Light Boxes (2 page)

When I was really little, my father came into my bedroom with a sheet of fabric he said would one day fly in the sky.

I'll show you, he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, then sliding toward the middle, where I sat with my legs crossed.

Through my bedroom window, I watched a tree lose a branch under the weight of snow that had been falling for months. Before the branch hit the ground, a sheet of yellow fabric floated down over my eyes. It felt like silk and smelled of oil and stream water.

I heard the clank of metal, and then a hot flame near the back of my neck, and then the fabric lifted from my face, and it bloomed into a giant flower that touched the ceiling and grew toward the corners of my bedroom.

What does this feel like, my father said.

It's like being inside one of those globes the shopkeepers make in town, I said, now standing on the bed, fingertips reaching toward the flower. It feels wonderful. It feels like happiness.

It will be called, my father said, a balloon.

In the crop field, four people are found standing with their heads tilted back and arms frozen to their sides. Eyes closed, their mouths stretched open and filled with snow.

 

 

he overheard the group of former balloonists known as the Solution.

How much can we put up with. How many days will this dreadful season extend itself. Our town is a place of no flight and all snow because of February.

There were five of them, tall and thin, wearing long brown coats and black top hats. They had thin plastic masks over their faces. Each mask was painted as a different-colored bird.

You, said one of the members, who grabbed Thaddeus's shoulder and turned him around.

Thaddeus faced the Solution, holding his basket of apples tight against his chest.

We're starting a rebellion, a war, said a yellow bird mask, against February and what it stands for.

A war, repeated Thaddeus.

Yes, a war, a war, a war, the Solution repeated.

An orange bird mask continued, We're sick of February, who we believe is responsible not only for a season of endless gray and snow but the end of flight.

A blue bird mask lurched forward and placed a square of parchment in Thaddeus's coat pocket. He knocked one of Thaddeus's apples out of the basket and into a pile of snow.

Remember us, said the Solution.

And they disbanded, walking, dreaming of flying, in separate directions.

At the entrance to our town stands the Peter statue. Peter initiated the bird migration. This led to the age of flight, which is a rare time of recorded joy for our town. The sky was a land of balloon travel, bird flight patterns and flying-machine experiments. The afternoons were hot, the evenings cool when we went to the top of the hill to watch the nightly umbrella effect. We walked barefoot through streams. The children exploded in piles of corduroy leaves. We named the changes in weather Spring, Summer, Fall and February.

Peter believed in the life of flight even when he was bound with twine to his balloon by the priests and sent to a deadly altitude. Peter believed that the month of February should be eliminated, that it was possible to move clouds with long poles and extend the seasons of Spring and Summer. He said it could be taken further, that utopia included a town that knew only June and July. He wrote on archived parchment that if February were allowed to expand, it would infest our moods and kidnap our children.

The Solution came to my window last night. They had on their bird masks and black top hats. They wore a single brown scarf around their necks. I said I understood the need to rebel and protect our town against February. I reminded them of the tactics used last year.

Most important, they said, think of your daughter, Bianca.

I saw that some snow had gathered in a corner on the ceiling. I grabbed a broom to sweep it away.

When I turned back around, the Solution was walking away into the snowfall. It looked like they were skipping.

I closed my eyes. I imagined Selah and Bianca in a canoe so narrow they had to lie down with their arms folded on their stomachs, their heads at opposite ends, their toes touching. I dreamed two miniature suns. I set one each upon their foreheads. I dreamed a waterfall and a calm lake of my arms below to catch them.

I know it was important to get up, but my body felt too heavy. My parents stood next to my bed and spoke slowly and moved slower. They said their bladders were being filled with lead and soon it would rise into their chests. My father smiled and ran in place, a tactic used against February last year, but I could see tears in his eyes, and then he stopped, shoulders slouched forward, head near his knees. Lead poured from his mouth.

My parents climbed into bed with me. The smell of mint made my stomach hurt. They held me and told me everything would be fine, that sadness would rise from our bones and evaporate in sunlight the way morning fog burned off the river in summer. My mother rubbed the kites on my hands and arms and told me to think of my lungs as balloons.

I just want to feel safe, I said.

The Professor told us that to protect Bianca we should feed her mint leaves. In the rare warm months, we grew as much as we could, taking precious crop space to harvest huge bushels of mint we use in the nightly tea, bathwater and

 

At night Selah rubs mint leaves into my beard and pats my lips dry with mint leaves. I braid mint leaves into Selah's hair. I whisper into her ear, You are my sparrow. Through the night we check on Bianca. When Bianca awakes screaming against February, Selah picks her up and holds her and tells Bianca to think of cloudless skies, a moose letting her hang by one hand from his nose.

Thaddeus Lowe! The guy who flies balloons. I spent my days collecting sap from the trees. Still do. Always covered in sap, tree bark splintered under my nails.

I'd be in the woods loosening the buckets and I'd hear the sky hissing. I'd look up. I'd see a scrawny guy with a beard in a basket that had a balloon fastened above it. The balloon was yellow with green stitching. He couldn't have been more than a few feet above the tallest tree. At one point the basket brushed the heads of the trees and pinecones rained down. Gave me a nasty gash on my nose. I tasted blood, but that was no bother.

I went up in a balloon once with my sisters and we watched the sun roll across the horizon, clouds going red and pink, colors swirling around us in a mist. I shouldn't be thinking about that anymore, because flight is over. Some people in this town say the more thoughts you have about flight the worse February haunts you. And then there's the priests, who have locked away believers of flight someplace at the edge of town. But that's just a dumb rumor. Could be true, though. If given the chance, I'd break open the skull of February. I'd swing a nice big bucket of sap right into the side of his head and watch the ice of his mind explode like confetti.

Last night everyone in town dreamed the clouds fell apart like wet paper in their hands.

 

1. The Solution attempted to fly today.

2. They failed.

3. To hell with February, one member shouted. The rest cheered. They are a loud bunch. They wear bird masks. They throw apples through clouds.

4. The balloon collapsed on one side. The flames shot up. The flames spilled out and crawled across the field and up the birch trees, where flightless birds burned.

5. The snow continues to fall.

6. There has been talk of a war.

 

 

he told Selah about a war against February. She bathed Bianca in mint water, ran a cloth in circles around her back.

I don't know if a war will help anything, she said.

It's the Solution, said Thaddeus. They have nothing to lose. I don't know. It's something we should consider. For her sake. He tilted his head toward Bianca.

Come, said Selah, and Thaddeus followed her voice as if the word were a hook thrown from the bathwater.

He knelt down beside the tub and placed his face in the mint water. Bianca felt him close to her back. The water rose to her chin. She remembered what it was like to swim in the river with June. The drain in the tub was a fish biting her toe. Thaddeus held his face in the water long enough for the mint to be fully absorbed into his beard.

There, said Selah tugging upward with a fistful of Thaddeus's hair.

Water poured from his beard. Thaddeus walked into the kitchen and made a cup of tea, then went back into the bathroom. He watched his wife continue to bathe Bianca. He made sure to tip the teacup high enough when he sipped so that Bianca could see the balloon painted on the bottom.

 

 

Maybe the priests aren't really priests. Look at the way their silly robes move.

 

I want to be safe. I want to live inside a turtle shell.

 

 

A little mint water drips on his palm. He rubs his hands together. He walks into Bianca's bedroom and soothes her arms and legs with his hands. The idea is that any sadness that occurs during sleep can be decreased by infusing mint into the skin, into the lungs and heart. Thaddeus and Selah take turns, applying the mint throughout the night.

Before daybreak, Thaddeus smells honey and smoke coming from Bianca's bedroom.

In her room he notices that the window is open and snow is blowing in.

He throws the covers off the bed.

He looks around the room.

He looks under the bed.

He looks in the closet.

He looks in the hallway.

He looks at his feet.

He looks at the bed. He looks at the bed.

Bianca's bed is a mound of snow and teeth.

Bianca is gone.

I've been spending more time alone on the hill. I can't remember it being colder than it is now. The ground is frozen and black, the town windows webbed in snow and ice. When I spark a fire from found branches a snowball falls from the sky and douses the flame. I look up at the sky, the gray waves rolling along. I am growing tired and sad at the disappearance of my daughter and it stirs deep inside me. I snap off a tree branch. I whirl it around in huge circles before letting it fly skyward.

It flies up, much higher than I imagined, and, climbing higher and higher, it rips through a cloud's leg, peaks in flight, then descends again, tearing another hole through the shoulder of a cloud.

In the first hole, there's a pair of feet dangling from the edge. In the second hole, there's a man walking around a dark room. I call down to the house for Selah who is shaking out Bianca's bedsheet, which disintegrates into a little blizzard.

Am I dreaming right now, I shout. Can you check the bed to see if I'm sleeping.

No, you're not dreaming, she yells back after going inside to check our bed. You're standing outside by yourself with your thoughts. Your daughter has been kidnapped and your thoughts are torturing you. Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night from terrible dreams, but right now you are awake.

I watch the two holes in the sky until a new breaking of gray rolls across.

My mind is ice.

Selah yells, I want our daughter back.

Deer run against the edge of the woods. Twisted through their antlers is a long quilt, a banner. The quilt says, WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW WAR AGAINST FEBRUARY NOW. The Solution waves from under the pine trees. A man is collecting sap.

I hesitate but wave back.

I climb on the roof. Your bedroom is beneath me. I close one eye and reach my hand out and tear open the horizon. I pull the sky up and toward me like old wallpaper. I see you sleeping in a bed of duck feathers. I close both eyes and finish the dream of us in a balloon. The new sky smells like the ocean. It feels like crushed velvet when you push against it to send the balloon toward your mother waiting on the hill.

Thaddeus asks the children twisting the heads of owls if they have seen a small girl named Bianca in yellow pajamas. The three children sit against an oak tree with their legs stretched out, snow as a blanket to their waists.

Do the yellow pajamas have flowers printed at the hem, asks the middle child.

Yes, Thaddeus says.

Does the little girl have dark hair that smells of honey and smoke, asks the child to the left.

Thaddeus shakes his head. No, he thinks, she never smelled of honey and smoke. But the room did. Yes, the room.

The room smelled of honey and smoke. Bianca has dark hair. Her hair doesn't smell of honey and smoke, but the room did.

Does the little girl have a drawing of kites on her hands and arms, asks the child to the right.

Yes, says Thaddeus. Her mother painted those kites. Where is my daughter. What has happened to my daughter.

The children go back to concentrating on twisting the heads of the owls.

No, we haven't seen her, they say.

I don't understand, though, you said, Thaddeus says. Now, if you don't mind, sir, we are much enjoying ourselves by playing with these owls. I hope you find the little girl. She sounds very cute and very beautiful.