In the Land of Birdfishes (11 page)

And I sat there with my elbows on the yellow wood of the bar, without a thought in my head of what was going to happen between us. And then a thing happened that made me not think about him anymore or how even though Mara’s sister was gone home now, he was as full of her as if you’d have to put him through the sluice to mine her from him.

And all that happened were four words and the touch of a hand. And after, John sat with his long legs stretched out to the floor beside me, him with his eyes soft and black, and me thinking how, how, how gentle a man could be. And who’d have thought a man you’d known all your life could one day look at you with soft, black eyes and there you’d be and not feeling like you were different than you had been when you sat down on that stool beside him, when you reached in your pocket for the money to pay and he caught your hand and said, “No, no, let me,” and you were left with the feel of his hand on your wrist and not looking any different than you had before, but everything now changed.

And I thought of that and could no more look at him than Jason could look at me, and I thought of everything I knew about him and wondered if he touched my arm again if I’d feel what I had again.

Then John stood up and said he had to go talk to Eloise about something. “Hold on,” I began saying and then had nothing more to finish it with. He looked at me and even Jason turned his face so he was watching the bar in front of me though even then he wouldn’t look at me. “We’re going to have a practice at my house tomorrow. June and me. And
Lando. You could come by if you wanted. After lunch, you could come by.”

“I heard you were going to sing at that festival,” John said. “That’s something special, isn’t it. Lou would be proud as a rooster to have his little girl sing in front of all those people.”

“You could come by,” I said again, and John smiled at me.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said.

I looked down to see Jason’s hand that he had laid there between us. I wondered what he meant for me to do with it and then thought for a moment of how it made me tired to wonder about another person and never be sure.

“You can’t talk to me like you did,” I said to him.

He shook his head, and I thought he would apologize, but instead he said this, he said, “Aileen betrayed my mother.”

I didn’t want to hear about Aileen, so I stood up, but Jason said, “Angie, Angie, sit down, while I tell this,” and so I sat down again.

And then he put his hands to his head and talked to the bar like it was listening to him. He said that when Mara and Aileen were little girls together, their mother hanged herself. Their father went crazy then and blindfolded the girls to keep them from seeing their mother. And later he refused to take the blindfolds away. And after that, the girls didn’t see anything anymore.

Except.

He said, “Except that Aileen did. After the first year, she says she started to take off her blindfold when her father wasn’t around. She was surprised by everything she saw. Nothing was the way she remembered it. She didn’t tell Ma what she was doing. She says she thought Ma must be doing the same thing. Aileen would test her, always asking her what
she could see, waiting to catch her in a lie. But she always said she couldn’t see anything at all. Then Aileen got to be angry with her for not betraying her. She started to leave Ma alone whenever she could. Sometimes, she’d be gone for hours. She found some hippies two miles down the road who were fixing an old farmhouse. The husband taught her how to help him with the boats he built in his barn, and the wife would bring them hot tea and bread while they worked.”

That was the second I saw it happen. He wasn’t talking to me anymore. He was making a story out of it, talking to the story itself, like it was happening before him, becoming what had happened in the air between us. Like the words themselves were what it was built of.

“And then one day,” he said, “Aileen was coming back from their house, and as she climbed the hill toward home, she saw Ma on the hill, snapping the heads off of dandelions with her thumb and singing to herself. The ground was all uneven, so she couldn’t walk quite right, like over and over the ground itself would rise up and catch her by surprise, so she almost fell but never quite did. She looked alone in a way that made Aileen feel sick. And when Aileen put her blindfold on and went to her, Ma started singing. This is the song she sang:
‘Aileen smells like wood, Aileen smells like wood when she comes back, where does Aileen go and what is Aileen made of.’

“And then Aileen noticed her hands were rough with sawdust, and she sniffed her fingers and thought she smelt nothing but wasn’t sure.

“And after that she didn’t take the blindfold off anymore. She didn’t visit the hippies again, even though whenever she was bored she’d get to thinking of the way the wood had felt
against her hand. Almost two years passed before she saw again, and when she did, she couldn’t get her eyes to focus right, to see like she used to. Somehow the world had got blurred while she wasn’t looking at it.

“The doctors said it was not enough to have two eyes and a brain, the right parts in all the right places. The brain and the eye have to learn how to talk to each other, so the eye can tell the brain what it sees. But Ma’s eyes never had anything to say to her brain, so after a while her brain stopped listening for good.

“But Aileen’s eyes hadn’t gone so long without seeing anything at all, and so for her the world was like a light bulb that had gone dim. And slowly her brain started listening again to what her eyes had to tell it. After a few years, she could see enough to know what looks people had on their faces and how far away her hand was from the things it reached for. She couldn’t read or drive, but she could live like a normal person. She could have a normal life.

“But my mother hadn’t seen a thing for almost four years. For her, the light bulb went out altogether and it never went back on.

“Aileen told me that. And then she asked me to forgive her.”

“For keeping the secret from Mara?” I asked.

“For blinding my mother,” Jason said.

But I didn’t see how it was Aileen’s fault. It was wrong that she could see and her sister couldn’t. But, too, it was wrong that she was alive and her sister wasn’t. And I couldn’t see how either thing was her fault, not even though she’d lied. I told this to Jason, and he looked at me like I understood nothing.

“That’s not the point,” he said.

“What is the point?” I asked.

He didn’t answer and we were quiet for a long while until he put money on the counter and said to me, “Come home with me tonight.”

I got up before he was awake, like I knew he’d want me to. His face was turned down, so I couldn’t see what he looked like. I would have liked to see his face before I left.

I decided I could have a count to fifty. I let my mouth say the numbers while I watched his back. I was afraid to stay.
Forty-nine
, I thought as his hand opened and closed on the pillow and then reached for the sheet, pulled it tighter around him.
Fifty
. I held my breath. And then …
One
. A count to twenty, I thought, and then I’d be gone.

Already I had the idea that I wouldn’t see him sleep again, and after this day had happened I wouldn’t think anymore of what it had been to be this close to him and see the shape of him in the sheets beside me. To be close enough to touch him. To be the only person in the world in the room with him, near him, waiting for him to wake.

Twenty
, I thought, and then I was gone.

Momma’s truck was missing in the driveway when I got home. I was glad to not have to see her or tell where I had spent the night. Whenever I used to bring my father home from the bar or a girl in town caught a disease from some white boy staying at one of the hotels, she would tell me the worst harms to our people always started with opening our legs or a bottle of booze.

I lay in my own bed till lunchtime, but I wasn’t sleeping.
I could hear June in the hall, her fingers clicking the keys on the computer she’d won at school and set up in what used to be the linen closet. She was smart that way and had fixed the computer twice by herself. Now she used it to write to Jude. She said he never would write back, but she knew he liked to hear from her and it would help him remember to practise using the computer so he could get a raise at work.

“June,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” she said and the sound of the computer keys didn’t stop.

I stood up and went to the door. I leaned against it and watched her. She was wearing an old pair of Momma’s jeans and they were too short for her long, skinny legs. “I could fix them,” I said.

“What?”

“Those jeans. I could take out the hem for you.”

She stopped typing and pulled her glasses off. “What is it, kiddo?”

I looked at her. She’d done the perm herself, but it looked as good as if it had grown that way. Everybody said she was the best-looking girl in town.

She sighed. “Something you want to tell me?”

I didn’t want to tell her. Almost, but didn’t. She half knew already, I could tell. And if I told her all the way, she would make me feel, not ashamed, but something else. Like I’d taken something good and dirtied it. Taken something out that couldn’t get put back. “Maybe we could have practice outside today. Might be nice.”

She made two lines of her eyes. “That’s it?” Then she pressed a button and everything on the computer disappeared. “Well, let’s do it then.”

Outside, I laid my head back on the steps and stared up at the clouds while I tuned my guitar. Behind me, June was trying to reach an extension cord from the kitchen so she could plug in the electronic piano she’d bought two months ago. I liked it better when she played the regular piano, but it took her almost a year to save up the money, so I told her I thought the sound was good, more interesting than a real piano. “More modern,” she’d said and looked pleased.

I was thinking about lying on that porch the night before and how strange it was to be in one moment and not another, and for those two moments not to talk to each other, like Mara’s brain not able to listen to her eyes, or only one to talk to the other, so you could know what had happened but not ever know what would. And then I heard him say my name.

“Angel,” John said again and I lifted my head so I could see him, standing there in front of me on the road, wiping the shine of sweat from his face. “Angel, do you remember you asked me? Is it okay that I came?”

His face was full of worry, and his long, tall body was stooped over. I knew if I asked him to, he’d turn and go home again and think it was his fault. “I’m glad you did,” I said. “June’s in there. Lando should be here any minute. We thought we’d play outside today.”

“That’s a good idea,” John said and his face filled with a smile. “Why play music inside the house. Plenty of time for that in winter.”

“John.” June climbed down the steps and cupped her hand over her eyes to stare up at him. He was taller than even June, who was so tall. “Isn’t this a nice surprise.” She hooked her finger under the collar of my T-shirt and gave a pull. “You
want to help me set up, Angie?” she asked. She nodded at John. “We’ll only be a minute.”

I followed her in and she closed the door behind us. “Angie, what’s John doing coming over here?”

I whispered to her, “I asked him to.”

She made her lips tight like Momma’s. “Now why’d you do that.”

“He was Papa’s friend,” I said, still whispering.

“Angie, he’s seen fifty come and go.” I knew June wasn’t as mad as she wanted to seem. But she thought she was meant to be like Momma when Momma wasn’t there.

“Last night he touched my hand,” I said. “I never had a feeling before like when he touched my hand then.”

“Angie, is that where you …” She took my face in her hands, and I let my eyes tell her nothing.

At last she said quietly, “Well, Papa always liked him.” She pushed open the door and said, “Maybe you’ll get free trips down to Vancouver now.”

John and Lando, our cousin who was only fifteen but a mean good drummer, were waiting on the steps, looking up at us as we stood there in the door. I’d not been to Vancouver ever.

“Hey, Lando. So, John,” said June in the voice she talked to boys with, “how’s it flying?”

“Pretty good,” he said shyly. “Pretty good.”

“How long are you in town for? It’s an awful treat to have you stay a while.”

He looked at me first before he said, “I don’t know yet. I bid for a vacation leave till August. Thought I might take a holiday here for a spell.” He was a pilot and that meant he was richer than a trucker and wouldn’t have to leave you for weeks at a time if he didn’t want to.

I looked up at her and with my eyes let her see that I needed her to say yes when I asked her, “You all ready then, June?”

He jumped up when she nodded, and asked how he could help. And I liked how serious he was, letting June boss him around and carrying chairs from the porch to the yard. I liked how he checked that the ones he’d set up for us were on the most flat part of the grass so they wouldn’t lean one way or the other, and how he took the chair with the broken arm for himself, and how I could still remember him in the basement, tipped back on Papa’s green chair that we weren’t allowed to sit on, while Papa poured into his glass until it looked like it was full of gold and said something to make him laugh, and me watching from the door, not yet ten years old, and John seeing me there and saying, “Not in front of the girl, Lou,” or how it made me happy to think that while I was just a child, he was already a man and being made to laugh by my father.

And when everything was set up, I sat on the chair John had carried there for me, and I couldn’t stop smiling. He took off his jacket and laid it on the back of his chair before he sat down. He was whistling “We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye,” and when he noticed me looking at him, he stopped and then smiled a big, slow smile back at me.

“You start us off, Ang,” Lando said. “Tell us what you want to start with.”

Our mother said she named me Angel so I’d always be thinking of heaven. She said, “You won’t get in any trouble if you just keep thinking about heaven.” Papa said that while she was pregnant with me, for a time she’d got to going to church with our neighbour Sissy Grant, and she thought it would be nice to raise us kids like Christians, but then the mood passed. That was her way of saying it, which Papa said
sounded stuck-up. But I knew he liked that she was a proud lady and that when she changed her mind, and she always did, she would toss her hand as if it were something she’d set free and say, “The mood has passed.”