The Unfinished Angel
Read The Unfinished Angel Online
Authors: Sharon Creech
In memory of four sparkly ones:
Dennis W. Creech
Mary Crist Fleming
Kate McClelland
Kathy Krasniewicz
Contents
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Learn How to Talk Like the Unfinished Angel
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“Dictionary” Definitions
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A Q&A Session with Sharon Creech
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Incredilish Hardness Word Search!
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P
eoples are strange!
The things they are doing and sayingâsometimes they make no sense. Did their brains fall out of their heads? And why so much saying, so much talking all the time day and night, all those words spilling out of those mouths? Why so much? Why don't they be quiet?
M
e, I am an angel. I am supposed to be having all the words in all the languages, but I am not. Many are missing. I am also not having a special assignment. I think I did not get all the training.
What is my mission? I think I should have been told. I have been lolling around in the stone tower of Casa Rosa, waiting to find out. I am free to come and go in the mountain villages, free to float along the promenade on the lake, free to swish up through the Alps to mountain huts, free to spend days and nights floating and swishing. This floating and swishing I like.
It's true I have my hands full from time to time with Signora Divino and her grandson, Vinny, neither of them the slightest bit “divino” these days: cranky and bad-tempered, raining soot on everyone else's head. Signora Divino, she snip-snip gossips and causes trouble between the other peoples, and her grandson, Vinny, with the shaggy hair is causing the mischief and blaming the other boys, and he listens to no one, no one, you hear me? No one. I pinch him sometimes.
But is that my purpose? Solely to look after the Divinos and keep them from heaping misery on the other people types and giving them a pinch from time to time? I don't think so.
Do the other angels know what they are doing? Am I the only confused one? Maybe I am unfinished, an unfinished angel.
S
ometimes I want to throw pinecones at Divino heads, and more heads, too: those peoplesâthe American man and his daughterâwho moved into Casa Rosa. Where they come from, out of the green? Who lets them come here into my casa?
The American, Mr. Pomodoro, is tall and linky with a rubbery face that moves his cheeks and nose and eyes when he talks and even when he doesn't talk. He says he is starting a school here, and not just any school, but “the best of the best.” He tells Signora Divino, his neighbor, “We will bring all the children from all over the world and we will live in harmony!”
Is he kidding?
“We will have Turks and Germans,” Mr. Pomodoro says, “Iraqis and French, Russians and Chinese, Swiss and Dutch, Koreans and Brazilians, Israelis and Swedes,
et cetera
!” He squinches his eyes and nose in happy thoughts of all these peoples.
Signora Divino looks as if she has swallowed a goose. She does not seem to like the thought of all those peoples in this little village on the mountain. “Will you also have Americans?” she asks.
“Americans?” Mr. Pomodoro glances up at my stone tower and moves his lips around as if he is tasting them from the inside and says, “Of course.”
Signora Divino lifts one bent finger and aims it at him. “There are snakes at Casa Rosa,” she says.
Mr. Pomodoro blinks. “Snakes?”
“Many snakes.”
“Many?”
The Signora's finger crawls through the air. “Many, many black snakes.” She smiles.
Mr. Pomodoro smiles, too. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for that information.”
M
r. Pomodoro has a daughter. At least, I assume she is his daughter, arriving at the same time, staying in the same house, but she does not resemble him. Maybe this is a good thing. And where is the mother? I see no mother. And there is a picture of a young boy on the mantel. Where is he?
I do not know about this daughter, what sense to make of her. She is called Zola and is skinny like a twig-tree, with hair chip-chopped in a startling way. Her eyesâgray with large black poppils in the middleâher eyes are big and round like a cow's. She appears, overallâI don't know how to sayâlike maybe a fawn who grew up with humans. Or a chickadee who was raised by crows. I don't know. You are not understanding what I am saying, are you?
While Signora Divino asks Mr. Pomodoro many questions, Zola scouts for snakes. Signora Divino wants to know why the Mr. Pomodoro creature came here, to this village. “Why?” she asks. “Why? Why?”
“For a new start!” he says, with the happy rubber cheeks. Then his shoulders sag. “I am weary.”
“Of what you are weary?” presses nosy Signora Divino.
“Where should I start? I am weary of malls and merchandise and sales and rude drivers and cell phones and blasting music and big cars and fast food and you know those marshmallow candies that look like animals?”
“No, I don't know what you are saying.”
“Well, I don't like those.”
“Oh,” says Signora Divino. “Anything else?”
Zola, who is in the bushes hunting for snakes, seems to reply for Mr. Pomodoro with an air puff that escapes from her feet up through her whole body to her mouth.
“Foof.”
Signora Divino turns toward the
foof
and then returns her stare to Mr. Pomodoro, who says, “I am weary of
incivility
.”
It is a precious-sounding word, and I hear another
foof
from Zola in the bushes.
“
You
know,” Mr. Pomodoro continues, “bad manners, burping, crude language, that sort of thing.”
“Uck!” Signora Divino says. “Idiots! Cretins!”
M
aybe my towerâthe tower of Casa Rosaâis not the most attractiful or the most specialty tower in Switzerland. It is just a tower, after all, like so many other towers in the Ticino, this southern part of Switzerland. The casa is pink, like so many other casas, but the stone tower that rises three more stories above it is the color of its stoneâhow you call it? Tan? The color of straw in the winter? Of coffee with very much milk?
It is a tower that stands tall and upending like a good soldier, for nearly four hundred years, not wobbling or falling down. At the top of the tower is an open balcony with a low wall all around and a tile roofling overhead. There are no windows. You reach out and there is the air, just there. You are high, high above the other houses and the only things as high are a few trees and, down the road, the tall stickly spire of the church. The only thing in this balcony is a gauzy hammock, a light and airful place for me to loll about.
Beneath the balcony is a tiny square room, exactly the size of the balcony above it. In this room are two trip doors: One leads up to the balcony and one leads down to the room below. Also in this room is a narrow cot covered with a worn feather duvet, and a small desk with a candle on it.
The room beneath that one with the cot is again a tiny square, exactly the size of the room and balcony above it. In this room is nothing but dead spiders and flies; the trip door in the ceiling which goes up into the room above; and a short door (for like a shrunken man) which leads out onto a narrow, narrow landing and to curving narrow steps down into the main house below.
So, maybe you might think it is nothing specialful, this tower, but to me it is the finest of all the towers in all the world. From the balcony I can see mountains in a ring all around, a circle of mountains, and on the very top of those mountains most of the year is white, white snow, and below the mountains is a blue-green lake, and above the mountains at night is a blue-black sky all pokeled with blue-white stars. From my tower, I can see all the casas in the village and I can see all the peoples coming and going. I can see all the birds flying in the air and the creatures crawling on the ground.
Only once in four hundred years did someone live in the room beneath the balcony, the one with the narrow cot. A servant girl lived there. She had summoned me, and I stayed in the tower watching over her until another angel came and took her away. I did not see that angel because I was outside collecting figs, but I heard the flooshing and saw the golden light. After that, no one ever stayed in that room except for me. Sometimes when the wind is blowering hard and bellowing like a bull, I slip through the trip door and into the bed with the feather duvet. An angel does not
need
a bed, but sometimes I think the bed needs an angel.
I do not know what I mean. The words are maybe not right.
O
n her first night in Casa Rosa, Zola climbs the narrow, ziggy stone steps to the tower and clambers through the tripping door up to the balcony. I am lolling at the time, draped over the windowsill, smashing figs. Below me are the blue hills slipping down to the lake, and above floats a chalky white balloon moon, which is sending light beams down to the deep blue lake.
Zola does not seem afraid. I'm not in the definite that she can see me at all, but right away she says, “
Ciao
,” and leans over the sill, studying the smashed figs dripping down the stone. “An angel?” she adds.
There you have it. She knows right away. Most peoples don't. Sometimes young children seem to see or feel
something
, but they do not have the words for what they see. Usually those children blink or squint as if the light is too bright.
One child once pointed right at me and said, “Pipple! Pipple!”
His mother paid no attention, as if maybe the child said silly words all day long.
The boy squinched his eyes nearly closed. “Pipple!”
“What
are
you saying?” his mother asked. “Pickle? You want a pickle? You'll have to wait until we get home.” As she tugged the boy along, he swingled his head around to see me. “Pipple? Pipple?”
“When we get home!” his mother said, not very kindly.
But now, in the tower, here is the Zola girl, and she seems not at all surprised to see me, and she is saying, “An angel?”
“I live here,” I say.
“Hmm. And you plan on staying here?”
Honestly! Peoples, what do they think? They can barge in and move angels out?
“Yes. I
live
here.”
“Mmm. Well, then, if you are going to continue to live here, I assume you will help me.”
I do not like her assuming that I will help her. I don't have to do any such thing.
“I bet you are a clever angel,” she says. “
Extremely
clever. You're a bit young, but no younger than me. . . .”
Peoples think they know everything! I am maybe hundreds of years old!
Zola smashes a fig against the wall, much as I do. “An angel in our tower is certainly better than snakes in our tower.”
Our
tower? Peoples!
Zola smills, smuggles, what is that word? What is it, that word for the happy teeth?? Smule? Smale? Smile? Smile! She does the smile, showing her white teeth, mostly straight and enough large. In the moonlight, her crippy-croppy hair shines silver and blue.
Zola says, “I guess we'll be a team. I am
truly
and
deeply
honored.”
Honored? Truly? Deeply?
Well, that is a pinch better.
As Zola turns to zag her way back down the steps, she adds, “Feel free to hover about”âshe waves a fig-smudged hand through the airâ“and get the feel of things. There will be a lot of activity around here. Intervene whenever you like!” With that, she disappears down the steps.
Peoples!
Hover?
I do not hover!
Feel free?
Of course I will feel free, whether she tells me to or not.
Intervene?
Of course I will intervene . . . if I
choose
to.