Silhouette of a Sparrow

by Molly Beth Griffin

  “Garnet, you’re shaking.” Mother rocked me in her arms as the firemen and medics rushed around us in a blur of frantic activity. A bright red fire truck blared its two-note siren like a cardinal gone mad. “We have to get away from here,” she said. She coughed and clutched her ankle. “But where? Where can we go?”

  “I know a place,” I said, trying out my knee and finding it functional. “Can you walk?”

  I knocked, sheepishly, on the door of Isabella’s apartment. After I’d yelled at her and called her names and made her cry, here I was, knocking on her door in the middle of the night, asking for a place to stay.

  At least I hadn’t brought the Harringtons. They’d vanished in the bustle and we’d decided to go without them. We needed to find shelter quickly, and we trusted they’d find someplace to go too. And as Mrs. Harrington had so graciously pointed out, we were “no longer family” In any case, I was grateful to be spared their company at this moment as I waited for Isabella to answer her door, hoping that she’d let us in, dreading that she’d shut us out. She had every right to turn me away.

  At last, she answered. Isabella, in a slip and smudged eye makeup and the detested night gloves. She stood there, her irritation at being woken up turning to surprise and then concern at the sight of us.

  And she opened the door wide for me—for grimy, battered me and for my injured mother.

  We stumbled inside. Isabella slept on the sofa and gave us her bed. Mother and I dropped into that narrow bed and slept instantly. Deeply. Side by side.

  I didn’t wake up fully until Sunday. It was late afternoon when I sat up in Isabella’s bed, groggy and disoriented. Mother still slept, so I tiptoed out of the bedroom and shut the door quietly behind me. The apartment was empty, but I found a note from Isabella on the kitchen counter. Gone to rehearsal and then a show—manager scheduled one last minute on my day off, bastard. Back late. Help yourself to a bath and anything you can find in the icebox and the pantry. Left fresh clothes out on the sofa—should fit. Isabella

  My stomach let out a vicious growl. I opened the pantry door and then stopped—my hands were stained black with soot. The bath would have to come first.

  In the tiny bathroom I ran hot water into the cracked claw-foot bathtub and stripped off my once-white nightdress. I found a washcloth in the cabinet and a bar of soap on the edge of the tub. I lowered myself into the bath slowly, catching my breath at the sting of the water on little cuts and scratches I didn’t realize were there. Heat welled up from my burned hand. Half an hour must have passed while I scrubbed at the soot and soaked the sore spots. The water soothed the ache in my knee while I rubbed my stiff shoulder. My head buzzed the whole time . . . The fire. The roof. The words I’d said to Mother. The leap. Mother’s ankle. Hannah and her mother embracing. Isabella opening her door. Opening, opening, opening her door.

  Isabella in her slip, with mussed hair and sleep in her darkly smudged eyes, opening her door. And giving us her bed. She must’ve spent the whole of Saturday and most of Sunday creeping around her own apartment so that we could rest. Then she went to work and left a note to offer us everything she had: hot water and soap and food and clothes and a safe place to rest.

  When the water was cold and murky, I got out and dried off. Isabella’s towel, I thought, gently pressing the terry cloth against my inflamed skin. Then I rinsed out the washcloth and found a bowl to fill with hot water. After I dressed in a clean shift of Isabella’s, I brought the bowl in to Mother.

  She startled awake when I touched the warm cloth to her black-streaked face. “Shhh,” I said. “Just cleaning you up a little.”

  “Garnet, where are we?” she said, confusion and pain wavering in her voice.

  “A friend’s, Mother. We’re safe here. We can stay as long as we need to.” I hoped that was true.

  A look of recognition passed across Mother’s face as she recalled what Mrs. Harrington had told her. “A friend? Do you mean . . . the flapper?”

  “Yes, Mother. Her name is Isabella.”

  I waited to be scolded, lectured, reprimanded for my poor taste in friends, but she just lay there quietly a moment and then said, “Well, we should be very grateful to this Isabella, then, shouldn’t we.”

  We were silent for a while as I scrubbed at Mother’s face and hands. Then I took the bowl back to the washroom and assembled a little supper for us in the kitchen. When I brought the plate of bread and cheese and fruit into the bedroom, Mother was sitting up, leaning against the headboard. Her eyes were clearer. She looked more alert.

  “About what you said, Garnet . . .” She coughed, her lungs still rattling with smoke. I waited while she recovered, wondering what she’d say next. My shoulders hunched up with nervous tension and the hurt one smarted. Finally she continued. “I guess we’ll have to find a way to make it work. I’m just not sure how. So I thought—Teddy—I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay, Mother. Don’t think about it now. We’ll figure something out. Here, eat.”

  But I thought about it. As we demolished the meal—almost identical to the picnic food Isabella had brought to Big Island—I thought about Miss Maple, and about that sister in Minneapolis and that job at the telephone company. Let me know if you ever need a job, Miss Maple had said, and I’ll see if she can figure something out for you. What if Mother and I both needed jobs? Something full time for her, and something part-time for me while I finished high school and went on to college. Could we make it then? Was it possible?

  I waited up for Isabella that night. I paced until I was afraid I’d wake Mother with the creaking of my footsteps on the uneven floors. Then I sat on the sofa, nervously tracing the vines on the upholstery with one finger.

  She was late. The world lay in deep, silent slumber when she turned the knob and opened the door and quietly shut it again behind her. She busied herself in the entryway a bit before emerging into the sitting room with her shoes in her hand. She looked tired, and then startled to see me awake.

  “Isabella, I’m so sorry,” I said feebly. “I don’t know how to thank you . . .”

  She just looked at me, her eyes hard and then soft, hard and then soft. She padded over to me in her bare feet and sat next to me on the sofa. She took my hand. “How could I turn you away?” she said at last. “I love you.”

  I swallowed hard to keep the tears back. “I know.”

  She squeezed my hand and I flinched.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing, it’s just . . . burned. That hand.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She let go and reached for the other one instead. “Everyone’s been talking about the fire. No deaths, but plenty of injuries and the hotel is nothing but rubble.” Then the Harringtons must be okay, and Avery too. Isabella would have heard if something had happened to any of them. I knew I should try to find Hannah and her mother, but it could wait.

  “How is your mother?” Isabella asked.

  “She’s all right. Coughing some, and I think her ankle might be sprained, but she’s okay otherwise. She’s asleep now.”

  “And you? Are you okay?”

  Besides the twinge in my shoulder and the ache in my knee and the terrible throb of my burned hand and my shame at what I’d done to Isabella and my fear for the future—“I’m fine.”

  “Come into the bathroom with me. I need to get this makeup off. My skin hates me when I fall asleep with it on.”

  I followed her and stood in the doorframe of the tiny bathroom while she dabbed at her face with cotton puffs. Gradually, the pallor of her skin and the jet black brows and lashes and the scarlet lips subsided into less extreme beauty. And who was to say which one was the real Isabella? Could they both be real? How many faces can a person have?

  “I told her no, Isabella.”

  “What?” She splashed water from the running faucet up onto her face and then blindly reached for a towel. I handed her a dry one from the rack and she pressed it to her skin.

  “Just before we jumped. I said n
o, I couldn’t marry Teddy. I’m sticking to it.”

  Her clean face emerged from the towel and bloomed into smiles. She was radiant even without all the paint. And when she looked at me like that, I felt radiant too.

  When I finally climbed into bed with Mother, my mind was buzzing with plans and ideas, my heart burning with hope. I didn’t drift into sleep until the first gray light of dawn filtered into the room, and the cardinals whistled their clear songs into the morning air.

  Common Grackle

  (Quiscalus quiscula)

  The next day, Isabella and I stood silently in front of the burned-out hotel, like it was a grave. The shell of the building stood at odd angles, and inside the skeleton black and gray ashes, like feathers in disarray, lay ankle deep where chairs and beds and tables should have been. It reminded me of Father.

  The winter after he came home from the war, Father hit a grackle with our new Model T Ford. We were going out for a drive after church, and I was excited because I didn’t get to ride in the car very often. I was sprawled in the backseat, enjoying the bump and jostle of the journey, when suddenly Father let out a curse and slammed on the brakes. I threw my arms out to steady myself against the lurch of the car, and winced at the crunch of bones beneath the tires. Father pulled over and we all got out. A light snow dusted our wool coats. The little broken pile of black feathers lay there in the road. I leaned back against the cold metal of the closed car door, looking at the small sleek creature that had become nothing but an ink stain on the white snow.

  Then rage gripped me and I turned to Father, blame searing my tongue. But before I could speak, he stepped out into the road and bent over the dead bird. He scooped it up in his gloved hands and looked at it—at this common bird that most would consider a pest—with tenderness, respect, regret in his eyes.

  “Garnet, get the trowel out of the glove box,” he told me. I went.

  “The ground is frozen, Albert. We can’t bury it,” Mother said.

  “We can try,” he told her. “We owe it that.”

  Father dug the bird a shallow grave, wrenching chunks of frozen dirt out of the ground at the side of the road. He laid it inside, whispered something under his breath, and covered the blue-black body with bits of brittle earth. He heaped a little snow over the mound, and I set two sticks in a cross shape on the grave.

  Father stood up and wiped the snow from the knees of his trousers. Large wet spots remained. In a dark, heavy voice, he said, “Never neglect the dead. The ones you’ve killed will haunt you, always.”

  He wasn’t speaking to me.

  Now, I stood with Isabella in front of the wrecked hotel, which was lying there in its rubble of soot and ash, and it looked just like Father’s grackle had, that snowy day. And I thought of him. I had memories of him cupping a frog in his huge rough hands, him kissing Mother full on the lips. I knew he had been a living man once. His sadness had made him seem dead for so long, but with Mother’s hopeful letters I’d almost started to believe he would come back to us. Now he was really gone, from me at least, and I found myself gazing up at the ruins of the hotel and saying good-bye to him. Wondering where he’d go. Wishing him luck.

  Maybe he would find a new place to live, a new life, a new happiness. Or maybe he would wander, like the chimney swift who never perches anywhere for long.

  Fly, Daddy, fly! I thought, imagining the dark shape of the swift darting through the sky. First the grackle, then the swift—my mind was full of dark birds as I took in the sight of the ruined building.

  Isabella seemed pensive too. She shivered despite the heat and I stroked her hand.

  “I tried to tell you that day, in the water . . .”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Mitch is sick.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I got a letter from my mother. The boxing gloves arrived and so she finally had my address. She wrote to tell me Mitch has been ill for months now. They’re not sure he’ll make it.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “And I have a sister. Sophia. She was born a little while after I left—she’s almost two now and my mother says she already likes to sing.”

  She swallowed hard and sniffed and a tear inched down her cheek, leaving a little trail of mascara. I turned to her and put my arms around her, pressing her into me. I didn’t care an ounce if people saw.

  “What if they break her of it? The singing?” she said into my shoulder. “Like they tried to keep me from dancing?”

  “She’s your sister, Isabella. I’m sure she’ll be strong like you.”

  “I can’t trust them to raise her right. And I have to see Mitch again before he—he—in case I can help make him better. I have to go home.” She pulled away and looked at me with fear in her eyes.

  “You can do it, Isabella. You had the courage to leave. You’ll have the courage to go back.”

  “The season’s almost up. My contract ends in September. I’ll go then, and plan to stay the winter, and see what happens.”

  I smiled, wiped a tear from her cheek. It was possible that I’d never see her again, but even knowing that fact and letting its weight sit on my heart, I could never tell her not to go to her family.

  “Do you want to go in?” I asked. “I think it’s safe.” She composed herself and nodded. We borrowed heavy shoes and thick gloves from two firemen who were just finishing the day’s cleanup work and ventured inside.

  We picked our way to the northeast corner of the wreckage, where three floors’ worth of debris lay in one thick layer. The hem of my borrowed dress trailed in the deep ashes—I’d picked Isabella’s longest skirt and it was actually a little too long for me, but otherwise her clothes fit me pretty well. I liked having the smell of her close to me all day long.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for, pawing through charred bits of unrecognizable furniture and the broken porcelain of bathroom fixtures. There was nothing left. I didn’t mind; it almost made it easier to start over, for me and Mother, and for the Harringtons too. For all of us, maybe. I saw a piece of a lantern, and a tune found its way into my head. I began to hum, and then to sing quietly under my breath:But should the surges rise, and rest delay to come,

  Blest be the tempest, kind the storm,

  Which drives us nearer home,

  Blest be the tempest, kind the storm,

  Which drives us nearer home.

  After awhile I called to Isabella, “We can go now. Are you ready?” She nodded solemnly. I looked around me one last time. Then I led Isabella out, not the quick way straight through the gap in the crumbled wall, but through the front door and down the broken staircase that had once been so grand. A proper good-bye.

  “We have one stop to make on our way home,” she said as we emerged. “You need a new pair of scissors.”

  When we reached the stairs to Isabella’s apartment half an hour later, she took them with decisive steps: up, up, and up.

  I scrambled after her and grabbed her before she reached the top. From one step below her, I held her close, pressed her against me, buried my face in her shoulder. My injuries had mostly healed but mother was not walking on her ankle yet, and I did not fear discovery. Isabella lifted my chin with one hand, the other gripping the railing so we wouldn’t fall, and kissed me, hard. Once, twice, three times, again and again.

  I lost count of kisses and minutes and up and down and pain and joy and fear and loss and happiness and risk. I’d say that there was nothing in the world except her right then, but that would be a lie. There was everything, and it filled me up to bursting.

  Mallard

  (Anas platyrhynchos)

  As we washed up from breakfast the following morning, a knock at the door startled us. I shut the door of the icebox and shot Isabella a puzzled look. She stood at the sink, up to her elbows in suds.

  “No idea,” she said. “Can you answer it?”

  I wiped my hands on a dishrag and hurried to the door. It swung open to reveal Hannah Harrington. She wor
e a green linen shift and her hair was tied up simply. Under her arm she carried a thick book. She looked older, calmer, more composed.

  But when she spoke, she stuttered. “I—I have your book. I was up reading it that night, so I had it with me when the . . . well, here it is.”

  “Oh, Hannah, come in, come in. It’s a library book, but thank you for bringing it. I’m so glad to see you well.”

  She came through the doorway followed by Avery, who I hadn’t seen standing behind her on the stairs. “He was kind enough to show me where he thought you’d be staying,” Hannah said in explanation. She glanced shyly around her, and then looked at her feet as Isabella came into the entryway.

  Isabella dried her hands and rushed to embrace Avery. “Everyone told me you made it out of the fire okay,” she said, “but I had no idea where you were.”

  Hannah and I stood back, or tried to, in the tiny space. “Let’s all of us go for a walk,” I said. “There’s so much to say and I could use some air.”

  I excused myself and found Mother in the sitting room. She sat in a chair by the window with her injured leg propped up and a pair of Isabella’s pants in her lap. If you don’t give me something to do, I’ll go mad, she’d said to Isabella that morning. We had phoned Aunt Rachel (who I knew would always be Aunt Rachel, with or without Father around) to ask her to send us a few things, but they hadn’t arrived yet, and Mother was stir-crazy without any work in her hands. Reluctantly, Isabella offered up her pile of mending. At first, Mother looked appalled by the pants, the sleeveless blouses, the short dresses, but she collected herself after a moment and said Of course, dear. It’s the least I can do. Now she was happily at work.

  “Who’s here, Garnet?” she said, her needle continuing its neat progress along the seam as she spoke.

  “Hannah Harrington and the doorman from the Galpin.”