The Bone Sparrow

by Zana Fraillon

  It’s not even funny. I tell him so, but Harvey is too busy laughing.

  He puts the pool down on the ground, and even without shade to keep it cool, my toes still get excited just thinking about that water.

  “It’s a hose day today,” Harvey says. “I don’t care what anyone says. When it gets up over one hundred degrees, I’m using the hose to fill this thing up to the top.”

  The other Jackets don’t like Harvey bringing in that pool. They say it wastes water. The last time Harvey filled it up with the hose, the water went off and didn’t come back on until the truck came back three days later, so Harvey had to reckon they were probably right.

  I ask Harvey about the water running out, but he just shrugs and says, “Too late now, Subhi, it’s already half full. What’s up? You don’t want a swim?”

  I don’t say that I like toilets that can flush more, or that tomorrow is my shower day and you can’t have a shower without water. I don’t say, because my skin is aching, waiting to jump in that cool. And hearing that water makes me thirst even worse than before, especially knowing I can’t sneak even a drop because the tank water makes you sick.

  But Harvey thinks of everything and seeing my look he points to his bag, full to the top with water bottles. Harvey’s great like that. I make sure not to drink too much so there’s enough to go around.

  Out of nowhere, kids come running to the sound of the water splashing into the pool. By the time it’s full, there’s already fourteen of us trying to push in quick before the water warms up as hot as the dirt, our feet fighting for space in that cool, and sloshing water up and over the side, turning the ground to mud. Even Queeny is here, splashing some of the cool up onto her face. I try to help her, but all I get is a punch on the arm for my troubles.

  “Here you go, kids. Your very own sea. Don’t go in too deep now.” Harvey points the hose to the sky so the last bit of water rains down on us and tingles our skin.

  I’ve seen pictures of the sea in some of the books and magazines that come through the Rec Room. In the pictures, the sun is never angry, but warm and soft, glinting the water. Queeny says that when you swim deep down under the sea, you can watch all the fish and turtles and rays and sea flowers as bright as bright, and that you can lie on your back and let the sea carry you and you don’t sink, not even a bit. The sea just lifts you up.

  Some days, if the wind blows just right, I can catch a whiff of the real sea. Then, if I close my eyes and rub out everyone else pushing around me, and put all my thinking on to that water bumping against my toes, then for a second I’m there, with the sea pushing in and out against me, and going on forever and ever, and me breathing in the wind, right down inside, and just waiting to let that water tingle over my whole body all at once and not just in drops.

  Anyway, there’s no wind today. Just hot.

  Harvey goes to his bag and pulls out toys for the pool. Some cups with holes in the bottom that pattern down water onto the dirt, some toy plastic boats, and a water wheel for the little ones.

  And a rubber duck.

  Harvey throws the duck into the water, which is already red from the dirt and getting warmer by the second. The duck doesn’t seem to mind, even though feet keep stomping it under the water and kicking it about. That duck just keeps bobbing back up, smiling a little duck smile all the while.

  I know a bit about ducks. Harvey taught me. I know that the feathers close to the duck’s skin stay dry, even when they dive as deep down underwater as they can go. I know that there aren’t any nerves in a duck’s feet, so that their feet don’t ever get cold. I know that a male duck is called a drake, and that there are some ducks quacking around who have been alive longer than me. Ducks can live up to twelve years, which is pretty good if you think about it.

  I even know a duck joke. What grows down as it grows up? I guess that’s more of a riddle than a joke.

  The rubber duck Harvey put in the pool has black hair and a mustache and a tiny triangly beard. It’s wearing a blue jacket and under its wing is a bit of paper with writing on it that says “To quack or not to quack.”

  “What’s with the duck?” Queeny says, picking it up and looking at it with that hard on her face, like she’s trying to work something out.

  “It’s a Shakespeare duck.” Harvey smiles. I think he thinks that’s funny, but neither of us gets why. “He wrote plays—he’s famous.”

  Queeny stares at Harvey with the same look on her face that she used on the duck and Harvey stops talking. “The water’s already too hot. I don’t know why you bother.” Queeny throws the duck so it squeaks when it hits me on the head and is gone before I can even ask her what a play is.

  I look at the duck. For a second I think it gives me a little duck nod and a wink. “Well, hello there,” it says.

  “What’s a play, Harvey?”

  But Harvey’s not listening. He’s moved over to the oldies on the plastic chairs that get all hot and sticky from being left in the sun, so whenever the oldies move, their legs sound like the Velcro on the tents. Harvey tells them to get inside. Tells them about the sun being burning today and there being no sunscreen to stop it turning their skin to sandpaper. They aren’t paying him any mind though. They just keep swatting the air like Harvey is one of the big flies that settle in your eyes and ears and won’t leave you alone. They pretend they don’t understand a word of what he says even though some of their English is as good as Harvey’s. And when that Shakespeare duck decides he doesn’t like living with Harvey so much and suggests he could come live with me instead, I know Harvey won’t even notice.

  The pool isn’t great for properly cooling off, with so many of us squashing to get wet. Really it’s only our feet that get all the way in, and then the little ones push and grump until we step out of their way. But just having that water to swish your hands through, or splash over your back and head, cools everything down just enough so your brain can think right again.

  I wait a long time, until just before lunch when everyone else has got out, still complaining of the hot, and then I stick my head all the way in and under the water. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t any fish or turtles or rays or sea flowers as bright as bright, or that the water is hot and full of dirt, it’s still brilliant.

  When I stick my head under the water, the whole world stops. The earth stops spinning, the wind stops blowing, the birds in the trees freeze, and the birds that are flying fall like stones to the ground. I call out a warning first, just so they know what is coming and can get to a branch quickly.

  Under the water everything is so quiet and still, and my brain stops right along with the rest of the world. I hold my breath for as long as I can and try not to feel too guilty about those birds that couldn’t find somewhere to land in time.

  I guess it’s because of me going under the water that it happens. I guess those birds had had enough. Because when I get back to Family Three, there it is, waiting for me. And even though there’s a whole bunch of us kids in there, not a single one makes a noise. All of us stop, as still as the world when I’m underwater, and all of us look at my bed.

  A sparrow. As sure as sure. Sitting right at the top of the bed where my head goes, so I know for sure it is talking to me and not Queeny. Not even a little bit bothered by all us kids staring at it.

  That sparrow looks at me. It looks at me and I feel my mouth go as dry as before I had that drink from one of Harvey’s water bottles and hot crawls up my body so I’m suddenly sweating all over. It whistles. A single chirp. Then it flies over my head and right on out of the tent.

  After, when everyone else has quietened and got on with their own doings, Queeny tells me, “You know what that means, right? A sparrow in the house?”

  I shake my head, not wanting to know what Queeny is about to say, because Queeny, she isn’t even messing.

  She pulls me right in close, hugging me like she hasn’t done since I was little, and just her doing that makes me more scared than ever. Her whisper in my e
ar cuts right through the hot of the day. “Subhi, a sparrow in the house, that’s a sign of death.”

  Jimmie doesn’t want to wake up. She knows what day it is. The house has been getting heavier and darker, preparing itself for today. Now today is here, and Jimmie doesn’t want a bar of it. She pulls herself under the yellow blanket covered in monkeys that her mum gave her four years ago when she was six, and tells her brain to stop, to go back to sleep. But her brain doesn’t listen. It rarely does.

  Jimmie wonders if she closed herself up in a cupboard or hid herself under the bed, if she just sat in the dark all day, then maybe it would be like today didn’t exist. Then she could wake up when it was tomorrow. And there would be a whole year before they had to go through this again.

  Jimmie stays very still, her breath held, her heartbeat slowing. She listens. There is no noise, as if the house is holding its breath too. There are no sounds of coffee being made or the shuffle of a newspaper being opened. No milk being slurped straight from the bottle or footsteps stomping to the bathroom. No water clanking through the pipes. Even Raticus is silent in his cage.

  Outside the day has already started. People are laughing and walking and yelling and driving and working and flying in airplanes and swimming in the sea and growing and cooking and reading and doing. People are living, without any of them knowing what today is. None of them knowing that in this house, everything has stopped. In this house, there is nothing.

  The first year was the hardest. The sadness was still open and bleeding. The second year wasn’t much better. Jimmie’s dad told her it would get easier. And it has. Most days it has. Most days Jimmie can go the whole day without feeling that thirsting inside. But there is a lump, and a heaviness, that never goes away.

  Today is the beginning of the fourth year. Today, it has been three years since Jimmie last heard her mum whisper her name. Three years since every part of her life changed. Three years since her mum placed the Bone Sparrow around Jimmie’s neck, her fingers shaking at the knot. “It’s your turn now, love,” she whispered, and Jimmie closed her eyes.

  At the funeral, Jimmie held on to the necklace, the sweat from her hand sinking into the bone. Her fingers worked at the Bone Sparrow the whole way through the speeches, her thumb rubbing at its smoothed back where her mum’s fingers used to rub, until there was a dent in her hand the size of the sparrow and a pain at the back of her neck from the pulling.

  Jimmie didn’t listen to any of the words people were saying. Instead she thought of the afternoons she’d spent with her mum, just the two of them, together, before the others got home. For a moment, she thought she could feel the warmth of her mum’s hands on her shoulders and the slightest pressure of a kiss placed gently on her head. Sitting in between Jonah and her dad, feeling them close, she could almost imagine that nothing had changed. That her mum would pop through that door any second. “What a mix-up! Wait till you hear what happened!”

  In those first weeks after the funeral, Jimmie helped her dad pack up her mum’s clothes. They put them into boxes and her dad pushed them high up into the attic. They did the same with her mum’s things—her books, her pictures, her jewelry, everything—sweeping them into boxes so they wouldn’t make her dad weep and cry and curl into a ball on the floor.

  All through that clearing, Jimmie had kept the Bone Sparrow necklace tucked under her shirt. She didn’t want to remind her dad that she wore it now. She didn’t want him to cry again.

  It was while they were packing up the bedroom that Jimmie found the notebook. Small and broken and full of words she couldn’t read. She wanted to ask her dad or Jonah to read the words to her, but she knew she couldn’t. It didn’t matter anyway. Her mum had written down each and every word in that book, and one day Jimmie would read them and hear her mum’s voice again. So she didn’t pack the book into the boxes with the other things.

  That was three years ago. She still can’t read the words. Still can’t hear her mum’s voice.

  Outside in the garden, she hears a howl, long and pained. Her dad is awake. Even through blocked ears Jimmie can hear him crying. She holds the Bone Sparrow above her head, watching the bird spin lazy circles in the air, its wings spread wide and the white of the bone blossoming into green around the middle where a coin used to sit. Her mum told her about the Bone Sparrow when she was little. Told her how it had protected her family for generations. Told her how it carried the souls of all her family, keeping them together and safe on their journey.

  But Jimmie doesn’t feel protected. She doesn’t feel safe. All she feels is that lump, and that heaviness, that never go away.

  I tell Eli about the sparrow. About what Queeny said. Eli starts up laughing like it’s the biggest joke I’ve ever told. He says that a tent is a tent and a house is a house and there’s no need to confuse the two, so I have nothing to get so worked up about.

  But that tent is all the house I’ve ever known, so I don’t know if Eli is right about that one.

  I tell the Shakespeare duck that I rescued from Harvey, and he looks me up and down with his little duck eyes and says that clearly I’m done for and could I please arrange for someone nice to take him when I’m dead. I tell him that if I’m going to die, I’m taking him with me, and there isn’t anyone else in this camp who would take the time to talk to a rubber duck. He doesn’t say much after that.

  I tell Harvey too, but he just wants to know what I’ve gone and left in my bed to attract the birds, and that we already have enough problems with the rats without me attracting the birds as well.

  I don’t tell Maá, in case it worries her. In case she thinks it’s true.

  And now it’s like those darn sparrows are everywhere. Watching me. Maybe they’ve been there all along, but ever since that one sat staring at me from the top of my bed, I can’t stop seeing them.

  Eli and I are walking the fences, and when I bend down to tie my shoe, there’s another sparrow, hopping right in front of me, and looking at me with its head turned to the side. “It’s another one, Eli, look!”

  Eli throws his hands in the air. “If you mention that stupid bird one more time, then I’ll kill you myself to get it over with.” He can’t say it without smiling though. “Now if you want to keep those shoes of yours, you’d better start earning them. Come on, Squirt, we have work to do.”

  There are only fourteen pairs of real shoes in this whole entire camp, even though there must be near about nine hundred pairs of feet. And one of those pairs of shoes belongs to me. My shoes are blue with white laces and some black bits on the side. They were more than big enough when I first got them, and I still have to stuff paper in them to stop them from falling off with each step. I’m growing into them though. Eli taught me to tie my laces, which is something, because even Queeny can’t tie laces. If she ever gets proper shoes, Queeny will have to come to me, begging for me to teach her how.

  Eli got me my shoes. He said I needed them if I was going to run packages with him. Package delivery is Eli’s business. At first, I didn’t want to run. Not a bit. But then I saw the happy on people’s faces when Eli delivered. And I saw the shoes. I gave him my too-small flip-flops that very day, and he gave me the shoes, and now I can walk anywhere I want without stones poking up through the soles and the hot eating at my feet.

  Eli calls us partners, and together we trade most of what people want for most of what we’ve got. People just tell us what they need and what they are going to swap to get it. A shirt for flip-flops, or soap for toothpaste, whatever they want. Eli keeps a stash hidden away and most mornings we run a couple of packages and keep people happy.

  When the Jackets hand out provisions from the truck, we don’t get to choose. You get what you get and you don’t get upset, that’s what Harvey says. The other Jackets you don’t even bother complaining to, even if they’ve run out of mosquito spray by the time you get to the front of the line, or if they give you only one bottle of water for each day instead of two like you’re supposed to get. Complai
ning only gets your one bottle of water tipped into the dirt or the rest of your supply put back in the truck. So people come to me and Eli instead. Eli, he keeps all those orders and all those swaps stuck in his head so no one can find a written-down list and get us in trouble.

  Every so often Eli gets something for us as well, and we don’t have to trade a single thing. He said that’s our pay for taking the risk of running the packages all over the camp in the first place. We get toothpaste, because Eli reckons having good teeth is important, and I get Maá extra water when I can, and pads for when she and Queeny have their women’s time so they don’t have to ask the Jackets whenever they need to use the toilet. Once Eli even gave me a whole box of toilet paper so that we could use more than the maximum six small squares that the Jackets give you. I have pants that fit right without a rubber band to hold them up, and four pairs of underwear, which is twice as many as is allowed. And my shoes.

  Eli and me, we know all the squeezeways in and about the place. The places where the cameras don’t see, and the flaps that are loose enough to get you into the backs of the kitchen, and the wobbly wire between the toilet blocks. That’s how we get the packages all over the whole camp and not just all over Family Compound.

  Sometimes you can get right up close to the fences to pass the package through. Like if you’re delivering to Ford Compound, which is the place you get put if you need to be kept more safe than usual because someone keeps on hurting you, or if your brain gets so mushed from being here that you keep on hurting yourself. We can also pass straight through to Alpha Compound, which is where all the grown men without families live. Family is right in the middle between Ford and Alpha so our fences edge theirs. Then there’s Hard Road behind us and separating us from the other compounds on the other side. Hard Road isn’t really a road, but we call it that because that’s where all the hard buildings are. The ones made out of container blocks or bricks, like the old School Room, which isn’t used anymore, or the Computer Room or the toilets and showers.