“Can I see you again?” He steps closer.
I tilt back. “I’ll be at the hospital tomorrow.”
He opens his mouth but no words come out.
I run for the door.
I can barely see the road, I’m crying so hard. I don’t know why Emily’s news upset me so much. Everyone has their dating history. I didn’t expect Darryl would be a virgin, too. The back of my head feels cold, naked. The unsaid words in my mouth are heavy, invisible stones. When I look in my rearview mirror, all I see is empty space.
Someone has left a package on my elevator lift—a large one, it looks like, as I drive toward the trailer. Maybe it’s a boulder. Maybe it’s a bag full of birds. I pull into my parking spot. Closer up, it looks like a large pile of clothes. A shuddering pile of clothes. I sit inside the car, heart pounding, ready to drive away again. I’m not ready to find another body, dead or almost dead. I’m not ready to find the person who killed those people, either. I shift into reverse.
A head pops up from the bundle, and a scream involuntarily tears through my throat. I press the gas. The tires spin fruitlessly in the dirt. The person sits up; the metal pan of the lift tips back and forth. The person grabs on to the chains.
“Come on, come on,” I tell the car. “Go, go, go, go!” Then I catch a glimpse of the person’s face, the shape of the person’s shoulders. I suddenly feel like I’ve been drenched in cold water. I throw the car back into park.
“Omma?” I whisper.
My mother shakily lowers herself to the ground. The tray of the lift swings. Jumbled clothes, shoes, a birdcage covered with a towel remain on it, along with a few pillowcases filled with hard-looking things.
“Your hammock work wrong.”
“It’s not a hammock, Omma.” I walk toward her, my limbs fizzing with adrenaline. “It’s like an elevator. To bring stuff up to the trailer.”
“Hard on the back.” She rubs her spine. She seems to be wearing several layers of clothes.
“Omma, aren’t you hot?” As usual, it’s at least a hundred degrees today.
“It’s more easy to carry this way.”
“Don’t you have any bags?”
She just shrugs. I turn the key and push the button to send her scraggly pile up to the trailer. I want to ask her what she’s doing here, but my tongue has retreated into silence; the effects of the Ecstasy have evaporated completely, it seems.
“Watch for Yukam!” she yells. The birdcage wobbles a bit but stays upright.
“How did you get here?” I ask. Her car is nowhere in sight.
“Anchee drive me,” she says.
“Is she here, too?” It looks like someone could be hidden under the stuff on the slowly rising lift.
“She drive back home. Why you give me so many questions?”
“I’m sorry, Omma. I just wasn’t expecting to see you today. You caught me off guard.” This is my mother. My mother was a prostitute. This is her. This is real.
She reaches inside two layers of pants, pulls a tattered article out of the pocket closest to her skin, and hands it to me. My name is there, in smudged newsprint: “The body was discovered by San Diego native Ava Sing Lo, 25.” I’m surprised my mother hasn’t put this inside her Book of Dead Birds yet. I’m even more surprised to see myself listed as a San Diego native. I’ve lived there all my life, but I’ve somehow never considered myself native to the city, never thought anyplace could ever claim me as its own. I’ve always felt alien there. I’ve always felt alien no matter where I go.
“They think you kill her,” she says.
“No, Omma, they don’t,” I tell her. “No one thinks I’ve killed anyone.”
“You watch out,” she says. “They think you kill her.”
I scan the article quickly to make sure there aren’t any accusations that I’m not aware of, but the paper gives no indication of this.
“Omma, why would anyone think I killed that woman?”
The lift shudders as it reaches the top of the chain. A stuffed pillowcase wobbles at the lip; the contents begin to spill from it like vomit. A few stray feathers take to the air. A large dark square zooms down toward me. I jump back; it lands with a thunk at my feet. Some papers fly out, some seeds and scraps of paper. It’s my mother’s scrapbook. I bend down and try to pick up all the loose things that have fallen out. My mother stares at me as if I’ve just killed another bird.
“I’ll fix it, Omma, don’t worry,” I tell her. She looks at the feathers from Kane and Lee Lee, along with a sunflower seed hull and part of a candy wrapper, in my hand. She runs for the ladder.
“Omma, there’s not much of a ledge up there,” I tell her. “Let me unlock the trailer before you go up.”
She creeps up to one of the highest rungs anyway and puts a protective hand over the top of Yukam’s cage. She could easily fall. My heart feels like it’s full of bees. I think about Darryl’s house, the easy, buttery light, and wonder why I was so fast to run away.
Ava, daugher, 12,
come home from school,
give me this on yellow paper:
A siege of herons or bitterns
A wisp of snipe
A desert of lapwings
A sord of mallards
A skein of geese (flying)
A muster of peacocks
A murder of crows
[Part of yellow page torn off, taped in,
“A murder of crows” written
across it in loopy script]
11/2/83
I am not able to get much sleep with my mother in the trailer. I finally drift off in the wee hours of the morning, but am awakened shortly afterward by the smell of morning-after soup, made with sheets of seaweed and various kitchen implements my mother brought in a pillowcase. The smell makes me want to cry; I have to hide my face in my hands after I take the first taste.
“I’m teaching a self-defense class this morning, Omma.” I set down my spoon. “You can stay here or you can come with me. It’s like tae kwon do, for women. For women to protect themselves.”
She gives me one of her sidelong glances, then snorts. “You teach this class?”
We haven’t talked about tae kwon do since I was sixteen. I had stopped going to class after my teacher’s son grabbed my breasts once after practice. I didn’t tell my mother about this; she never knew why I refused to go back. After two weeks, she tricked me—she said we were going to go clothes shopping, a rare event—and drove me to the dojang. I refused to get out of the car. She tried to pull me out, but I was already six inches taller than my mother’s five-foot frame, and thirty pounds heavier than her hundred. I didn’t budge, even though I knew the teacher and his son were watching from the door of the storefront. My mother screamed at me, but I crossed my arms in front of my chest and wouldn’t move.
My mother eventually exhausted herself and sat down on the sidewalk. My teacher came outside and helped her into the back of the car. She lay down across the seat and fell asleep, or pretended to, immediately. Embarrassed, I nodded my thanks, then slid over to the driver’s side of the car and strapped on the seat belt. I was so eager to leave, I didn’t scoot the seat back. By the time we got home, my legs were cramped from trying to fit into my mother’s position. I had to shake them out and slap them to bring them back to life.
My mother brewed a pot of peacock tongue tea after we got home. We sipped from our cups together on the couch, but neither of us said a word.
I didn’t practice tae kwon do again until graduate school, when I noticed classes were offered at SDSU. I was amazed by how glad I was to be doing crescent kicks and down blocks and the crane stance. My body remembered everything. I didn’t tell my mother I had taken it up again. I practiced in secret in my room.
My mother slurps up the last of her soup. “I go with you,” she says, a glitter of challenge in her eyes.
The self-defense group has dwindled the last couple of weeks. The bridge ladies decided, in their words, that they can now sufficiently “
kick ass” and have gone back to their cards, and Rayanne never returned after Emily’s comments about her boyfriend. Most weeks it’s been just me, Frieda, and Emily, with Lonnie showing up every now and again.
The Aloha smells of sausage and syrup when we walk in. The breakfast crowd, if you can call three men a crowd, is still there, huddled together over their last cup of coffee. Jeniece is there, too, sitting by herself in a booth. She looks away before I can wave hello.
“Frieda, Ray, Jeniece, I’d like you to meet my mother.” My mother stands behind me. They probably can’t even see her.
“Howdy!” Ray lifts a spatula in greeting.
“Ava! I didn’t know your mother was coming out!” Frieda wipes her palms on her apron and steps around me. “So nice to meet you,” she says. My mother stands stiffly, shakes hands with Frieda like a robot.
Emily comes through the front door wearing a grayish sports bra and faded paisley bicycle shorts, holding a frayed hand towel. I almost can’t look at her. Darryl put his lips on her lips. Darryl touched her skin. I feel nauseous just thinking about it.
“Emily, look! This is Ava’s mom!” Frieda calls out.
“I didn’t know your mom was Japanese.” Emily drops her towel and stares at my mom like she’s part of a sideshow. “Ava, I didn’t know you were part Japanese!”
“Korea,” my mother says. “I from Korea. No Japan.”
“She speakee English!” Emily squeals.
“Emily!” Frieda glares.
My mother looks almost frantic. “Where you put your eggshells?”
“My eggshells?” Emily points to herself. “I don’t have any eggshells!”
My mother turns to Frieda. “What you do with them?”
“We toss them out, I guess,” she says as she gives the men their change.
“Why you not blow them?”
“You blow eggs?” Emily laughs. “Ooh, your mom’s dirty, Ava!”
The three men drool at Emily before they get up to leave. She pretends to ignore them but tilts her hips in their direction. Is that what Darryl likes?
“My mom makes art out of eggshells,” I say quickly. “She puts a pinprick on each side and blows the stuff out. She makes amazing stuff.”
“We did that once,” Jeniece pipes up. “Me and Ray. Remember, Ray? That Easter? We blew the stuff out of the eggs.”
Ray winks at her.
“The house smelled like vinegar for days,” says Frieda.
“Can’t raw eggs make you sick or something?” Emily asks. Half her attention is on the men walking out the door. She runs her fingers through her hair to maximum effect. Is that what drew him in? “They give you botulism or something?”
“That’s what the birds have,” I tell her. I’m sure there’s more vinegar in my voice than necessary.
“Well, the birds have eggs!”
“I think it’s salmonella…”
“Oh! Knock knock,” says Ray.
“Who’s there?” Jeniece asks.
“Sam and Ella. I mean, Sam and Janet.”
“Sam and Janet who?”
“Sam and Janet Evening,” he sings.
“I don’t get it,” says Emily.
“Some enchanted evening,” he sings again. “Sam and Janet Evening. Sam and Ella Eeeeevening…”
“You work here?” my mother asks. Ray scrapes the grill to the tune of the song.
“I eat here,” I tell her.
“Where the tae kwon do?”
“Oh, the self-defense class—that’s here, yes.”
“You know, Ava,” Frieda says. “I don’t think we can do the class today. I have to take Jeniece to the doctor and we’re going to have to lock everything up. I’m sorry—I should have called you.”
“Damn, Frieda!” Emily picks up her towel and dabs her forehead. “I was gonna kick your butt today, too!” Did he touch her butt? Did she touch his butt? Where did they touch each other? His house? Her trailer? The fish bone–studded shore?
“Sorry, kiddos,” Frieda says. “This was the only time we could get her in. We better get ready to skedaddle.”
“What do you make with your eggs?” Jeniece asks my mother. My mother walks over to the booth.
“Purse, box, ship in bottle, many kinds things.” She sits down across from Jeniece.
“I can’t picture it,” Jeniece says.
“I show you sometime,” she says. “You a sick girl?”
Frieda rushes over to the booth. “Jeniece isn’t sick,” she says. “She just has some problems.”
“I’m defective,” Jeniece says.
“A birth defect doesn’t mean you’re defective,” Frieda says.
“Mom, look at the word, okay? It’s the exact same thing.”
“I use all the eggshells,” my mother says. “Defect one, broken one. I make things with all the one.”
“Mosaics,” I say, remembering the picture frames she spangles with tiny bits of shell, intricately pieced together.
“See? You’re not defective,” says Frieda. “You’re a mosaic.”
Jeniece rolls her eyes behind her thick glasses.
“I show you sometime,” my mother says.
“We better go,” Frieda says. “It was so nice to meet you.” She shakes my mother’s hand again. “Come on, Jeniece.”
Jeniece tussles with her canes and pulls herself out of the booth. “See you later,” she says to my mother. My mother nods and smiles. I can’t remember when I last saw her smile.
“Well, Omma,” I say. Her face drops when she looks at me. “Do you want to see the bird hospital?”
“If you want,” she says.
“I want to do whatever you want.”
She shrugs, watching Jeniece stomp-drag her way to the door. Emily watches my mother.
“So, what brings you to the beautiful Salton Sea, anyway?” she asks. Did Darryl call her beautiful, too? Did he spike her coffee with ginger? Did he look at her the way he’s looked at me?
“They think Ava kill her.”
“Who thinks you killed who?” Emily crinkles her eyebrows at me. Frieda stops at the door to listen.
“They think Ava kill that girl.”
“Ava, have you been killing people?” Emily says with mock horror. “I thought you were just breaking hearts!” Me? I’m the heartbreaker?
Ray turns off the light in the kitchen.
“They put Ava in jail,” my mother says.
“What?” Emily asks.
“No one’s putting me in jail, Omma.” I touch her elbow. It feels hard and dry, even through her windbreaker. “Let’s go, okay?”
My mother lets me lead her to the door. I can feel all eyes on us as we walk back out into the light.
“It always so hot here?” She fans herself with her purse.
“Maybe we’re closer to the sun than most places.” Emily shields her face with her hand as she comes outside. Her nipples jut through her pilly sports bra. I feel a rush of shame about my inverted nipples. Who would ever want to touch such weird and backward things?
“We’re farther, actually,” I say, hating the snotty tone of my voice. “We’re lower than the ocean here. We’re about as low as we can go in this country.”
“Oh, no.” Emily sashays past us with a wink. “Believe me. We could go much, much, lower.”
I forget to warn my mother about the stench at the bird hospital. I forget to warn her about what she’s about to see. When we walk into the enclosure, she freezes. Then she starts to swoon. She sags against me, dead weight. I lower her onto a folding chair.
“Ava?” Darryl rushes up to us.
“This is my mother,” I say, grateful to have her as a shield between us.
“Is she okay?”
“Omma, are you okay?”
She looks dazed.
“I guess passing out is a family tradition.” Darryl tries to laugh, but I see the concern in his eyes. I try not to look at his hands.
“I not pass out,” my mother says. Her voic
e seems to come from a tiny place deep inside her chest, a voice echoing from a well.
“I think she’s just overwhelmed,” I say. “She’s never seen so many dead birds before.” The pile by the incinerator is especially tall today.
“Let me get you some water,” Darryl tells her. He walks off. I’m tempted to follow him, but I don’t.
“Omma.” I touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I should have prepared you better for this.”
“You prepare me for this.” She glares at me. “Your whole life you prepare me for this.”
“Omma, you know I never meant…”
Darryl comes back with a water bottle, a bendy straw poking out the top. “Here.” He bends down and offers it to my mother. “Have a sip.”
She lowers her head and wraps her lips around the straw. I have to look away, it seems so intimate—the bottle resting on his knee, her practiced mouth. What did Emily do to Darryl with her lips?
“Omma, why don’t I take you back to the trailer,” I say. “I think you need to take it easy.”
“Will you come back later?” Darryl asks me.
“I should probably stay with my mother,” I tell him.
“Ava, about Emily…”
“We should go.” I help my mother to her feet.
“You don’t have to keep rushing off…”
“I’ll see you later.” We start to walk away.
“I just want—”
“We need to go,” I tell him. “Thanks for the water.”
“Nice to meet you,” he calls to my mother as we hobble off to the car. I’m not sure which one of us is holding the other up.
There was no red ribbon around Sun’s doorknob, so Helen walked into the room. Sun was curled up on her bed. A bruise peeked through the rouge on her cheek. She didn’t acknowledge Helen’s presence. Helen climbed onto the bed and wrapped her arms around her.
“I wish we were back in our cave,” she said into Sun’s shoulder. It hurt to talk, her jaw was aching so much.
The Book of Dead Birds Page 13
