The Language of Sparrows

by Rachel Phifer

  “You want her, she’s all yours, man,” Emilio said.

  Emilio and his friends headed down a side hall, but Carlos was still there. “You need to tell them to back off, Sierra. Let them know they can’t talk to you that way.”

  She shifted her backpack to her other shoulder. Hadn’t he been the one teasing her just a few weeks ago? She thought back and wasn’t sure anymore. She wasn’t sure what to say. Thank you. That would be good, but she didn’t say it.

  Carlos closed the distance between them. “Hey, I’m going over to your place again.” His bright smile startled her. “Maybe I could walk you home?” He spoke so quietly and bent his head to her, as if he asked a special favor. A strand of his hair fell into his eyes, and he pushed it back.

  She closed her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. “I have to talk to a teacher. You go ahead.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She shook her head.

  “Later then.”

  He shrugged like it didn’t matter. She moved into the stairwell but turned to look after him walking down the hall. He walked like he couldn’t get to the door soon enough.

  She trudged up to Mr. Foster’s room. At first she thought he’d already left for the weekend—the classroom looked empty—and she went hollow inside. Waiting for this moment was what had gotten her through the day.

  She turned to leave, but then she heard a movement. Mr. Foster rose from behind his desk. He had been kneeling beside a box of books.

  “Sierra.” He said it in a pleasant voice, as if he’d been waiting for her to stop by.

  She closed the door behind her, but he said, “Leave it open, please.”

  No, he wouldn’t want anyone to accuse him of being a molester, would he?

  She laid the sketchbook on his desk and dropped into a student desk.

  Mr. Foster picked up the sketchbook, but he didn’t untie the ribbon. He looked at her, a question in his eyes. He looked American, but she wondered now how she could have missed it. He had Mr. Prodan’s light eyes, his mouth. It would be easier if he looked like a stranger.

  She gathered her courage. “I—” Her breath came in a short burst. “It’s for him.”

  “You want me to give this to my father?”

  “He’s not what they accused him of.”

  There was no argument in his eyes, just sadness.

  “He’s not dangerous.” Her voice cracked. “How can you not know your own dad?”

  Sierra could swear he flinched.

  “He’s not dangerous,” she repeated.

  He tapped her sketchbook. He didn’t look sorry or mad. He just slid her sketchbook into his satchel. “You have my promise. I’ll give it to him.”

  “It’s none of my business. Your dad told me it wasn’t. But I still think it’s strange that you don’t have his name.”

  “None of your business? Is that what he said to you?”

  Sierra wanted to shake her head and say it hadn’t been like that, but she couldn’t remember what it had been like now. Mr. Prodan hadn’t been unkind though.

  “I’ll tell you.” Mr. Foster came around the desk, leaned against it, and lifted up his hands to her. “If you want to know.”

  She wanted to hear Mr. Foster explain why his dad got all quiet at the sound of his own son’s name. But instead she shook her head. “I’d rather hear what your dad has to say about it.”

  He placed his hand on the satchel. “Fair enough, Sierra. I’ll give your book to him this weekend.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday night, Nick drove to his father’s house. He killed the engine and stared at the house before getting out. Nick had just stepped onto the clean-swept porch when his old man came out. He had aged since last week. His shoulders sagged. The skin on his face hung slack.

  “I’ve brought you something from Sierra Wright,” Nick said.

  His father looked at the sketchbook without expression but put out his hands.

  “May I come inside?” Nick kept the sketchbook against his side.

  His father took his time to answer, as he so often did. “Of course,” he answered at last. “Come.”

  There were only two chairs. The couch had given way years ago and had never been replaced. Nick didn’t like to come in here. The address might be the same, but it was a different house from the one he had grown up in. All of Mom’s feminine touches were gone now.

  His father took a seat. Nick took the other chair.

  Before he could tell the old man about Sierra’s book, his father stood and began pacing. He swung around to face Nick and let out a raspy breath. “They came to my house, Nicu. The police came inside and questioned me. Did you know of it?”

  “They were being cautious, Dad. You see the crazy stories in the news. They were just trying to protect Sierra.”

  “They came inside and questioned me,” his father repeated. “As if I were a criminal, they asked me what I did with her.” His voice cracked, and he stopped to calm himself. “I said I gave her a book to read and I read the poems she wrote for school. They laughed at me and told me that was not the sort of thing a man does with a pretty girl. They claimed I had done things to her.”

  His father came close, way too close. He put his nose in Nick’s face and shoved a finger into Nick’s chest. “They threatened me with lies, your American police!”

  Nick tried not to feel pushed into a corner, tried not to feel seventeen and castigated by his father yet again. He removed his father’s hand from his chest.

  Dad turned away and made a noise that sounded too much like a sob. “They made me say I would not welcome her in my home. By using a packet of lies they made me do this. They are no better than the secret police. No better!”

  Dad pounded a fist into the kitchen cabinet, and then did it again so hard Nick thought the Formica would splinter.

  “No better, Nicu.”

  He began shouting, striding back toward Nick. “Secret police! American police! What is the difference? Tell me! If the truth does not matter, they are all the same.”

  Nick looked out the window, away from his old man’s tirade. The authorities would never have hurt his father. This was America, and however cold his father’s manner was, he was innocent. But he couldn’t push away the thought pinching his conscience. He should have known that the police, Child Services, or some authority might speak to his father. And he might have prevented it.

  Nick looked at the scars on his father’s hands, a permanent record of what authorities meant to his father.

  “I told them I would not see her again,” Dad said, breathless. “I told them what they wanted me to say to them. But it makes me ill. The girl believes I have turned her away?”

  “She blames the school. Me.” Nick handed him the sketchbook. “I don’t think she blames you.”

  His father held the book as if unsure he should open it. At last, he sat down, pulling the ribbon away. He turned page after page without stopping. He didn’t say anything, but his fingers slowed as he went on without finding anything. Nick himself felt a growing sense of alarm. What kind of message was a blank sketchbook?

  But at last his old man turned to a portrait that was more eloquent than a journal full of writing. Dad studied it for a moment and closed the book, his face haunted. “Oh, Sierra,” he whispered. “My child.”

  Nick looked up, startled. Never had his father said his name with such feeling. Sure, there were good reasons why he wasn’t a whole man. But just once, couldn’t he say, “Nicu, my son” with any degree of feeling, anything besides weariness or contempt?

  Monday morning, Nick woke in the early quiet. The gray light of dawn tempted him to go back to sleep. The day would be merciless. Every hour in the classroom was a battle, one he’d come to look forward to, if he were honest. But the only way to make it through was to spend these few minutes not
in bed, as his body craved, but sitting on the deep windowsill of his study, praying. He stumbled across the hall, leaving the covers behind.

  Too tired to pull out words of his own, he leaned back against the window and began with the words he knew by rote. “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

  He rubbed his eyes several minutes later, realizing his mind was drifting. To Sierra and his old man. He glanced at the clock, at the bookshelves, at the bars of sunlight shining between the slats of the blinds onto the carpet.

  “Our Father which art in heaven,” he began again.

  His mother had taught him that prayer before he could read. He’d learned it by heart in both Romanian and English.

  In the most brutal years of his life—when Mom died; during Desert Storm; when Caroline drove off, stone-drunk, to her death; during his first year of teaching—he’d lost the words to pray. His world became an empty void. Words became meaningless, and belief a shaky thing he couldn’t count on anymore.

  But that prayer, the one he’d learned so early, stayed with him, and when he prayed it, he had the sense that at least God was present and listening, until at last, he found God filling the empty spaces again.

  The fourth sentence always tripped him up though. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” How could he pray that? He hoped God had more mercy than he did.

  “Help me to forgive.” It was the only honest prayer he could say.

  But no matter how often he prayed Help me to forgive, it didn’t get any easier to speak with his old man. What need did a forty-year-old man have for his father’s approval anyway? Prison had broken Luca Prodan and left Nick fatherless for all intents. He needed to accept that and move on. He forgave his old man. He always did. But sooner or later, Dad would say something offensive, and the anger washed back in, galling him.

  Nick closed his eyes, tuning out his study, and went through the words of the prayer one more time, forcing his mind to focus on the words and to mean them.

  After he said amen, he went downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and then stood on the deck in back. He leaned on the wood railing and drank down the hot, bitter stuff. A cool breeze rippled over him. The sun crested over the pine trees, lighting up the hill that sloped down toward the stream below.

  Maybe his relationship with his father couldn’t be salvaged. But at least he could save Sierra Wright some heartache. Her mother had enough spirit to set the girl onto another track. Sierra would forget his old man soon enough.

  He smiled, thinking of April Wright, with her artsy, short hair, standing up to tell off the school for interfering. She had enough spirit all right. He wondered how a capable, stylish woman like her ended up in his school’s neighborhood. And what had happened to give Sierra eyes that held her whole battered soul within them?

  No mention of a father or husband had come up either time he’d spoken with Sierra’s mother. Somehow he suspected their problems were connected to the missing Mr. Wright. Surely there had once been a Mr. Wright.

  Chapter Eleven

  April stopped in the middle of scrubbing the kitchen sink to watch Sierra sitting in front of the TV. She’d been flipping an international news station on and off all evening as if she were searching for something. Apparently, she found what she was looking for because she put down the remote and leaned forward to watch the woman broadcaster. What was it she found so captivating?

  April thought the broadcaster was speaking Italian at first, or maybe Portuguese. Then she caught the ribbon of text trailing at the bottom of the screen—Bucuresti. Bucharest, the capital of Romania.

  April almost had the sense Sierra understood what the woman was saying, the way her eyes blinked in sync with the rise and fall of the broadcaster’s voice. Her daughter already spoke French and Spanish. Who knew? With Sierra’s abilities, she might be picking out some of the words. Romanian belonged to the same family of languages.

  She put down her sponge. A simple warning wouldn’t turn her daughter from this man. Like her father before her, when something captured her attention, nothing would distract her. Food and rest, not to mention companionship, would take far, far distant seconds and thirds until she mastered her subject. And clearly, the one and only subject on her mind right now was this old man from Romania.

  She sat on the couch beside Sierra. Her daughter’s ever-present notebook lay by her side, but instead of writing alphabets of the ancient world, Sierra used the familiar letters April knew. Boxed-in words with loops and accent marks filled the page. It didn’t take a genius to know what she was doing.

  “Picked up much Romanian yet?” April refused to let Sierra see the wave of hysteria coursing inside.

  Sierra gave her a shy smile. “A little.”

  When the news program switched to Bulgaria, Sierra put the notebook away and got ready for bed.

  But at one in the morning, April found her sitting in the corner of the living room next to the tiles, reading with the aid of her book light.

  April sat down beside her. “What are you reading?”

  Sierra looked up at her, blue smudges under her eyes. Without a word, she lifted the book, a thick leather volume. April strained to see it in the dim light. It wasn’t in English. Romanian? Where could she have possibly found a book in Romanian?

  April sent her to bed, but it was almost two before the sounds of Sierra tossing and turning in her bed quieted, and April could fall asleep herself. When Sierra came out of her bedroom in the morning, she moved like a zombie. Her oatmeal sat untouched on the kitchen bar.

  When she trudged off to school, April sank onto the couch, looking at the tiles. Sierra never mentioned them. April saw her glancing at them from time to time, but she couldn’t fathom what was in her daughter’s head.

  It was time to do something about the empty middle. She would take care of it before she went to work. Dragging the large center tile from the coat closet, April took it outside. She laid the cream ceramic on the balcony and kneeled beside it.

  Dipping her paintbrush in ebony acrylic, she hovered just above the tile. She wanted loose lines to match the feel of the running letters that would surround it. Black and bold, yet abstract. With her thickest brush, she painted the outline of a woman and child and then a symbol of water on both sides. She didn’t fill them, leaving the impression of a large hieroglyph.

  When it was dry, April hung it and stood back from the completed project. Sierra could make of it what she wanted. April had conveyed her message, not in empty words, but in images. Her daughter would see it every day when she came into the apartment.

  They were in this together. The waters might rise high, but they would surge over them together or not at all.

  On April’s afternoon off, she went for a run. Back at home, she took out her camera, but she couldn’t bring herself to take one picture. She found herself pacing around the apartment. Her daughter needed light, and April couldn’t give it to her. Somehow this man, Luca Prodan, had provided something Sierra needed though.

  On a whim, April logged on to the Internet. There was no phone number for Luca Prodan, but with a little digging, she found his address.

  Unable to keep herself from snooping, she looked up the house records. The title and property taxes were in Nick Foster’s name. Something wasn’t right. Why wasn’t there anything in this man’s name except his address?

  She looked up directions and picked up her car keys. What would she say when she found this Luca Prodan? She wasn’t sure yet, but she had to get a sense of who he was. What sort of grown man wanted to spend time alone with a teenage girl he had no relation to?

  She passed apartment complexes and stores with bars in the windows and crossed over the bayou. When she found the street and the house number, she parked at the curb, inspecting the house.

  She saw what brought Sierra here. It was a simple home. It wa
sn’t even half a mile from urban decay. And yet, under the shade of the huge oak trees and decorated by bright gardens, the street breathed. April’s heart tightened at the thought of her daughter feeling trapped in their concrete world when this green refuge was calling to her.

  April knocked on the front door. There didn’t seem to be a doorbell. She was at the point of knocking again, when she heard shuffling steps and the door opened. This couldn’t be the man. He was stooped and frail. Why had no one told her?

  “Mr. Prodan?”

  “Yes.” He had his son’s piercing gaze. And for all his frailness, his single syllable spoke volumes. His gaze turned into a knowing smile. “You are Sierra’s mother, I think.”

  “I’m April Wright.”

  “Your eyes are very alike.”

  April looked up in surprise. People were always saying Sierra looked like Gary. But then, this man had never seen Gary.

  He didn’t invite her in, and it seemed he held to the door frame for support.

  “I …” April fumbled, shook her head, and tried again. “I hope you don’t mind my coming. I don’t know what the police said, but they said some things to you, I think.”

  “Untrue things.”

  “Sierra has missed you.” April tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I hope you understand. It’s impossible for a mother to let her daughter go into the home of a man she knows nothing about.” She closed her eyes. She was bumbling it.

  “Perhaps. But I did nothing to hurt Sierra, and it was wrong, what the authorities said to me.”

  I’m sorry, April wanted to say. But she couldn’t say that. She wanted him to know she would not back down in protecting her daughter. “I wanted to meet you for myself. I can’t send Sierra here to spend time with you without supervision,” she said. “But I don’t know how I can tell her not to speak with you either. I thought if I came here and spoke with you, we might find a solution.”