Postcards for a Songbird

by Crane, Rebekah

  Sometimes a person has to demolish what was to build what should be.

  Is that what Chief did to our lives in Boise? Did he demolish his past so he could move on to the future? If so, I can’t fault him, but I also can’t stop wondering, Why leave Idaho? Why leave his friends, his job, the life he built? He was in love. He said himself that he never wanted anything more than my mom. That she did the leaving. But so did we. If he wanted her to find us, he’d have stayed put. Chief has chased enough criminals to know that to catch someone you have to follow them. People who want to escape turn the other way.

  But escape from what?

  The walls of my house are crumbling, and my place of reprieve is beginning to look like a prison. Is that how Lizzie felt from the start? Is that what Lizzie meant in her postcard? Did she figure it out and decide to break free? Does she want me to follow?

  But where is she? How can I find her if she won’t tell me where to go?

  When Olga shows up for her shift later in the day, Chief fires her. She stands in the doorway, her purse slung over her arm, her expression blank. I’m standing behind him, ashamed that what I did lost Olga her job. She even made me soup.

  “I trusted you to keep this house in order,” Chief says.

  “I’ve been coming here fourteen years,” she says flatly. “I never miss a day. I’m always on time. I follow your rules.”

  “And I’m sorry to see you go, but all the same, I think this is for the best,” he says.

  Olga steps closer to him, pointing her finger in his face. “I’ve been looking after children for years. I see things. I know more. You think what you do is for the best, but that’s where parents make mistake.”

  Chief is curt in his response. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your best?” Olga points at me. “Or her best?” It’s the most I’ve ever seen her combat Chief. I want to apologize, tell her that this is all my fault, but my words fail me.

  Chief rigidly hands Olga a check. “It covers two weeks’ pay. Good luck.”

  As Olga walks out the front door, she says, “It was bound to happen at some point. That girl wasn’t going to stay quiet forever, no matter how hard you try to make it so.”

  “It really was the best soup I’ve ever had,” I say as Olga walks down the front steps. When she looks at me one last time, I know she wasn’t sleeping last night when Luca snuck in. She sacrificed herself so I could live a little more.

  I’m pretty sure she did the same for Lizzie.

  Later that night, when the house is quiet, I realize that Olga’s silence actually made a lot of noise. And I already miss it.

  Chief takes the rest of the week off to make sure I adhere to my punishment. When I ask him what he’s going to do about me when he goes back to work, he avoids an answer, saying only that he’s got it covered.

  I wash my sheets and clean up my room as well as I can, but the color stays. It’s embedded, on the walls and furniture, under my fingernails. Chief can lock me up, but the color is here now. Even in me.

  We watch Wheel of Fortune in silence. I sit on the couch with a new reality. For years I’ve blinded myself with other puzzles instead of realizing my life, this house, Chief, Lizzie—we are the puzzle no one wanted to solve. Until Lizzie did. I’m sure of that now.

  Both Chief and I are hiding something. How he examines me, the soft way he pads around the house, the nonchalant questions and casual conversation—it’s a game of hide-and-seek, though I’m not sure either of us is willing to find the other yet.

  So we hide in whispers.

  Chief can’t seem to sleep through the night. I hear him walking the hallways, getting water in the kitchen, watching television. Something keeps him awake. He sleeps only in spurts—a few hours here and a few hours there, never really rested, always on alert. Like he’s worried I’m going to leave, too. Or that something might come back to haunt us.

  But it’s already back. I can feel it.

  I walk the steps into the dark basement during one of Chief’s afternoon naps.

  In some places, make-believe isn’t possible. Lizzie’s words echo in my mind.

  I need to see her.

  Boxes are stacked in the darkest corner of the basement, where the cobwebs are thick and the spiders play. I brush them aside, digging through winter gear and holiday decorations and old DVDs. The unmarked boxes of pictures are way in the back.

  When I finally get to the photos, I’m covered in dust and dirt, my hair tangled with cobwebs, my fingers grimy. But no one comes to a precipice clean. To reach the edge of a cliff, one has to crawl, hands and knees, to the ledge. To peer over slowly.

  That’s how I open the box. Slowly.

  I’m not sure what I expected. What does love look like locked in a basement? Part of me wanted an organized scrapbook, or delicately handled photo albums. How love should be touched. But love doesn’t work that way. It’s dirty and messy and unpredictable, and sometimes, when it becomes too much, it gets tossed to the back of the basement under the assumption that it will always be there when we need it.

  Luca and I know better. No one expects their memories to leave, and so we treat them poorly, casting moments aside in arrogance when we should be cradling them.

  I don’t find her immediately. My heart pounds as I peel through the pictures of me and Lizzie and Chief, our early life in Spokane—Chief in his police uniform on Christmas Day, Lizzie’s first day of kindergarten, Chief visiting her classroom. Me on a swing next to Chloe. A Fourth of July barbecue in her backyard. I see a tuna casserole on the potluck table, and I can’t help but laugh.

  For a moment I’m distracted. Old pictures will do that.

  I dig deeper into the box, the dust making me sneeze. Lizzie and I knew that finding our mom wouldn’t be easy or clean. It would hurt, scrape, bruise the skin, and tear up our clothes. So we painted a clean life.

  I pull another picture from the mess, and I see her. My mom has my hair—dark, practically jet black—and green eyes like mine. In fact, everything about her is me. For my entire life I’ve assumed she looked like Lizzie, with brown, flowing hair and eyes of the earth, skin of the sun. That she loved Lizzie because they were the same. That she gave Lizzie the sun, and me nothing, because unlike flowers, a child will grow even if you don’t water it.

  But I am a replica of her.

  Footsteps sound from upstairs. I close the box quickly, putting it back where it belongs. Then I see a sweater, green with embroidered flowers around the collar.

  Lizzie said that it felt like she was wearing a garden.

  “It’s like I’m tangled in flowers, Songbird. Doesn’t that sound lovely?” she said when she found the sweater at a thrift store this past spring. “Where do you think this hole came from?” she asked, holding up a pair of jeans too big for her with tears in the knees.

  I never knew.

  “Skydiving?” she asked.

  “That’s too scary.”

  “Professional wrestler?”

  “No one wrestles in jeans,” I said. “Someone probably just tripped and fell. That’s the story.”

  “No, Songbird. The real story is what they were running from.”

  I pick up Lizzie’s sweater. She was down here recently. Not long before she left.

  “Wren?” Chief’s voice carries down the stairs. I put the picture in my pocket but leave the sweater, and I race upstairs before he can figure out that I was digging through our dirty past.

  35

  GRAND THEFT AUTO

  Chief is taking another afternoon nap. I’m roller-skating in circles in the driveway, practicing my crossovers, when Baby Girl arrives.

  I can tell the instant I see her that something is wrong.

  “Did something happen with Leia?” I ask.

  Baby Girl shakes her head. Fatigue clings to her like a wet blanket. “She’s working today. So is Luca. He’s different. I can see it.” That makes me smile. “I think he finally stopped running from himself.”


  “It was getting tiring.”

  She exhales a breath that says, I know this with every inch of whoever I am.

  “You know the problem with carousel horses?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “They don’t go anywhere when you need them to.”

  “This is true.”

  “It never bothered me until now. And if I have to listen to that song one more time, I’m going to scream. I think I need a new job.”

  “OK.”

  “Also, I like chai-tea lattes. I can’t stop drinking them. They’re my favorite.”

  “That’s great.”

  Baby Girl runs a hand over her freshly shaved head. “And I like not having hair.”

  “You look good with a shaved head.”

  She nods. “I hate skinny jeans and the sound of corduroy pants rubbing together and the saying ‘Your vibe attracts your tribe.’ It’s insulting. And I think I want to major in psychology. I figure I know a lot about people, seeing as I’ve tried on so many personalities.”

  “You’re making real progress, Baby Girl.”

  “Thanks,” she says. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  She has a hard time saying what comes next. The words lodge in her throat. I’ve seen the look so many times on Chief.

  “Luca told me about your room,” she says.

  “Chief wasn’t happy. I may have gone a bit overboard.”

  “Sometimes the only option is to jump ship,” she says.

  “Chief doesn’t see it that way.”

  “That’s because he’s the captain of the vessel. His job is to save you.”

  “I don’t need saving.”

  “Would you prefer he let you drown?”

  “But what if the ship is sinking? What if getting off is how to survive?”

  “Well, maybe you have it backward. Maybe Chief needs you to save him. The captain is supposed to go down with the ship. Maybe you need to convince him to screw the rules and jump with you.”

  I never thought of it like that.

  “You definitely should major in psychology,” I say. “You’re good at it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Whatever Baby Girl needs to say comes closer to the surface.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Finally she says, “I need your help.” She exhales a long breath. “My dad . . . He’s dying.”

  “What?” I spit out.

  “Turns out, the reason he didn’t show up for our last meeting is because he’s in the hospital with stage-four lung cancer. My mom refuses to see him. She says he deserves to die on his own. She won’t take me there either.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Coeur d’Alene.”

  That’s forty minutes away.

  “What about Leia? She has a car.”

  “I can’t ask her.”

  “Did something happen between you two?”

  “No, but she doesn’t know”—Baby Girl looks at the ground, ashamed, and my heart aches—“what you know about my past. And I don’t want to tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because no matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t my fault, a little voice in the back of my head tells me it was. And I’m worried that if I tell her, she’ll feel the same way and see me differently.”

  I understand.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say softly.

  “That’s beside the point at the moment. My mom’s probably right. My dad does deserve to die alone, but death is rarely about the dying. I’m not sure I can live with myself if I don’t at least see him one more time. Even if he is a horrible person. Every body needs one asshole. And he was mine. I need to say goodbye.”

  Chief will probably be up soon, patrolling the house again.

  “And you’re sure he’s going to die?”

  “It’s an inevitability for all, Wren, but it’s imminent for him.”

  “Do you want to borrow the cruiser?”

  “I don’t know how to drive. I was a pothead for most of my junior year. Not conducive for driving . . . and then I just kind of forgot.”

  “So you want me to drive you.”

  Baby Girl gives me a look of guilt, and of hope. “You said if I ever need you . . .”

  I’ve only ever driven a go-cart. And I managed to get a concussion.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Really?”

  “People only die once,” I say. “That’s worth stealing a car for.”

  The hospital smells like sterile cotton balls. Baby Girl visits her dad while I sit in the hallway. I offered to go in with her, but she said honesty doesn’t like observers. She needs to do this alone.

  I keep telling myself that, technically, I didn’t steal the car, since it’s mine and we plan to return it immediately.

  Minutes tick by, and then an hour. I don’t know when someone becomes OK with leaving a dying person. Walking away means never seeing him again. A final goodbye shouldn’t be rushed.

  But I don’t regret helping Baby Girl. She needs me, and up until this summer I’d never felt that before.

  Three hours later she emerges. No tears stain her cheeks, though she looks a little pale.

  “Let’s go to Denny’s,” she says.

  So that’s where I take Baby Girl after she’s said goodbye to her dad for the last time.

  We slide into the sticky booth and take our sticky menus from the waitress. She leaves two glasses of water. We didn’t talk as we drove to the restaurant. The air-conditioning in the cruiser doesn’t work, so we rolled down the windows and let the wind talk for us.

  “Moons Over My Hammy?” I ask.

  Baby Girl is distracted. “I ordered that only because my dad did, but it always grossed me out. I choked it down for him. I’m not that hungry, actually.” She takes a deep breath.

  I get it. Death has a way of consuming people.

  The waitress comes back, notepad in hand. “What would you like to order?”

  “Nothing,” Baby Girl says.

  “Why come to a restaurant, then?”

  “To look at the menu,” Baby Girl says to the waitress. “I have options now.”

  The waitress turns to me, disgruntled.

  “I don’t have any money,” I say with a sorry expression.

  “Enjoy your free water.” The waitress leaves us then.

  “So . . . will you miss . . . Moons Over My Hammy?” I ask.

  “I’d like to say no, but people miss hate as much as they miss love. Both leave irreparable marks.” Baby Girl peruses the menu. “You can’t forget the taste. You know what I mean?”

  “Well . . . you could never eat at a Denny’s again if you don’t want to.”

  Baby Girl sits back in her seat. “I don’t want to live like that, Wren. Avoiding . . . I think that’s what I’ve done most of my life.”

  More minutes pass without words. A container of crayons sits on our table. I ask the hostess for paper. When I sit back down, I draw a tic-tac-toe board.

  “Xs or Os?” I ask Baby Girl.

  “I’ll be Xs.”

  The first round ends in a cat’s game. I draw another board, and we come to the same end. Then another and another, each round ending in a draw.

  “I think we’re too old for this game,” Baby Girl says. “Neither of us can win.”

  “It’s not about winning. It’s just a good distraction.”

  “Well, in that case . . .” She makes another tic-tac-toe board. Slowly the paper is filled with distractions.

  “Isn’t it weird that we require a class and multiple tests to drive but anyone can be a parent?” she asks, placing an X in the center box.

  “Chief always says a car is a weapon.” I add an O.

  She puts an X in the upper-right corner. “So is parenting.”

  I can’t think of anything to say. She is right.

  We end another game in a tie.

  The waitress comes back over. “Are you going to eat or what? My shift�
�s about to end.”

  “What’s the most popular thing on the menu?” Baby Girl asks.

  “Moons Over My Hammy.”

  Baby Girl looks at me. “Figures.”

  “You can’t just sit here all day.”

  “Yes, I can,” Baby Girl says. “You’re open twenty-four seven. I could live here if I wanted to.”

  “Why would you want to live at Denny’s?” the waitress asks. “This place is a shithole.”

  A smirk pulls at Baby Girl’s cheeks. “Maybe that’s why my asshole dad brought me here. He felt at home.”

  And then Baby Girl starts laughing uncontrollably, like a volcano has erupted from her gut and won’t stop until her insides have calmed again. Tears streak her face as she tosses her head back, cackling. I’ve never seen her like this. Laughter shatters her into beautiful pieces, right here in life’s shithole.

  The waitress doesn’t realize that she’s seeing a girl’s becoming, right in front of our eyes. In the middle of death and shit, Baby Girl pulls herself from the wreckage.

  When the laughter has subsided, the tears on Baby Girl’s skin give her a new, fresh glow, her eyes shimmering with a light I’ve never seen before. She says to the waitress, “I’m ready to leave now. Thanks for the water.”

  We get back in the cruiser, windows down, and leave Denny’s. Baby Girl has this serene look to her.

  “I think I want to get my own apartment near campus, or live in a dorm. Maybe next week, you, me, and Leia can go shopping together?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “And I’m going to tell her. About my dad. Because she should know.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  A few minutes pass before Baby Girl says, “Thank you, Wren.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “I told him I forgive him,” she says.

  “You did?”

  She nods slowly. “Not for him. For me.” She’s practically floating above the seat, the lightest I’ve ever seen her, like each of her costumes has been stripped away and all that’s left is her real skin. No hiding. “If I didn’t forgive him, he’d always have control over me. He’d be my story. Even after he dies. I didn’t want that. But now . . . for the first time in my life, I feel free.”