The Year the Swallows Came Early (13 page)

M
ama came barreling loudly through the back door five minutes later, her black bag brimming with boxes of red hair dye. “Did you see the swallows?”

“You scared me, Mama!” I gasped, startled out of deep thought. I'd been thinking about everything Daddy had said, deciding whether or not to tell Mama about his call. How he seemed sad but peaceful,
different
today than I could ever remember. I could see how Mama would've been mad about him giving the trailer to Mr. Tom when he
could've used that money, and why he didn't tell her about it. And even though selling the trailer would've been the smart thing to do, there was a part of me that felt glad he'd let Mr. Tom win it from him. There was something about Daddy giving away one of his last valuable possessions that made me feel he had goodness in him again.

“The paper said the swallows are ahead of schedule this year. They must know something we don't,” Mama said.

“Maybe they got confused,” I told her.

“Baby”—Mama put her hands on her hips—“Mother Nature does
not
get confused.” She looked at me with her eyebrows scrunched up. Like maybe I'd come down with a fever that was sucking up all my common sense. I knew she was wondering how in the world a daughter of hers would not know this fact.

I shrugged. There was too much in my brain at once.

“Here they are,” she said. “You can look through them and decide. I've been collecting
different products.” She picked up a box with a picture of a pretty girl on it who looked like a movie star. She had shiny red hair. “This one, in my
professional
opinion, would look best with your coloring.”

“Mama, I told you before, I'm not changing my hair.” I felt tired. Exhausted actually. I sat down at the table. My conversation with Daddy rang in my ears. I laid my head in the palms of my hands and closed my eyes. A picture of him nodding his head appeared.
I should've done things differently,
I heard him say.

“Maybe after dinner,” she answered, smoothing my hair, her cool hands gentle and strong at the same time. “I thought
you
could make dinner tonight. Maybe a nice tuna fish casserole with peas.”

She paused then with her hand on my head. Her body froze. “Did you feel that?” she said slowly.

“What?” I asked her.

“Don't move,” she whispered. Her hand gripped my hair, pulling it a little.

“What?” I asked again.

“The light over the kitchen table just moved. Look.”

I bent my head toward the light. “It's not moving,” I said.

“It
was
moving,” she answered. She let go of my hair and tiptoed around the table, inspecting the light carefully. Then she glanced around the rest of the kitchen. “It's all this hot weather,” she told me as she quickly checked under the kitchen sink. I watched her go through the cardboard box of makeup samples and pink foam hair curlers she kept in the back for emergencies.

I rolled my eyes at her to let her know I thought she was crazy. “Mama, please. There's no such thing as hot weather causing earthquakes.”

“Darn heat,” she said.

I laid my head back on the kitchen table. Secrets were mounting up inside me: the day I went to the bank, talking to Daddy on the telephone, all these things Mama knew nothing about. I could feel them pushing, saying,
Tell her everything. Tell
her about the trailer he gave away to Mr. Tom.

A small throbbing started behind my eyes. “Mama, do you miss Daddy?”

She sighed. “Sometimes.” She took a deep breath in, like she was getting ready to tell me something else.

I waited.

But nothing. Instead she walked through the open sliding glass door into the backyard, stepped over a lime lying on the grass beneath our lime tree, crossed to the edge of the small hill, and looked over the ocean in the distance. Her shoulders were stiff.

I got up from the table and followed, ready to tell her everything. Blades of damp grass stuck to the soles of my feet and in between my toes as I walked, my head pounding. A warm breeze caught my hair, sending it in all directions, reminding me of the inside of my brain, how everything felt strewn about since Daddy's call.

At the edge of the hill, the setting sun sparkled off the sea like rays of light filtering through a crys
tal doorknob onto Mama's face, making it glow in a soft way. She took my hand in hers and squeezed it three times.
I. Love. You.
Our code from when I was little. I smiled at the sea, at Mama's love coming through her hand into mine, at the breeze whizzing around the hills like a game of tag.

And that's when I saw it. A tiny, soft white wishing weed, from what used to be a dandelion, drifting through the sky toward the ocean, maybe twenty feet from us. It bounced on the air, light and cheery, like it had nothing better to do, and I wondered if Mama saw it too. It floated slowly in an
S
pattern for a l o n g time, like it was making sure I knew it was there. I remembered the day Daddy had been arrested. How he'd stepped on a dandelion in front of the police car, crushing it. And I thought,
This could be that same dandelion. Only it's not ruined after all. It's spreading its seeds so it can come back again. And this time it'll plant itself in a field, to be safe. This time it will do things differently.

A miniature tear crept into the corner of my
eye then, thinking about Daddy, hoping he'd meant what he said. How it all seemed possible, that we could be a family again someday.

The wishing weed drifted in front of the sun for the slightest second, the orange and amber colors of the sky soaked through its transparent whiteness until it looked like it had been tie-dyed by the sun.

It reminded me of camping with Daddy last summer, just the two of us. How we'd woken up extra early and watched from our sleeping bags on the sand, looking at the sunrise shed pink and orange and yellow across our sky.

“Red sky at night, sailors' delight,” Daddy had told me. “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”

“What does it mean?” I'd asked.

“It means those fishermen out there should watch out for that storm coming in. But don't worry, you're safe here with me. Even so, we'd better heat up our breakfast before that rain comes. Beans again?” He'd smiled his beans-are-
the-best-thing-in-the-world smile and lit a match under our campfire.

I'd dug my feet deep under the cool sand, knowing even before he'd said it that I was safe. That at that moment, beans would taste better than even chocolate cake. And that he loved me.

Later that week he'd surprised me and painted that same sunrise on my bedroom wall. You have never seen a prettier painting. In the bottom corner he wrote,
You are my sunshine.
Sometimes in the morning, when the light starts to come through my window, it looks like a real sunrise, promising good things.

And with all those thoughts of hopefulness mounting inside me, I decided to use the wishing weed.

I sent a wish for Frankie. For his mama to come back soon so he could be close to her again. Then I sent a wish for Mr. Tom to get back to his island with his supplies to
his
trailer.

By the way I stood there grinning, you would've thought I suddenly got the news I was
on my way straight to cooking school, that the classes had been paid for somehow and I had my white apron and chef knives. My head still pounding, a lightness settled over me, emptying everything out but the warmth between Mama's and my hands, and the knowing about Daddy wanting to do things differently.

Because then I did it.

I sent a wish for me. About Daddy being able to sit with me on the jetty rocks again one day. And at first I was surprised about what I wished for after everything that had happened.

But it felt okay, and just a little bit free. Like I could finally rest.

The wishing weed hovered lightly as it came to the edge of the sea. Like it was waiting to see if I had anything else to send it.

But then it caught a fast breeze. And whirled upward in a half circle before it flew west.

And suddenly it was gone.

Because it needed to hurry up and deliver all my wishes.

S
pring break ended and school started up again.

Miss Johnson assigned our class a five-hundred-word essay to be written about the swallows. “Nothing factual, though,” she told us. “I want you to write from the heart. Tell me how the swallows make you feel. Maybe in a tall tale, or a personal narrative. Anything creative.”

I could tell Frankie's essay would get an A by the way he already had his first paragraph finished before I'd even started.

Mama's horoscope predicted business as usual
for two days straight, while mine, she reported, was calling for change.

“It's referring to your hair,” she insisted, to which I rolled my eyes. I didn't believe in astrology, but I knew encouragement when I heard it. It was time for me to come clean and tell her everything, even my wish for Daddy to come home.

And then, at 2:08 in the afternoon on Saturday, while Mama took a short break from the salon for lunch, and she and I were sharing a plate of bell-pepper-and-blue-corn nachos at José's Cantina, surrounded by Marisol's newest sketches hung on the walls, it happened.

“Mama,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”

She looked up at me, her eyes waiting. “Have you decided to start making your chocolate-covered strawberries again?” she asked.

“Yes, I have.”

Mama smiled. “I was sure that a person with the name of Eleanor would figure a way to work things out.” Her face turned soft, and it made me
want to get up out of my chair and put my arms around her right there.

“Thanks, Mama, but that's not what I wanted to tell you. It's about Daddy.” I went over my list in my head of where to start—the bank, the phone call, the trailer—when suddenly the forks and knives on our table started bouncing toward the edges, like a pair of dice does when they're thrown onto a Monopoly board.

The wooden chandelier swung above our heads.

Glasses on our table tipped over, spilling ice cubes and Coca-Cola into a brown bubbling puddle around our feet.

My heart skipped and then beat hard. Instantly my body filled with enough energy to jump a million feet high.

I heard the glass in the windows shaking, warning us to move away in case they shattered.

“Earthquake!” shouted Mama, her eyes as big as ever. And for a moment our bodies were stuck to our chairs, feeling what was happening.

“Quickly, baby,” she told me, “try to get to the doorway. We'll be safe there!”

And she grabbed my arm like she had been waiting for this her whole life.

We ran to the door between the kitchen and the dining room, where strong wooden beams crossed into the stucco walls, and held on tight. A waitress coming from the kitchen dropped her tray, scattering corn chips on the floor.

Customers screamed.

Some tried to make their way outside, stumbling and tripping over nothing but air.

Marisol's sketches fell from the wall.

Dishes crashed to the floor.

“Everyone get away from the windows!” yelled Marisol's father. He ran quickly from person to person, helping them to safety. I watched as he helped a mother and her two little boys huddle under a nearby table.

“Hold on to me, baby!” Mama screamed.

“I am!” I yelled into the air. But she couldn't hear me.

Because without warning, a piece of whitewashed stucco broke apart from the ceiling and fell, shattering loudly into tiny pieces of dust and sharp chalky edges around our feet.

Mama pulled me back tight. “Don't look,” she told me. Which was like telling me not to breathe because who could close their eyes while dodging pieces of a falling ceiling?

She grabbed my shoulders and kissed me on the forehead beneath my bangs. And I knew she loved me more that second than any other by the way she kept her lips pressed firm to me for so long.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the earth stopped shaking, and the restaurant became quiet.

My heart beat so loudly, I was sure Mama could hear it too.

Our fingers gripped tight to the wooden beam, not ready to let go.

We kept waiting.

Watching.

Not daring to move yet.

Not trusting it was over.

Because who can trust a ground that shatters ceilings without warning?

Little by little, people walked back into the restaurant and came out from under tables. Some hugged each other. One lady cried.

“It's over. We're okay,” said Marisol's father. He stood in the middle of the room looking relieved, his arms raised up and spread wide. “Thank you, Jesus,” he told the ceiling.

I looked at Mama. Her eyes stared straight ahead like she was in shock. She had read all those books about being ready for an earthquake. But I could tell from looking at her that her reading hadn't prepared her for what she felt when it actually happened.

“Mama,” I said, knowing that nothing seemed important anymore except the truth about me wanting Daddy home again. So I went straight to it.

“Last week in the backyard, I saw a wishing
weed.” I spoke the words slow, to be sure she heard every one. “I wished for Daddy to come back. I miss him.” I said it like a teacher does when she gives the homework assignment at the end of each day. Like it was just how things were.

She stood quiet. Pieces of her blond hair fell into her face, and splotches of red skin popped up on her neck like they do when she's nervous. And for a minute, I didn't know if she'd heard me.

“Mama?” I reached to touch her face.

She took my hand and held it to her cheek. Soft little tears came out of her eyes while she kissed my fingers. And I knew she'd understood everything by the way she waited, pulling me close to her and nodding, like she was going to say the exact same thing but I'd beaten her to it.

“I know, baby,” she finally answered. And she kissed me so lightly on the face then, it felt as if sifted flour was dusting my skin.