Blackbird House (6 page)

I started to think about California more and more, and how Ruby and I could get there.
 
We would have to leave my mother behind; she was like a bitter ember, she would burn us alive.
 
Still, she was our mother.
 
How could we desert her?
 
Sometimes she would cry all through the night and we would hear her.
 
There’d be a puddle of red around her in the morning, so that the fallen leaves nearby turned scarlet.
 
She’d gaze at me and at Ruby, and I’d feel frightened in a deep way that I couldn’t begin to explain.
 
Was this love?
 
Was this what happened to you?
 
By then, the cardinal’s wife was perched in the lowest branch of our pear tree.
 
Even when I chased her, she wouldn’t fly away.
 
She didn’t make a noise, not a chirp, nothing.

When the doctor came to town on the fifteenth of the month, I went to talk to him, but he told me to mind my manners and do as my mother said.
 
I visited the pastor, but he only advised me that death was a veil we could not hope to understand, nor were we meant to.
 
I had to carry Ruby everywhere we went, and she was heavy.
 
I had walked all the way into town that day and now there was all the way back to be dealt with.
 
I had blisters, and the wind was cold.
 
I sat down at the side of the road.
 
Ruby had fallen asleep, and sleeping babies are even heavier than fretting ones.
 
I had a cracker in my pocket, and I broke it in half half for me, half to save for Ruby.
 
I saw someone coming down the road then.
 
I wished with all my heart it was my father, but it was only an old woman, selling pots and pans kept tied to her back with lengths of rope.
 
She sat down beside me, and before I could think I gave her the other half of the cracker.

I told the old woman about my mother as she ate.
 
She chewed carefully and she listened carefully, too, even though she was very old, maybe even a hundred; she had walked all the way across Massachusetts, from Stockbridge, selling her pots and pans.
 
I told her how my mother was turning into blood, how she was basing our future on the fate of a cardinal, how my sister still wasn’t speaking when other babies her age had mouthfuls of words.

“This is what you do,” the old woman said.
 
“Take whatever is most precious to your mother and bury it somewhere on your property.
 
In exchange you will find what you need.”

Of course the old lady wanted payment in return for her advice.
 
She was a businesswoman, after all.
 
She stared at my sister, her sleeping form, her red hair, the way her cheeks puffed up when she breathed in.
 
I didn’t like the way she was looking at Ruby.

“You can’t have her,” I said.
 
“She’s what’s most precious to my mother.”

“Luckily, that’s not true.
 
Otherwise you’d have to bury your own sister in the dirt.
 
If this little girl was so precious to your mother, why would she be here with you?
 
No.
 
Anyway, she’s not what I want.
 
I’ll take your shoes.”

I slipped off my boots that had been dyed red on the day after my father left this world.
 
The old woman took off her torn boots, stuffed with papers and felt, and slipped on mine.
 
They fitted her perfectly.
 
She laced them up, then did a little dance, so that the pots and pans clanged on her back.
 
My sister woke up and laughed at the sight; she waved when the old woman went off, and I hoped that, after walking so far, she wouldn’t be disappointed when, in a few miles, she reached the end of Massachusetts, the farthest shore.

I walked home barefoot.
 
The fallen leaves and pine needles were soft under my feet.
 
Softer than my boots had ever been.
 
Along the road the stone walls were covered with red and brown lichen.
 
I could taste November in the air.
 
I thought about what was most precious to me in the world, the things I had hidden away when my mother collected our belongings for burning: my blue dress, my silver bracelet, my sister’s spoon and her doll.
 
Worthless, really.
 
Not much better than pots and pans tied up with rope.
 
“I have a pony” I sang to my sister, and she hummed along.
 
“He’s black and white and very strong.”
 
Ruby tried to pull off her red stockings; she wanted to be just like me.

When we got home, we found that one of our neighbors had left us a pail of potatoes for our supper.
 
There was the lady cardinal, sitting in the grass, brown as pine needles.
 
She didn’t fly away when Ruby chased her, and I had to pick up my sister and carry her inside.
 
When I closed my eyes, I could still feel my father in this house.
 
That was why my mother was sleeping in the open air, tearing at her skin.
 
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what was precious to her.
 
Certainly not Ruby.
 
Not me.
 
And then I knew what it was.
 
A necklace of halibut teeth she wore around her neck.
 
It had belonged to our father.
 
The halibut had bitten off his leg, and for years after, my father would spit up fish teeth that had been left in his skin.
 
They were cool when you touched them, like ice, like glass.
 
They were the thing I had to bury deep in the earth.

That night, I left my sister sleeping.
 
I was grateful that the moon was waning.
 
It was a red slice in the night, and the light it cast was dim.
 
The male cardinal looked black in the darkness; he’d been dead for some time, still he looked like he might fly away.
 
I went out to the woods, my feet bare.
 
I was as quiet as the mice who lived in the tall grass.
 
A red mouse, with my red hair pulled back.
 
My mother was sleeping beside a log where the possums lived.
 
She hadn’t eaten for days.
 
Her eyes were closed tightly and her breathing was heavy.
 
I knelt down next to her and I realized I was afraid of her.
 
Even though she’d brought me up, and kissed me good night; even though she was my mother.
 
I understood why people in town had thought she was a witch.
 
There was no difference between her inside and her outside, no barrier, no bone, only blood.

I unclasped the necklace.
 
I held my breath.
 
I begged to be a mouse for one moment more.
 
Dream of leaves, I begged of my sleeping mother.
 
My head was pounding so hard I feared the sound alone would wake her.
 
Dream of falling oak leaves, red and brown, if they touch you, you won’t wake.
 
You’ll dream on.

The moment I had the necklace, I ran.
 
I ran so fast and so hard there might have been a dragon behind me, but there were only falling leaves.
 
I found a spot in the farthest field, where the turnips grew.
 
I took the necklace apart.
 
There were thirteen teeth, and each one felt cool in my hand.
 
I dug the first hole.
 
I thought I might find a turnip or a stone, but in the red moonlight something glittered.
 
Something red.
 
My father had told me that, a long time ago, the sailor who’d owned this house had drowned.
 
Afterward, it was said, sailors’ wives came here and gave offerings, whatever was most precious, to ensure their husbands’ good fortune.

I got down on my hands and knees.
 
I dug hard even though the ground was cold and my fingernails bled.
 
I made a furrow, the way my mother did when she planted seeds.
 
I found twelve red stones in all, rubies brought back from the West Indies.
 
In exchange I buried twelve halibut teeth.
 
The thirteenth stone was green, an emerald, the largest of all.
 
In the morning I packed our few belongings into a leather bag.
 
I combed my sister’s red hair, and she laughed, and said “Ruby.”
 
I was glad that her first word was her own name.
 
I had been teaching it to her all along, just so she’d know exactly who she was.

When we went outside, I found the cardinal’s wife dead on the grass.
 
Bugs had gotten into the carcass of her mate, and there was little left of him but feathers.
 
I took two feathers, for luck, good or bad, time would tell.
 
Then I tossed the female cardinal into the woods.
 
She looked like a fallen leaf, brown and small and paper thin.

When we got to the pond, my mother was awake, but she wasn’t moving.
 
She had found the halibut-tooth necklace gone, and had scraped at her neck until there was a line of blood, a crimson necklace, blood hot, burning.

“You,” she said to me, as though I were her enemy.

I wasn’t barefoot anymore.
 
I’d put on some old boots I’d found in the back of my father’s closet.
 
They were mismatched, but I didn’t care.
 
If someone were to look at me, it would be because I was smart. Because my hair was so red it appeared that my inside was the same as my outside; no barrier, no bone, only blood.

I crouched down and opened my hand to show my mother what I’d found.
 
I wasn’t afraid of her anymore.
 
I told her we were going to California.
 
We were going someplace where November was as hot as July, where the grass looked like gold; we were taking what the sailors’ wives had left us and accepting the jewels as our good fortune.
 
What she decided was up to her.

My mother thought it over.
 
Faster than I would have imagined, she agreed to leave with us.
 
But she had a price.
 
Didn’t everyone?
 
I sat back on my heels and waited to hear her bargain.
 
She wanted to take the two things she cared most about with us; she wouldn’t leave them behind.
 
I thought I would have to dig up the halibut teeth, or take a branch of the tree that bore red pears, or bring along one of the cows, or carry the tin of bones that was left in the corner, but instead my mother took my two hands in hers, and then she was ready to go.

INSULTING THE ANGELS

ON THE FARTHEST EDGES OF THE CAPE, IT

was widely believed that cranberries first came to earth in the beak of a dove.
 
If that was indeed true, then heaven was red, and the memory of paradise could be plucked from the low-growing shrubs that grew in the dampest, muddiest bogs a far cry from heaven, it would seem, at least to some.

To Larkin Howard the bogs were heaven and earth and everything in between; he had worked harvesting cranberries from the time he was twelve, and his hands were permanently dyed red.
 
That he would be marked in this way embarrassed Larkin, for he was a shy man, mortified by his own clumsiness.
 
He rarely spoke, not even to the Dills, where he boarded, or to the neighbors who had known him since he was an orphaned child.
 
He wore gloves to cover his stained flesh when he went to the meeting house or the tavern, no matter the weather.
 
He even wore gloves to the barbershop on Main Street when he went in for a haircut and a shave.
 
The barber, Max Jeffries, had a pet squirrel who would spin in a circle and whenever he came in, Larkin always made certain to give the squirrel a handful of dried cranberries he kept in his pocket.

Larkin was only twenty, but his family had died in a house fire, and since that time Larkin had worked for any farmer who would hire him, in any bog, and he never complained.
 
He wasn’t the sort to think about everything he didn’t have, even when an employer cheated him, even when he worked all summer and fall with little to show for his labor but his red hands and his board paid in full.
 
That was Larkin; he’d learned to make do, though that meant ignoring the harsh realities of his life. He put away the loneliness that had surfaced inside him the year he lost his family In doing so, he put away other things as well.
 
He looked past anything he didn’t want to see, and therefore he often didn’t recognize the truth even when it was staring him right in the face.
 
Those cranberries he fed the barber’s pet squirrel, for instance, were so bitter the squirrel always spat them out the moment Larkin left the shop.

Sometimes, on his way to work, so early that the blackbirds weren’t yet awake, Larkin would make a detour, and wander down a leafy lane to an abandoned farm he especially admired.
 
The hedges were overgrown and the rooms were empty, but the place reminded him of the house where he’d grown up, the one that had gone up in flames when a kerosene lamp fell over unnoticed.
 
He breathed in deeply when he stood there in the high grass.
 
He had to force himself to turn away, but turn away he did, each and every time.
 
He had no expectations; he didn’t think about the day that would follow the one he was living.
 
It might have been that way forevermore, until he was an old man too crippled by the cranberry scoop to manage a spoon up to his mouth, too bent by tending those low-growing bushes to stand upright, if he hadn’t met up with Lucinda Parker on the day the blackfish came ashore.