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Sunshine Picklelime

Page 2

by Pamela Ferguson


  Before long, Lemon Nectar by Patel and PJ was in business. The first person to stop was old Mr. Kanafani, a Palestinian from the ancient walled city of Jericho who had come to live on the next street with his son and daughter-in-law, both software engineers.

  Mr. Kanafani sampled the nectar slowly, eyes closed. Tears rolled down his cheeks. After a few moments, he began to talk about a lemon grove where he used to play as a boy and the soft, ripe lemons with leafy twigs attached he’d pick up off the ground for his mother to slice and place around plates of hummus, beside warm flatbread straight from the oven, bowls of fat local olives, and red radishes. As he spoke, Mr. Kanafani waved the cup of juice around and around in front of his nose, as though moving more and more scenes of his boyhood through his mind.

  “Shukran,” he whispered after a while, “as a Palestinian I lost everything. But not the richness of my memories up here,” he added, and tapped his forehead. “Thank you, Mrs. Patel, PJ.” He dropped coins into a cup labeled Lemon Pie’s Bird Rescue Fund and walked away, tall and thin as a poplar.

  Then came the local librarian, Mrs. Martins, from Cape Town, a short, huggable lady with a headful of crisp brown hair and skin the color of chocolate milk. She stopped when she saw the stand, and pressed both hands to her cheeks. Out flooded a torrent of words. “Ag, nay, nay, nay, Mrs. Patel, PJ, what are you doing to me? You know I grrrrrew up in District Six in Cape Town and my daddy used to drive around the streets selling lemons off the back of his old bakkie truck. And he always smelt of lemons, hey? Clothes, shirt, socks, never mind the number of times Mommy scrrrrrubbed and scrrrrrubbed his clothes, hey!

  “And there,” Mrs. Martins pointed at the table, “rrrrright there with the frangipani I loved in Cape Town’s gardens and the pile of lemons and everything, you bring my father back to me! Listen, I’m going to cry. I’m going for a little walk and I’ll be back in half an hour. Promise you’ll keep two cups for me?”

  PJ and Mrs. Patel watched her bounce away. They turned and looked at one another. What was happening here?

  A group of neighborhood kids suddenly jostled around the table. PJ had to grab the vase of frangipani to prevent it from toppling into the street. The kids poured themselves second cups, asked, “Where are the cookies?” giggled, and pretended to gobble lemon cookies off an invisible plate, spilling juice all over the cloth.

  Mrs. Patel clapped her hands sharply. “Off you go, you cheeky children. Go on, off you go, quick!” And off they ran.

  Pablo dos Santos y Sanchez pedaled by on his racing bike. He was PJ’s dreamily handsome young art teacher with wavy chestnut hair framing his face and almond-shaped eyes. “Aaaaaah!” he said, removing his helmet and gloves and kissing his fingertips to his lips. “The smell of my beloved Andalusia! Ripe lemons and the richest of rich olives and olive oil! Later we will have a feast. I’ll bring olives and fresh bread.”

  And so it went during the day. The word soon spread. By lunchtime, a line snaked around the block. Neighbors began bringing their own chairs and favorite foods to add to the feast. Mr. Splitzky, the “bearded beekeeper,” took some of the lemons home and returned with a huge lemon meringue pie.

  Mr. Kanafani brought a salad of young lettuce, parsley, and bright red radishes. Mrs. Martins came back with plates of sliced papaya. Ms. Naguri, a Web designer from Japan, walked over from her home four houses away, carrying one of her special rice dishes scattered with sesame seeds. Swiss-born Evi Lenz of the Chocolate Dream arrived with boxes of her special white, milk, and bitter chocolate truffles for everyone to enjoy. She took one sip of the nectar and her eyes widened. Would Mrs. Patel and PJ share their blend with her so she could create a special lemon truffle?

  “Of course,” said PJ. “As long as you name it Lemon Nectar.”

  Soon Mrs. Patel’s lawn hummed with villagers, all sharing stories with one another over this spontaneous feast.

  That evening, Mrs. Patel and PJ counted over two hundred and twenty-six dollars and forty-five cents in coins and small notes. More than that, Pete, the helicopter pilot who took supplies to the coastal relief effort, came by to enjoy the wonderful spread of food. He offered to take Mrs. Patel and PJ on his early-morning flight so they could give the money—and big containers of lemon nectar—to the rescue crew.

  PJ was so excited, she wished they could go immediately. Later, after everyone had gone home and she had helped Mrs. Patel clear up, she went to her room and began sketching lemons and frangipani, experimenting with different shades of yellow and cream to get the colors and textures just right.

  PJ finally fell asleep and dreamed that the bees on Mrs. Patel’s tablecloth came alive and danced with the lemons. She woke up to find drawings and pastels scattered around her pillows.

  The next morning she described the exact spot she’d seen on TV, near the long, jagged split in the cliff. Helicopter Pete knew the spot well and said yes, he could certainly land close by so PJ could climb down to see her beloved Lemon Pie. Mrs. Patel and PJ loaded the helicopter with tall containers of lemon nectar and the box of money they had collected for the rescuers.

  Pete strapped them into their seats. Propeller rotor blades whup-whup-whupped wildly overhead. The chopper lifted high off the ground and arched toward the coast. As they circled close to the cliff’s edge, PJ scanned the sky for that quick dash of yellow. But when they drew near, she only saw a laughing gull with a black polka-dot-tipped tail seated in the nest on the ledge just below the top of the cliff, surrounded by chirping chicks.

  As promised, Pete swayed down to land a little distance away. PJ asked for time alone. She didn’t want to disturb the gull, so she moved very slowly and quietly to the cliff’s edge and peeked over. But there was no sign of Lemon Pie anywhere. She looked from left to right, all the way down to the beach below. PJ cupped her hands around her ears to block out all other sounds so she could pick out the quaint call she knew so well. Sadly, there was nothing.

  PJ returned to the chopper and hid her face from Pete and Mrs. Patel. Pete tilted to the right, and down they went to a wide stretch of beach that had been turned into a special landing pad. Men and women in shiny oilskins bustled around, unloading supplies.

  Whoops and cheers filled the air as they set up the containers and tasted the nectar. They told PJ and Mrs. Patel exactly how Lemon Pie’s rescue fund would be used to save more birds.

  After returning to the village, Mrs. Patel took PJ’s face in her hands and said, “Don’t be unhappy, dear PJ. I know about Lemon Pie and how he lived in your hair and the rosebush while you taught him to sing. I’ll always keep your secret, please don’t worry. But friends like Lemon Pie need to fly and be free, to share the talents you shared with them. Be patient, child. One day you’ll look up and hear his song when he is ready to return. Because I know he’s in your heart, which is why you wanted the lemons.”

  When PJ didn’t respond, Mrs. Patel added, “See what you did yesterday! We brought lemon joy to the village, to Mr. Kanafani, Mr. Splitzky, Mrs. Martins, Mr. Santos, Ms. Naguri, Ms. Lenz, and who else? We all helped rescue more birds! We’ve started something, PJ. Come. The village is waiting for more.”

  PJ knew Mrs. Patel was right, but it just wasn’t enough for her to create another lemonade stand in the neighborhood to help save more birds. She yearned to know where Lemon Pie had gone. To keep her little friend’s image alive, PJ went up to her room and reached for her sketch pad. Using broad sweeps with her pastels, PJ drew the lost warbler peeking out of clusters of yellow roses that were a little darker than his creamy feathers. She also sketched the TV clip of Lemon Pie swooping close to the cliff’s edge and nurturing the nest of laughing gull eggs. Then she sharpened some of her pencils and did quick sketches of everyone who came to the Lemon Nectar fiesta, from poplar-tall Mr. Kanafani to Evi Lenz with her bell-like copper curls, and Mrs. Patel in her flamingo pink yoga pants and shirt.

  Smiling, PJ pinned the sketches onto a corkboard, next to the pastels of baskets overflowing with lemons an
d frangipani blooms she’d drawn the night before. What better way to wake up or fall asleep than facing such delicious sights along with her memories of Lemon Pie?

  a birdmail from lemon pie

  PJ thought she must be dreaming. There was a frenzied flapping of wings against her windowpane before dawn. She shook herself awake and sat up. But instead of a hundred birds out there, she saw only one, a large white gull with black wings and a handsome polka-dot tail. How could one lone gull kick up such a rumpus?

  The gull began to tap-tap-tap the windowpane, squawking and yelling “PJ, PJ, PJ, PJ,” over and over until PJ thought it would wake up the entire neighborhood. She reached out and opened the window. The gull hopped straight in, clearly annoyed at being kept waiting. He looked a bit battered and travel-weary.

  “Are you Ms. PJ Picklelime?” the gull asked.

  “Yes I am. And who are you?”

  “Special Messenger Gull. I need some form of ID please?”

  “Before five o’clock in the morning? You can’t be serious!” PJ protested.

  “Ms. Picklelime, I take my work verrrrry seriously. I have a special delivery for you.”

  “Delivery?” PJ asked excitedly. “From Lemon Pie?”

  The gull nodded twice. “From Lemon Pie. But I have to deliver it to Ms. PJ in person and I was told she had wildly bushy hair. Your hair is too short, so I’ll need some ID.”

  PJ quickly scratched around in the drawer next to her bed for her school ID card and handed it to the gull, who squinted at it, head to one side, one eye shut, and gave the ID back with a brief nod. “All right. But I’m tired and hungry, so before I talk, I need to rest and eat.”

  “Oh yes, of course.” PJ was about to say she knew gulls ate practically anything, when something stopped her. This gull spoke with a different accent than the laughing gulls off the coast, and he seemed bigger and slimmer. Perhaps he had flown a very long way?

  “Messenger Gull,” she said, “here, I’ll make a snug nest for you in my shoe box.” And she went off to her closet and rumpled an old red tartan flannel shirt in the box for the bird. “Now, what would you like to eat?”

  The gull hopped gratefully into the box and settled himself around the soft shirt. “Lemon Pie told me you make nice toasted sardine sandwiches….”

  “Done,” said PJ. “I’ll be quiet and quick. My parents are still asleep.”

  “Snnnnzzzzz,” was all she heard from the box.

  PJ tiptoed downstairs, trying to figure out Messenger Gull’s accent and way of pronouncing sardines as “sawdeenes.” Mrs. Martins pronounced sardines like that. Could Messenger Gull possibly be from somewhere off the coast of South Africa? And he flew all this way? PJ’s heart quickened. Had Lemon Pie flown that far? She longed to read Lemon Pie’s letter but realized Messenger Gull had probably fallen asleep with it folded under a strong wing.

  She prepared the toasted “sawdeene” sandwiches, hoping beyond hope the smell of the toaster wouldn’t wake up her parents, and quickly tiptoed back upstairs to her room.

  Messenger Gull was lying with one wing fanned out and draped over the edge of the box. PJ placed the sandwich beside the tip of his wing and reached gently under the bird for Lemon Pie’s letter. Nothing. The gull stirred, hung out of the box, and began to peck hungrily at the sandwich, murmuring, “Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.”

  PJ watched for a moment. She went to fill a little bowl with water for him and then asked, “Where do you live, Messenger Gull?”

  “Everywhere but nowhere. I fly north to south and east to west delivering birdmail. You have e-mail. We have b-mail. This is how I see the world. I’m a loner, PJ. I’m a Cape gull. I was born on a boat in the docks of Cape Town and learned how to fly off the masts of different boats sailing around the Cape in winds you would never imagine. Never! Winds so fierce and wild they tear feathers off your body and tumble you around the rrrrrugged coastal cliffs. Rocks and proteas fly through the air, and once even a tiny baby baboon went rolling along! I lost my family in a storm…. Mmmm, mmmm, you know you make the best sandwiches, PJ!”

  PJ waited impatiently until Messenger Gull was finished. Then she asked, “When can I get Lemon Pie’s letter?”

  “Letter?” said Messenger Gull. He leaned over to point his beak into the bowl of water. “Oh no, PJ,” the gull chuckled. “You don’t understand. There’s nothing to read. Once I’m fed and rested, I quote Lemon Pie’s b-mail to you from memory. Give me a few moments here, hey?” And again PJ heard a little of Mrs. Martins in the way the gull said “hey?”

  Finally, Messenger Gull stretched his wings and legs and hopped out of the box. He arranged himself on the window seat like an actor on a stage. “Now, PJ, promise you won’t interrupt? Otherwise you’ll break my chain of thought.”

  “I promise!” PJ settled down cross-legged on a big toffee-colored beanbag cushion.

  Messenger Gull took some deep breaths and closed his eyes. Outside, a milky white dawn was beginning to break up the dark sky.

  “Lovely PJ,” Messenger Gull began, in Lemon Pie’s crackly little voice.

  Tears trickled down PJ’s cheeks, and she hastily wiped them away, fearful of interrupting Messenger Gull’s flow.

  “Lovely PJ,” came Lemon Pie’s voice again. PJ glanced at the pastels of Lemon Pie pinned up on her corkboard and imagined he was right there in the room with them.

  “Keep watching your windows. I told Messenger Gull to remind some of those laughing gulls I took care of to visit you so you wouldn’t be lonely,” the familiar voice went on. “I joined some restless gulls who wanted to explore coastlines. We kept going from winter into summer until we found ourselves flying with large Cape gulls down the southeast coast of Africa. To Port Elizabeth. Except one day while flying low over a flooded river bursting to join the sea, I saw these strange little nests looking like baskets swinging in the wind off a tree hanging over the floods. And out flew these little yellow birds, PJ! Imagine! I thought they were South African versions of yellow warblers, but they weren’t, because of their funny nests. The birds were called weavers. And I watched one young bird hanging upside down off one of the nests and he was making these silly noises, and you know how silly they must have been, even sillier than I sounded when you first met me. Then he flew away, and a tiny lady bird’s head popped out of a hole in the side of the nest and said, ‘Hey, you!’” (Messenger Gull created a falsetto voice in a South African accent for Lady Weaver.)

  “‘Me?’ I said, looking around.” (Lemon Pie’s voice.)

  “‘Yes you. Come here.’” (Lady Weaver’s voice.)

  “‘Come there?’ I asked.” (Lemon Pie’s voice.)

  “‘What’s the matter with you?’” (Lady Weaver’s voice.)

  “Well, you know me, PJ. Without another peep I flew over. And I looked up into this cute little face and felt all fluttery until Lady Weaver said, ‘Don’t get funny ideas, stranger. I don’t need to know who you are. But I need you to hang around so they will stop bothering me!’

  “‘They?’

  “‘You don’t want to know. Hop in.’ And she disappeared.

  “So there I was, PJ, invited to become Lemon Pie, Chief Bouncer. I puffed out my chest and climbed on board Lady Weaver’s nest. She taught me how to dangle upside down off the nest, hanging on by my claws and swaying in the wind. All those noisy birds bothering her laughed and asked who her ‘freaky friend’ was. But I’m so used to being different, it didn’t bother me. All I could think was how boring they were. Lady Weaver and I became buddies. It made me think of you, PJ, because I haven’t had a good buddy since leaving you.”

  Messenger Gull sipped some water and then continued.

  “Lady Weaver told me about the floods that tore walls off houses and swept beaches into the sea and toppled tall palm trees that floated by like matchsticks. But even that force couldn’t destroy the weavers’ nests. Even though they swung and bucked dizzily in the storm, not one of them broke. Out came the TV crews and cameras, and they were on t
he evening news. But Lady Weaver told me she could do without the fame, because all those scruffy birds kept harassing her, thinking they could just move in and freeload. ‘I’m very fussy about boyfriends,’ she said.”

  Messenger Gull paused. The room became very quiet. He looked up at the corkboard. “Your Lemon Pie looks a little scruffier than that now, PJ. Listen, do you have any bananas downstairs?” he asked.

  “Oh, oh yes, of course,” she said. She scrambled up and paused by the door to make sure her parents were still asleep. She returned in minutes with a plate of bananas and a knife and began peeling and slicing the fruit to share with Messenger Gull. He hopped down off the window seat and snuggled beside her.

  “Mmmm, nice, but not as dark and sweet as South African bananas.”

  “These are from Guatemala. Don’t be rude!” PJ said.

  Messenger Gull chuckled. He pecked at the banana bits, slurped some more water, and hopped back on the window seat. “Now, where was I?”

  “Lady Weaver told Lemon Pie she was fussy about boyfriends.”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes, now let me pick up the thread here … hmmmmm … yes…. Well, once the rascals …” Messenger Gull cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and went on talking in Lemon Pie’s voice. “Once those rascals stopped harassing Lady Weaver, she had no more use for me, you see, PJ. She fed me one morning and said I had to move on. That was it. So I flew toward the Indian Ocean, hoping to meet some of the Cape gulls, as I felt a little lost. I’d been too comfortable for a while. And then, PJ, as I flew past the port with the big rusty storage tanks, you will never guess what happened.”

  “What?” asked PJ.

  “Shhh,” warned Messenger Gull. “Don’t interrupt me!”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Messenger Gull paused, frowning, then, once again in Lemon Pie’s voice, he said, “You’ll never guess what happened. I saw this huge tree by the port. So huge and bushy it reminded me of your hair, PJ, so I flew straight into it and perched on a branch. The sparkling blue Indian Ocean was behind me. And I faced a busy crossroads, opposite a steep hill with a bright green mosque and roads going from left to right. The tree was next to the port, in a scrubby field with piles of builders’ rubble, bricks, and broken bottles. The tree was full of birds. Some sounded like Canada geese but didn’t look like them. Oh, guinea fowl and peahens and colorful little birds I had never seen before, with bright turquoise tails. So, I began to twitter away in the voice you trained and didn’t feel shy or embarrassed about not sounding like a true yellow warbler, because I was the only warbler around! There were also a few Cape gulls—wow, are they noisy—and some of those rascal weavers I chased away from Lady Weaver’s nest, who found it very funny to hear she had finally chased me away, too!

 

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