Songs of the Humpback Whale

by Jodi Picoult

�That�s great,� I say, �and the northern girls?�

  �With the way they kiss . . .�

  I sing with her, walking backwards as far as I can, calling on her to raise the volume of her voice as I get farther and farther away. When she forgets the words, she sings syllables, da-da-da. When I can see the car I break into a run, and find a tissue that I�d used to blot lipstick, and bring it back to Rebecca.

  �I wish they all could be California girls,� she says, as I run up to her. �You see? No one came near me.�

  �Better safe than sorry.�

  We lie down on the hood of the Chevy, our backs on the slope of the windshield. I try to listen for the bends of the Colorado River, which we passed several miles back. Rebecca tells me she is going to try to count the stars.

  We pass the last Yodel between us like a joint, taking smaller and smaller bites at the end so that neither one of us will be accused of finishing it. We argue about whether or not a helicopter�s lights are a shooting star (no) and if Cassiopeia is out at this time of year (yes). When the cars are not passing us, it is almost quiet, save for the hum of the vibrating highway.

  �I wonder what it is like here during the day,� I say aloud.

  �Probably a lot like it is now. Dusty, red. Hotter.� Rebecca takes the Yodel out of my fingers. �You want it?� She pops it into her mouth and squashes it against her front teeth with her tongue. �I know, disgusting. You think it gets really hot here, hot like in L.A., where the roads breathe when you step on them?�

  Together we stare at the sky, as if we are waiting for something to happen.

  �You know,� Rebecca says, �I think you�re taking all this really well.�

  I lean up on one elbow. �You think?�

  �Yeah. Really. I mean, you could be falling apart, you know?

  You could be the type who doesn�t stop crying, or who won�t drive on highways.�

  �Well I can�t be,� I say, honestly, �I have to take care of you.�

  �Take care of me? I can take care of myself.�

  �That�s what I�m afraid of,� I say, laughing, and I�m only half joking. It is easy to see that in two or three years this daughter of mine will be a knockout. This year in school she read Romeo and Juliet, and she told me pragmatically that Romeo was a wimp. He should have just taken Juliet and run away with her, swallowed his pride and worked at some medieval McDonald�s. What about the poetry, I asked her. What about the tragedy? And Rebecca told me that that�s all very well and good but it isn�t the way things happen in real life.

  �Please,� Rebecca says, �You�re getting that weepy cow look again.�

  I would like to lie here for days with my daughter, watching her grow up in front of me, but since I am running away from my own problems I don�t have that luxury. �Come on,� I say, nudging her off the hood of the car. �You can hang your head out the window while we drive and finish counting.�

  By the time we reach the signs for Gila Bend the soil turns brick red, veined with night shadows of cacti. The sides of the road level around us so that it seems we should be able to see the town and yet there is nothing but dust. Rebecca twists around in her seat to double-check that we have read the green sign correctly. �So where is this place?�

  We travel several miles without seeing traces of a civilized town. Finally I pull to the side of the road and turn off the ignition. �We could always sleep in the car,� I tell Rebecca. �It�s warm enough.�

  �No chance! There are coyotes and things here.�

  �This coming from the girl who was willing to go to bathroom with all the lunatics hiding in the woods?�

  �May I help you?�

  The sound startles us; for three and a half hours we have heard only the patterns of each other�s voices. Standing beside Rebecca�s window is a woman with a tattered grey braid hanging down her back. �Car trouble?�

  �I�m sorry. If this is your property, we can move the car.�

  �Why bother,� the woman says, �no one else has.� She tells us that we have come to the Indian Reservation in Gila Bend, the smaller one, and points out furry lavender shapes in the distance that indeed are houses. �There�s a larger reservation about six miles east, but the tourist traps are here.� Her name is Hilda, and she invites us to her apartment.

  She lives in a two-story brick building that smells like a dormitory--federally subsidized housing, she explains. She has left all the lights on, and it is only when we are inside that I realize she has been carrying a paper bag. I expect her to pull out gin, whiskey-I have heard stories-but she takes out a carton of milk and offers to make Rebecca an egg cream.

  On the walls are woven mats in all the colors of the southwestern-rainbow, and charcoal drawings of bulls and canyons. �What do you think of her,� I ask Rebecca, when Hilda is in the makeshift bathroom/kitchen.

  �Honest?� Rebecca says, and I nod. �Well, I can�t believe you�re here. Have you lost your mind? It�s midnight, and some person you�ve never seen in your life comes up to the car, and says, Hey, come to my place, and she�s an Indian to boot, and you just pick up your things and go. Whatever happened to never taking candy from strangers?�

  �Egg creams,� I say. �She hasn�t offered us candy.�

  �Jesus.�

  Hilda comes out with a wicker tray that carries three foamy glasses and ripe plums. She holds one up and tells us they are grown locally by her step-brother. I thank her, sipping at my egg cream. �So tell me how you came to be on Dog Forked Road at midnight.�

  �Is that what we were on?� I turn to Rebecca. �I thought it was Route Eight.�

  �We turned off Route Eight,� Rebecca says. She turns to Hilda. �It�s a long story.�

  �I have all the time in the world. I�m an insomniac. That�s what I was doing on Dog Forked Road at midnight. Milk�s the only thing to soothe my heartburn.�

  I nod sympathetically. �We�ve come from California. I guess you could say we�ve run away from home.� I try to laugh, to make light of the situation, but I can see this woman whom I hardly know staring at the bruises on my wrists.

  �I see,� she says.

  Rebecca asks if there is some place she can lie down, and Hilda excuses herself to fix up a fold-out couch in the other room. She collects pillows from one closet and sheets colored with Peanuts characters from the kitchen pantry. �Get some sleep, Mom,� Rebecca says, sitting beside me on the loveseat. �I worry about you.� Hilda ushers her into the bedroom, and from my angle I can see Rebecca slip in between the sheets, sighing the way you do when you run your ankles along all the cool spots. Hilda stands in the doorway until my daughter falls asleep, and then she steps back and presents me with Rebecca�s face, in profile, lit silver and traced with the grace of the moon.

  10 J OLEY

  Dear Jane-

  Do you remember when I was four and you were eight, when Mama and Daddy took us to the circus? Daddy bought us small flashlights with red tips that we could swing around and around when the clowns came out, and peanuts-so many! the shells we stuffed in our pockets. We saw a lady stick her head inside the jaws of a tiger; and a man dive into a small bucket from a place way up in the air that I thought must be Heaven. We saw brown-skinned midgets flipping over each other, catapulted by ordinary seesaws like the one in our backyard, and Mama said, Now don�t you two do this at home. And Mama held Daddy�s hand when the acrobats did their most difficult trick, swinging on a silver trapeze and locking in midair like mating falcons for just a moment, before they grabbed another trapeze and went separate ways. I missed the trick because I was so busy looking at Mama�s hand; the way her fingers twisted between Daddy�s as if they had a right to be there; her diamond engagement ring holding all the colors I had ever seen.

  Then there was a kind of intermission, do they call it that at a circus? And a man in a green coat began to mill through our seating section, peering into the faces of the children. And suddenly a woman was standing in front of me, calling TOM! TOM! and pointing. She bent down and told Mama I was the most adorable little boy she�d ever seen, ever. And Mama said that�s why sh
e named me Joley, after joli -French for �pretty�-as if Mama fancied herself to be French. And then the man in the green coat came over and squatted down. He said, Boy, would you like to ride on an elephant? Mama said that you were my sister and that one couldn�t go without the other, and they gave you a quick once-over and said, Well, all right, if that�s that, but the boy sits up front. They took us backstage (there�s another word-is there a backstage at the circus?), and we crunched peanut shells with the toes of our shoes until a lady wearing sequins all over her body picked us up one by one and told us to straddle the elephant.

  Sheba (that was the name of the elephant) moved in sections, in quarters. Her right front hunched forward, then her right rear. Left front, left rear. Her skin felt like soft cardboard and the hair sticking through her saddle itched my legs. Then we entered the ring, me sitting in front of you. Flash cubes popped and a thundering announcer, a man I thought was God, told everyone our names and ages. I saw washes of color spinning by in the audience. I tried to find Mama and Daddy. You held me tight around the ribs. You said, I don�t want you to fall off.

  If you are reading this you�ve made it to Gila Bend and I�m sure you�ve gotten yourself a good meal and a decent night�s rest. When you leave the P.O. you�ll see an apothecary on your right. The owner of the store is named Joe. Ask him how to get to Route 17. You�re heading towards the Grand Canyon. It�s something you ought to see. Tell Joe I sent you, and he�ll set you straight.

  It�s an eight-hour drive. Same thing: Find a place to stay and go to the P.O. in the morning-the one closest to the northernmost point of the canyon. There�ll be a letter waiting to take you somewhere else.

  About the circus: They took pictures of us riding that elephant, but you never knew. One where most of your face was hidden became the poster for Ringling Bros. the next year. It came in the mail when you were at school; I had been let out early from kindergarten. Mama showed me and wanted to hang it up on the wall of my bedroom. My pretty boy, she called me. I wouldn�t let her hang it up. I couldn�t stand seeing your hands around my waist but your face lost in the shadows. In the end she threw it out, or she said she did. She sat me down and said that I had been given my looks by God and that I�d have to get used to it. I told her, flat out, that I didn�t understand. They made me ride up front because of how I look, I told her. But don�t they know Jane is the beautiful one?

  Love to you and Rebecca.

  Joley

  11 R EBECCA July 29, 1990

  A clamshell of color snaps open and shut several inches from my face flashes lights and the sounds of animals that are dying what has happened I ask you what has happened? sometimes it comes to me times like this when the world has turned black and white sometimes it comes and it will not leave it does not leave no matter how many times I scream or I pray.

  I saw people ripped in two flesh split like broken dolls in what used to be an aisle outside the sky had shattered and the world which I had always imagined as soft cotton blue was angry and stained with pain.

  Do you see I had witnessed the end of the world I saw heaven and earth trade places I knew where devils came from I was so young at three and a half with the weight of my life on my brow I knew for sure my head would burst.

  At the end of it all row nine sailed inches away like a glider in the night and over its rotten edge I watched the fireworks diamond glass explosions and in spite of myself I started to cry.

  There is a sound that the mute make when they are murdered I learned this years later on the evening news their vocal cords cannot vibrate so what the listener hears instead is the air quivering pushing in pushing out a wall of silence this is the voice of terror in a vacuum.

  For days I have felt a leopard crouching on my chest. I breathe in the stale air it exhales. It scratches at the inside of my chin and it kisses my neck. When it shifts its weight, my own ribs move.

  �She�s coming to,� I hear, the first words in a long time.

  I open my eyes and see in this order: my mother, my father, and the tiny attic room of the Big House. I squeeze my eyes shut. Something isn�t right: I have been expecting the house in San Diego. I have forgotten entirely about Massachusetts.

  I try to sit up but the leopard screams and claws at me.

  �What�s the matter with her?� my father is saying. �Help her, Jane. What�s the matter.� My mother presses cold towels against my forehead but does not notice this monster at all.

  �Can�t you see it,� I say, but it comes out a whisper. I am drowning in fluid. I cough and phlegm comes up, and keeps coming. My father holds tissues into my palm. My mother is crying. Neither one of them understands that if the leopard will just move, I will be fine.

  �We�re going to go home,� my father says. �We�re getting out of here.�

  He is wearing the wrong clothes, the wrong face to be on this farm. I search my mother�s face for an answer to this. �Let me be with her a minute, Oliver.�

  �We need to work this out together,� my father says.

  My mother puts her hand on his shoulder. It looks cool, like a ladyslipper or a corner of the hayloft. �Please.�

  The hayloft. �Tell me this,� I say. I try to sit up. �Hadley is dead.�

  My mother and father look at each other and without a word my father leaves the room. �Yes,� my mother says. Her eyes spill over with tears. �I�m so sorry, Rebecca.� She reaches across the heart-sewn quilt. She buries her face in the cave of my stomach, in the breast fur of this leopard. �I am so sorry.� The animal stands and stretches and vanishes.

  To my surprise I do not cry. �Tell me everything you know.�

  My mother sits up, shocked at my bravery. She says that Hadley broke his neck in the fall. The doctors said he died instantaneously. It has been three days, but it took this long to raise his body from the gorge.

  �What have I been doing for three days?� I whisper. I am embarrassed that I do not know the answer.

  �You have pneumonia. You�ve been sleeping most of the time. You were gone when your father first arrived here-you�d run off after Hadley. He insisted on going with Sam to find you-�She looks away. �He didn�t like the idea of Sam staying here with me.�

  So he knows, I think. How interesting. �What does he mean, �We�re going home�?�

  My mother holds her hand to my head. �Back to California. What did you think?�

  I am missing something. �What have we been doing here?�

  �You don�t have to hear this now. You need to rest.�

  I pull the quilt away from myself and gag. All over my legs are bruises and scrapes and yellowed gauze wrappings. My bare chest is crossed with raked furrows of dried blood. �When Hadley fell, you tried to climb down after him,� my mother says. �Sam pulled you away, and you started to scratch at yourself. You wouldn�t stop, no matter how many things they wrapped around you, or how much sedation you�d been given.� She starts to cry again. �You kept saying you were trying to tear your heart out.�

  �I don�t know why I bothered,� I whisper. �You�d already done that.�

  She walks to the other side of the room, as far away as she can possibly get. �What do you want me to say, Rebecca? What do you want me to say?�

  I don�t know. She can�t change what has been done. I begin to realize how things are different when you grow up. When I was little, she would sing to me when I was sick. She would bring me red jello and sleep curled beside me to listen for changes in my breathing. She would pretend I was a princess locked in a tower by a wicked magician, and she acted as my lady-in-waiting. Together we would watch the door for my shining white knight.

  �Why do you want me to forgive you?� I say. �What do you get out of it?� I turn away and Sam�s sheep, all seven, scuttle down the path they�ve carved in the middle field.

  �Why do I want you to forgive me? Because I never forgave my father, and I know what it will do to you. When I was growing up my father would hit me. He hit me and he hit my mother and I tried to keep him from hitting Joley. He broke my heart and eventually he broke me
. I never believed I could be anything important- why else would my own father hurt me? And then I forgot about it. And I married Oliver and three years later he hit me. That�s when I left the first time.�

  �The plane crash,� I say, and she nods.

  �I went back to him because of you. I knew that more than anything else I had to make sure you grew up feeling safe. And then I hit your father, and it all came back again.� She buries her face in her hands. �It all came back again, and this time it was part of me. No matter how far I run, no matter how many states or countries I cross I can�t get it out of myself. I never forgave him. He won. He�s in me, Rebecca.�

  She picks up an antique marbled pitcher that has been in Sam�s family for a long time. Without even really noticing, she lets it slip out of her grasp and shatter on the floor. �I came here and I was so happy, for a little while, I forgot again. I forgot about your father, and I forgot about you. I was so crazy in love-� she smiles, far away, �-that I didn�t believe anyone else could feel the way I did. Including- especially -my own daughter. If you could fall in love with someone who was twenty-five, and it was all right, then it couldn�t possibly be all right for me to fall in love with someone who was twenty-five. Can you see?�

  I have seen my mother with Sam in the shadow of the orchard; they�re joined at the mind. That is what has been different about these weeks: I have never seen her like this. I have never enjoyed being with her so much. I don�t understand what my father is doing here or why he wants her back. The woman he wants isn�t here. That woman doesn�t exist anymore.

  �But I�ve watched you with him,� I say.

  �If it was right, Rebecca,� my mother says, �it would have happened years ago.�

  I don�t have to ask her why she is going home, anymore. I already know the answer. My mother thinks she has failed: not just my father, but me. She can�t have Sam; it�s her punishment. In the real world, the best of circumstances don�t always come to be. In the real world, �forever� may only be a weekend.

  My mother looks at me. When our eyes connect there are more words that come in silence. What you cannot have, I cannot have. My life created yours, and because of this my life depends on yours. How strange, I think. I learned about love�s Catch-22 before my own mother. I taught this lesson to her.

  She smiles at me and she lifts the sheet of gauze from my chest. �Sometimes I can�t believe you�re only fifteen,� she murmurs. She runs her fingers across my nipples and over my breasts. As my mother touches me the wounds begin to close on themselves. We watch in silence as split skin heals and bruises diffuse. Still, there will be scars.

  When he comes into the room in the middle of the night I am expecting him. He is the only one who hasn�t come to see me since I regained consciousness. First the door opens a crack, then I see the flashlight�s head, and by the time Uncle Joley makes his way to the bed, I know where we are headed.