The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (22 page)

“What your mother did,” Brick said without finishing the phrase. “Do you . . .”

“Love her?” I said. “Yeah. And I know she loved me.”

My mother was my mother and she still is.
Pas på,
she’d say.
Pas på
. And I did. There was just that one time. That one day she couldn’t protect me—not from the hurt and not from the words. It was just one day, but I think for Mor it seemed like Day 1.

Rachel

The park’s almost empty on a cool fall afternoon. We’ve gone to sit by the lake at Laurelhurst Park on Brick’s last day in town. Tomorrow he’s going home to Chicago.

“Take this. It’s a nickel from the year my dad was born,” I say, handing it to him.

“It’s worth a lot of money, isn’t it?” he asks. “I can’t.” He reaches over to give it back.

“I don’t need it for remembering him,” I say. “You take it. A going-away present. It’s worth five hundred dollars. Sell it and keep the money. I have what I need.”

“Thanks,” he says very softly.

We sit for a long time. Just sit there quietly. Brick flips the nickel in the air absentmindedly again and again.

A flock of birds—both ducks and swans—circles near the
water’s edge to eat the bread crumbs and cakes an old woman throws nearby.

“I hope you find your mom,” I say.

I’m not sure that Brick has heard me, because he takes a long time to respond.

“Me too,” he says finally.

“Don’t worry. You will,” I say. “You found me.”

Brick puts his arm around me. When he looks at me, it feels like no one has really seen me since the accident. In his eyes, I’m not the new girl. I’m not the color of my skin. I’m a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.

Brick flips the coin in the air again and again.

“You know what these are good for?” he says holding the nickel in his hand.

“What?”

“Wishes,” he says. He stands then and throws the nickel into the lake.

When the coin lands in the water, it startles the feeding birds. Some squawk and swim away. Others take flight, including one awkward-looking swan that runs across the water.

“Look,” I say.

The swan takes one step. Three steps, four. It dips its head and then its wings catch the wind. It’s hard to tell: Is it still running or is it flying now? It’s on top of the water and in the air—like it’s in two worlds at once. The swan flaps its wings again and again, three times, four, and then it’s aloft. We watch it fly. Away.

“Hey,” Brick says finally. “What did you wish?”

“I can’t tell you,” I say. But I think, If only Robbie had been a bird. If only we had been a family that could fly.

Published by
A
LGONQUIN
B
OOKS OF
C
HAPEL
H
ILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
W
ORKMAN
P
UBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2010 by Heidi W. Durrow.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Durrow, Heidi W., [date]

The girl who fell from the sky : a novel / by Heidi W. Durrow.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-56512-680-0

1. Racially mixed children—Fiction. 2. Identity

(Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Intergenerational relations—

Fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.U757G57 2010

813′.6—dc22            2009027572

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Barbara Kingsolver, my hero. Thank you to Neltje, and the Jentel Artist Residency Program, where I found my voice, and thank you Mary Jane Edwards and Lynn Reeves too. I am grateful to have spent time at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, Hedgebrook, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Ucross Foundation while working on this novel. For continued encouragement of my work I thank the New York Foundation for the Arts, Elizabeth George and the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Associated Writing Programs, the Bronx Writers’ Center, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Lois Roth Endowment, Lorian Hemingway, Leigh Haber, the folks at Bread Loaf, Thomas Kennedy, Rowan Wilson, Helen Elaine Lee, Maurya Simon, George Hutchinson, Martyn Bone, Dorothy Allison, Maxine Clair, Whitney Otto, and Michael Pettit for his belief in what I thought was unbelievable. Thank you to my agent, Wendy Weil, for championing my work, and to my editor, Kathy Pories, for helping me find the story’s shape, and to my copyeditor, Bob Jones, who helped me hone the details. Thank you to great teachers Beverly Belanger, Jeannette Swenson, Michele Stemler, Karla Hoffman, Jeff Ditzler, Carolyn Gratton, Sam Freedman, Vicki Schultz, Alan Isaacs, John Rickford, Bill Hilliard, Alex Knowles, Hettie Jones, and Joan Silber. For vision and inspiration, thank you Honorée Fannone Jeffers. Thank you to my friends for your support and encouragement over the years: Rayme Cornell, Fanshen Cox, Laurie Katz Braun, Marla Mervis, Victoria Platt Tilford, Michael Siebecker, Reg E. Cathey, Alicia Lowry, Adrienne Flagg, Brooke Campbell, Marty Hughley, Douglas Light, Murad Kalam, Jeffery R. Allen, Nova Ren Suma, and big big thanks to trusted readers Kylie Sachs, Mary Thamann, Ryan Canty, Sandy Ray, and Beena Ahmad. Thank you to Rosemary, Loretta, Michael, and Mark, and always always always Darryl E. Wash—this is for us.