Leaves on trees, brown and heavy with water, shiver in the wind.
Teresa sits on the patio table, keeping watch. I sit down next to her. Eleanor’s cooking bacon for breakfast. Even though I won’t eat it, it smells good.
“It’s cold today,” I say to Teresa. “I know a lot about cold. My mom would leave the windows open in winter during the day, unless it was raining. I don’t know if this is in my imagination, or if it really happened, but I remember fog drifting in through the windows. It was hard to see anything.”
And there was never the smell of bacon. It always smelled like winter. The smell became part of my skin. It made sense, though. I was born in December. And with the front door and windows always open, the outside air absorbed into my skin and stayed.
“I’m used to the cold, though. Thanks to my mom. I think the real reason she left the door and windows open all the time was because she hoped I’d fly away on my own, away from her, so she wouldn’t have to take care of me. She didn’t like taking care of me. That’s how I ended up here.
“But great horned owls like you start to nest in January and February. In the dead of winter, you guys raise families. So winter can’t be so bad.”
Eleanor sticks her head out the door. “Breakfast is ready.”
I pick up Teresa. “But because of my mom, I can adapt to the cold easy. That’s a good skill to have, just in case.”
When Eleanor drops me off at school, I wave goodbye until I can’t see the green of the truck anymore. Other kids are slamming car doors and yelling, “Goodbye, Mom!” or “Goodbye, Dad!”
It’s so natural for them to say “Mom.” I don’t remember actually saying the word to anyone, even to my biological mom, so it would be weird to call someone that. I think it would take me a while to get used to the word.
This morning, Mrs. Beck talks to us about a poem written by a man named Robert Frost. The title of the poem is “Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter.” As far as I can figure out, it’s about a bird that sits in a tree, singing like an angel, but now it’s winter and the bird is gone.
“In your journals, I want you to write a response to the poem,” Mrs. Beck says. “How does it make you feel? Or, what do you think is going on in the poem? You could also write about why you might think Robert Frost was inspired to write the poem. Later, I would like some of you to volunteer to read your responses. You have about twenty minutes. You may begin.”
When time is up, Mrs. Beck asks us if there are any students who want to share their journal entries. No one raises their hands. Mrs. Beck scans the class, and her eyes land on me just as I push my hand into the air.
“December, thank you for volunteering.” Mrs. Beck claps her hands together. “You can choose to stay seated, but I’d like you to stand up so everyone has a better chance of hearing you.”
My knees are weak, but leaning against my desk helps. Once I start reading, my voice isn’t shaky. “In ‘Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter,’ Mr. Frost doesn’t seem to care if his poem makes me feel sad or happy. The poem is about having hope. In the poem Mr. Frost knows the bird is gone during the winter, and he can’t hear the bird singing. But it will be back in the spring, and I read that as Mr. Frost saying something about hope.”
“Wow,” Mrs. Beck says, “that was very good, December. Let’s give her a round of applause.”
The class claps. Mrs. Beck looks up at the clock. “Okay, we have a few more minutes before it’s time to go. Does anyone else want to share?”
The classroom phone rings. “Room eight,” Mrs. Beck says. “Okay. I’ll give her the message.
“December, your mom’s going to be late picking you up. She wants you to wait in the office.”
I nod. “Mrs. Beck, Eleanor isn’t … Never mind.”
While Mrs. Beck reminds us about homework, I think about Robert Frost’s poem.
Instead of waiting in the office, I stand outside, against the wall.
“Did Eleanor forget you?” Cheryllynn asks.
“No, she’s just going to be late.”
Cheryllynn pats the outside of her coat pockets. “Checking if I have any Froot Loops left.”
Kids rush around us, jumping in cars and slamming doors. Cheryllynn stays with me until we’re the only ones left standing in front of the school.
“I’ll go into the office with you if you want to call Eleanor,” Cheryllynn says.
I shake my head. “No, I’ll give her some more time.”
Mrs. Franca sticks her head out the office door. “Cheryllynn, sweetie, your mom’s on the phone wondering if you’re still at school.”
“Can you tell her I’m walking to the store now? Thanks.”
“Well, I better get going.” As Cheryllynn walks across the parking lot, she keeps looking over her shoulder toward me. When she gets to the sidewalk, she turns around. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
I give her a thumbs-up. “Yes, I’ll be fine.”
But she must not hear me, because she runs back, opening the school office door. “I’ll be a second.”
While she’s inside, I stare down the road, the direction Eleanor would be coming from. There’s no truck heading this way. What if something happened to her? What if she’s decided she doesn’t want me to live with her anymore? What if it’s Adrian, and not Eleanor, who comes to pick me up? I don’t think I’ve done anything to give Eleanor a reason for leaving me here, but people leave without giving a reason all the time.
“Okay.” Cheryllynn leans against the wall next to me. “I called my mom and asked if I could wait with you. She said yes, so you’re stuck with me.”
“I think I want to leave. I think I better go to Eleanor’s house.”
“I thought you said Eleanor was going to be here.”
“I don’t think she’s coming to get me.” I take off running, not caring if Cheryllynn is following me.
But when I get to the railroad tracks, I smell Froot Loops. “I said you were stuck with me,” she says.
We turn down a canal bank. On the road, cars’ headlights glow, and in the western sky, there’s a little bit of orange light shining between blue clouds.
My and Cheryllynn’s breaths make unidentifiable patterns against the air.
The closer we get to Eleanor’s house, the more the wild blackberries and oak trees turn to shadows.
At the end of her driveway, I can’t see Eleanor’s truck. But the front yard is covered with Christmas decorations—a blow-up Santa, a blow-up snow globe with a reindeer inside, and a polar bear wearing a Santa hat and scarf. I’ve only seen these types of decorations in other people’s yards. Eleanor could do all this, but she couldn’t remember to pick me up?
I open the gate to the backyard.
“Where we going?” Cheryllynn asks.
I run out to the base of the tree and toss my backpack on the ground.
I balance on the third branch up, just like I did on the monkey bars, then crouch down. The bark scratches against my skin, but it doesn’t hurt.
I take a deep breath, look down, and wave at Cheryllynn.
She doesn’t wave back. “That’s a little higher than the monkey bars.”
“It’s not that high.”
“You’re not going to jump, are you?”
“Why not jump?”
“What do you mean, ‘Why not jump?’ Because you could break something, that’s why not.”
“I won’t break anything. Don’t worry.”
“I didn’t say you ‘would’ break something, I said you ‘could.’ There’s a difference. As much as I’d like to see your gymnastics talents again, I’d rather have you in one piece.” I shuffle my feet closer to the edge of the branch and bounce a little.
“Maybe you could move down to the first set of branches,” Cheryllynn says. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
The layer of skin over my shoulder blades tightens, bones and cartilage trying to escape.
“We have to stick together, Dece
mber. You’re my friend,” she says.
I’ve learned to be a lone bird. There’s a pattern in my life: people come and people go. No person has interrupted this pattern, except for Adrian, and he flies in, checks to see how I’m doing, and flies out again.
I slide back on the branch, lean against the trunk, and open Bird Girl. “My mom left me when I was little, and …” I’m ready to tell Cheryllynn my story. I read, “December didn’t close the door. She really thought her mom was coming back for her. All the smells from outside—dirt, rain, fog, gasoline, and hot dogs from down the block at Oasis Market—made her want to leave. Maybe December’s mom left because she wanted December to find her wings again on her own. December did walk out the door, but it wasn’t because she was going to try to fly. She left because she couldn’t take smelling those hot dogs from Oasis Market anymore. She left home because she was hungry.”
I jump, but it’s from the second tier, with not enough space between the ground and me to give my wings a chance to unfold.
“I’m sorry your mom left,” Cheryllynn says.
“Well, at least the hot dogs tasted good,” I lie.
Cheryllynn turns around and points to the backs of her thighs. “See right here? I have two scars that run across my legs. Long time ago, we used to live with my dad. He wasn’t a nice person. Sometimes I’ll come up with fairy-tale stories for how I got the scars, like ‘Once upon a time, I was swimming in the river and my legs got tangled up with branches. The branches wouldn’t let go, but a salmon swimming against the current freed me. The salmon saved my life. The branches left scars, but the rest of me was beautiful as always. The end.’ Sometimes I’ll change the fish to a trout. Sometimes I’ll add some gruesome details to the story, like that I was caught in a blackberry bush at night, and an owl freed me. But I’ll always remember how I really got the scars. The truth isn’t a fairy tale.”
It doesn’t have to be a fairy tale. It could be a different kind of story. “Truth is overrated.”
“Not always. You still have to know what the truth is, even if people—even if you—don’t like it. I mean, I can imagine all I want about how I got my scars, but I don’t ever want to forget how I got them, even if it hurts me to remember. My mom says remembering is still important because it can protect me from hurting more.”
A door slams, and I hear Eleanor’s boots scraping the sidewalk in the backyard, then the gate opens. “December?” She’s running toward me. Her eyes are big, like an ostrich’s.
“You’re here.” She’s breathing hard. “You’re here. You’re okay. Didn’t you get my message?”
“I waited at school for a long time, then I thought you weren’t going to show up.”
Eleanor kisses my forehead. She bends down so that we’re eye to eye and rests her hands lightly on my shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I lost track of time. Not a good excuse. I may have been late, but I didn’t forget you. I will never forget you.”
I nod. I want to believe her.
Since her mom’s working, we drive Cheryllynn to the store. On the way back to the house, it’s quiet except for Eleanor, who’s humming “Eleanor Rigby,” and the sound is sad, blue sad. “I didn’t mean to scare you, December,” she says.
She stops at a stop sign and pauses a little longer than she usually does. “I want us … I want you to be happy.”
“You want us to be happy. Us is the word you used.”
“Yes, I do want us to be happy.”
As we’re sitting in Eleanor’s pickup truck, with the world surrounded by tule fog, making it hard to see in front of us, making the world feel heavier, my heart and the rest of me are light.
Us is a word like Mom. I know what it means. I know how to use it in a sentence. But it’s a strange word. It’s like when I’m standing on the ground, watching a bird soar in the sky. I know flight is out there, but there’s a distance. Just like with us. There’s a gap between the word and me.
19
I was born in the early morning, so by the time I wake up on my birthday, December 21, I’m already twelve. The house smells warm and sweet, and when I sit down at the kitchen table Eleanor sets a plate of cookies shaped like snowflakes in front of me. They’re still warm. I take a bite of one and wash it down with hot chocolate.
“Happy birthday! How does it feel to be twelve years old?” Eleanor sits down with me and eats a snowflake in two bites.
“It feels different than when I turned eleven.” And not because I live somewhere else.
Last year, on my birthday, I sat in a tree all day. Even when Wes and Linda called my name over and over again, I didn’t move. I’d brought a bag of sunflower seeds, a Snickers bar I’d taken from Wes’s candy stash, and a can of Pepsi up with me.
Before trying to fly, I stuffed the empty can, candy wrapper, and bag of seeds in my pocket, opened Bird Girl, and read the part about when I was a baby.
Whenever her mom held December, she’d breathe fast, like she wanted to hurry up and get the holding over with. It was like her mom was afraid, like she was riding on a roller coaster instead of holding a baby. When she put December down, her breath went back to normal. Then she’d look at December like moms are supposed to.
But December’s mom always believed December would be capable of doing amazing and wondrous things.
Later in the day, instead of climbing my flight tree, I sit on the ground, against the trunk, and eat another snowflake. I open Bird Girl to the last page, where I’ve drawn an illustration of Amelia Earhart’s first airplane, the Canary. Just in case my wings were a once-in-a-lifetime thing and when they went dormant, they were meant to stay that way, I had drawn some alternate plans for flight and made some notes about them. I never thought I’d need them, though.
WINGS
Possibility #1–Made from aluminum cans. Would need to find a motor to attach for propulsion. Drawback: Collecting aluminum cans wouldn’t be the problem, but storing them and taking them from foster home to foster home would be.
Possibility #2–Made from birds’ feathers (all types) collected from the ground. Drawback: It would take forever to collect the feathers I need to build a set of wings with a long enough wingspan* or wide enough wing area.
Possibility #3–Twigs/branches. Drawback: Collecting and storing again and, just like with set one and set two, a place to assemble and keep the wings. Probably wouldn’t take as long to collect as feathers, but still would be a long process.
*Note: Wingspan would have to be 11 feet x 2 = 22 feet from wing tip to wing tip.
I turn to a blank page and draw a series of pictures. The first panel shows a five-year-old me, asleep under a tree. The next panel shows footsteps, walking through leaves, and then a talking bubble with musical notes. The third panel is a woman, standing over me, saying (even though I’m just my normal-self, not my bird-self), “What a magnificent creature!” In the last panel, the woman picks me up in her arms, whispering, “My name is Eleanor.”
I hear the gate close, and there’s Eleanor in real life. I hurry before she gets out to the trees and shove Bird Girl into my backpack.
Eleanor’s carrying a picnic basket and a blue blanket. “I was going to surprise you, but you’re already out here.”
She spreads the blanket on the ground and from the basket takes out blue plates and a ziplock bag of something else that’s blue. “I made these last night,” Eleanor says.
Inside the bag are origami birds. They’re amazing. We hang them from the branches. When we’re finished, my flight tree looks even more beautiful.
Eleanor sets a pink box in the middle of the blanket and opens the lid. There are cupcakes with blue frosting. She places one on each plate and then pulls a thermos filled with hot chocolate from her bag.
“Surprise!” a voice yells from behind me. It’s Cheryllynn. “Happy birthday!”
She’s wearing a sky blue dress with tights the same color, black boots, and a purple furry coat. “How’d you get here?” I don’t ask it
to be mean. It’s amazing she’s here. Birthday parties in the past have usually been Adrian taking me out to dinner.
“My mom dropped me off.” Cheryllynn holds out a package and sits next to me. Up above, fog is parting to show a winter blue sky. “You have to open my present now.”
The present is wrapped in a brown paper bag decorated with different-colored birds. I unravel green tissue paper. Inside are the butterfly wings I tried on at Sav-Mor Market.
“They looked good on you at the store,” Cheryllynn says. “So I thought you should have them.”
I thread my arms through the wings. Eleanor lights a candle, and she and Cheryllynn sing “Happy Birthday” to me. It’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard, more beautiful than a nightingale’s.
Day is fading from the sky. Eleanor turns on a lantern and opens one of the little boxes decorated with snowflakes that are by each of our plates. “These,” she says, “are winter solstice fortunes. It’s my own tradition. I’ll read mine first. ‘In the darkness, there is always light.’ I always get that one. It’s a good reminder, though. Who wants to go next?”
Cheryllynn raises her hand. “I’ll go.” She reads the fortune. “ ‘The one who makes it through the storm is the one who keeps walking.’ ”
I’ve gone through a storm before, except I didn’t walk, I crawled, across the living room floor, down the steps of our trailer, across the cold ground, into the walnut orchard.
“You want to read next?” Eleanor sips hot chocolate from a teacup.
“Okay.” I remember crawling to one of the trees in the orchard and curling up next to the trunk. I remember hearing cars driving by on the road, not far away. I kept breathing, and when I breathed out, I made a sound, a wounded sound. Before closing my eyes, I saw red drops on the ground, between the trailer park and me. I made myself think the drops were rain.
“Okay,” I say again, and take a deep breath. Tears want to fall, too, but I don’t let them. I open the box and pull out a slip of paper that says, “ ‘Snowflakes are beautiful and intricate. Be sure to look at them closely.’ ”
“That’s a good reminder,” Cheryllynn says.
Extraordinary Birds Page 11
