The Milk of Birds (37 page)

Dad told me that I should stress the hopeful, not the hopeless, because people will give once out of pity but repeatedly when they think their money is turning lives around. That fits: I feel very hopeful about you, don't you? But how to get this hope into a fund-raiser—that's the problem.

More later.

Dear Nawra,

I miss you.

Is Hamdu crawling yet? Cilla is almost. Mrs. Clay refers to her as “my little redecorator.”

Wally's more like Parker. Their idea of sports is surfing the Internet. That's not really true. Wally would love to play baseball, only he swings at a pitch like it's a piñata. His mom signed him up for T-ball and bought him the whole rig, so I spend a lot of my babysitting time as a batting coach.

Parker loves to walk. Sometimes we take the bus and wander around Richmond. In Hollywood Cemetery he showed me the grave of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederates, the rebels in our Civil War. I told Parker what you said, about scars lasting generations.

Because of the gray, cold day, we were shivering side by side, trying to mix the fog of our breaths, and then somehow we were kissing.

In a graveyard! But it wasn't vampirey at all.

I think I know what the sweet waters of Umm Jamila used to taste like.

More later.

Dear Nawra,

Steven took us hiking last weekend on his favorite trail in Shenandoah National Park. He invited Greg and Parker, too. “
Jebel
” means “mountain,” right? The Shenandoahs are some really beautiful
jebels
, even at the muddy end of winter. At one point I got way out in front of everybody. I swear my brain works better when my feet are moving because I had a knockout fund-raising idea.

I've been rereading your letters, which are what made me hopeful, after all, and writing down my favorite sayings.

If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing.
Whatever we do has to be really joyful.

Too much of anything makes it cheap, except for people, who become more valuable.
It has to involve a lot of people.

God is the greatest.
Who could argue with that, right? We should get church people involved; they usually don't mind doing a lot of work for free.

We live in the world we created.
I wish people could hear your voice, Nawra. I was picking my way over some roots and I thought,
Why don't we write your sayings down and make them part of this fund-raiser?
Then it will belong to you and your mom and your sisters and all the grandmothers of Umm Jamila.

We could stick little cards on the dashboard after we wash cars.
Alms do not diminish wealth.
We could tuck them into cookie bags.
Do not regret what is gone.
We could get a lot of people together to buy cookies and pins and cards with sayings while their cars are being washed.

But something was still missing. All these people standing around—they need something to do.

I remembered what you wrote:
When I close my eyes, I see two kites dancing across the sky on the breeze.

Kites—we could fly kites for Darfur!

Dear Nawra,

I was sure my brilliance was going to dazzle everybody.

I tried it out first on Parker, in the
jebels
. He said, “Every time I fly a kite, it nose-dives.”

“You probably don't run fast enough,” I said. He was annoying me. My mom had brought trail mix, and he was picking out the raisins.

I called an emergency meeting of the Darfur Club executives. “Kites?” said Emily. “That's so . . . Afghanistan.” Just because there's this famous book and movie about cutthroat kite flying there.

Then Mr. Nguyen raised a point about money: We'd have to buy the kites.

“Maybe we could make them,” Parker said. I decided to forgive him for the raisins. They do look like turds. “Ben Franklin did.”

“See, kites are American,” I told Emily. “And international.”

I made Parker and Nathan into a committee so Parker can find some books and Nathan can actually make the kite while Parker reads the directions and drinks coffee.

More later.

Dear Nawra,

Nathan and Parker brought a prototype kite to our Darfur Club meeting. A contractor is enlarging Chloe's kitchen, so Nathan bummed some Tyvek, which is this really light and tough material, perfect for the kite body, and he made the frame with a fiberglass rod. It happened to be a breezy, sun-kissed day, so we trooped outside. Parker held the kite—actually he saluted it—and Nathan started running, his ear-puck flapping, and then Parker let go, and
whoosh
, the kite just took off, did some show-offy swiggles, and kept climbing. Everyone cheered.

So the kites are a go.

Dear Nawra,

My head's about to explode. Decisions. We're picking a spring day, a Sunday, so we won't conflict with my track meets or all the other sports. Sunday afternoon so people can still go to church in the morning. Our principal agreed to let us use the football field as a kite arena and the driveway for our “information fair.”

We need a name for the event. I suggested Go Fly a Kite for Darfur. Frieda said it sounded rude. For a new member, she has an awful lot of opinions. We dropped the “Go.” Fly a Kite for Darfur. That decision took a week. At this rate we'll be holding our Darfur fund-raiser three years from now at our senior prom.

It sounds so simple—bake sale, car wash, kite rally—but now the details are running around like a bunch of sugared-up kids at a birthday party. We have to make the kites, bake the sweets, glue the pins, enlist the sponsors, line up the volunteers, and advertise, advertise, advertise.

Dear Nawra,

Mom told me maybe I should pull back from Fly a Kite for Darfur because my homework's suffering. It's not my homework suffering—it's me!

I had a little breakdown and told Parker he was a jerk who cared more for dead heretics than live women and children like you and Hamdu because he told me he had to finish a paper on the Spanish Inquisition and couldn't go with me to the local building association and plead for more Tyvek.

For about a week we hissed at each other as we passed in the hall. Then he showed up at my meet with a sign that said,
BURN UP THE TRACK, K. C.
I guess this is his way of making up, with a shout-out to the inquisitors who burned people alive.

Emily said we had to delegate. “The way you do with your homework,” she said. “Parcel out the jobs.”

“Hey—I do my own homework.” I was deeply offended for about 2.2 seconds.

“I
meant
, chunkify,” Emily said. “Break up the big job into little ones and assign them to people. Think of our club members as your personal assistants.” That girl knows me. We made Frieda the recording secretary, in charge of keeping track of who is doing what. Nathan—kite construction, of course. Todd
and Gregory—publicity. The
Sunshine
is letting Todd write a preview article about the event, with a photo of us making kites, and it's also going to run Fly a Kite for Darfur in the calendar section. Milton Stanley took charge of the bake sale because his parents have a stand-alone freezer where we can store stuff we make ahead of time.

“Are we sure he won't eat everything?” I asked.

“I'm more worried about what else he might be storing in the freezer,” Parker said.

We decided we don't want to know.