The Bone Sparrow

by Zana Fraillon

  “Just in case though,” I say. “You always said, you always told me that you’ve got to have a Plan B.”

  When Eli looks at me this time, he’s nodding. I can see that Plan B working its way through his thinking. He breathes in deep, his eyes closed with concentrating, and when he opens his eyes, there isn’t even a trace of fear. He says, “I did say that, didn’t I? All right, then, Squirt. Tell me, Subhi. About the fence.”

  When I tell him, he smiles. “You’re a good man, Subhi. I’m proud to be your friend, little bruda.”

  I’m about to tell him more, all about Jimmie and her phone and her pet rat and Oto and Anka and the Bone Sparrow, but then a man from Alpha comes up. He is holding some string and his face is full of scary. I grip Eli’s hand so tight that my fingers ache.

  Eli, he doesn’t look scared at all. He just looks at the man and shakes his head. “I’m holding off for a bit. I think I’ve just been given a plan.”

  I wonder if the man will get angry, but he doesn’t. He just nods at Eli. “Stay strong, boy.”

  He walks away, back into the tent, and Eli turns to me. “I gotta go. I need to help these guys. But you stay strong too, Subhi.” He squeezes my hand once and follows the man into the tent.

  I don’t move from the fence. My legs are numb, thinking on what Eli’s said. And I can’t have been sitting there long before Eli walks past again. He nods when he sees me, but he doesn’t smile. He’s helping the man walk to the fence edging out to the road. The man has only strong in his eyes, and I can see where he’s used that string to stitch his own lips shut. Like that time Queeny cut her arm and had to have the cut sewn tight to let it heal. The man still has the needle in his hand. He nods at all of us, raising his arms like he’s just won a race, and lies down on the dirt. Eli unfolds a bed sheet and I can see where the ink of a pen shines through. They’ve written on the sheet. Eli turns and shows it to all of us gathered at the fence, watching.

  WE ARE INNOCENT.

  PLEASE HELP US TO BE FREE.

  WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT HOPE.

  When six more men lie down in the dirt, all of their lips stitched so there’s no food or water getting in, I feel a shaking that starts in my legs and moves up my whole body, until I’m juddering all over.

  Harvey comes up behind me and rubs my arms and says down low in my ear, “They’ll be all right, kiddo. It won’t last long. Don’t you worry about this, now. It will be over in no time.” He gives my arms a squeeze and walks away, not even looking at those men at the fence.

  As soon as Harvey has gone, Queeny comes up. She stands right next to me and takes the camera out of her pocket. She gives a whistle, and the men all turn toward her, like they know exactly what she wants. Eli and another man hold the sheet next to them and Queeny takes a picture, and then another. She shoves the camera back into her pocket before a Jacket sees, and Eli hangs the sheet on the fence facing the road.

  I think of the pictures on Jimmie’s phone and Maá lying in bed and people lined up in the sun with no water and no shade and no food, and my brain can’t make sense of any of it. The whole world has gone crazy and the bricks are falling out all over the place.

  I can’t get the taste of sour out of my mouth.

  It’s storming. The Night Sea crashes and slams at the tent, making the walls lean over sideways. I can hear Eli’s whale thrashing about and bellowing long howls into the wind. Those waves pull themselves through the cracks, trying to reach us, so that all of us are lying wet in our beds, watching our clothes turn to mud puddles on the floor.

  Queeny squeezes my hand and says, “It’s just the rain,” but she has to yell it to get over the thunder those waves are making. Even though she says she doesn’t believe, I can tell she’s scared the Night Sea is coming to wash her away.

  No one sleeps. Not even Maá, who is lying in bed, her eyes watching those puddles growing on the floor. She doesn’t say anything. Not even when I cozy up into her and brush the hair back from her head and sing her the tarana songs she used to sing to me. I don’t think she even blinks. The babies are screaming and crying, and their fear eats into all of us.

  The Night Sea keeps coming. There is no washing back deep sleep tonight. If this is my ba trying to tell me something, then I’ve no bloody idea what it is.

  I sit awake with everyone else. Waiting for that storm to wash everything clean. For the waves to wash that dust right out of the dirt and leave it still and clear and quiet. Waiting so we can listen to the earth again.

  It’s still and silent when Jimmie gets home from school. Her dad is sleeping upstairs, recovering from his shifts, and Jonah is out with his friends.

  It’s the third day this week that Jimmie has made it to school. Her teacher told her that if she could get there every day for a week then she would be in the running to win a pair of brand-new soccer cleats. It almost made forcing Jonah to wake up worth it.

  Jimmie sits down at the kitchen table and gets a book from her bag. Her teacher asked if there was anyone at home to help her read it, and she said yes, even though the answer was no. But maybe she didn’t need help. Maybe she could do it herself.

  But before Jimmie even gets past the first page her eye catches the newspaper lying open on the table, and she stops. There’s a photo. Of Subhi’s camp. In the background, Jimmie can even see their corner, hidden away behind the bushes. At the front are six men, their lips sewn closed with string, staring right out at the reader. There’s a boy holding up a bedsheet next to them. The boy can’t be much older than Subhi. Certainly younger than Jonah. Jimmie wonders if she knows who it is. It could be Eli, the boy Subhi told her about. Jimmie remembers what Subhi said, about Queeny and Eli sneaking in the camera to get their pictures out into the world. And Jimmie gets the same feeling that Subhi had. Like something bad is coming and she can’t do a thing to stop it. She punches herself in the arm and whispers the same words she said to Subhi. “There. That was the bad coming. Now you can forget about it.” But it doesn’t make a difference.

  Jimmie feels a warm hand on her shoulder, and her dad is standing behind her, reading over her shoulder. The feeling pulls back, and Jimmie closes her eyes and breathes in her dad’s smell. He looks so tired. He should be sleeping. But Jimmie knows why he got up. He heard her come in.

  “Sad, isn’t it, love? The way these people are being treated. It isn’t right. Hunger strikes, of all things,” he says.

  Jimmie feels the cold start in her belly again. “Do they all have to do that? The hunger strikes?”

  “Ah no, love. I guess some of them are making a protest. Best way they can, locked up in there. Just trying to get us to say we hear them. Take notice. They’ve been in there a long while now, some of them.”

  Jimmie wants to ask more. Wants to find out how they can help, so that no one has to sew their lips together. Wants to know why they have been locked up in there for so long. Why no one is listening. Why it is illegal for people to try and save their families. Why it is illegal to want to live. Jimmie wants to know.

  But her dad has already slid the paper across the table and is flicking through to the sports pages. When he says, “Would you look at that? They suspended him for two weeks for just a little shove! What is the world coming to?” Jimmie gets up from the table. She takes her book and goes to her room.

  Her mum would have understood. Her mum would have known what to do. But her mum isn’t here. Jimmie has never felt so alone.

  Jimmie hasn’t been here for a while now. When I finally see her light flash, I feel how much I’ve been missing her. There is so much I want to tell her. So much I want her to know. Because just telling Jimmie makes it feel not so bad somehow. Like maybe it really will be okay. Someday.

  When Jimmie runs through the dark, over to our corner, and sits herself down, my breath catches in my throat and it’s not from the dust getting into my lungs. It’s from seeing what Jimmie has done.

  Jimmie doesn’t just have the book tonight. She doesn’t just have th
e thermos of hot chocolate. She has an entire feast, all wrapped up in a red backpack, with cups and plates and blue-and-white napkins, and even a blanket so the food doesn’t go crunchy with bits of dirt. That food looks almost too dreamy and amazing to be real.

  It is real though. And sitting there watching Jimmie get it ready, my tongue aches with just seeing it all sitting there smiling up at me. I nose through all the smells and breathe in all those colors. All the while, in my head I can see those six men who haven’t eaten or drunk a thing for three days now, and Maá who barely eats or drinks at all, but not for any reason she’s saying, and Queeny with her camera, and Eli with his sheet, and everyone getting more and more buzzy and angry. It takes just about everything in me not to scream up to the moon with all the swirlings of feelings bursting through my body.

  All of a sudden I’m blubbering. I try to wipe away the tears and smile at Jimmie because this is one of the best things in my life so far, and here I am ruining it by crying like a baby.

  Jimmie looks at me and nods. “I know,” she says. “I hear you.”

  My blubbering slows and my eyes mostly dry up, and I wipe my nose on my shirt and I nod back. I know she does.

  My hands have already started heaping the food into my mouth, all those tastes that I didn’t even know were real, each one different and wonderful, playing on my tongue and filling out my cheeks and rubbing against my teeth. I see now why Eli and Queeny get so angry about the food in here. They know all these flavors and crunches and tongue-twirls exist. I have to stop and breathe through my nose before I choke.

  “If you don’t slow down, you’re gonna spew it up all over the place and that would just be a bloody big waste.” Jimmie spits her food halfway out of her mouth to demonstrate, then sucks it all right back in again.

  There is so much food Jimmie says there’s no way we will be able to eat it all, but I say there is no way I’m going to stop. Not until every little crumb has gone, and I don’t care if my stomach bursts from the stuffing.

  There are pancakes, which are round and hand-size and still warm from being wrapped in a tea towel. Jimmie spreads cream and jam on top, and when I get it close to my mouth, my nose sucks up its smells and hints at the taste waiting for my tongue. All setting-sun sweet and shell-pool cool mixed together and spread so thick that the jam and cream squish over the sides and drip down onto the blanket. I see why Jimmie brought napkins. It wasn’t just so she could fold them into a swan shape and pretend we’re at a restaurant like she tells me. I don’t know how correct she is in her pretending, but she promises me that someday she’ll take me to one so I can see for myself how good her swans are.

  She’s brought in a coconut so we can drink the milk, which looks more like water than milk and tastes kind of soapy. The coconut is furry and rough, and has a smell of my Night Sea about it.

  There are jam tarts and chicken sandwiches that look as good as the photos in the food magazines and taste even better than I’d imagined. There are sausage rolls with an outside that puffs its crumbs into the sky and spreads all over me, and there’s a kind of chocolate filled with cream that tastes like oranges. There’s a whole packet of strawberries, and those strawberries are the best thing I’ve ever tasted. They are the taste of happiness, pure and true.

  “You’re not supposed to eat the green bit,” Jimmie says, but that green bit is playing on my tongue like nothing I’ve ever had before, and I’m not spitting out a single flavor.

  “My mum used to have a veggie garden. She planted all these different things and sang to them all to help them grow. Plants love that, you know.” Jimmie stops and I can see the thinking flashing across her face. “I might start up the veggie garden again. Then I could bring in veggies pulled straight from the dirt. They taste the best of all, with that growing flavor bursting from them right into your mouth.”

  I wonder if the Jackets would let us grow some seeds. Maybe just a few. Then everyone in here could have a turn singing to those seeds and tasting that growing flavor on their tongues.

  We sit for a long time then, just talking. Jimmie tells me about the soccer cleats that her school is giving away, and all about rats and how smart they are. “They get trained to sniff out bombs and stuff. They get paid in bits of avocado and banana. They love being tickled on their stomachs and they even laugh.”

  When I tell her about the hunger strike, Jimmie nods. “I know. I saw it in the paper.”

  So Queeny was right. It did get into the paper. But getting into the paper doesn’t seem to do much. Not for us. Thinking on that doesn’t make me feel bad though. Not now, anyway. All the food Jimmie’s brought in has given me the clearest, strongest, cheering-est feeling I have ever had. I don’t think my tongue can ever go back to not knowing. I reckon it will be stuck thinking on those flavors forever.

  When Jimmie stands up to go, all the food turns to heavy in my gut, knowing that it’s over. But Jimmie stops, like she’s trying to work out whether to ask me something or not. “Before I go…” Then she pulls out a new book from her bag. It looks like one of the books we used to have in here when the teacher used to come. “Can you help me read it? I need to practice if I’m gonna learn.”

  It seems to me like there is nothing I would like to do more right now. I don’t say so though. I just nod, and Jimmie and I lean back against the bricks, and we go through that book, every page.

  “That’s a pretty crappy story,” I say at the end.

  “Terrible,” Jimmie agrees.

  “But your reading was great,” I add. Jimmie smiles bigger than I’ve ever seen her do before.

  Then she packs everything into her bag, and even though it is scrunched up and sticky and doesn’t look a bit like a swan anymore, I take one of the napkins and stuff it into the pocket of my pants. And when we see her mum’s book lying there on the picnic blanket, we look at it and back at each other, both thinking the very same thing. That it doesn’t matter one bit that we had somehow forgotten about the book. It doesn’t matter to either of us that we didn’t even get a chance to read a single word of the story. It doesn’t matter at all.

  After Jimmie has gone, after we’ve flashed good-bye and I’m lying back in bed, my stomach feels all warm and full. And it still feels warm and full when I wake up the next morning.

  It’s almost midnight when Jimmie gets home, but the energy and excitement are still pushing through her. She feels like dancing. She feels like singing. She feels like climbing onto the roof and howling. She can’t remember the last time she felt this happy. Really, really happy.

  And Jimmie knows it is time. She lowers the ladder leading to the attic and quietly comes up into the dark. There’s no need to turn on the lights. Jimmie knows exactly where her mum’s things are. She reaches into the box and pulls out her mum’s garden gnome, breathing in the smells of her mum drifting up from the bottom of the box. Old Gnome is still wearing the sweater her mum knit for him when Jimmie was four. Jimmie remembers watching and wondering when she would be able to knit a sweater like that too. Her mum had promised her that one day she’d teach her.

  From downstairs, Jimmie hears her dad snoring and Jonah groaning in his sleep. If she tries, she can even imagine her mum sitting up in bed, waiting, just like she used to when Jimmie was little and would climb into the warm between her parents each morning. Jimmie sits there a long time. She closes her eyes and imagines she can hear her mum singing. It’s a song they used to sing together to help the veggies grow. “You have the most beautiful voice,” her mum had said. Jimmie hasn’t sung a single note since her mum died, but when she opens her eyes, she realizes it is her own voice she has been hearing.

  Then her dad lets out a fart and the moment is gone.

  But Jimmie can still feel that happiness bubbling inside her. She doesn’t put Old Gnome back in the box; instead she holds him close as she starts back down from the attic. Even when she catches her arm on a piece of sharpened metal sticking out from the ladder, it doesn’t bother her. “Ow!” s
he grunts, but it doesn’t really hurt. She licks the blood and tells Old Gnome, “Saliva has great healing powers, you know.” When Old Gnome looks at her and agrees, Jimmie giggles, knowing Subhi would approve.

  Jimmie doesn’t bother getting into her pajamas. Instead she kicks off her shoes and climbs under her monkey blanket, nuzzling her face deep into Old Gnome’s sweater. Buried beneath the smell of cement and dust and mold is her mum’s scent. As strong and beautiful as Jimmie remembers. As she breathes in that smell she realizes that the lump and the heaviness in her throat are gone. She wonders when they went away. Tomorrow, she’ll ask her dad to get some dirt and some seeds and she’ll start that veggie garden going again. Every day she’ll sing to those seeds, so they can find their way up through the earth and into the sky.

  Jimmie falls asleep with a smile on her face.

  My brain can’t stop thinking about that feast. About the warm full of my stomach that’s still there even after a whole day. And when Harvey asks why I’ve drawn a tattoo of a duck on my arm, I get to laughing so hard that I can’t stop and Harvey tells me to get out of the sun because it’s making my brain go funny.

  I sit next to Maá’s bed and draw. This one is for Jimmie. A picture of a girl being born from an egg, and I’m drawing it so that even though Jimmie can’t read it yet, she can look at my picture and remember the story for her own self and feel happy.

  Some of the oldies ask me to draw them things. Sometimes they ask me to draw them things I haven’t ever seen, and then they have to talk and talk until I can see in my head what they have in their rememberings.

  Queeny says they only do it so that I shut up for a bit and stop pestering them for more stories. She reckons the only time I’m ever quiet is when I’m being told a story. But Queeny doesn’t get it. I need these stories. Everyone else in here has memories to hold on to. Everyone else has things to think on to stop them getting squashed down to nothing. But I don’t have memories of anywhere else, and all these days just squish into the same. I need their stories. I need them to make my memories.