Bird (21 page)

“Yeah,” I said, “but instead he fell and died. He was five.”

Silence.

Father Jim's eyebrows lifted. “I'm so sorry about your brother, Jewel,” he said, and he meant it. “That's tragic.”

I shrugged, but my throat got tight.

Father Jim crossed his legs. “And you go to this cliff? What kinds of things do you do there?”

“I talk to my rocks—or I used to,” I said, shooting a murderous look at Mom.

Mom exhaled loudly.

“Rocks.” Father Jim peered at me intently.

“Well, and to the grasses and the sky and the sun. They talk to me.” I was on a roll now. And Father Jim looked really interested, which made me want to keep going. “The cliff is special,” I said. “There's something there.”

“Like what?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. But the moment you go there, you know it's different—it doesn't feel like how a gas station or a grocery store feels.” I shifted in my chair. “It's . . . special. Like how the inside of a church is special.”

Father Jim leaned forward. “What do your rocks say?”

I thought about that for a bit. They don't use words, exactly, but I can hear them anyway. Like Grandpa. It's a different kind of talking, a different kind of listening. “They say something like, ‘We care about you,' ” I said.

The grandfather clock in the room ticked loudly, and each swing of the pendulum measured out the seconds that no one spoke. I really wanted to tell Father Jim about how I bury my pebbles too, but Mom was jiggling the foot that was crossed over her leg, which meant nothing good.

Father Jim finally turned to Mom. “When was the last time you came to mass?” he asked gently.

Mom's lips pursed, like she would bolt out of there if it wasn't for me. “Five years,” she said. “Maybe six.”

“And you're worried about your daughter's experiences at the cliff,” Father Jim said.

“Her father and I both are, for different reasons.”

Father Jim stood up and crossed over to his shelf of books. “There are a lot of ways that God talks to us,” he said. “Many times, it's through the church. But if Jewel hasn't been raised in the church, then God will talk to his children in other ways.”

Mom sat stiller than a statue.

Father Jim pulled out a book. “There was a great man who talked to stones too,” he said to me.

“Really?” I asked. This time I was the one leaning forward.

“He talked to the sun and the moon and, well, everything.”

“Where does he live?” I asked.

Father Jim chuckled. “He's been dead for a good couple centuries. His name is Saint Francis.”

“Excuse me,” Mom said sharply. “My daughter put a circle of stones at the cliff. I have lost my job over this.”

Father Jim's shoulders straightened.

“My husband thinks evil spirits are there. I'm not going to sit in this room and hear you tell my daughter she's a saint because she talks to rocks.” Mom leaned over and grabbed her purse.

“Saint Francis endured much pain and poverty,” Father Jim said.

I nodded my head vigorously. “We can't pay our bills.”

A small sound came from Mom's throat. “Enough. We're going.”

But I didn't move. “Father Jim, do evil spirits exist? Do duppies trick us?”

Mom froze. Father Jim sat there awhile and rubbed the underside of his chin. Finally he said, “There are spirits out there, angels and demons, good ones and bad ones. We need to be vigilant about what kind they are and what kind we trust.”

“How do we know what kind they are?” I pressed.

“It can be hard to discern because they come in many different forms,” Father Jim said. “The best way is to notice what they want us to do. Are they asking us to glorify God? Or ourselves?”

I wasn't sure if talking to my rocks was glorifying anything, but they always felt like home to me.

“Sometimes God talks to us through humans,” Father Jim continued, “but he can use all of creation.”

“Because God is everywhere,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So my rocks are beautiful because I'm seeing a part of God.”

Father Jim smiled. Then, because Mom really wanted to leave at that point, he said a quick prayer, that God would protect us from evil and that we could find God's blessings all around us. He also thanked God for remembering to make stones, because stones can teach us how to endure.

I liked that.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MOM
didn't say anything on the way home, which was fine with me. That gave me time to think about what Father Jim had said. And the more I thought about it, the more questions I had. Do angels and saints have to be human? If not, then Mr. McLaren's tree had to be an angel, the way it brought Eugene and me back together.

But angels and saints felt a long ways away as Mom pulled into our driveway. The sun hung above the trees.

“Well?” Dad asked, coming out to meet us. The angle of the sun made a golden outline around him. He wiped his hands on his pants. They were covered with flour.

“It was a splendid time,” Mom said dryly. “The priest says that saints talk to rocks too, so there's nothing to be worried about.”

“He said that?” Dad shifted, and with him, the light.

Mom smirked. “In fact, he and Jewel got along quite well.”

“Did he pray over her?”

“He said a prayer.”

“No,” Dad said, his forehead wrinkling up. “I meant—”

“Did he exorcise the demons?” Mom asked. She readjusted the purse on her shoulder. “No, Nigel, he did not. I guess he didn't see the need. Maybe next time, before I do you a favor, we should talk about exactly what you want me to demand of a priest.”

I left them to argue in the driveway, blinking back tears. I wasn't sure which was worse, slicing into someone with silence or with words.

I knocked on Grandpa's door. When there wasn't any answer, I peeked inside. He wasn't there. Back in my room, I slipped in one of Grandpa's mento tapes, but even his music couldn't lift the weight off my chest, not with Dad and Mom's comments seeping into our walls. So I went into the kitchen and put on my shoes again.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked. He looked directly at me, like I was a thief.

“Out,” I said.

“Don't talk to your dad with that tone of voice,” Mom said.

“I'm not going to the cliff,” I said. And before they could get on my back about
that
tone of voice, I left the house.

It was just as I thought: There were footprints through the grasses on the deer path. I followed the trail around until it opened up and revealed the pond. And Grandpa. He was sitting exactly where he had been before, his head in his hands, his back deeply curved. The pond was a soft pastel, almost a mirror to the sky.

I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Hey, Grandpa,” I called.

Grandpa's head lifted, and he looked at me for a long while, like a deer that doesn't know if it should stay or flee. I waved a little. He raised his hand awkwardly, and I walked down the grassy slope to where he was. He scooted over so I could sit next to him.

The cicadas were loud. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time. How could something so small make so much noise? Or someone as large as Grandpa make no sound at all?

But an entire universe full of silence was still better than how Dad and Mom were now talking to each other, each word awful and cold. Where was the laughter and happiness from that Valentine's Day on the tape? Joy is like a child, I realized, as I picked at the bark by my thigh. You feed it or it dies.

“Grandpa,” I said, “why are my parents so angry all the time?”

I knew better than to ask him something other than a yes-or-no question, but I couldn't help myself.

Grandpa exhaled through his nose and shook his head. I didn't quite know what he meant by that.

“And why are you so sad?” I asked.

He turned to me. I never realized how deep and full and dark his eyes were until that very moment. They were soft and endless, in an awful way, like those black holes that go on and on, never stopping for forever. I wanted to cry just looking at Grandpa. Maybe that's why he made sure never to look at anyone.

“You made so many tapes,” I said, a little shaken. “I like the way you laughed.”

Grandpa's face grew even longer, and he turned toward the pond. Then he stood up, and after a while I did too, and we watched the pond grow pink and orange and purple, until it looked like it was on fire. I was sure then that this pond knew Grandpa as well as my cliff knew me. As I was marveling at how the earth holds our sadness in many kinds of ways, Grandpa put his arm around my shoulder. Then it was my turn to turn into a deer, startled and not knowing what to do; his arm was warm and awkward and gentle, though, and my heart was beating a million times a minute because
this was Pooba
.

“It's all about Bird, isn't it?” I said, and it wasn't really a question.

Grandpa kept looking away from me in a way that said yes.

“You mean he's actually
nice
?” Eugene asked later that night. We were at Event Horizon. Eugene clicked his flashlight on and off, on and off, like he was a big lightning bug.

“Grandpa's more than nice. He shares his music with me,” I said. Eugene and I had a lot of catching up to do.

“Well, I'll be dipped.” The light went out. Then on. “So what happened?” Eugene asked. “Why the change?”

Light out.

I shrugged. “Don't know. But it's really different now.”

Light on.

“Huh. So does that mean he won't punch me in the face anymore?”

Light out.

“Oh, you mean like this?” I asked, and in the blackness I reached out and squeezed his face.

“Hey, stop that!” he shouted, but he was laughing.

I was laughing too, and snatched the flashlight from his hands. “Stop turning the stupid flashlight on and off,” I replied, and I clicked the light on and threw it at him.

We grew quiet after a while. A starry-night kind of quiet. It felt like I hadn't been to Event Horizon for a million years, and considering that the last time I was here it was with
John
, I suppose I was right. We looked up through the tree and into the circle of stars above us. There are some pretty good things about being an astronaut. You could see the stars up close. You could leave your problems behind.

“Actually, I think Grandpa would still punch you in the face,” I said.

Eugene's head jerked back a little. “Why?” he asked.

“Because,” I said, feeling like the teacher this time, “Grandpa probably still thinks you're a duppy.”

Eugene snorted. “I'm a duppy?”

I forgot I never told him that. “Your name was John, you look a little close to what Bird might have looked like, and Grandpa thought you were a duppy in a human form, tricking me. So he punched you.”

“Wow.” Eugene shook his head.

“Well, you
were
tricking me,” I pointed out. “Just not how Grandpa thought.”

“A duppy taking a human form?” Eugene asked. He rolled his eyes. “Please.” Eugene grabbed a granola bar from his stash. “I'll tell him I'm not a duppy.”

“Doesn't matter,” I said. “That's what he thinks.” Eugene gave a bar to me, and I took a hungry bite. You could really get addicted to these things. “Same thing with Mr. Robinson,” I continued. “Even Mom doesn't think she can get him to understand.”

“Then it looks like we'll have to talk to him ourselves,” Eugene said.

I tried to figure out if he was kidding or not.

“I'm serious. Let's go tomorrow,” he said as he shoved the whole granola bar in his mouth. It turned into a big wad of goo. He couldn't even close his mouth, it was so big.

I laughed. Eugene tried to laugh too but couldn't, which made me laugh harder. “Looking like that, Grandpa would
definitely
punch you in the face,” I said.

Eugene elbowed me. He chewed on his granola for a long time, making smacking noises. Finally he said, “Why's your grandpa so angry?”

“I asked him why he was sad,” I said. “It's because of Bird.”

“Right. But why is he
angry
?”

That stumped me. Growing up, I never questioned why Grandpa was angry. He just was. That was how things were. The sun rises. The sun sets. The moon comes out. Grandpa's angry. But I guess that someone could have different layers, like the earth, different strata piled one on top of the other. If you dig you can hit another layer inside someone. And sometimes those layers are surprising.

“Well,” I said, “he did kill Bird. By accident.” The tips of my fingers made little circles on the earthen floor. I tried to push down something mad and bubbly in my stomach when I thought about how this came back to Bird. Again. “It's just . . . my brother's been dead my whole life, but everyone's still fighting about him. Like he's right in our house.”