Bird (6 page)

“Another dimension,” John replied simply.

How could he be so confident? My head buzzed a little. I'd never met anyone like him before. And the best thing was that someone as confident and courageous and smart as John was happy sitting in the woods with me. In my whole life, I hadn't met someone who truly understood why I dig in the dirt so much, or why I like rocks and trees or watch how the sky moves during a storm. But John liked all those things too, and then some, and he didn't feel he had to hide anything at all. I wanted to slip under his skin and snatch some of that confidence. Maybe that's why I told John that the other oaks and pine trees surrounding us looked really great for climbing.

John shot me a mischievous grin. “These trees go up a lot higher than my uncle's.”

My lips twisted up. “Are you saying I'm afraid?”

“I'm saying that you can see everything.”

We spent a long time climbing as high as we dared, and trying all kinds of different trees. He was right; there were some big trees with pretty daring jumps, from one branch to another to another, and at times I got a little nervous, but I kept up, right there with him.

We secured ourselves in the forking branches of a maple tree, and John was on the higher branch when he looked down at me. “What was your brother's name?”

I paused. I wasn't quite sure what to say, but then I realized I'd already lied to him about not believing in duppies and wasn't ready to tell two lies in one day, so I said, “John.”

He swiped the sweat off his forehead and fixed his eyes on me. “No way.”

My heart was thumping a little faster, and my hands gripped the bark until my fingers hurt. I wasn't quite sure what he was thinking. “Serious. But they called him Bird.”

“Why?”

“Grandpa wanted him to fly.”

We didn't say much after that, just kept climbing. There were still a couple big branches left before it got dicey, but we didn't go any higher. When our forearms ached too much, we climbed down, ate John's snacks, and stood at the edge of the grove. From the top of the hill, we could see the flowing, green-golden land, the tiny little houses below—with a clear view of my house and Mr. McLaren's, too—carved dolomite cliff formations, and the gravel roads as thin as twigs in the distance. Millions upon millions of years of earth were holding us.

When I snuck a peek at John, I caught him looking to the sky.

Dad was standing by his garden when I got home, hands on his hips, studying each plant.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, giving him a light peck on the cheek, but my stomach twisted inside. If Grandpa had somehow told him how I disobeyed him this afternoon, I would be in deep trouble. “What do you think of the weeding?” I asked as casually as possible.

He was nodding his head. “Nice job, Jewel,” he said. Dad bent down and inspected the young cucumber leaves.

I exhaled silently, relieved. Grandpa hadn't said anything.

“I'm surprised you got all the way down beneath those prickers,” Dad continued. “Their roots are tough.”

Those were the weeds that John pulled up.

Dad walked slowly around the perimeter. “I was starting to worry about the rosemary.”

My cheeks felt hot. I wasn't sure I had done something wrong. “It looks pretty healthy to me,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes, but if those weeds had strangled out the rosemary, that would be very bad for us.”

“It would be unlucky because rosemary protects us,” I said, more confidently this time.

Dad's eyebrows lifted with delighted surprise. “You remembered.”

I beamed. Dad had told me about rosemary a long time ago, and I had run to my room to write down what he'd said so I could impress him at a time exactly like this. “Rosemary can be used in different ways,” I said. I scrunched my brow, thinking. “You rub it on your skin or put it in your pocket when you need help remembering things. Like for tests.”

“And?”

“And . . . you put it under your pillow so you don't get nightmares.”

He squeezed my shoulder.

“And drinking rosemary tea can make you healthy if you get hurt,” I added, wanting to make him even prouder.

“And?”

“And . . .” I faltered. I couldn't remember anything else.

“You burn rosemary to get rid of duppies,” Dad said. “Burning rosemary is very powerful for warding them off.”

“Just like the Xolo dog?” I asked.

Dad's smile grew wider. “Do I have a smart girl or what?” he said, shaking his head, but I knew it wasn't really a question.

Dad had been really excited when some show on TV talked about the Xolo dog, an ancient dog that protected the Aztec kings from intruders and evil spirits. After Dad found that out, he made sure a Xolo dog figurine was in our house. When I pointed out that Xolo dogs are from Mexico, not Jamaica, he replied that protective spirits do the same job, no matter where they're from. Then he made sure to work on the leak over in Mrs. Rodriguez's kitchen, because she was the one who brought the figurine back from Mexico for him. Dad put the little dog right by our family pictures in the living room, and it stayed there even though Mom had some sharp words for him when she got home.

There are a lot of things that Dad does that Mom's not too thrilled about. Especially taking care of our Buick. Even though it's super old, Dad makes sure to wash and wax it every Saturday afternoon, and he even has this special cloth mitt to put the wax cream on and a different mitt to take it off. Mom says all that is a waste of money, especially the car magazines that he leaves around the house. In her opinion, what would really help is if he could figure out how to fix the car when it breaks down, but I doubt Dad would notice even if the engine was missing, because never in my life have I seen him open up the hood. He sure shines the top of it, though, and when he's done waxing the Buick, he puts his hands on his hips, gives a little whistle, and nods his head. But we still have to take it in for everything, even an oil change.

I guess I don't blame him for being as proud as a peacock about that Buick, even though it has rust on the sides. When he talks about the day he got that car, his whole face becomes as bright as a star, and his eyes twinkle too; he purchased it with cash, a big, rolled wad of it, and drove away in his spanking-new car, with a hot wife to boot. That's how he put it. I can just see the two of them smiling from ear to ear, their happiness gleaming like sunlight off the chrome. And even though he doesn't tell that story much anymore, I wonder sometimes if he still remembers it, especially because he's always waxing that car alone.

Dad and I stood at the edge of the garden in silence for a while, looking at how everything was growing. “The tree saplings don't look too good,” I admitted.

Dad's eyes squinted up, like he was trying to make the trees grow by sheer willpower. “Don't worry, honey. These are lucky saplings.” His voice was a soft, gentle baritone. “I want them because they're good for protection too.”

I scratched my arm. “Dad?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“If the rosemary is good for protecting us from duppies, why are you trying to grow the trees?”

Dad smiled. “You sure are one smart girl,” he said, and put his arm around me. I leaned into him a little more. “The more protection around you, the better,” he said. “It's like layers.”

“Layers?” I cocked my head up at him.

“Layers of protection, Jewel. And you always want them nice and thick.” He was nodding at the garden. “One day these will grow to be huge trees, you'll see.”

I gave him a sideways look. “Coconut trees in a snowstorm?”

He chuckled. “Why not?”

I elbowed him.

“Hopefully they'll get to the point where we can transplant them into pots and bring them in the house for the winter. Then we'll wheel them in and out when they get bigger.”

Like I said, Dad can be somewhat of an optimist. What happens when the coconut tree is taller than our house? But he doesn't bother with details like that. One reason why I think Dad loves these plants so much is that this used to be Granny's garden, and Granny used to love plants too. Dad says she had a big garden in Jamaica in the countryside, and she knew the healing properties for all kinds of plants—plenty more than Dad knows about, from what he tells me. Maybe Dad feels closer to Granny by working the garden, like her spirit is still around, somehow. A lot of plants died when she did—Dad didn't know how to take care of them, but he told me they died because they were heartbroken—and the ones that lived he's super careful with. Granny knew a whole lot about duppies, too—like how to know when one's around—and Dad tries to teach me about them when Mom's not listening. Sometimes I think he wants to be more like Granny, because he'd talk about her and plants and duppies all day long if Mom would let him, but he doesn't. Instead, he looks at Granny's picture in our living room when he thinks I'm not watching; he just stands there and stares at Granny, like she's going to jump out of the picture frame and talk to him. She died when I was young, and it's strange that Dad misses so much someone I never really knew.

Dad and I inspected the garden for a long time, poking the plants here and there, rubbing their leaves, and smelling their fragrances. What made me the happiest, though, was that he didn't have to say not to mention any of our talk about rosemary to Mom. He knew I already knew that.

It's funny that it's Dad who's taking care of Jamaican plants, talking about duppies and the like, because he didn't come over from Jamaica—Grandpa and Granny did. Nobody's been back there either. Nothing to go back to, Dad said when I asked him once. Everything's changed by now—the people and towns are all different. Anyway, he said, he and Grandpa have been in the North so long that even the Jamaican sun wouldn't recognize them anymore. They'd probably get sunburned like a bunch of white people. Dad had laughed pretty hard when he said that. Still, once I found a really old travel flyer for a vacation package to Jamaica that was tucked into one of his car magazines. The flyer had these pictures of the ocean, and trees and sunsets, and the package included airfare and hotel and even meals, and listed what it said was a rock-bottom price. But that price didn't look very low to me. Maybe not to Dad, either, because he never said a word about it to us.

Dad's never even gone back to Miami, either. That's where Grandpa and Granny lived after they came over and where he grew up. I figured they'd want to go back and visit their friends, at least a couple times.

Sometimes I feel bad for Dad because he can't talk to folks around here about things like using rosemary to ward off duppies. Iowa doesn't have the greatest Jamaican community, if you know what I mean. We have to drive fifty minutes to get to a store that sells plantains, and since those are sold for the Mexican Americans, that's the only time that Mom speaks Spanish, because the workers don't speak much English. Then we have to drive more than three hours to get to Chicago, where we buy our Jamaican food: saltfish, tinned ackees, Scotch bonnet peppers, dried pimento, bammies, and beef patties. After eating at our favorite Jamaican restaurant, we drive back to the cornfields, to the community that thinks that Jamaica is some country in Africa, to a place where the white people and the Latinos stay in their own little corners of town, and where mixing just doesn't happen.

Except for in my family.

I wonder what it would be like, sometimes, to have two parents who have the same languages and histories and recipes. It would make things less interesting, I think, but maybe a little simpler, too. When we leave Caledonia to go shopping, it's confusing to hear folks ask me what I am. Shouldn't they ask
who
I am? Why am I a
what
? I'm not sure why it matters so much, but I can tell by the way they stare that it does.

“Why didn't you pick up around the house?” Mom asked me, more tired than stern. It must have been stressful for her at work today or she would have been more upset with me. She had turned on the oscillating fan and was taking off the earrings Dad had given her for Christmas a couple years ago. Mom then leaned in to the mirror, staring at her face. She always looks for wrinkles or something on her smoky quartz skin. She doesn't know how much I'd love to look like her one day; she's so beautiful.

I was sitting on the edge of their bed, and I stopped swinging my feet back and forth. One day they'll touch the ground, but for now, they were still a couple inches away. “I didn't get to the living room because I got distracted a little.” Heat rose to my face.

Mom's dark eyebrows rose and scrunched together. “By what?”

“I spent too much time weeding the garden.” That was true, but not completely. I just left out the part about Grandpa, and then John, and then Event Horizon.

Mom sighed, and she turned to face me. “Jewel, come here.”

I slipped off the bed and approached her, slowly. She gave me a hug, not too tight, then drew me back a ways so she could look at me. “I'm really worried about you, honey,” she said.

I swallowed.

“You listen too much to your dad. He means well, but I want you to have a good job when you grow up. Be someone.”

I squirmed. She was afraid that I won't? That I'm not anyone right now? I looked back at her and nodded.

“Your father is a sweet man, and you know I love him, but you can't take him too seriously.”

I didn't like this conversation. I love Dad's lessons and his stories and the way he keeps wishing for things, even if they'll never come true. So what if he wants a coconut tree in Iowa?

Mom softly pinched my chin. “You're all we got, Jewel. I want you to make us proud.”

A small tremor ran through me, like my heart was splitting, a deep crack in the earth, and all kinds of dark fears rose up. I swallowed.