Postcards for a Songbird

by Crane, Rebekah

  Vivienne Rhine pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Idaho.

  She was released two years ago.

  There is no looking back as Leia pulls onto the highway toward Boise. A flock of birds rises high into the sky, as if to guide us forward on our journey back home.

  Rolling fields of amber wheat extend in front of us, the harvesting done, neat rows lining the land now, like waves. The vast swath of farmland known as the Palouse, south of Spokane, looks beautiful in the bright light of day. The gray of the city is gone. It’s quiet out here. Life seems simpler without so many buildings. Just fields as far as we can see.

  “Wreck Tangle,” Leia says, her arm hanging out the window.

  “I like that one,” Baby Girl says, offering Leia a smile as she sits shotgun next to her.

  “No,” I say. “That doesn’t feel like me.”

  “Belle on Wheels?” Luca offers. He’s next to me in the somewhat cramped back seat of the truck.

  “Gross. Too cute,” Leia says from the driver’s seat.

  “But Wren is cute.” Luca winks at me.

  “Resident Shevil?” Baby Girl asks.

  “Game Ovaries.” Leia laughs.

  Baby Girl adds, “Deathascope?”

  “Wicked. I like that one,” Leia says.

  But my heart and my head aren’t really into picking a Roller Derby name right now. I hug the jar of pennies closely.

  “What are you going to do with those?” Leia asks.

  “I don’t know yet,” I say. What does one do with freedom? There are choices to be made.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Luca says.

  A long silence hangs over the car. The sun streams in through the windshield. The wheat fields wave in the breeze.

  “I’m scared,” I say finally. At my confession, Luca takes my hand in his.

  “It would be weird if you weren’t,” he says.

  “It’s going to be OK,” Leia says. “No matter what happens, pain always fades with time.”

  “So do memories,” Luca says. “Even the bad ones.”

  “Nothing lasts,” Baby Girl says. She gives a knowing look at Leia, who reaches out and takes Baby Girl’s hand in hers. Baby Girl told her everything, and it turns out Leia likes her more for it.

  “Intoxiskate,” Leia says.

  “Skaterbrained,” Baby Girl says.

  I rest my head on Luca’s shoulder and watch the world go by. “It really does look like amber waves.”

  “One day maybe we’ll go to the ocean,” he says, holding my hand. “But not today.”

  “I wish I could kiss you right now.”

  Luca and I lie in the bed of the truck, Leia and Baby Girl curled together inside, asleep. Overhead, clouds block the stars. Only tiny streaks of sunset sneak their way through to splatter color on the earth. We’ve made it to Boise, but my mom will have to wait until morning.

  “You can kiss me,” I say.

  “No, because kissing will lead to other thoughts, and then I’ll want to do those ‘other thoughts’ with you, and Leia’s right there. I’m pretty sure she can kick my ass with one hand.”

  I have to hold back a giggle.

  “I can wait to kiss you in the daylight,” Luca says.

  “You can?”

  “My patience has grown this summer.”

  “It has?” I say skeptically.

  “I’m like a monk now. I’m thinking about going into the seminary. My Catholic parents will be so proud.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “Why?”

  “No kissing allowed at seminary.”

  “Don’t say the K-word.” Luca bites his lip.

  “OK,” I say. “What about ‘hug’? Can I say that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “‘Touch’?”

  “Nooooo.”

  “‘Snuggle’? ‘Embrace’? ‘Lips’?”

  “You may need to stop talking. I’m not sure I can take it.”

  I turn toward him completely, rolling onto my hip and shoulder, my head resting on my arm.

  “What about ‘love’?” I whisper. “Can I say ‘love’?”

  Luca’s dark hair matches the black clouds above us. His eyes are trained on me. “Only if you mean it.”

  I lean a little closer, forgetting air and space and rules, because now isn’t the time to back away. It’s the time to get close. Lean in. See. Be.

  “Love,” I say.

  Our lips are just barely touching, so when he speaks, the word falls into my mouth, like a desperately needed drip of water.

  “Love,” he whispers.

  We’re still, our closeness like a protective shield.

  “I think it’s only right that you kiss me now,” I say.

  “Well, if I have to.”

  Luca brings his hand to my cheek and guides my lips to his. The kiss is simple, and I feel a sense of calm, of being, of stability I’ve never experienced before. The humble power of being in love and having that love returned. Whole. Holeless. One. There is no room for doubt to settle in, no crevices or wrinkles.

  “I change my mind,” Luca says. “I could never be a monk.”

  “Thank God.” I smile, but it fades slightly. “What’s going to happen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I mean Utah. I mean my mom. I mean Chief and Lizzie and life.

  “Only one thing is for certain,” Luca says. “Tomorrow will eventually be a memory.”

  I lie back and look up at the stars.

  “OK,” I say. “Tomorrow’s a memory.”

  And in the morning, when I wake up, our hands have crept toward each other and grabbed ahold, palm to palm, a simple kiss.

  41

  PRISON

  What’s my gesture?

  What’s my punctuation?

  What’s my vegetable?

  What’s my color?

  What’s my . . .

  What’s my . . .

  What’s my . . .

  Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle.

  I am a songbird.

  And this is my song.

  Finally.

  As she watched me paint a tree in her partially finished forest, Lizzie wanted to know about Monet.

  “He painted with only nine colors,” I said.

  “Why only nine?” She examined the outline of a butterfly still drying on her wall. “What about all the other colors? Why leave them out? Didn’t he like them?”

  “That’s not how color works. I can make any color I want. All you need is a few, and you can paint a universe.”

  “Show me, Songbird.”

  Dabbing a little bit of yellow and red on my palm and swirling them together, I made orange.

  “See?”

  “Now my butterflies can be monarchs.” Lizzie gasped. “You’re magic, Songbird.” She smiled and lay down on the floor, arms spread wide, an angel in a frozen forest. “This means we can make anything out of practically nothing.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I have an idea,” Lizzie said. “Let’s paint her a life.”

  And so we did. We made a masterpiece out of stories we imagined.

  All the fantasies Lizzie and I dreamed up for our mom ended the same.

  “Maybe she’s a Christian-radio host in North Dakota,” Lizzie said. “Or a sound technician for Burning Man.”

  “Or an ocean photographer with over a million followers on Instagram.”

  “Or a tap-dancing street performer in New York.”

  “Or a CIA agent with a perfect Russian accent,” I said, “living in Moscow and dining with Putin every night only to steal his secrets.”

  “Or the only midwife in a crumbling Syrian hospital, with bombs going off all around her. But she’s vowed never to leave, because babies are born even in the middle of war and they deserve to be held lovingly when they take their first breath,” Lizzie said. “She has to stay.”

/>   That’s why she couldn’t be with us.

  In the name of love.

  We may have come up with multiple versions of her story, but there was only one conclusion. One reason she lived without us.

  We never imagined there could be a different ending.

  Vivienne Rhine opens the front door of her cement-gray apartment, a cigarette oozing gray smoke between her fingers. She stares at me, knowingly. Like she expected that I’d show up and she’s not too pleased about it.

  “She said you would come.” Vivienne pulls a drag from her cigarette. In all our imagining, she never smoked. Not in this addicted kind of way. The way that makes your face sour and your breath gross and your skin prematurely saggy. “She’s been waiting for you.”

  Another drag, and a long exhale. Her hair is dyed black, with gray peeking out on the crown of her head. She is not the beautiful woman from the picture, with eyes the color of life. Premature death has settled into her features.

  In some places, make-believe isn’t possible.

  She picks a piece of tobacco from her tongue and leans against the doorway.

  “You came all this way and you’re not going to speak?”

  What is there to say? For years I imagined a woman, but not her. And in all my fantasies, we never spoke. There was more magic in silence.

  Where is the woman Chief loves?

  “Your sister wanted me to give you something.” Vivienne walks into her apartment, letting the door close slightly, as if to tell me to stay put, and returns a moment later with a book. She hands it to me.

  When Instinct Goes Wrong: An Investigation of Woodpeckers and Their Relationship with Wood.

  “Kind of an odd book,” Vivienne says.

  “I’m kind of an odd person.” I run my hand over the cover. Lizzie had it all this time. I open to the page where my secret has hidden for years, but a postcard has been placed there instead.

  Self-Portrait with a Beret, 1886

  Dear Songbird,

  “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” —Claude Monet

  I love you,

  Lizzie

  Wren Plumley

  20080 21st Ave.

  Spokane, WA 99203

  This one is handwritten in Lizzie’s circular scrawl, like all the postcards she sent when I was younger, when she was pretending to be the woman who now stands before me. I don’t know which I prefer—Lizzie’s smooth handwriting or the reality—but I’m not sure it’s necessary to know.

  “That’s Monet, right?” Vivienne says, pointing to the picture on the front. She pulls another drag from her cigarette. It’s down to just a nub now.

  I nod.

  “Look, I told your dad years ago that I wasn’t fit to be a mom. That hasn’t changed. I don’t know what you girls want from me.”

  “Nothing,” I say, examining the gray walls and the gray smoke and Vivienne’s gray aura. A person doesn’t have to be behind bars to be in a prison.

  We all decide when it’s time to let ourselves out. To be free.

  And I didn’t come here for her.

  Before I leave for good, I say, “When you see Lizzie again, tell her she can come home now.”

  42

  BACK WHERE YOU BELONG

  I walk up to the reception desk at the Spokane Public Library.

  “I’m here to return a book.”

  I hand the librarian the copy of When Instinct Goes Wrong: An Investigation of Woodpeckers and Their Relationship with Wood. She scans it.

  “We’ve been waiting for this to be returned,” she says.

  “Me, too.”

  She goes to set it among the pile of books for reshelving.

  “Do you mind if I put it back?” I ask her. “I know exactly where it goes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I’ll make sure it doesn’t go missing again.”

  On the fifth floor, among the stacks of research papers and old encyclopedias, secrets are tucked between pages of facts. For so long I wanted to find Lizzie’s truth, but what I discovered was my own.

  This was never about her. Even she knew that.

  It’s the story of a songbird.

  Only one more secret belongs here. And then it’s done.

  So do woodpeckers get headaches or what? I imagine Wilder asking.

  “I’m not sure it matters,” I whisper aloud. “They’re still going to peck wood. It’s in their nature. I think it’s time we just let it be.”

  Wilder is a memory now, but even so, I can almost hear him saying, Birds will be birds.

  On a lone piece of paper, I write my secret about a boy with constellation freckles and red hair, who flipped on a light in the darkness and turned my life upside down. I place it between two pages and close the book. Done.

  “Birds will be birds,” I say, and walk away.

  Alone.

  43

  FREEDOM

  It’s the middle of the night. Rosario’s Market is closed. The lights are off inside. I hold the jar of pennies. Thousands of them. Each one stored for just the right time. Saved for Lizzie, but meant for me. Freedom in a jar.

  Leia, Baby Girl, Luca, and I stare at the mechanical horse.

  “Do you regret it?” Leia asks. “Seeing your mom?”

  “No,” I say. “I needed to know.”

  “It’s the same way I feel about Doritos. Am I bummed I can never eat them again? Sure. But is it more important I don’t poison myself with shit that’s going to give me cancer? Yes.”

  “A profound statement, Princess,” Luca says.

  “Food is totally a metaphor for life,” she says. “Just because it tastes good doesn’t mean you should eat it. As much as it sucks, it’s better to eat your broccoli most days.”

  “The truth is broccoli,” Baby Girl proclaims. “It smells, tastes even worse, but it keeps the heart healthy.”

  “I like my heart,” I say with a quick glance at Luca. “It’s more reliable than my head.”

  “The only junk food I’m eating from this day forward is marshmallows. One in particular,” he says. “That’s all I need.”

  “So who wants the first ride?” I ask, shaking the jar.

  “That’s a lot of pennies,” Leia says. “I hope there’s time.”

  “You, Wren,” Baby Girl says. “You do it. Show us how it’s done.”

  So I climb onto the horse, drop a penny into the machine, and wait. And wait. And wait. Leia inspects the horse. She shakes it once.

  “I think freedom’s broken,” Luca says.

  “How apropos,” Leia says.

  “That’s OK,” Baby Girl says. “A wise person once said, ‘You can’t do freedom. You have to be it.’”

  “Genius,” Leia says. “Who said that?”

  Baby Girl smiles at me. “Wren.”

  “Well, what do we do now?” Luca asks.

  I set the jar of pennies next to the horse. “I guess we’ll just have to wait for the horse to be fixed.”

  “That might take a while,” Leia says. “There’s a lot broken in this world.”

  “That’s OK,” I say. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  We all take a seat on the curb, a mini-rainbow of auras—turquoise, orchid, cadmium yellow, and shamrock green. Maybe Monet saw auras, too. Maybe he collected nine colors because each one meant something special to him.

  “I figured it out,” I say. “My roller-girl name.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Leia says.

  “I’m glad one of us knows who we are,” Baby Girl says.

  “You’ll get there,” Leia says. “We’ll all get there.”

  “But maybe just not tonight. We can blame it on the broken horse.” Luca grins, and the dark lights up with sunlight. “So what’s the name, Wren? Who are you?”

  Who am I? The answer comes easily now.

  And I say, “Plum Crazy.”

  44

  HO
W IT ENDS

  When life isn’t working, take another perspective. That’s what Chief and I are trying to do. It’s how to move on.

  “Before and After,” he says. He’s on the couch in the living room, drinking chamomile tea to help him sleep. Leia convinced him it would be better for his health than beer.

  I know why Chief has deep wrinkles around his eyes that crinkle and crease, even when he’s resting. I know why he holds on tightly, why he lives in the dark and fights the lurking shadows when other people are sleeping.

  He told me the story. How love lives in the cracks and the crevices and the wrinkles. He finally let me dig down and pull it out of him.

  He told me how he met a woman who bent light and shifted his world and made living feel effervescent. How he wanted her for all eternity, but she was haunted by a darkness even Chief couldn’t tame. So he gave her light the only way he knew how—two baby girls.

  “You and Lizzie,” Chief said. “I thought it would solve our problems, but it wasn’t that easy.”

  When a call came in to the Boise Police Department about a car crash near Interstate 84, he was the first person to the scene of the accident.

  “When I heard the make of the car and license plate, I was paralyzed,” he said. “And then I heard two deceased. It took me five minutes to get there. For five minutes I thought you and Lizzie were dead.”

  Chief shuddered, tears in his eyes, and any anger I had seemed small then next to what he experienced. Next to death.

  “It wasn’t right to be relieved—two people died that day—but by God, I was.”

  Vivienne was drunk and high on pain pills. Chief blamed himself. He knew she was struggling with depression and addiction, but he thought if he loved her hard enough, it would go away.

  “Two people died because of me,” he said. “It’s my job to serve and protect, and I let my own blindness cloud my judgment. I couldn’t stay in that town. And your mom . . . It was like she wanted to go to jail. She wanted out of our life together.”

  It was then that I understood: Chief didn’t completely lie to me and Lizzie. Our mom did leave, just not how we thought.