast. “To the rot that lets the earth take our loved ones back home.” This sort of situation was so Rae and her women at the sweat lodge, like soul arts and crafts, but it was a real stretch for Elizabeth. Side by side with her daughter and husband, she tried to do as Anthony had instructed, as well as she could. Rae was the teacher’s aide, going from person to person, standing with each awhile, hearing the names and memories. Over in the children’s corner, Jody helped the kids sand sticks until they were smooth and pale.

  Anthony said to concentrate on something important—who you are, what you so desperately need—going way back, going forward, in paths, in mist, in darkness, in light. Human, alive, you couldn’t understand much of this mysterious world, but maybe our ancestors hungered for us like we hungered for them today.

  Elizabeth said Andrew’s name out loud. James said his parents’ names, Mitch and Dottie, and then couldn’t go on. Rosie said, “To Andrew, my daddy.” Tears sprang in her eyes, and she wiped them with her hand, trying not to smear the kohl. She left her parents’ side. She needed to be with Jody. Also, she suddenly felt funny, woozy, nauseated. She walked toward the children’s corner of the field. Ten of the dozen children broke away from Jody and threw themselves at Rosie, like sticky little groupies. She got down in the grass with them and wrestled, tickled and flung, hugged, luxuriating in that precious warm skin.