The Language of Sparrows

by Rachel Phifer

  She waited by the Dumpster where Carlos brought the full wheelbarrow. Her breath came out in puffs of steam.

  Carlos hefted a load into the bin. “You’ll get a cold standing out here. You ought to be inside.”

  “I need your help.”

  He stopped. “Okay.”

  “Give me a ride to the medical center?”

  He wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “You know, people usually smile and say please when they ask a favor.”

  “Please, Carlos. I have a friend in the hospital.”

  He looked up at her empty apartment. “Sure. I’ll take you. Your mom knows, right?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Go call her, Sierra.”

  She rubbed her arms to warm them. “Never mind. I’ll take the bus.”

  He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll take you to see the old guy. Just tell her.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I never said who I was going to see.”

  He looked down. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I don’t know all your friends. Who is it you’re going to see?”

  “Never mind,” she bit out again. He had it all figured out, didn’t he? And when he laughed, it just made her angrier than ever.

  “It’s no big deal, Sierra. Ricky knows the neighborhood, and he told me he was in the hospital. Give her a call. She’ll understand he’s too sick to hurt you.”

  She went back to her apartment, wandering by the phone, picking it up and putting it back in the cradle. Mom never saw reason when it came to Mr. Prodan.

  She looked at the schedule she’d written down and stuffed it into her pocket. She only had three minutes.

  She grabbed her spare change and rushed through the front door to the bus stop. She was lucky. Right as she got to the stop, the bus pulled in with a squeal of brakes and a gust of carbon monoxide. She found a seat halfway down the aisle and shivered. She’d forgotten her coat.

  An hour and fifty minutes and two buses later, she arrived at the medical center. It was late, almost dark. She tried not to gawk from the bus window. The hospitals were stacked one after another. It was as big as downtown.

  She’d gone to the medical center in their old town for some of Dad’s appointments. It had been one big hospital with some doctors’ offices, a children’s clinic, and a psychiatric center. What could one city need with so many hospitals together in one place? Mr. Foster hadn’t even told her which one his father was in. She’d assumed there would be only a few. She stepped off the bus at its second stop.

  The lawns in front looked frozen, each blade of grass standing stiff and separate. Nurses and med students, catching the bus at the end of their shifts, thronged the wet sidewalks. Fast-moving cars made her hair fly into her face as a full commuter train zinged by, setting off an electronic bell on the tracks.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. Where would she even begin? She looked up at the heart institute. That was one hospital she could cross off her list at least.

  She went into the next hospital. Crowds of people scurried through the huge lobby. A twenty-foot Christmas tree and matching nutcrackers towered over her.

  “I need Luca Prodan’s room number,” she told a girl not much older than her who sat behind a desk.

  “I can only give patient information to authorized family members.”

  Sierra took two seconds too long. “I’m his granddaughter.”

  The woman gave her a wary look but began typing. “Spell the last name.”

  Sierra spelled it for her.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t find him listed here.”

  She visited a second and a third hospital, but the clerks there refused to give her any information. She made a loop. Crowds of pedestrians waited at a light as policemen waved cars into parking garages. Sounds of Arabic and German crossed between two women in burkas and a couple pushing a baby stroller.

  So many people, and they all looked like they knew exactly where they were going. She was the only one wandering around the medical center aimlessly. She felt suddenly as lost as she had the time she’d been separated from her mom in the mall when she was six. But she was not six. She held her head a little higher and kept pace with the rushing people around her.

  She passed a sprawling cancer center and a gold-towered children’s hospital. The buildings were enormous. The next building she went into looked like a hospital, but once inside she could see it was just a private office building closing for the night.

  She walked down another street, and another, shivering inside her sweater. The streetlights flickered on and soon the sky was black. Finally, she slumped down on a bench. The sidewalks were empty now. Traffic thinned to a trickle. A policeman watched her from a doorway.

  She looked back at him, trying to appear like she had a good reason for being out late at night by herself.

  She craned her neck to watch a Life Flight helicopter lowering onto a roof several blocks away. If she boarded that, maybe she could tell from the air where all the hospitals were in this layout.

  Freezing in the wind, she glanced at the skyline behind her. Where was Mr. Prodan? Was he in pain? Visiting hours were probably over, but she couldn’t go home. She just couldn’t. But eventually, she couldn’t stand the cold anymore.

  The bus back home was almost empty. It was nearly midnight by the time the bus roared into her neighborhood. She exited before she got to her apartments. The rain had evaporated into a dry cold now.

  She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wasn’t going home. She wasn’t about to face Mom with that hopeful look on her face—as if she could make Sierra be an ordinary teenager and force everything to fit into a picture-perfect life if she just smiled enough.

  Sierra’s face stung in the frigid air. Her lips were numb. She didn’t look up because she knew it would only frighten her. This wasn’t a street to be on after dark. It was cold enough, though, that she hoped everyone would be inside.

  She thought of Carlos, who had lived on the streets, but she shoved the thought away. He’d have a thing or two to say about her being out here.

  “Hey, honey.” Across the street, a woman in pumps and a slinky dress with a fur shawl called out to her. “Come on over. I’ll keep you warm.” A man’s laughter echoed farther down the street.

  Sierra walked faster. She walked and walked until she came to the bridge. Then she knew where she’d go. It wasn’t exactly an inspired hiding place, but the tension melted away as soon as she crossed the bayou and saw Mr. Prodan’s street outlined in the dark.

  She glanced around furtively. There wasn’t even a kitchen light on along the street. A dog barked far away, but otherwise it was quiet. It was easy enough to pull the metal bar up on the gate and let herself into the backyard.

  She stood on the back patio, the icy air cutting into her skin. She felt stiff and frozen. But she didn’t mind somehow. Thoughts of strawberry crepes and Turkish coffee and summer afternoons with Mr. Prodan warmed her.

  She imagined a nurse waking him in a few hours and giving him a breakfast of rubbery eggs and weak coffee.

  This was the place she wanted to be. Though it froze her backside, she lowered herself next to the doorway, trying to stay invisible.

  When the sky began to soften and lights began to turn on in neighbor’s houses, she heard the gate squeal open.

  Soon warm hands touched her face. “Hey, Ojos Cafés. I looked all over the medical center for you.”

  Carlos. Still calling her Brown Eyes, in Spanish now.

  She was too numb to move her lips. Too numb to do anything but shiver uncontrollably. She refused to look at him, but he crouched before her at eye level.

  Sierra shook her head, as if he’d asked a question. Maybe he had. Wasn’t that why he was here? To say, Come home, Sierra? But there was no talk of home. He just stared at her with a clenched jaw and
black eyes.

  He put his jacket around her shoulders, unraveled a scarf from inside a pocket and wrapped it around her neck, and then took her hands in his and began to chafe them into warmness. She was too cold to resist and fell into his arms of warmth.

  Neither of them spoke. If only it could stay that way. She didn’t want to hear him say it was time to go home. She didn’t want to tell him she was never going back. But eventually, one of them would have to break the silence. It would have to be her.

  Sierra pulled back. “I-I wanted to make sure he was okay.” That was all she could say before her teeth began chattering.

  Carlos nodded, stood, and pulled her up with him. “I know.” His voice was low and sad.

  He wrapped his arm around her. Too tired and frozen to ask where they were going, she let him lead her to the car and drive her wherever he wanted to take her. He stopped by a drive-through and got two hot ciders. Thawed by the warm drink, she knew what had to come next. But he didn’t talk about what came next.

  “So what is it about this old man, Brown Eyes?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Carlos didn’t accept that answer. He waited for her to say more.

  “I can be who I am when I’m with him. I’m not too smart or too uncool. And I don’t need to be saved from myself. We talk, that’s all.”

  Carlos blew on his cider and turned a corner with one hand on the wheel. “Sounds like a nice guy.”

  “The thing is, I think he liked me being there too. I don’t think anyone pays attention to him either.”

  “You’re friends.”

  She nodded, pleased. That’s what Mr. Prodan was: her friend.

  The conversation trailed off, and Sierra looked out the window. Headlights filled the road as people hurried to work. They stopped at a red light a block from home.

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  He looked at her hard. “Don’t turn your back on your mom, Sierra. Family’s not something you want to give up.”

  She knew why he said it. He wished he had his family back. Well, that was fine for Carlos. He had warm memories of his parents.

  He drove her home, as she’d known he would. It was sunrise when they walked up the steps to her apartment. Sierra slid out of the jacket and handed it back to Carlos before she opened the door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  April leaped off the couch with a strangled cry. She threw her arms around her little girl. “Where were you?”

  Sierra stood like a statue in April’s embrace, then broke away and ran into her room. April was alone again in only a matter of seconds. She buried her face in her hands. After a long night speaking with the police, calling everyone, anyone who might have seen her daughter, and then sitting tight as they told her to do, she felt like splintered glass.

  “Give me wisdom,” she whispered, looking up to the ceiling. “Give me light.” It was a prayer of habit, more than anything. April was accustomed to unanswered prayers, but she couldn’t stop praying altogether. She wasn’t ready to admit that kind of defeat.

  She marched to Sierra’s bedroom and raised her hand to knock on the door, but stopped to take a deep breath first. She didn’t want to storm in on the offense. She had to win this battle with love, not force.

  She tapped on the door, and when she got no answer, opened it with a gentleness she didn’t feel. Sierra lay huddled in the rumpled bed. April sat on the corner of the bed, waiting for the storm, stroking her daughter’s back. The tears never came, but still, Sierra kept her face buried in the pillow.

  “Sierra,” April said in her softest voice. “I’m not here to accuse you. I’m here to help you.”

  Sierra looked up from her pillow. “He’s got pneumonia.”

  “Who?” But who else? “Don’t answer that, sweetie. I know who you mean.” April smoothed the blankets, searching for the information Sierra wasn’t sharing. “Where were you? At the hospital?”

  Sierra’s mouth quivered, and her face crumpled. She shook her head.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Mr. Foster said he was in the medical center. But there were so many hospitals. I couldn’t find him.”

  All of April’s anger melted at the thought of Sierra wandering through the blocks of unending hospitals, all alone in the cold, wet night.

  “I went back to his house and sat on the patio in his backyard.”

  “Sweetheart, I am not your enemy. Did it occur to you to tell me he was sick?”

  Sierra shook her head violently. “You wouldn’t have let me visit him, Mom. You and Mr. Foster think he’s dangerous, but he’s not.”

  April pulled Sierra into her arms. She rocked her daughter as if she were three again and a hug could make everything better. She smelled of apples and ginger, reminding April of the days of applesauce and bath times.

  Finally she stood to go. “Rest, baby. I’ll take you to see him after you’ve had some sleep.”

  Alone in the living room, she looked up at the center tile on the wall—mother and child in outline. They were in this together. How could Sierra not see that?

  That evening they walked through miles of corridor before they reached the hospital’s main elevator bank. On the ninth floor, another long corridor brought them to a set of double doors. April guided Sierra through them.

  The nurses at the station waved them in. But when April opened the door, Luca was asleep. With only the fluorescent recess lights on, the room was left in a dim glow. His breathing rattled. His color was a shade lighter than skim milk. Sierra looked back at her, and April gave her an encouraging nod.

  Nick sat in a window seat, grading papers on his knee. Keeping the quiet, he stood and motioned for them to sit on the padded bench next to him.

  A newspaper lay on the bench and April picked it up, preparing to fold it and put it in the corner. She stopped when she saw it was probably in Romanian and handed it to Sierra, who began poring over it.

  She felt Nick’s eyes on them before he whispered to Sierra, “So what’s happening in Bucharest?”

  Sierra looked up at the wall, at the TV. “The government is meeting to make their budget stronger. And they’re preparing for the anniversary of the December Revolution.” Sierra looked down then. This was the part where she’d downplay what she’d said. It’s what she always did when she got caught being brilliant. “At least I think that’s what it says. I can’t make out all the words.”

  Nick looked directly at Sierra. “It sounds like you made out the words just fine.”

  There was no doubt in April’s mind what he was thinking. Sierra had a way of throwing people off when they realized what she could do. She wasn’t just bright.

  They dropped back into quietness. April watched Mr. Prodan, only vaguely aware of Nick and Sierra on either side of her. Luca was a shrunken, pale version of the man he’d been only a few weeks ago, and he hadn’t seemed strong then.

  He stirred and opened his eyes, but didn’t appear to see them.

  Sierra drew close to his bed and leaned over to take his hand. “Mr. Prodan,” she whispered. “It’s me, Sierra. I’m here. Is it all right?”

  “Sierra Wright,” he said with wonder in his voice. He struggled to sit, and April could tell even that small effort cost him. He looked at the window where April and Nick sat. “If I knew this is all I should have to do to earn your visit, I should have gone swimming in the bayou with the first chill in November.”

  “I won’t stay long,” Sierra whispered.

  Her daughter was at ease with Luca Prodan, and the man appeared to relax with her by his side. It all seemed so right.

  Luca smiled at Sierra. His face appeared blue in the artificial light. The lighting made the scars stand out across his hands. April winced, recalling the picture taken after Luca’s release from prison. She didn’t want to consider what mig
ht have made the scars on his hand or how vicious his life must have been during those years.

  But the thought that really plagued her was the suspicion that what made the relationship between this man and her daughter work was an unnatural bond of pain. Sierra had suffered. Gary’s illness, and then his death, had left a scar. But was a man who had lived through a gulag the only one who could understand her?

  Mr. Prodan caught April’s gaze. He had such gratitude in his glance. She wanted to give him something of worth. And there was only one thing April had to give him—time with her daughter.

  She motioned to Nick, and they stood. “We’ll leave you two to talk. We’ll be in the lobby if you need us.”

  With winter coming on, it grew dark early. The lights from the other buildings in the medical center shone outside the ninth-floor lobby, but the hospital had turned the inside lights down for the evening. The smell of waxed floors mixed with coffee from a nearby kitchenette. Nick stood beside her, looking into the darkness.

  April turned from the window and leaned against the windowsill to face Nick. It was clear what she had to do. “I’m going to allow Sierra to visit with your dad again.”

  She waited for some kind of response but only got wary silence. Nick had such natural goodness when he was with her, with Sierra. He was at ease. But when the subject turned to his father, he always took on such tension.

  “She ran away last night,” April went on, needing to make him understand.

  Nick shot her a worried glance.

  “She was trying to find Luca, but didn’t know the hospital name. Spent the night in his backyard. She’s teaching herself Romanian. Studying Romanian history. Luca is all she can think about.”

  April shook her head, her voice rising a notch. “She’s so like her dad. It doesn’t matter how high the stakes are, what the cost is to herself or her mental health. She’ll grieve for your father until I allow her to see him. I know you’ve said he can be mean-spirited. And I’ve seen firsthand he can’t always cope.”

  April’s voice grew hoarse. “Sometimes faith is all that’s left. And I’m going to have faith that your father will be good to my daughter.”