Alyce came from a family of birders, but she had never been interested in checking off species from a list or watching them gorge at backyard feeders. Rather, flight itself was the reason she’d majored in mechanical engineering in college, specializing in aeronautics, an unsophisticated science compared to how birds migrated long distances based on the earth’s magnetic field, big gliders using the thermal updrafts created during the day, as the heat from the sun rose, and small powered fliers, like robins, preferring to migrate at night when the atmospheric boundary layer was still. Back and forth, back and forth. Just one more way to devour endless days.
Alyce looked at her boys—all three hunkered down, staring out at the field, connected by a web of dumb, guileless awe. Jake and Ian flocked around Harry and each other, forming their own instinctive patterns of flight.
Harry leaned into their sons and said, “We’ll have enough robin soup to last the entire winter.” The boys’ expressions turned first to horror before scrunching up in the way they did to show their suspicion of grown-ups.
Jake turned and explained patiently to his younger brother that the robins were messengers of a magical army. “I’m going to ride one.”
“What about me?!” cried Ian. The robins started, jumping slightly to the top of a dance beat, before bolting east in a rush of chirps and feathers, eyes and beaks suddenly obscured by wing. Her sons stood to watch orange puzzle pieces converge and fly away.
As the birds freckled the face of the horizon, Alyce pictured the robins that would fly into the windows of skyscrapers, or become caught in the fuselages of airplanes, or simply run out of energy and fall, unable to fly on.
“Jake is going to be sleepy and cranky at school.” Harry began to tie the laces of his boots. “We probably shouldn’t wake them up for every little thing.”
“It was cool, though. Right, guys?”
“Pretty cool,” said Jake, now nonchalant.
“You have a very cool mother,” Harry told them, but his voice was strained. He turned to Alyce. “You could have woken me up, you know.”
Alyce lay on the grass and looked at the sky and, from this perspective, Harry appeared as a scarecrow, awkward sticks dressed up to create the illusion of human menace.
Harry sighed. “Don’t forget. Someone’s coming to drop off the tent and chairs this morning,” he said. They were hosting Flannery’s welcome-home party next week—Harry had badgered Alyce into offering up the ranch.
Alyce closed her eyes. “And there are still boxes to unpack. Food to buy. Dishes to wash.” Breaths to breathe, she thought. “Have you noticed how we buy food and then eat it, and then have to buy more?”
Harry didn’t respond. Alyce opened her eyes and saw the corners of his mouth turned down, the folds in his forehead, the subtle droop of his tired eyelids. For a moment, she wanted to reach out and hug him, but the feeling passed before she could own it.
A scream of delight drew her attention. Alyce sat up. Jake was standing in the yard throwing a horseshoe dangerously close to his brother’s head.
“Put those fucking things down,” she hissed, and then clasped a hand to her mouth to catch the vitriol before it escaped. Too late.
“Flapjack time,” said Harry, and with that, the boys dropped everything and lined up to follow him inside, the Pied Piper of Pancakes. His walking stick leaned against the porch swing, forgotten.
Alyce stayed on the ground for a moment, looking out at the trees and sky, wondering if a few of the robins were watching through the brambled cross-stitch of brush, and like her, waiting anxiously for the cover of night.
FLANNERY
Flannery, jet-lagged and half delirious, slumped into her sister Molly’s car outside the airport in Austin. They drove past the overturned bowl of pink limestone that was the state capitol building and stopped for lunch at a place called Quack’s.
The long narrow bakery echoed with the clanging of silverware and the clicking of computer keyboards; brightly painted wooden tables were shoved close together; dogs, tied to the railing outside, barked as each new person flung open the door, uppercuts of air-conditioning hitting them in the face. The sisters ordered at the counter, then staked out a spot in the corner flush against a bookshelf full of board games. “I hardly slept last night,” said Molly. “You’re finally here.” Her sister was two years younger and six inches shorter than Flannery, with darker hair, bigger breasts.
“I didn’t sleep, either,” said Flannery. “Dragging myself through Heathrow at three in the morning might have had something to do with that.” She interlaced her fingers with Molly’s and leaned forward.
“I wouldn’t let Dad pick you up—wanted you to myself first,” Molly said, “but I did tell him that you and I would drive out to Abilene this weekend. Hope that’s okay. . . .” Flannery listened to the stream of words, letting them flow through her, feeling the warmth that bubbled up whenever she first saw her sister, before the bickering and confused feelings resurfaced. “He could come here, but he hates new Austin and just spends all day bitching about the traffic and the yuppies and drives Brandon and me up the wall. Papa’s cooking now, you wouldn’t believe it, and he’s not a total catastrophe. Nothing too fancy, but . . .” Molly put her hand over her mouth and laughed. The two sisters looked at each other.
“Too bad Kunle couldn’t come,” Molly said.
“Actually, he has an interview at the consulate in a few weeks for a visa and we’re hoping—”
“Hey, sorry, but I’ve got to pee. Listen for our number, Flan-cakes.” Molly almost knocked over her chair as she rose and turned, threading her way through the tables toward the back.
Molly and Kunle had never met in person, just on the computer. Once, when Flannery dragged him into the bedroom to video chat with Molly while she went to answer a knock at the door, her sister asked about the three parallel scars on the side of Kunle’s face. Flannery overheard them from the other room.
“All future kings of the Yoruba are born with them. It’s a sign of royalty.”
“Born with, huh?”
“Only joking. They came from a fight with my brother. Flannery told you I was raised by a pack of lions, abi?”
“What?!”
From the hallway, Flannery had cocked her head in wonder. Maybe he believed Molly would think him savage or primitive if he told the truth.
The sandwiches at Quack’s arrived in plastic baskets lined with wax paper. Flannery was in the middle of taking a bite when her sister emerged from the bathroom door across the bakery. She saw it in Molly immediately. It struck like a bullet. Her sister walked toward her, swaying a little from side to side, a flashback of their mother, tilting back and forth like a toddler not yet comfortable with how the steps transition one into another.
Molly smiled as she moved forward, oblivious in her amber beads and blue jeans. She was beautiful—she’d always been the pretty one—and Flannery wanted to stop her, to freeze the moment, or at least slow the ticking off of seconds: the red of the bathroom door as it clicked shut; the smeary fingerprints on the display window housing glittery confections; the flick of a customer’s wrist as he tossed coins into the tip jar on the counter; the way the coins jangled as they hit bottom.
Flannery closed her eyes. She was shocked, and the most shocking thing was not even this confrontation with the first signs of disease in her sister. It was the realization that, somewhere deep down in the cracks and fissures of her brain, Flannery had known this could happen. But not now. Not this soon. Wahala, she thought. Big trouble. She tried to suppress the image of her mother attempting to spoon soup into her own mouth and then throwing the bowl across the room when she couldn’t keep her hand from shaking.
Flannery felt a sharp pressure on her back and realized it was Molly’s palm beating up and down because Flannery was coughing a little on the sandwich. She blinked hard and spat the mess back into her plate. She inhaled a rough breath.
“You’re a tough cookie,” said Molly.
“Went . . . down the wrong pipe.”
Flannery stared as her sister began eating, and it was like something playing across a television without sound. The way Molly slid a ridged potato chip into her avocado sandwich “to give it more texture,” giggling and eating and talking at the same time. How did her sister do that? What was she even saying? It was all Flannery could do to bob her chin up and down, hoping this was the correct response to whatever was being asked, head swimming in recriminations:
Had Flannery really imagined Africa would make their mother’s death and all its implications go away? You didn’t just blink your eyes, move across the world, and expect the darkness you left behind to disappear. Blink, blink: Flan thought of their mother in her last years, eyes darting one way and another. The inability to maintain eye contact was a symptom of Huntington’s disease, but it had always seemed to Flannery like a reluctance to face things.
“You will? Excellent. I know you’re moving into that rental, but they’ll last in sacks for a while until you get settled. We’ll pull them out of the ground in a few months.”
Flannery felt the urge to run. She didn’t want to be there anymore. She didn’t want to look at her sister or talk to her or even think of her.
“Are you listening to me? Mom’s iris bulbs have finally split. I’m thinning out the extras this year.”
Flannery didn’t know how to say she wouldn’t be staying long enough to plant their mother’s irises here. “I don’t know.” And then, as though it explained everything, she said one word: “Africa.” And yet, despite this pronouncement, her future in the rutted streets threaded with concrete squares and wooden stalls, filled with smells of grilled meat and exhaust, where Flannery had bargained over goods for the last five years, began to glimmer and smear in unreality. Panic set in.
Molly betrayed her hurt feelings with a shrug. She said she had to get back to work but would drop Flan off at the house so she could take a nap.
“I must have forgotten to tell you. I feel horrible,” said Flannery, looking away from the steady beam of her sister’s gaze. Her baby sister. “I’m staying with a friend tonight. From graduate school. She’s teaching at the university now, and I promised . . . a great big house . . . I figured it would be easier. . . .” As she spoke, unsure whether she was making any sense, Flannery stared at the sad, overturned remainder of her chicken and pesto on whole wheat—mangled and falling apart. It was enough to make her want to throw up.
Flannery dragged herself and her luggage (stuffed with cheap gifts, or what a Nigerian friend of hers called “DCC”—Developing Country Crap) down the sidewalk. A row of brick storefronts advertised antiques and used music and funky art painted on recycled wood. Across the street, peach-colored roses threaded through the metal fence surrounding the mental hospital. Trundling along, Flannery passed a corner telephone pole inexplicably encased in a colorful knitted fabric. Yarn graffiti. In Nigeria the Yoruba believed intersections were liminal spaces, thresholds where humans and spirits and ancestors overlapped, and they often left offerings like this at crossroads. Flannery touched the strange handmade fabric and remembered how her mother looked before the illness, knitting and sewing costumes for one of her plays at the community theater, sharp pins sticking from her mouth like weapons and black lace piled in the bowl of her lap.
Flannery eventually found the bar she remembered fondly from her time as an undergrad at Marsh College, a small, nerdy engineering university situated in the neighborhood nearby. The dive bar, which had been frequented by grad students drinking Lone Star and people looking to get in bar fights with grad students drinking Lone Star, was directly above the Burger Tex, and you had to climb up a fire escape to get there. As she dragged her suitcase through the entrance, Flannery saw that El Gaton was a much hipper place now, with walls covered in hundreds of wine bottles sticking out of severe, modern racks. Real wine sounded good. So good. The only wine they drank in Nigeria was sweet palm wine or imported “sangria” from a box.
Soon after she walked inside, El Gaton began filling up with happy-hour patrons, carefree and young, disposable income fattening their wallets, while Flannery ordered a glass of white and then another and then another, occasionally looking around, pretending to be meeting someone. As she drank, she tried not to think about her sister but to focus on her real purpose here—to complete research that would allow her to return to Nigeria. To Kunle, the man she would marry. To the place where they sat outside in red plastic chairs and ate the best melt-your-face-off fish pepper soup, kids stopping to ask, “Are you here on an adventure?” (because white people in movies were always going to Africa on adventures) as she laughed at them and said, “How did you know?”
Flannery was a lightweight these days, and the alcohol quickly made her woozy and regretful. Where was she going to sleep tonight? She shouldn’t have lied to Molly about having other plans, but Flannery just couldn’t bear the thought of watching her sister all evening. She looked at her bar bill and thought, Fuck. I could buy a goat for that. She considered mentioning this to the bartender but decided against it, remembering how Mrs. Tonukari always said nobody on the other side actually wanted to hear anything real. Nigerians never asked about Mrs. T’s life back in Wales, and her Welsh friends could never understand what she’d been doing all those years in Nigeria.
The man next to her worked the crossword puzzle in pen. Flannery asked to borrow his cell phone, which he handed to her without looking up. Pressing a finger into her other ear to block out the noise, she dialed Alyce’s number, but when her best friend picked up, she sounded shrunken and distant, as though she were talking through a sack.
“Can I stay with you tonight?”
She was answered with muffled noises.
“Ground Control to Major Alyce.”
“Sorry . . . I’m distracted. Jake won’t finish his green beans . . .”
“Call the gendarmes.” Flannery sighed and asked how Harry and the boys were, but Alyce didn’t answer that question, either. Instead, she asked, “Are you drunk?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“I thought you were staying with your sister.”
“I am, but she’s busy with work. You know. I thought we could catch up.”
“One problem. I live on a ranch an hour from town now, remember? I can’t leave the kids alone to pick you up, and a cab out here will cost a fortune.”
“Right.” Flannery had the feeling Alyce was trying to set boundaries, to protect her family. As if Flannery was going to come over with a bottle of bourbon and a batch of malaria for the boys.
“Hold on a sec.”
Flannery rolled her eyes. Unbelievable.
“Sorry, Flan. Ian’s diving off the top bunk again. I’ll call you later.”
There was a click before Flannery could remind Alyce she didn’t have a cell number in the States yet. Alyce, who always had her back. Who had told the speed-addled cabdriver in Spain to pull over and made him sit in back while Alyce drove them through the dark empty streets toward their hostel. What had happened to that Alyce?
At the bar, another drink in hand, Flannery couldn’t help herself from peeking at her neighbor’s crossword. “Enya.”
“Excuse me?” He angled his thick neck toward her, and she noticed the Eastern-bloc-style cap perched in his lap.
“Forty-nine down. They love to use her. It’s those vowels.”
“Yes.” He smiled weakly and wrote it in. Handsome and clean-cut in an old-fashioned way, she decided he looked like Phineas from A Separate Peace, or at least what she imagined Phineas would look like—something about his square jawbone and blond hair. Poor, perfect Phineas who fell from the tree or was pushed.
“Phineas,” she said. “Things were not always this way. For example, this bar used to be a dump.” She almost slipped from her stool but caught herself by grabbing his arm.
A group of women walked in from outside, laughing.
“My name is Ash,” he said, as the
bartender plopped down a small plate in front of him, a slider with blue cheese dribbling down the side.
When she heard Ash’s name, she thought of libraries and quiet, those last two letters forming a shhhhh. Don’t disturb the other patrons. Don’t wake up the sleeping baby. Ash.
“I need a place to crash. What do you think, Phineas-Ash? Do you have a sofa? In exchange, I could teach you a thing or two about crossword puzzles.” She knew this wasn’t coming out exactly right, but she was sleep deprived and going through reverse culture shock; they were all going to die, but her little sister was going to beat them to it; her apartment wouldn’t be ready for move-in until Monday; she felt sick. Flannery vaguely understood that these problems were not on equal levels of importance. Her heart fluttered insistently, trying to beat its way out from under the bones of her chest.
Ash’s smile was strained, annoyed, and he lifted his hand to show her the band on his left ring finger. “Wherever you end up,” he said, “I hope you’re not driving.”
By the time the taxi pulled up outside the door of the bar, Flannery could only think of one place she could go. She didn’t know the address, but how hard could it be to find?
She waved away the cabbie when he tried to put her things in the trunk, heaving her giant rucksack beside her onto the vinyl seat.
“There’s an old firehouse in Clarksville behind Jeffrey’s. Do you know it?”
As the cab moved forward, warm air from a rolled-down window blowing across her face, Flannery closed her eyes and imagined being back in Adamanta, the streetlamps dark, no electricity coming from the passing buildings as they sped by on the back of an okada. Too late for the buses, so they’d flagged one of the passing motorbikes to take them home instead: Flan behind the driver; Kunle behind her. She remembered how his breath passed along her ear and the side of her face as she leaned back into him. His legs straddled hers, and his hands barely touched her torso as if held there not by muscle but by magnetism. It was joy and movement and freedom in a liminal space, invisible ghosts licking at their heels.
Migratory Animals Page 2
