The Year the Swallows Came Early (3 page)

T
he bells on the glass door to the Swallow chimed as I pushed it open. Inside the smell of flour tortillas and cinnamon greeted me. Add to that all the onions, peppers, and chilies heating up on the stove, and you could tell it was the kind of place people liked coming to.

“Hey, Groovy,” Frankie's stepbrother, Luis, shouted from the back of the store when he saw me. He stood at the counter, chopping ingredients. His height made him look older than he was, and his black hair shone like the night sky. “Come
on back here and help me make these tacos. I'm running behind schedule. The ferry driver went home sick, and Frankie's gonna have to bring the boat in for the day. He's at the dock refueling right now.”

Luis's biggest moneymaker was not the ferry service he ran back and forth across the harbor for tourists every day, but his secret-recipe tacos passed down from his Aunt Regina. He bought special chilies from Mexico each month when he went to visit her; they were the ingredient no one could guess. The one that made people come back to buy two or three dozen more tacos and a Styrofoam cooler to take them home in.

“Sure,” I told him, even though I was disappointed I wouldn't be able to talk to Frankie right away.

“Thanks. I kind of thought you wouldn't mind.” He smiled and tossed me the cellophane wrap. “And don't forget to wear the plastic gloves.”

I nodded. I knew that after Luis had turned
twenty-one and bought the Swallow Shop & Ferry and the apartment above—where he and Frankie lived—he was determined to make it into a first-rate place. I'd always pictured Luis being a fisherman when he got old enough, like his father. But he'd said it was out of the question. Frankie needed stability and after Frankie's mama had gone and did what she did, Luis was going to do his best to give it to him. The salt would damn well disappear from the ocean before he left Frankie—his very words.

He'd take Frankie to hear Pastor Ken most Sundays at church. “God knows everything you need,” Luis told Frankie over and over.

I went along with them to church every so often because I wanted the same for me: everything I needed. Even though Mama stayed behind. She'd say, “Baby, I'm not sure God even knows the color of my hair, and besides, who knows better about what I need than I do?”

I walked over to the food-prep area in the Swallow and washed my hands for exactly sixty
seconds, as outlined in the
Joy of Cooking
guidelines for proper kitchen hygiene. I knew the chicken taco recipe by heart, being that Luis had finally told it to me after me begging him for months. And I mean begging, because according to Luis, secret family recipes were secret.

“Always use the yellow chilies,” he'd told me. “That's the secret.”

So I'd taped an exact picture of what the chilies looked like in the margin of page 14 in my cooking notebook where I'd written the recipe. There were recipes I'd made up myself in that notebook, but most were from other people. Some were clipped from magazines like
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
, which technically weren't cooking magazines but were the only ones Mama got. Things like “Ten-Minute Meals” and “Fast, Easy Dinners,” which I suppose is the type of cooking ladies who read those magazines do. Like Mama.

Me and Daddy were food people, though. We'd go to the market together, walk through the aisles, and get inspiration. Once we came across a
breadfruit. I had no idea what recipe a breadfruit would go into. Neither did Daddy.

The store owner said, “Got those breadfruits from a farm in Hawaii yesterday. Be great in a bacon-and-milk gumbo, don't you think?”

We nodded at him. Like we cooked breadfruit all the time, and in fact, breadfruit was growing in our garden at home this very minute.

Luis yelled from the front of the store, “And, Groovy, we had an order for ten cheese enchiladas to be picked up this afternoon at four. Please start those, too, if you can. The recipe's on top of the microwave.”

“Okay,” I yelled back. “In cooking school, they teach you to make two or three dishes at the same time, like they do in professional restaurants. They call it kitchen management.”

Luis leaned back around the counter and smiled. “Maybe I should take that class,” he said.

I smiled back at him. Just being inside the Swallow made me feel calmer. Putting together
the tacos with the chicken and cheese and onion and chilies, making something perfect with my hands, made me feel like a different person.

Maybe it was because I appreciated each ingredient by itself—the way it smelled, the way the onions always made me cry when I cut them, even if I lit a candle to absorb the fumes the way they did on TV. It didn't matter, I still cried.

It was Luis who taught me to chop onions. I figured out the dicing part so fast and easy that he said I was a natural. Those were his exact words: “Groovy, you are a natural at chopping onions.”

The Swallow was the only place I really got to cook. Luis said he was happy to have the help. Plus, we didn't always have the ingredients I needed at home. I could never talk Mama into buying extras like cinnamon or fancy cheeses. But Luis's shop had everything.

It was named after the birds that fly each year to the Mission that was built by Junípero Serra in San Juan Capistrano. In the old days of California, the padres had walked north from Mexico and
built missions to spread the good news about Jesus and teach the Indians new ways to farm.

After the mission in San Juan Capistrano was built, the swallows flew there each spring and made little mud nests to raise their babies in after they hatched. People say there used to be so many birds in the sky, it became dark while they flew over the streets to their destination. If you didn't look up, you might think it was an eclipse.

Frankie says it's fitting that they call Luis's store the Swallow Shop & Ferry because the birds will be coming to the area long after we're gone.

“Frankie, why do you love those birds so much?” Luis would ask him each year when they returned.

And Frankie would always say the same thing: “Because I can count on them.”

T
he second I finished wrapping up those tacos and making the ten cheese enchiladas, I ran to the dock in front of the Swallow. Its worn gray wood was as soft as an old pair of cotton pajamas, from years of sun and salt and people walking on it. In the distance I could see the fog building like a wall of dark mist, pushing at high speed toward us. Frankie was tying the ferry to the pier posts good and tight with slipknots, the same kind they use in the navy.

“Frankie,” I said. “It's Mama's fault my daddy's in jail.”

“Your mother's fault? Why?” His face was a mixture of 50 percent surprise and 40 percent that-can't-be right, and 10 percent something else that I couldn't quite make out.

“I don't know. She won't talk about it. She came down with a bad headache right after she told me she was the one who called the police.” I felt tears in my eyes again. “She's at home. She said, and I quote, ‘I don't feel well, and talking makes it worse.'” I shook my head.

Frankie frowned. “You'll have to get her to tell you what happened.” He looked me over good and sighed. Then he said, “But I'm sort of not surprised.”

I looked at the ground. It was the first time Frankie had actually
said
something like this. But I knew he thought it from time to time because he would stop himself in the middle of a sentence sometimes when we talked about my daddy. He would say, “Do you think your dad—?” and then he would stop. And I would say, “What?” And he would say, “Nothing.”
And then it felt weird between us. So Frankie would quickly change the subject and use this cheerful voice that really didn't sound like him.

“So what are you saying?” I looked up at Frankie.

He shook his head. “That she'll have to tell you sooner or later. I mean, he is your father.”

I nodded. He was right.

Frankie pulled the blue tarps over the ferry and worked to secure the bumpers. “Help me tie these ropes tight. The weather's coming in and I wanna get the boat cleaned off and covered.”

“Okay.” I grabbed the lines and did my best with the knots. “I'm just saying, I don't know what he could've done to make her call the police.”

Frankie shrugged. I could tell he didn't want to talk about it anymore. I watched him wind the rope ends into a perfect coil on the dock. Then he reached for the hose and started spraying off the tarp.

A small boy with dark brown hair, who looked like he might be in kindergarten, ran up to us.
“My sister's
not
gonna like you getting water all over her masterpiece,” he said, glaring at the sidewalk in front of him. A large chalk drawing of a bird flying over a tree, similar to the one I'd seen earlier, covered the cement. The claws of the bird were twice the size of the boy's tennis shoes.

Mist from Frankie's hose was drifting in his direction, making the air look as if it were shining, each atom lit up and falling lightly over the drawing.

I walked over to him. I hadn't noticed the drawing before, but there it was, signed by Marisol Cruz, who was in my grade at school. The way she'd shaded the bird's wings and eyes, it was easy to see how much she loved birds.

“She'll be here any minute and she's not gonna like it,” the boy told me.

Frankie turned off the hose right away. “Sorry,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Felix,” he told us.

“Are you supposed to be here by yourself?” Frankie asked him.

“My sister's coming. I'm not gonna be by myself. She let me carry her chalk box. I'm not gonna drop it.” He held up a white cardboard box covered in construction-paper drawings: a bird standing, a bird flying, a bird nesting.

“Okay,” Frankie said. “Just so long as you're not by yourself.”

“Marisol drew this swallow. She's gonna open up a real art gallery. She's gonna get her pictures in magazines and newspapers. That's what she said.” Felix opened the top of the box and took out a piece of blue chalk, holding it up. “Black is her favorite color. Mine is sky-blue. She said I could color the sky for her birds, so long as I don't go over her lines. Otherwise, I can't be her assistant anymore. Assistants have to do what they're told.”

“The fog is coming in fast today!” Luis called to Frankie and me from the shop. He stood looking over the ocean, his black hair blowing in the breeze. “Come inside, you two. It almost feels like rain.”

It was true. Fog had rolled in on top of us and curled around the sides of the boat where it touched the sea. It was the same fog that brought rust and mildew to everyone's roses except Mama's, and was so famous up in the San Francisco area that photos of it made covers of calendars. And postcards.

Beads of water were busy forming on the outside of my clothes and in my hair, making it curly and frizzy. I knew Mama hated this kind of dampness because she said it ruined a good hair-straightening job.

We hurried into the shop just as Marisol found her little brother.

“Sorry about getting water on your drawing!” Frankie yelled to her.

Marisol looked confused. I saw Felix's arms open wide like he was explaining. “I seen the whole thing,” I heard him tell her.

Inside the shop, we sat at the rear counter on orange vinyl swivel seats, the kind that turn all the way around with a good push.

Frankie got us Frescas and quesadillas made with three kinds of cheese.

“Frankie!” Luis yelled from the front of the shop. He was getting ready to lock up for the day. “You got some mail yesterday. It's on the counter by the microwave. And, Groovy, your mother called. I told her I'd send you home when you got back.”

“Okay,” I answered, thinking that her headache must have gotten better by now, and how I wanted to get home ASAP.

I picked up the letter and handed it to Frankie.

He looked at it and gave it back right away. “Throw it in the trash!” he demanded. “I don't want it.”

“What is it?” I looked at the front of the envelope but before I could read it, Frankie grabbed it from my hands and tore the letter into pieces, throwing them like bits of confetti onto the terra-cotta floor.

He stood for a couple of seconds looking at
the ripped-up letter, then took a roll of Tums from his pocket. He unwrapped it past a lemon- and a lime-flavored tablet until he found an orange one, and put it in his mouth. He chewed fast, swallowed, stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“What?” I asked him.

He opened his mouth, then shut it.

Turned around.

Walked out the door.

I knelt down and pushed the tiny pieces of paper into a pile with my hands.

“Leave them there,” Luis said as he walked to the back where I was. “He won't read it even when it was in one piece.”

We stood real quiet for a minute. I handed the torn-up letter to Luis.

“I knew it was from his mother by the handwriting,” he said. “And I didn't know how to tell him when it came yesterday, so I left it on the counter hoping he'd see it and open it. It's the second one he's gotten in three weeks. Before then, nothing. Except those postcards last year. All of a
sudden, it's like the Pony Express around here.”

Luis opened his hand and the pieces fell slowly into the round cutout in the counter. The same one where customers threw away their used napkins and thin white papers that cover straws. Things nobody thought twice about.

F
rankie held anything that had to do with his mother so tight inside that it made him sick—nothing serious, but still, sick. At first the doctors said he had allergies. Then it was headaches. Later they decided it was a sensitive stomach. All of which were wrong, if you ask me. It was just plain sadness. That, and maybe him being mad for so long. Because when his mother and stepfather left to fish in the southern waters where the big catches are, they left Frankie behind with his stepbrother, Luis, for what was supposed to be a
couple of weeks. Three at the most.

It turned out to be two years with nothing but postcards promising they'd be back as soon as they could.

So far, he was still waiting.

Why she left him was a mystery, and I mean
mystery.
Frankie says the day she left, she only packed enough clothes for a week. In only one suitcase. And it was a small suitcase, like a carry-on, like she really was going to come back.

I knew if she ever did come back for Frankie, it would take a hundred years of explaining before Frankie understood her side. He was just like that. Even with little things. It could take him a whole week to call back if I told him even the tiniest white lie. I'd say, “Frankie, I'm very sorry. I won't do it again. Can we forget about it?”

He never did.

I went outside to look for Frankie. The late-afternoon fog glowed yellow-green around a fluorescent light mounted to the pier. Moisture stuck to everything, a layer of cool wetness.

Marisol and Felix stood side by side, their heads tipped in the same direction. They were looking at Marisol's drawing as though it were a famous painting on display.

She turned around when she heard me.

“It took me a while to fix this one.” Marisol pointed to the swallow Frankie had accidentally sprayed with hose water. “Maybe you should be more careful next time. People like to enjoy my drawings, you know. Especially my swallow series.”

“The swallows are coming back soon,” Felix said.

“It was an accident,” I told her. “We didn't see it.”

Marisol rolled her eyes. “Right,” she said.

“Maybe you should think about drawing somewhere not so close to water,” I told her.

“This is where everyone comes to walk. This is where my audience is,” she said.

“Your audience is at the restaurant, too,” Felix said to his sister. “That's what you told
Dad.” Then he turned to me. “My dad is framing Marisol's swallows for the customers at his restaurant to look at. Marisol says they can enjoy her artwork while they eat.”

Marisol smiled proudly. “I'm starting out there. Soon I'll be in galleries.”

“Oh,” I said. “I better go. I'm looking for Frankie.”

“Yeah, he walked by here. He didn't even say hello. Or sorry.” She waved her hand in the direction of the jetty. “He's out there.”

“Thanks,” I said, walking away as fast as I could. Marisol Cruz wasn't the nicest girl; we found that out pretty quick when she moved here last year with her father, who opened up a Mexican restaurant in town. And the fact that she sat alone at lunch recess, sketching every day, made it even harder to get to know her.

I knew where Frankie would be, without Marisol's help. I found him sitting on the jetty rocks that overlooked the ocean.

Mr. Tom was sitting with his guitar next to
Frankie. He played a song I'd heard before but couldn't remember the name of.

Mr. Tom didn't live anywhere we knew. Sometimes we saw him sitting on the yellow bench in front of the Swallow when it wasn't too busy, but mostly he kept to himself. He had a cardboard box of old sea charts, and a red umbrella that he slept under so he wouldn't get dropped on by the seagulls. His face was a storm of lines and wrinkles, showing the long journeys he'd been on.

Frankie said that Mr. Tom knew the way to the islands off the coast without using a GPS. And that he was waiting for a free boat ride to take him there so he could retire.

I walked up to them and stood listening to the song.

After a while I said, “Luis told me you got another letter from your mother a couple of weeks ago, Frankie. Why didn't you tell me?” I sat down next to him, away from Mr. Tom, on account of Mama telling me he was crazy.

“I don't want to know what she has to say,” Frankie told me.

“I think you should read her letter, though.”

“No, thanks,” he answered quickly.

“Where was the letter sent from?”

Frankie turned away and shook his head. “I don't care where it was sent from,” he said.

Mr. Tom sang on, like he was playing for a huge audience, about a levy and pie. He wore a purple cap over his gray hair and a yellow foul-weather coat, one that had the name Skip Harris embroidered on the left side below the collar. I guessed he'd probably found the coat, being that his name wasn't Skip.

His fingernails were dirty, and long for a man. He wore blue flip-flops that were worn down to nothing. I could see a wad of gray chewed-up gum stuck to the bottom of his right sole. From the grayness of it, I decided it had probably been spearmint-flavored at one time.

Mr. Tom didn't seem to mind me staring at him. He just looked straight ahead and kept singing his
words, the fog making his voice sound close and faraway at the same time.

And I thought that if Daddy were here, he would know the words because it sounded like just the kind of music he used to play on his radio. Soft and a little sad.

“Frankie,” I said, “why don't you want to know what she has to say? Maybe she
wants
to explain. Unlike
my
mama right now. A letter is a lot different than a postcard.”

“I have my own life,” he told me. “With Luis.” He unwrapped his roll of Tums to the last one. It was lime-flavored, but he ate it anyway.

I watched his face and saw a funny look on it. And I thought it must have taken a lot for him to hide that away for so long because just then, he looked a lot different from the friend I knew who could do anything. I started wishing I had a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies to offer him. Ones that came straight from the oven, something to make him feel better.

Mr. Tom stopped singing. He put his guitar
down and stood up next to Frankie, stretching his arms and hands out with his fingers wide. “You gotta forgive, boy,” he told him, “otherwise you keep that with you, like one of those houses they put sandbags around to keep the floodwaters out. Nothin' comes in, but nothin' goes out either.”

Frankie looked up at Mr. Tom. He didn't answer him, but I could tell there was something he wanted to say by the way his eyes looked all serious.

“You don't wanna be stuck,” Mr. Tom said. “It's only a matter of pride.” He let out a long sigh. Then he said, “I've seen this before. Sailors I served with who'd rather stay angry than forgive. And all that personal suffering that comes from built-up anger. It makes no sense, but they'd rather suffer.”

Then he took off his knit cap and his yellow coat and started moving his hands in small circles slowly in the air around Frankie.

He started at the top of his shoulders, and made his way to the bottom of Frankie's legs, but
without touching him. His eyes were closed tight, like he was feeling for the anger that must have been coming off Frankie that very moment.

And when he came to the bottom of Frankie's tennis shoes, he shook his hands out three times. Like a person does who has no towel to dry them after a good washing.

Then he picked up his guitar with his coat and cap and walked up the hill without looking back, like it never even happened.