Bird (9 page)

Grandpa glowered at her, then at John. He turned around, took a couple steps to the dining room table, and snatched the saltshaker. As he stared at John, he shook some salt onto the floor.

“Leave,” Mom said.

The way she said that made me shiver.

Grandpa clenched the saltshaker and shook his fist at John with it. Then he stomped down our hallway and slammed his bedroom door behind him.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in. Water was still gushing out of the faucet, and I went to turn it off. John was rubbing his face, casually, as if he got punched every morning.

But I had seen that look of fear in his eyes.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“I can't believe he hit you,” Mom said, putting a hand to her forehead.

“Take a look for yourself,” John said, pointing to the already swelling skin at his cheekbone.

“Oh, my God,” Mom said, lightly touching the skin around John's eye. “Let me get you some ice.” She crossed to the refrigerator. “Why is there water all over the floor? And your . . .”

Wet clothes clung to my skin. It was hard to hide a water fight. “John was teaching me about water pressure,” I said lamely.

“Water pressure?” Mom's brow furrowed as she slipped some ice into a grocery bag, then doubled it over so it wouldn't drip everywhere.

John smiled a lopsided smile. “Jewel was asking about the physics of water faucets, and I was teaching her,” he said. “And I think the lesson got a little out of control. We'll clean it up, don't worry. It'll be even cleaner than when you left it.”

“I see.” The skin around Mom's eyes turned soft, like when she wants to smile but doesn't. She handed John the bag of ice. “Rose. Call me Rose.”

I was confused. Rose? Not Mrs. Campbell?

He took the ice and pressed it to his cheek. “I'm John.”

“John?” Her voice turned thick.

John nodded.

I winced.

She looked at him for a good, long time. Finally she wiped her hands on her pants and took his right hand in both of hers. “I'm glad you're here, John.” She glanced at me. “And you picked a great day for a lesson on water pressure.”

I grinned.

It didn't take long for John and Mom to hit it off. She sat the two of us down at the kitchen table and brought us iced tea and even suddenly appeared with those expensive packaged cookies that were her favorite.

“When did you get to Caledonia?” she asked him, pushing the plate of cookies in his direction.

“Just a couple weeks ago. I'm visiting my uncle Tim for a while.”

Mom's brow furrowed. “Tim McLaren?” She was too polite to mention that Mr. McLaren was white.

“Yup,” John said, sipping his iced tea. He turned his face slightly toward our oscillating fan to catch the humming breeze. “He's my mother's brother.”

Mom stared at him. “Really?”

John smiled his moon-teeth smile. “I'm adopted.”

Mom's eyebrows popped up in understanding, then furrowed, embarrassed.

“I don't know anything about my biological parents,” John said, even though Mom hadn't asked any question at all, “but my adoptive parents are great, so that makes up for it, I guess.”

My jaw went slack. His anger was completely gone. Where was that sheet of black ice that had slid over his face just a little while back, in the living room? Now it was as if his adoption was almost an afterthought, something that you think about only when you're too bored to think about anything else.

Mom was smiling like those ladies on the commercials. “Mr. McLaren's a wonderful man,” she gushed.

I tried not to let my eyes get all bug-eyed. Mom doesn't even know him.

John grabbed a cookie. “He's okay,” he said noncommittally.

“Where do you live?”

“We're in Norfolk, Virginia. Dad's a university professor, and Mom works for an insurance company.” He smiled, then winced and repositioned his ice pack on his cheek. “I have no idea what she does, but she works in the tallest building in town.”

“Wow.” Mom had her elbows on the table, holding her glass of ice water with both hands, her eyes dancing. John could talk about dung beetles and she'd be fascinated. I squirmed. Maybe she was being nice because she felt guilty for Grandpa hitting him in the face.

Still, she never looked at me like that.

“That's terrific that you have a great family,” Mom was saying.

“Yeah, it's pretty cool,” John said.

My back muscles tightened the way they do when someone is lying. Except I didn't know if John was lying to Mom or to me.

John grabbed another cookie. “They're excited I'm studying to be an astronaut.”

I sucked in my breath. Another scientist. Mom was going to have a hissy fit.

Mom smiled. “With your interest in physics, I'm sure you'll be a terrific one.” Then she looked at me, as if suddenly remembering I was sitting at the table. “Don't you think so, Jewel?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MOM
sent us outside for the afternoon. She told me not to worry about my chores, and when she invited John to join us for dinner the next night, she even smiled, which surprised me, since I knew she was sad. It's not like she never smiles when she's sad, but usually when she does it's a halfhearted attempt that never reaches her eyes, like something is plugging up her smile, stopping it from spreading past her lips.

Today, her smile seemed to fill up the entire house.

The last time she smiled all big like that was two winters ago; she had taken me to Caledonia's county park in the winter, the one everyone goes sledding down when it snows. It was a sticky, bright snow, the kind that burns your eyes with sunlight when the clouds go away. The hill had well-formed sledding paths from the big kids and seemed to stretch up for forever, and we watched the kids come crashing down, sometimes toppling over sideways, their sleds veering out of control.

I didn't want to go up that hill. Not at all. But Mom said to me, “Sledding is the best part of Iowa, honey. They don't do this in Texas.” And the way she smiled when she said that, that smile seemed to warm the snow and slow down the sledders and somehow made everything, everything okay.

After that, we climbed the hill and she plopped me between her legs, and we swooshed down, laughing and screaming louder than everyone. When we reached the bottom, she raised her arms in triumph, then wrapped them around me and hollered as if the sky, the sun, and the sparkling light would send us right up the hill again.

And they did.

That was the last time I saw her smile that big. After that day, I tried so hard to make that smile come back, but for some reason she slipped into this sad Mom and nothing did any good. I made a snowman for her in the yard, and when that didn't work I drew her at least eight cards until the construction paper ran out, and when
that
didn't work I begged her to take me sledding again. She finally did, but it was a chore for her, like cleaning the house, and she waited for me at the bottom the whole time. It felt so wrong I cried when I got home. That smile must have been a mistake, I decided that day. In a way it would have been better never to have seen it at all.

So of course I didn't want to go outside now that Mom was smiling like the sun. But how could I tell John that I was afraid her smile would slip through the windows or the cracks in the wall? In the end, I told myself that Mom was smiling because of John, not because of me, and that I shouldn't hope for things I'm never going to get. When I left her in the kitchen, she was cleaning up from our cookies, humming, and it was all I could do not to dash back into the house and cling to her leg like when I was a little girl.

I tried to forget about all that as John and I ran through the fields again, which burned like an oven in the midday sun, and we didn't stop until we climbed up the hill to Event Horizon.

“You're lucky you have a cool mom,” John said, once we slipped inside the tree. The cool air on our skin made us both sigh with relief. He gave me a bottle of water.

“I guess,” I said uncomfortably, and opened the bottle. The water went down warm, almost as if I were still breathing air. His cheek was swollen; it would take a while for it to go away.

John caught me looking at him. “It's fine.” His lips curled as much as his cheek would allow. “It won't be the last time someone hits me.”

“Really? What other fights have you gotten into?” I couldn't imagine John getting into a fight with anyone. I squirmed as I tucked my legs under me.

“Hapkido. I'm a green belt. You get hit a lot.” He looked at me, and his eyebrows rose. “A
lot
.” He shook his head.

“Hapkido?”

“It's a kind of martial art. I'm pretty good for a kid my age.” He paused. “That's what my teachers say.”

“How come your parents let you be in hapkido if you get hit?” I asked.

“They don't like it,” John said, rolling his water bottle between his hands, “but they know I do.”

I didn't know how you could like getting hit.

“Besides,” John said, “when you have a green belt, you know you can take care of yourself. One day, I'll be a black belt.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“Then everyone knows you're the best.”

I picked at the dirt under my fingernails. I'm not the best in anything—not even close. Not in math class or gym or art. Even Mom is worried that I won't be anyone when I grow up, maybe that I'm not anybody now.

“I think your parents are cool for letting you be in hapkido,” I said.

The happy look in his eyes flicked away, as if my words had smashed it to a million pieces. “Like I said, they suck,” he said.

My throat tightened. “But I thought—”

“Look, Jewel,” he said. His voice wasn't as sharp this time. “People only want to hear that you have great parents, that you never think about the life they stole you from.”

My jaw dropped. “That they what?”

John looked up at the bright hole at the top of the tree. “How do I know that my parents—my
real
parents—wanted to give me up? How do I know that they're not out there looking for me at this very moment?”

I didn't know what to say.

“How can I call Jack and Susan my
parents
? They don't look like me. They don't even talk about the fact that I'm adopted. Or black.” His mouth tugged on the sounds of that last word.
Black
. “They just tell me, ‘We're all human on the inside.' ” He snorted. “Like that's helpful.”

“And since people don't listen to what you want to say,” I said slowly, “why bother telling them the truth?”

John paused and looked at me, surprised. “Yeah. Just like that.”

We both stopped talking at that point. John and I, we just leaned our backs against the inside of Event Horizon and took our time listening to the birds chirping, to the humid air filling up the afternoon sky. It felt strange to talk about things that mattered—not things like what I ate for lunch, or did I do my chores. I didn't want to stop talking about important things, so I turned to John. “It's like with Bird,” I said. “I think about him all the time.”

He nodded. “You don't talk about him, though, do you?”

I shook my head. “Not really. Nobody wants to listen either.” I stood up and left Event Horizon. John scrambled to his feet, following me. I found a good, low-hanging branch of a maple tree and swung up onto it. “Just like my parents aren't going to listen to me when I try to tell them why I was hitting Grandpa,” I said, looking down at John. The trunk was solid and the nearby branches forked gently. I got to my feet, holding on to the trunk, and moved to the next branch.

John was already climbing up. “They can't be mad at you,” John said. “Your mom saw everything.” He pointed to his swollen cheek with his free hand.

“I saved Grandpa's life and they were still mad at me,” I said, looking for my next branch.

“Really?” John seemed impressed.

“So I don't know why they'd be happy about me hitting him.” The bark bit into my hands. I grabbed the trunk, steadied myself, and stepped onto the next limb. This branch stretched up at a steep angle. I bit my lip. A part of me suddenly wanted to climb all the way to the very top thin branches of the tree, to bend with the leaves and the wind.

Maybe fly.

“Okay, they might not be jumping for joy.” John was perched on the branch I had just left. We were almost at the same level. “I get that. But they can't expect you to watch what your Grandpa does and not get mad.”

I didn't answer John because I was getting confused. He had a point: If I had done what Grandpa did, my parents would sure be mad at
me
. But somehow, I wasn't supposed to get angry. Grandpa's the angry one. I was the responsible one. Levelheaded.