Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (34 page)

Sophie let loose her call. She knew she needed one fuller than the mess-cleaning, window-replacing zawolanie, yet one softer than the call that had banished her grandmother, if that's what she had done. As she opened her mouth and sounded her howl she could feel the reins of her consciousness on it, like a harness on a wild beast. It sounded its fierce, feral noise, all the charged grace of a lightning storm but contained, crackling up and out from Sophie's wide mouth as she flung the powder onto her mom. Andrea's eyes opened to the spectacle of her daughter standing above her, her mouth cranked open, the last of her zawolanie curling up and away, gone. Her daughter, the witch.

Andrea scrambled up, unsteady on her feet. She seemed too tall, an ungainly giant. There were her legs bare in their shorts. Her hair was a disaster, her throat raw; she was still ill. She looked down at her daughter, as if for the first time. She could note the outline of the sea
glass, a bulge beneath her shirt. “What is that?” she whispered, and Sophie removed it, could feel its warm light shine out toward Andrea. Andrea noted the pouch dangling from her daughter's waist, could see the bulk of things inside it. “And that?”

“That's private,” Sophie said.

“I am still your mother,” Andrea whispered. “You show me respect. You don't”—she motioned to the floor where she'd just been lying—“you don't
do
things like that to your mother. I don't care how special you are.” Andrea spit the word
special
at her, and Sophie felt the echo of all the times Andrea had spat on Sophie's aspirations toward something special—a special outfit, a special school, a special thought. How Andrea had always come down hard on them, the lid of her wounded heart smothering it.
But it couldn't be smothered
, Sophie thought.
And I am so much more special than any of that
.

“I'm leaving,” she told her mother. “You probably know. I mean, I know you're not magic”—it felt bad, not resisting the jab, but it was true, also, wasn't it?—“but I think you know everything. Who I am and how I have to go.”

Andrea's face contorted with pride and shock and envy. “I was magic,” she whispered. “Not magic enough for my mother, but I had a bit, I could feel it inside me. You are
my
child. Any magic I had, I held it for you. I gave it to you. It came to you from me. If I have none it is because you have it all, and if you have any, even a spark, it came from me.” She did not stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Sophie cried. “If you knew everything,
why didn't you tell me?”
Why didn't you love me
, Sophie thought,
I was so special, why didn't you love me better
?

“I was protecting you,” Andrea said. “That is what mothers do. I was protecting you.”

“You let Nana take my sister. My twin sister.”

“Sophie. Yes, yes I did. I didn't know what else to—”

“You could have fought!” Sophie raged. “You could have saved her!”

“Sophie.” Andrea placed the heel of her hand to her sweaty brow. “You don't understand. Everything is a mess. It was supposed to be you Nana took. So much, so much—badness will happen now.”

“I'm going to stop the badness, Ma. It's my work.”

“Sophie, you have no idea what you are getting into. You could have been happy with Nana. Your sister—she's happy.”

“You don't know that!”

“She's
fine
, Sophie! She's charmed. She doesn't know better. She loves the flowers. She's simple. She's simple, and happy. Look at you. You're already tormented. What will happen to you, Sophie? You want to spend the rest of your life fighting? You're just a girl!”

Don't listen to her
, Sophie told herself.
Listen to Angel, listen to Livia and Arthur, to Hennie and the mermaid
.

“Your grandmother,” Andrea said softly. “My mother. What would she have done if I had stopped her? Or if I had told you? Do you know what it's like to have no magic, and her so full of magic?” Andrea demanded. “She is in my head all the time. She's in me, I can feel her. I can hide nothing from her. Imagine it, Sophie. Imagine it.”
Sophie didn't need to. The image of her mother, weakly kicking away the Naw in her nightmare, was seared into her. It felt wrong to know something so intimate about her mother, to know about a suffering she herself did not remember. She wrung her hands at the memory.

Sophie moved toward her mother, wrapping her arms around her waist. “I'm sorry, Ma.” She knew she was apologizing for things she had no business apologizing for, for things that were and were not her fault, could not be placed on her shoulders, but there she was, alive and full of magic, about to run away with a mermaid, leaving her mother behind with Kishka.
Maybe
, Sophie thought. Maybe it was best that Kishka had deadened a piece of her mother's heart. Maybe it helped her not feel everything too much.

Andrea stroked Sophie's head, her fingers getting caught in the feathers and snarls. She lifted one with her finger, and watched her daughter's whole head of hair lift slightly, a mass of mats and tangles.

“Let's get you fixed up,” Andrea said. “If you are going to do this thing, I can't stop you. But I can at least help you look presentable.”

Andrea fetched a bottle of conditioner from the shower and sat her daughter between her legs, and with her nimble fingers unwove the balls of hair from themselves. She handed Sophie the feathers as she plucked them from her head, and Sophie clutched them, bundled in her hands like a bouquet. Andrea ran a comb through the locks, smoothing them, training them to lay flat. She plugged in the hair dryer and ran the warm air over Sophie's head. Through all of it, Sophie melted. She luxuriated in the sensation of her mother's hands
working around her scalp, her hair raised in a delicious chill. Even the pulls, the inevitable stings, were okay, because they were followed by such soothing pets. Sophie felt sleepy, and loved.
I feel loved
, she thought.
That doesn't mean you are
, came her next thought, and Sophie decided to stop thinking, just for a moment, and enjoy the feeling of it all, the feeling of there being so much time, this lazy, unhurried grooming, the tickle of her mother's hands and the slow, glowing sensation of love. When Andrea was finished she pulled Sophie to a mirror and Sophie regarded herself, her hair in twin braids that fell across her shoulders, a light fringe of hair wisping across her brow.

“Look,” Andrea said, “at how pretty you are.”

It was not a word Sophie ever would have used for herself. It was a word she would have batted away as a well-intentioned lie, but seeing herself in the mirror she thought,
Yes. Look how pretty
.

* * *

ANDREA OPENED THE
front door to a sidewalk full of pigeons. The pavement was alive with them, many shades and hues of gray, fat ones and malnourished ones, some standing solid on two good legs, many not, many standing stork-like, balanced on their one healthy claw, others shifting painfully on two twisted nubs, all of them silent, no coos or clucks. Many had traveled from distant cities to be there in Chelsea, at that moment, to escort Sophie to the creek. Andrea's dulled heart spasmed at the sight. She could not resist her revulsion,
but there was a begrudging acceptance, too. The pigeons loved her daughter, and had helped her as she, the girl's own mother, had not been able to.
What is wrong with me
? She anguished inside, but she knew. She could feel her own mother sitting upon her heart, pecking away at it like a dark crow.

“I can't come with you,” Andrea said. She held her hand over the place her heart hammered. Was it the beating of her heart, or Kishka beating upon her heart? She felt it always, and never knew.

“It's okay, Ma.” Sophie stood on her tiptoes to whisper in her mother's ear. “There's a gold brick on the kitchen table, I brought it for you.”

Andrea looked at her daughter, her face so raw; Sophie's face was always so raw, her need sitting right on top of it. Her earnestness, this face of her daughter, it had been so hard for Andrea to look at it, to feel someone needing so much from her.
She only needs love
, Andrea thought. Surely it did not have to be so hard. She wrapped her arms around Sophie, kissed her head, which smelled so good, the fruity bright stink of it obscured the heavy, bed-scented sick smell of Andrea's own hair.

“Thank you so much, Sophie,” Andrea said. “I love you, baby.”

She walked back into her house, her heart a thunder.

Chapter 21

L
ivia and Arthur stepped out from the mob of birds, holding in their beaks a ribbony garland, braided with tiny treasures—chestnuts, the green pods that fall from trees that Sophie played helicopter with as a kid, acorns, bottle caps, small dusty toys, twigs, strands of shredded plastic. All the things one might find brushed up against the curb on a Chelsea street. All of it braided together, strangely beautiful.

“We all made this for you,” said Bix, as Livia's mouth was full and she could not speak. “We braided it together, with our beaks and with our feet, those who have good ones.”

Livia and Arthur rose into the air with the wreath firmly in their beaks. The light clatter of the trinkets shaking together was a pleasant clatter.

“Could you bend, please,” Bix directed. “At the waist.”

Sophie did as she was asked, and the birds swooped beneath her,
landing on her back. She enjoyed the scramble of claws, their sweet weight upon her. Her eyes stung with missing the pigeons in advance. Would there be pigeons in Poland? It didn't matter. Even if there were, there would not be Livia and Arthur and Giddy and Roy and Bix.

Livia and Arthur worked their tiny beaks expertly, tying the garland into a messy knot on the back of her neck. They lifted off with a scraping push, and Sophie righted herself.

“Ooooh,” the birds hushed.

“Oh it's
very
pretty,” Giddy cooed. Sophie rather liked the bustle of it, the unexpected sight of a plastic cowboy translucent from a decade in the sun, or a fragment of a rusted can looking fragile and lacy.

“This is really cool,” Sophie said. “I can't believe you all made this for me.”

“It was our pleasure,” Arthur said. His melodic pigeon voice was taut with the swell of emotion butting up against his bluster. “We really love you, Sophie. We think of you as one of us, ours. Oh, crap—” Arthur's voice cracked, the sound of a violin trill slightly off key. “I said I wasn't going to do this.” He pushed his face into Livia's feathers.

“Arthur hasn't cried since Roy hatched,” Livia said.

“Well, I'm going to cry!” Sophie said to her audience of birds. Had her mother told her she loved her? Was it the first time Andrea had ever said such a thing? Sophie remembered hearing it as a little girl, but it had been a long time since Andrea had uttered that phrase. “I love you guys,” she said to the birds, grateful to feel such an easy love inside her heart, uncontaminated by doubt or fear, no hurt there,
nothing worn away by time's passage, just a sweet and easy love for the birds. “I really love you.”

Together they walked toward the creek. Sophie wished she could carry her closest friends upon her body, all of them, but she was too small for so many birds, so she let petite Giddy perch on one shoulder and still-growing Roy, eager and proud, on the other. Livia and Arthur led the dark cloud of pigeons in the sky above them, such a mass they blotted out the setting sun. Sophie watched people leave their houses to point up at the incredible swarm of them. Closer, hovering above Sophie, was Bix.

“ ‘How do I love thee?' ” He said sadly. “ ‘Let me count the ways.' ”

“Bix is in love with you,” Giddy said, giggling.

“Giddy!” Roy chastised. “You weren't supposed to tell!”

“
You
weren't supposed to tell,” Giddy corrected. “
You
made an oath. I was just eavesdropping.”

Bix went on, quoting love poetry. “ ‘How will I be awake and aware / If the light of the beloved is absent?' ” He asked mournfully. “The Muslim poet Rumi.”

“Uh-oh,” Sophie said.

“He wants to mate for life with you,” Giddy said.