Before I Saw You

by Amy Sorrells

  “Gabe. Honestly.” His apprehension is getting a little old.

  “All right. Okay. I got it.”

  I can tell he’s working hard to stand still as I set the bird inside, then fold the flaps of the box over the top.

  “What now?” Gabe looks at me like a little kid lost at the mall.

  “Let’s set him in the backseat. I’ll stay back there with him, make sure he doesn’t fly out or anything.”

  “That’d be good.”

  I grin. “We’ll take him to Sudie’s.”

  “Sudie?”

  “The lady I was at church with. She’s my neighbor. She rehabs birds and all kinds of wild animals. I help her when I can.”

  His eyes widen. “She doesn’t have snakes, does she?”

  The look on his face causes me to burst out laughing, and I can hardly stop.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I just had this impression of you is all.” I wipe tears from my eyes.

  He’s not amused. “I don’t like snakes.”

  “She doesn’t have any snakes. Only reptile she’s got is a turtle. You’re not afraid of them, are you?”

  “No.” He sounds a little defensive, and gingerly helps settle me and the box with the hawk in the back seat of his car.

  “I guess we’re missing out on all-you-can-eat pancakes,” I say when we pass the restaurant.

  “I guess so.”

  Every so often I catch him looking at me in his rearview mirror. Whatever impression he had of me must be changing too. I’m reminded of Sudie’s hand on my belly back at church. If Gabe’s thinking he likes me, he won’t once he learns I’m carrying a child, especially Bryan’s child. If he can’t handle a redtail with a bump on its head, ain’t no way he could handle all that.

  14

  * * *

  “Turn here.”

  I watch Gabe’s eyes in the mirror to see if they change when he sees the Shady Acres sign, then the Johnsons’ place with the furniture in the front yard, then the next neighbor with a sagging side porch and a faded plastic toy house tipped over on its side, then the next neighbor who used leftover bright-yellow road paint to brighten up the lattice around their redwood stoop, then the next one that used to be a white trailer before a thick layer of moss grew all over the side of it. Thanks to them, I learned moss grows on the north side of things.

  He blinks without any visible change to his face.

  “Follow this drive all the way to the end.” The gravel crunches and pops under his tires.

  “That’s my place,” I say as we pass my faded blue trailer.

  He brakes.

  “You don’t need to stop—keep on going to the end to Sudie’s. There. On the right. That’s hers.”

  He gets out and opens the door for me.

  I start to get out while keeping hold of the box, but I gasp at a sharp tug along my lower side. The baby.

  “You okay?”

  I focus on breathing slow so I don’t let on that it’s something else entirely. “Hunger pain,” I say.

  “Sorry about the pancakes.”

  “It’s all right.” I force back a wince.

  “Here, let me take it.” He peers at the hawk, who isn’t moving under the towel. “Is he okay?”

  “We’ll see. I’m not unwrapping him until he’s in the cage.” I use the car door to pull myself up and out, the pain dull but still very much there. I decide to fib so I can stall a little longer. “I think maybe I got a little carsick.”

  “Take a few deep breaths. That’s what I used to tell my little sister, who got carsick driving on a straight road,” he laughs. He sets the box on the hood, then looks around at Sudie’s place, the neighbors’.

  The image of a white Mercedes, red taillights, Mary’s face in the back window flashes through my mind. Will he decide who I am based on this place too?

  “Peaceful out here.”

  He seems to mean it. For now.

  “It’s all right,” I offer, as if I need to assure him I’m okay with living here.

  “What’s that for?” He nods toward the cage where the kestrel is studying him.

  “That’s an elevator cage. Where the hawks and other birds in rehab go to get strong.”

  I take a few steps, breathing in the cool air, closing my eyes, and turning my face up to the sun to feel the warmth. “Stay here while I run inside and get a towel for him, for the cage we’ll put him in. I’ll be right back.”

  Sudie keeps old towels for the rescues under her kitchen sink. Away from Gabe, I rub at the pain in my side, but it doesn’t help.

  Lord, please don’t let there be something wrong.

  I know it’d serve me right for the times I’ve thought about how to get out of this mess.

  I lean against the counter and take a few slow, deep breaths. That helps more than anything. Sunlight filters through the green soda bottle by the window next to me, creating a rainbow of light on the opposite wall.

  “What’s that for?” I asked Sudie about that bottle one day, years ago. She never moves it.

  “Tears, child. It’s to remind me that the Lord collects all our tears. Psalm 56.”

  I can’t recall a time I’ve seen her cry, besides when we buried Jayden. But working at a cemetery, I’m sure she’s had plenty of occasions.

  The pain is nearly gone, so I crouch down carefully and grab a couple of towels. Back outside, I motion for Gabe to come with me. “The cage is back this way.”

  Sudie’s built three bigger, open-air cages along the back of her place, screen and chicken-wire sides to protect them from foxes and coyotes and other predators. We head over to the smallest of these placed against the side of her trailer, which creates a bit of a shield against the wind. Winter and disuse have stiffened the latches and hinges, and the door creaks as I lower it. “Go ahead and set the box down.”

  He does, and surprises me by kneeling next to it.

  “Feeling brave?”

  “Trying to.” He grins.

  I kneel next to him and show him how the talons aren’t hard to find under the blanket. When I’m sure I’ve got ahold of them, I lift the bundle out and place it in the cage.

  Glassy-eyed and clearly still dazed, the bird hardly moves when I pull the blanket off of him everywhere except where I still hold his talons. “I think he looks worse.”

  Even when I turn him onto his belly his head hangs limp, enough so that I risk letting go of his talons so I can roll the towel into a tube. I arrange it in the shape of a donut around him like I’ve seen Sudie do, tucking it in around his sides and under his head to keep it up a bit. If a bird can be appreciative, he appears to be just that as I smooth his back feathers and rest my hand on him long enough to feel him breathe fast and shallow.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Gabe asks, most of his skittishness seemingly worn off.

  “I don’t know. Sudie’ll have a better idea.”

  I lift up the side door of the cage and we both reach for the same latch. His hand is warm and lingers on top of mine before I quick pull it away. “He’ll be fine for now,” I say and start walking back around to the front of the trailer before it gets any more awkward lingering there.

  “Still up for pancakes?” he says, behind me.

  “I don’t know. Kinda lost my appetite.”

  “Oh. Right. Carsick.”

  I feel a twinge of guilt. He’s just trying to be a friend. “I’ve got Coke at my place.”

  “Okay.”

  I point to my trailer. “You can park in that patch right next to the door. I’m gonna walk if you don’t mind.”

  Inside my trailer, I click on the lights and see the place different. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a guest besides Sudie, much less a man over. Smells clean enough now, like the lemon and orange cleaners I used for weeks scrubbing every inch of smoke film and drug-making residue off everything. The refrigerator hums in the kitchen. A basket of clean, folded laundry is on the couch from when I went to the laund
romat a couple days ago. The carpet’s clean and the walls are white, two improvements I made with the help of Bud and Larry and the donations from the church after Jayden died. A real oil painting hangs on the wall over my TV, a painting of a creek, dappled with sunlight in the woods. I found it for a couple of dollars at the Goodwill. Reminds me of the creek behind Shady Acres where I’d hoped to one day teach Jayden how to catch frogs. I could teach my baby to catch them . . . if I keep him. . . .

  “Have a seat,” I nod toward the couch and move the basket to the floor.

  Turning on the radio helps with the quiet, and the ice in the plastic cups cracks and pops as I pour Coke over them. He hasn’t sat down yet. Instead, he’s looking at the bookshelf, pulling out a book on North American wildlife, a cast-aside from the library book sale a couple years back. He sets that down and bends slightly to look at a framed picture of me and Jayden, one I printed off my phone at the Walmart shortly after he died.

  He sets it down when he hears me crossing the room.

  “Did you always want to be an EMT?” I say and hand him a cup. I still feel an ache low in my belly, and I’m glad to finally sit down again.

  “Thanks.” He takes a long sip, then sits next to me. “I did. Ever since I was in junior high. One of my friends, his dad was assistant coach of our soccer team. Big guy. Always cheering us on. One day in the middle of one of our games he just fell over. Heart attack. We were scared out of our wits. Somebody . . . someone’s mom started CPR and I remember when the ambulance came. The paramedics jumped out, all their equipment, everything. They started working on him. Saved his life. I watched them bring him back and I knew right then that’s what I wanted to do.”

  “Must be nice, being certain of what you want to do like that.”

  He nods. “What about you? What sort of dreams do you have?”

  “You mean working at the diner and living in a trailer on the outskirts of Riverton isn’t a dream come true?”

  “I just meant—”

  I laugh. He’s cute when he’s flustered. “It’s all right. I suppose maybe I had dreams of being something more years ago. I don’t know now, though.”

  “Really?”

  A chunk of ice in my cup cracks and rises to the surface. “I don’t really think about it.”

  “Everybody wants to be something when they’re little.”

  I consider this and try to remember what I thought about, who I was, before, when the couch we’re sitting on was new and didn’t have black spots where strangers fell asleep holding cigarettes or joints, when my ears knew nothing about the sound of a baby screaming with the pain of withdrawal.

  “You like animals,” he says, more like an answer than a question.

  “I do.”

  “Could you do Sudie’s job?”

  “Maybe someday. I’m fine right now with helping her. ’Sides that, I don’t have the money or the setup to do it myself.”

  Gabe looks over his shoulder at the photograph. “Who’s in that picture with you?”

  I told him earlier I didn’t want to talk about it. But now the truth is right here in front of us. “My little brother.”

  He looks around the room and I know what he’s thinking. No car seat or playpen. No stray toys. No sign of a child at all. The awkward will only get worse if I don’t tell him. If I do tell him . . . well, the worst that can happen is I’ll have to watch his taillights leaving Shady Acres like Mary’s did.

  I take a deep breath. “He died a couple years ago.”

  More questions have to be forming in his head, the sort of questions everybody has when a baby dies. Babies don’t just die, after all. I could tell him Jayden was poisoned, that it was an accident. But that’s not what he’s really wondering. I don’t know how to answer for him what I don’t have answers to myself.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, finally.

  “Yeah. Me too.” Our glasses are empty, and I need a change of subject. “I’ll get us more Coke.” I start to get up but he grabs my hand.

  “What happened to your brother, Jaycee? Where’s your family? Do you live here all alone?”

  I turn and face him. He puts his other hand on my arm, the warmth of his touch spreading up to my face. The kindness in his face overwhelms, confuses me. I close my eyes when I say, “You don’t want to know.”

  He hangs his head, fiddles with his watch.

  “I’m sorry. I just . . . .”

  “You don’t want to talk about it. You said that in the car. None of my business, really.”

  “It’s not that. . . . Things . . . It’s complicated.”

  He looks up at me and says simply, “Everybody’s complicated, Jaycee.”

  “Maybe so.” I head to the kitchen to refill our glasses. I can’t imagine what could be complicated about his life. Probably grew up in a nice two-story house, had a backyard with a swing set, lemonade stands, and soccer games on the weekends. Clean new shoes.

  He stands and goes over to the bookshelf again.

  “Where’d you grow up?” I ask.

  “Outside Columbus.”

  “Ohio?”

  “Indiana.”

  “What could be complicated in Columbus, Indiana?” This comes out with a little more snark than I intended.

  He shrugs. “I have good parents. Never wanted for anything. That much is true.”

  “Like I said, doesn’t sound complicated.”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t understand something hard.”

  I glance at the picture of me and Jayden on the bookshelf. It was my fault he died. Could he understand that?

  He crouches now beside the bookcase, running a finger along the book spines, including the romance set in North Carolina. “You got a lot of good books. You like to read?”

  “When I have time.” I set our refilled glasses on the coffee table. “You?”

  “All the time. I get on author jags. Clive Cussler. Tom Clancy. Espionage. History’s cool too. Civil War. World War Two.” He pulls a book from the shelf. Watership Down. “I loved this one.”

  “Really?”

  “My mom used to read it to me when I was little,” he says.

  “I read it in high school.” I take it from him and flip through the pages, some still dog-eared, some full of pink and yellow highlighter stripes. I find my favorite passage and read it out loud:

  “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

  “I used to think what Frith said was true. That if I was cunning . . .” I don’t want to talk about it, but there’s something about him . . . I’m treading on stones I haven’t stepped on before, ones where I’m not sure about my footing or how to steady myself. “All the world is an enemy. At least in this town.”

  “What makes you think it’s better anywhere else? Columbus isn’t exactly a utopia.”

  “I don’t know. Too many reminders, I guess. Too many shadows.”

  “Of your brother?”

  “I guess.” Yeah, my brother. A father I never knew. Mama. The drugs. And this child growing inside me.

  He pulls my hair back from my face and sets it gently on my back, and I can’t help but take in the hardworking scent of him. For a second I feel like reaching to him, too, but that disappears quick as frozen breath on a winter morning.

  “I’d like to know about him sometime . . . when you want to tell me,” he says.

  I take in his gray-blue eyes, his broad shoulders, the furrowed concern of his brow. A small place inside me trembles, and I wonder if this is how the redtail felt, eyes glassy with fear and pain and need as we scooped him up with our strange and human hands. I wonder if this is how the orphaned kits felt the night I saved them and not Jayden. They were so crazy from lack of milk, but kept fighting us as we tried to feed them one drop at a time.r />
  “All right.” I mean that. But I also mean what I say next. “But not now.”

  “Okay.” He shifts his weight, lifts his hand toward me again, then drops it to his side. “I don’t mean to pry. I just . . . I’d like to be able to get past cordial with you is all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, and cross my arms across my middle, hidden for now under my thick, oversize sweater. Maybe I just don’t have much besides cordial to give.

  He holds my gaze a moment longer, then steps toward the door. “All right. That’s all right. Thank you for the Coke.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I blurt.

  “I need to go.”

  I nod, then follow him as he walks out to his car. The neighborhood is quiet as it tends to be on Sunday afternoons, folks sleeping in or sleeping off the night before. The early spring grass gleams emerald under the bright afternoon sun.

  Suddenly thumps and thuds break the stillness in the direction of the Johnsons’ and I cringe.

  “What in the world?” Gabe says.

  “You’re about to witness firsthand the wrath of Virginia Johnson.”

  Dewey Johnson flies booty first off their faded redwood stoop and lands with a muted thud a few feet shy of their long-abandoned, rusted-out grill. Virginia throws first one, then two, then three beer bottles out after him and slams the door shut.

  Gabe looks astonished when he turns to me. “That happen often?”

  “At least once a week. You haven’t seen that in Columbus?”

  He shakes his head and the two of us crumple into the kind of laughter that comes when nerves are tied up too long, all while Dewey Johnson stands and brushes himself off, and begins banging on the door of his own home.

  Gabe’s still laughing when he opens his car door, but he soon softens. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For trusting me for lunch.”

  For trusting me, he says. “Okay . . . you’re welcome.”