Sadie's Story (6 page)
Authors: Christine Heppermann
“P
igeons.”
Ms. M beamed. “Sadie, for a beginner your identification skills are really coming along.”
The pigeons strutted back and forth in a tight zigzag pattern, one behind the other as if playing a game of follow-the-leader.
“Not to be rude,” Sadie said tentatively.
“But everyone can identify pigeons. Pigeons are EVERYWHERE.” She spread her arms wide, startling the bird in frontâBob? Lois?âinto strutting faster and leading hisâher?âcompanion closer to Ms. M.
“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” the witch mused, bending down. From the front pocket of her dress she retrieved a small handful of sunflower seeds and scattered them on the pavement. “But Bob and Lois have to fly all the way over to the awning of the Thai restaurant on Hawthorn Street to visit their nearest daughter.” She looked at the birds. “Did you say her name was Karen?” It was hard to tell whether Bob and Lois nodded or simply dipped their heads to reach their snack.
“Okay,” Sadie said. “Do they really have names? Or are you making that up?”
“Pigeons have lived among us for more than ten thousand years. They've picked up many of our habits and customs. And, unfortunately, our germs.” She nodded toward the bird on her right. “Lois accepted Cheerios from a boy with a runny nose.” Then, to Lois, “Did the echinacea help?”
Lois made a noise deep in her chestâa cough? A coo? Again, it was hard to tell. At least Sadie now knew which bird was which. The more she looked, the more differences she noticed. Dark spots dappled Lois's light gray wings, whereas Bob's wings had no pattern other than the two wide dark stripes at the bottom. Lois's wings had stripes, too,
but, unlike Bob's, they were scalloped at the edges, like lace around a valentine heart. Standing sideways facing each other, the birds resembled giant, slightly mismatched salt and pepper shakers.
“I need to get something from inside the playhouse,” Ms. M said, straightening. “I'll be right back.”
Once Ms. M left, Sadie looked at Bob and Lois. Bob and Lois looked at Sadie.
“I had a cold, too,” Sadie said to break the silence. “Last week. But I'm pretty much over it.”
Bob lifted a foot to scratch his neck. Lois wandered toward the petunias.
What were Jess and Maya doing right now?
Cartwheeling across the beach? Diving off the dock? Eating sundaes bigger than their heads?
What was Sadie doing right now?
Making small talk with pigeons. And boring them to death.
“Found it!” the witch said as she reemerged with a tattered notebook.
Sadie stared. Anything could be in there. Spells. Hexes. Enchantments. Or, knowing Ms. M, recipes and bowling scores.
“It's my life list.” Ms. M turned to a middle page dense with scribbled text. “Almost all the birds I've seen since I started recording, and that goes back a long time.”
“You keep a list? Of birds?”
“It's what birders do.” She produced a pen. Out of, it seemed, thin air.
“You didn't have it with you at the park yesterday.”
“Already you have the keen eye of a veteran birder.” The witch gave her a look of such obvious appreciation that Sadie blushed and ducked her head. “You're right,” Ms. M acknowledged. “Sometimes I like to watch and enjoy without the bother of writing everything down. Also, yesterday we were looking for one specific bird. If we'd found Ethel I wouldn't have taken notes, I would have given her a big hug. But I certainly want to record our meeting with Bob and Lois.”
At the sound of their names the birds stood up taller, it seemed.
“Different birders organize their lists differently.” Ms. M tapped the page with the pen. “As you can see, I have an entire section devoted to
Columba livia
. They're quite extraordinary.”
More like ordinary-ordinary, Sadie couldn't help thinking.
Ms. M studied Sadie's face. “You seem skeptical.”
“It's just that . . .” She leaned in close to the witch's ear, hoping Bob and Lois wouldn't overhear. She whispered, “It's just, like I said before, pigeons are everywhere.”
“Common, yes,” said Ms. M at normal volume. “But nonetheless rare. Let me put it to you this way. How many nine-year-old girls are there in the world? Millions? Billions?”
“A lot,” Sadie agreed.
“And how many witches?”
Sadie shrugged.
“I believe there were five hundred and seventy-three of us who attended the international conference in Brussels last September,” said Ms. M. “Which was an
impressive turnout, given the registration fee.” She continued, “Now, out of the million-billion-quadrillions of nine-year-old girls in the world, how many of them are you?”
Was this a trick question? “One?” Sadie ventured.
“And out of the smaller but still sizeable number of witches, how many of them are me?”
Sadie considered Ms. M's droopy hat.
Her dusty dress.
Her crooked, snaggletoothed smile.
“One,” she said.
“All right then.” Ms. M tapped the page with greater insistence. “Time to get down to business.”
She wrote the date on a blank line. “We'll add Bob and Lois here. Beneath Dorothy.
Dorothy was lovely. I met her and her brother Toto at an outdoor film festival in Poughkeepsie. Their mother was a great fan of the classics.”
Sadie could see that the life list didn't go straight up and down, like a grocery list, but was spread across the page in columns. Next to the date in the first column, Ms. M wrote Bob and Lois's names. “What about the sighting conditions?” she asked. “Stormy? Dense fog? Bitterly cold? Cyclonic?”
“Um, nice?” Sadie suggested.
“We'll say âvery nice.' To reflect the mood of the day. Now, location. You wouldn't happen to know the latitude and longitude of your backyard, would you?”
“Not really.”
“We'll just put âNorth America, Sadie's backyard.' Last is vocalization, though that can be hard to summarize for
Columba livia
. They are such lively conversationalists.”
Ms. M appeared to be concentrating hard. At her feet Bob burbled and cooed. He sounded like a cross between a purring cat and a tiny, whistling freight train.
“Of course, Bob, thank you for reminding me.” In the last rectangle of space on the line Ms. M carefully printed “Home.”
“What does that mean?” Sadie asked. Was Ms. M thinking of going home after all?
“When we were up on the roof, Bob and Lois told me how much they love where they live. I told them that I wished Ethel had turned into a pigeon instead of a yellow
warbler, because then I never would have lost her. Pigeons are home-oriented. They leave, but they always come back.”
Hwhapwhapwhap!
Sadie jumped backward in surprise as Lois launched herself into the air, landed on the curve of Ms. M's shoulder, and nuzzled her with her beak.
“Yes, you are absolutely right,” said the witch, smiling faintly and patting Lois on the head. “Ethel is who she is. I can't change that.”
“What if we went to the park?” said Sadie. “We could try the picnic table by the fountain. I bet we'd have better luck.”
“Of course, dear. Would you mind fetching the binoculars? They're in my bag. Put this away for me while you're at it.” Ms. M held
out the life list. “That's enough note-taking for one day.”
Hwhapwhapwhapwhapwhap!
Bob and Lois flung themselves upward, rose over the garage, and kept going. In no time at all they turned from big dots to small dots to smaller dots, finally disappearing altogether.
Poof.
“Wow, pigeons are fast,” Sadie said, staring at the spot in the sky where they had just been.
“Champion flyers,” Ms. M agreed.
“I hope I see them again.”
“Oh, you will,” Ms. M said gaily. “They're on their way to the park. They're meeting Karen there for lunch.”
O
nce again they saw a lot of birds.
Once again they heard a lot of birds.
Once again not one of those birds was Ethel.
“I never knew watching and listening could be so tiring,” Sadie said. She and Ms. M both wobbled a bit as they left the park, taking the winding path by the tennis courts. “It's a good kind of tired,” she added.
“Exhausting and exhilarating at the same time,” Ms. M agreed. “Like traveling.”
As they ambled along, Sadie thought about how the park really was like another country to her now, full of many languages and exotic inhabitants. In a way, she didn't even mind that they hadn't found Ethel. She and Ms. M could go “traveling” again tomorrow, and maybe the next day and the day after that.
When they reached the backyard, Sadie said, “I wish I could invite you to come insideâ”
The witch interrupted. “I know, dear. It's all right. I enjoy my own company.”
“I'll be out later to say good night.”
“I look forward to it.”
Sadie watched Ms. M until she was safely at the playhouse. The witch paused and tipped her pointy hat. Sadie giggled and slipped into the kitchen.
“Is that you, Sadie?” her mother called from upstairs. “Dad ran to the store. I'll be down in a minute.”
Sadie sat at the table, munching a granola bar and thinking more about Ethel. What would they do if they did find her? Would Ms. M know the right spell to change her back? She tried to imagine two witches living in the playhouse. Wait until Jess and Maya saw that!
Then she tried to picture herself with Jess, Maya, Ms. M, and Ethel. They'd all be together, doing . . . what? Bird-watching? Sweeping out the gutters? Making soup?
Her father entered the kitchen through the back door, clutching a bag from Paper Warehouse. He hung his keys on the orange hook on the wall and smiled at her. “Tough day at the slide and the merry-go-round, sleepyhead?”
Just then her mother thumped in with a big cardboard box. “So much junk in the attic!” She dropped the box onto the table across from Sadie. “I wish we could get rid of it all, but we'll start here and see what they have room for.”
“Your labels, madam,” her father said
gallantly, handing over the bag.
“What's going on?” Sadie asked. She got up to pour herself a glass of chocolate milk.
“The Kepplers are having a yard sale tomorrow, and they said we could add a few things. You don't want these anymore, do you?”
Sadie peered down at the dolls with soiled faces, the unopened paint-by-number kit, the squashed board games that she and her parents used to play for hours. The game Sorry! just looked, well, sorry. And the patient in Operation had never fully regained consciousness, not since Mom had accidentally vacuumed up his Funny Bone.
She grabbed Tina Tag-Along and pulled the string on her back, but instead of “Me, too!” Tina now said “Mrggfft.”
“Good-bye, Tina,” she said, replacing the doll gently in the box.
“All the toy money comes back to you,” Dad informed her.
“Really? Cool!” She might earn enough for a field guide if Ms. M didn't find hers.
“What do you think for Chutes and Ladders?” said her mother, pen poised over a sticky label. “Two bucks?”
“Sure.”
“The playhouse is a little worse for wear, but it should bring at least twenty dollars.”
What? The chocolate milk turned to sludge in Sadie's throat. She sputtered. “We can't sell the playhouse!”
“Why not?” said her father. “You never play in it.”
“Yes I do. I did today.”
“Remember what the Buddha said.” Her mother slapped a sticker onto Diva Dinah's now only somewhat-sequined gown. “Suffering comes from attachment.”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “I'm not attached to it. I play in it.”
“Look,” said her mother firmly. “I am suffering. My back suffers every time I have to move that thing to mow. My eyes suffer when they see the big yellow spot where it's killed all the grass.”
Sadie's father went to put his arm around her, but she ducked out of reach. “Some things you can hold on to, honey. Others you have to let go.”
“Let go,” meaning
lose
? The way Ms. M had lost Ethel and Onyx? And now Sadie would lose . . .
“No!”
“Yes,” said her mother in her end-of-discussion tone. “Say good-bye to your playhouse and wish it well. Tomorrow it's moving on.”