I Kill the Mockingbird (6 page)

Michael turns to Elena. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

“All I know,” says Elena, “is that she had two of those tall mucho caffeine things, and that can’t be good.”

“I’m fine!” I say, but I do feel a little wild-eyed. “Here’s the thing. We
are going to take copies of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, and we are going to make them disappear!”

“That’s called stealing,” says Michael.

I shake my head. “We’re not going to steal.”

“What are we going to do?” Elena asks.

I lower my voice. “Creative shelving. The books will never leave the store. We just put them in the wrong place.”

“According to Mr. Dobby,” says Michael, “that’s as good as stealing.”

“Except that it’s not stealing,” I say. “It’s shrinkage.”

Michael takes a nacho chip and points it at me. “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

“Why are you talking about ducks?” Elena asks him.

Michael pops the chip into his mouth. “Because Lucy is talking about stealing.”

“I’m talking about shrinkage,” I say.

“Why
are we talking about this at all?” asks Michael.

“Because of capitalism!” I say loudly.

A couple food court diners turn our way. They look a little worried. Maybe they’re afraid that we’re about to initiate an Occupy Wall Street movement right here at the mall.

“I don’t think you need any more of those coffee drinks,” Michael says to me.

“I’m still confused,” says Elena.

“Capitalism is basic
supply and demand,” I explain. “If we lower the
To Kill a Mockingbird
supply—”

“Through creative shelving,” says Elena.

I nod. “That will increase the demand.”

“Fewer books will be available,” Elena says slowly, “so more people will want books?”

“Exactly.” I dip a chip into a puddle of hot sauce.

“Excuse me,” says Michael, “that’s not the way it works. Capitalism requires the free flow of
goods, and low supply does not increase demand. It—”

I cut him off. “Thank you, Karl Marx.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I’m just saying that if people think that
To Kill a Mockingbird
is disappearing, they’re going to want to get their own copies.”

“No they’re not,” says Michael.

“Haven’t you ever been to a grocery store before a snowstorm?” I ask him. “Everybody stocks up on bread and milk because
they’re afraid there won’t be enough.”

“Books are not the same as bread and milk,” says Michael.

Elena wipes her face with a rough, brown napkin. “I could survive a snowstorm without milk, but that’s because I’m lactose intolerant.”

“What’s your point?” Michael asks her.

“I think Lucy’s point is that people will want what they think they can’t have,” Elena tells him.

“Just because something
is missing doesn’t mean people will want it,” Michael replies.

“Making books disappear is just the first step,” I say. “In fact, it’s the easy part. The hard part will be getting the word out. We need people to think that
To Kill a Mockingbird
has been banned or something.”

“You know what would be better?” says Elena. “If we could make people think that there’s some kind of conspiracy to keep
the book out of circulation.”

“What?” says Michael.

“Seriously,” says Elena. “Conspiracy theories are great for sales.”

“There will be a conspiracy!” I say. “The conspiracy is us! Think about it. If you believed there was some kind of plot to keep a book out of your hands, wouldn’t you want to read it?”

Neither Michael nor Elena responds.

“Of course you would!” I tell them. “Wanting what
you can’t have is the American way! All we have to do is make people think that they can’t have
To Kill a Mockingbird,
and they’ll be busting down the doors to get it.”

Elena grins. “It will be like Charles Darwin’s mobs at the boat docks.”

“Charles Dickens,” says Michael.

“Whatever,” says Elena.

Michael shakes his head. “This is ridiculous. Even if we got rid of every book in the mall, you
could still buy a copy from somewhere else.”

“But what if we hid books in other stores, too?” I ask him.

“I could go to the library,” says Michael.

“And if all the library books are gone?”

“I’d order it online.”

“But in the meantime you’d have learned that the books are missing from everywhere else. You’d discover that there’s some kind of mysterious plot going on that’s supposed to prevent
you from reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
. As a result, you’d really want to read it.”

“But the plot will have failed,” says Michael. “I got the book. I’ll read it. You lose.”

“No,” says Elena. “In the end, you did what she wanted you to do. You read
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lucy wins!” She turns to me. “I like it.”

The sane part of my brain knows that this whole thing is absurd. But honestly, I
like it too. “Let’s give it a try,” I say.

“Let’s not,” says Michael.

Elena leans forward. “You’d do it for Newman Noggs.”

Newman Noggs is a character in the novel
Nicholas Nickleby
by Charles Dickens. In fact, Noggs is one of Michael’s very favorite characters. I can’t believe that Elena remembers this.

“My mother is a police officer!” Michael reminds us.

“We’re not breaking any laws,” I
say.

“I don’t even like the book!” he protests.

“You like it enough,” Elena tells him.

“And one day,” I add, “you might want us to help you rescue Mr. Noggs.”

“That’s not fair!” he says.

Elena grins. “Literature is a cruel mistress.”

Michael puts his head down on the food court table. “Why do I hang out with you two?”

“Because you are an independent thinking person who chooses his friends
wisely,” Elena says to Michael.

“We’re going to be like terrorists,” he says.

“We are not terrorists,” I tell him. “We’re more like literary saboteurs.”

“Literary terrorists sounds better,” offers Elena.

“My mother will kill me if she ever finds out about this. Actually,” he adds, “she’ll kill us all.”

“Michael,” I say, “it’s not like we’re starting a riot. We’re encouraging people to read.”

“You just said we’re literary terrorists!”

“Michael,” says Elena, “this isn’t terrorism. This is community service. If we can pull it off, we’ll probably get a medal.”

Michael lifts his head off the table. “I bet that’s what all the terrorists say.”

9

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

The next morning, I find Mom at the picnic table on our back porch. She’s got a sketch pad, a coffee cup, and a pile of colored pencils spread out in front of her. Photography is not the only thing she does well. She paints and sculpts. She plays piano and guitar. She writes poetry that she never lets anybody read. But her favorite thing of all
is drawing. With a stubby pencil and a scrap of paper, my mother can take things she sees in her head and make them come alive.

I grab some yogurt and a spoon then open the sliding glass door that leads from the kitchen to the backyard. Mom lifts her head when I step onto the porch. “Hey, Lucy.”

I wave my breakfast at her. “Good morning.”

She points at my spoon. “Can I get one of those with
a bowl of Fruit Loops?”

“No,” I tell her. “You need healthy food.”

She rolls her eyes.

I look down at her pad. The page is covered with quick sketches of robins and chickadees and blue jays. I like to draw, but I’ll never be that good. Mom shows me her paper. “These are just the ones I saw this morning.”

In addition to everything else, Mom is a birder. She can identify just about any species
that’s ever visited the eastern United States. She recognizes most of their songs, too.

I point at a few stray lines near the top of her page. “What’s that?”

“It’s supposed to be a crow. He flew away before I could get it right.” Mom chooses a few pencils from the bunch on the table. She adds a purple smudge, some orange dots, and a couple sharp lines to the scribble. Now there’s a jaunty black
bird flying across her sheet. “There he is.”

“How did you do that?” I ask.

Mom laughs. “His parts were there. I just had to fit them together.”

That reminds me of something that Mr. Nowak used to say. “We are all broken, but sometimes the jagged pieces fit together nicely.” I steal a glance at Mom’s face. She doesn’t look broken anymore.

“Are you going to sit?” asks Mom. “Or are you just going
to stand there and stare at me?”

I sit.

Mom rips a blank page from her notebook. “Draw,” she says.

“Draw what?”

A sharp
rat-tat-tat-tat
echoes off the trees around us.

“A woodpecker,” says Mom. She grabs a dark pencil and starts to sketch.

I turn my head back and forth, but I don’t see the bird. “Where is he?”

“Just see him in your head.”

“I’d rather see him in a tree.”

“It’s probably
a downy woodpecker. He’s a little guy. White chest. Black-and-white wings. A mask on his face like a raccoon. The males have a bit of red on the tops of their heads. They’re very dashing.”

I look at the branches around us. “I still don’t see him.”

Mom points at a tall evergreen leaning toward our house. “Pretend that he’s on a limb near the trunk. Draw what you’d see if he was sitting right
there.”

“But—”

“Just try.”

I glance around one more time. I still can’t find the woodpecker, so I lean over my paper and make a stick figure drawing of a bird.

“Don’t forget to look at the tree,” Mom says.

“But there’s no woodpecker there.”

“You have to pretend that there is.”

I stay focused on my drawing. “Pretend that I’m pretending.”

“Pretend that I’m not going to stick a pencil in
your eye if you don’t look into the branches.”

I lean back and stare at the empty tree. “I think he’s coming into view.”

“Happy to hear it.” Mom continues drawing while I continue glancing back and forth between the tree and my paper. Every once in a while, the air fills with the sound of his drumming.
Rat-tat-tat-tat …

Mom smiles. “We hear you.”

She never looks happier than when she is drawing.
In fact, she says that her sketchbooks made as big a difference during her cancer treatments as the pain medicine that the doctors gave her. Even at her sickest, she tried to create at least one drawing every single day. Sometimes she drew stuff out of her head. Other times, she sketched nurses and orderlies and other patients. Once, she was so tired that she could barely sit up, but she struggled
through a detailed drawing of her own scrawny fingers holding a pencil.

“You could take a day off,” I told her then.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“I want to be an artist.”

“You are an artist.”

“Artists make art.”

Now, Mom adds small details to her woodpecker so that the feathers on its head look like a messy crown. “You should write a book,” I say.

“About what?” she asks.

“How
to fight cancer with colored pencils.”

Mom doesn’t looks up. “Who says I was fighting cancer?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Lucy,” Mom says, “I’m not one of those people who think that cancer is some kind of jousting match. People live or die based on good medicine, good luck, and the grace of God. The people who die from it did not fail. The people who live will die another day.”

My chest
fills with a sudden, familiar pressure. I do not know how many times my heart has been broken and remade during this last year. “I’m glad you didn’t die,” I say.

“I’m glad too,” Mom says, “but there were some days that death was the only thing that kept me going.”

I look up. “I don’t understand.”

Mom turns her face to me. “Just so we’re clear, being sick did not make me want to die.”

“Okay.”

“But it sure made me want to stop being sick. I figured that if I didn’t get better, at least I would die and then I wouldn’t feel so rotten anymore. One way or another, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

“Always look on the bright side of life, Lucy. And anyway, it’s not like death is the end of the world.”

“You mean heaven?” I ask.

“I
mean people die every day, and the world is still spinning.” Mom takes my paper and turns it around to study it. “That’s a good thing.”

“Are you talking about life, death, or my bird?”

“Life is good. Death is a mystery. The bird needs work.”

I take my paper, turn it over, and try again. This time, I don’t bother looking at the trees or at Mom or anything. I just draw what’s on my mind. When
I’m done, a little black bird sits on my page. It’s more like a cartoon than the realistic drawings that Mom makes, but it’s lively and confident and I like it.

“Nice,” says Mom.

“Really?” I ask.

She nods. “What kind of bird is it?”

“Does it matter?” I ask.

“If it’s art, then everything matters.”

I stare down at my drawing. “It’s a mockingbird.”

10

I Kill the Mockingbird

After lunch, I tuck my mockingbird sketch into a back pocket and let Mom know that I’m going to head to the bookshop for the afternoon.

“Look both ways before you cross the street,” she tells me.

I start to protest, but then it strikes me that if I am very lucky I will be able to offer annoying safety tips to my own children one day. “I’ll look both ways if
you eat some fruit.”

“Do strawberry Peeps count?”

“Strawberries would be good.”

Mom grins. Her eyes are bright and lively, and her cheeks are filling out. I wish she’d eat a little better than she does, but her main food groups have always been coffee, candy, and fast food. “Lucy,” she says, “Peeps make me happy, and happiness cures cancer.”