Read The Unfinished Angel Online
Authors: Sharon Creech
The Unfinished Angel (2 page)
A
n angel is supposed to be a happy being, no? Angels are supposed to float about bringing love and goodwill and protection and good fortune, no? I do not know where I got these ideas. Maybe they are wrong. Me, I am not feeling all that cheerful with all the peoples around, and I am not finding many peoples deserving of the splashes of love and good fortune, even if I knew how to splash and where to get the love and good fortune.
I am only feeling floaty when I am swishing up into the mountains to see the goats. Goats do not talk. They mostly are chewing the grassy plants and occasionally saying
Beh, beh, beh,
in a low, cricky voice.
It must be that I did not get the right training for the angels that work with peoples. Maybe I was supposed to be a different kind of angel, one of those that swoop down from above when peoples die and then lead them up to heaven. I think that kind of angel only does transport. Maybe I was supposed to be a transport angel but by mistake was dropped off as a ground angel.
Maybe you think I should just fly up to heaven and ask some questions, but it is not that easy. I do not know where heaven is nor where the angel training center is nor where any other angels are. And yes, I have looked.
Maybe I could wait by the bed of a dying person and then when a transport angel comes, I could follow the angel and the dead person up to heaven. I wonder if the transport angels ever make mistakes and take the wrong peoples, ones who are not actually dying.
I
tell you, Zola is not resembling other young peoples up here in the mountains. She wears many clothes on top of other ones, like this: three dresses, one atop each other, or sometimes two skirts under a third and layers of scarves around her middle and her neckle and in her hair. It is not even cold out, I am telling you. It is summer.
Everything is very bright colors, some colors I do not know the names for, more than raspberry and emerald and turquoise and periwinkle (that is a color, right?), yellows like the sun and the birds, and oranges like the apricots and the tangerines and the melons. And rainbows of ribbons on her wrists and ankles and neckle and in her hair. I thought maybe she did not have the cupboard for to put her clothes in and so she had to wear everything she owns, but there is much space in this house. Maybe she cannot choose and just keeps adding clothing until it surpleases her.
What to make of this peacock girl marching along swinging her arms and singing into the air?
Today, on the path up to Montagnola, Zola passes Signora Mondopoco making her slow, hunched way down the hill.
Zola stops to greet the Signora.
“Ciao!”
Signora Mondopoco peeks at Zola with all her clothes and colors and then she glances down at her own feets. It is not cold outside, but Signora Mondopoco is wearing short boots with a fringe of brown fur sticking out the tops. The Signora points to the fur and says, “Baa, baa, baa. Is real!”
“Fur, fleece? From a lamb?” Zola presses her dainty hands to her chest. “How especially perfect,” she says, quite seriously, as if Signora Mondopoco has just offered a crucial fact of existence.
Later, Zola clabbers up to the tower, sticking flowers in her hair and dancing about and singing, “Turenia, Bedenia, my name is Eugenia.”
“Not Zola?” I say.
“Today I am Eugenia.” She is moving in a slowly liquidy way as if her arms and legs were on long strings pulled by an invisible being. “Turenia, Bedenia, my name is Eugenia. Have you seen my Row-row-rowena?”
“No, I have not.”
“Sa-la, then,” she says, swillowing back to the ladder hole.
“Sa-la,” I say.
F
rom the tower this morning just before the light crawls up behind the mountain, I spy Signora Divino in her housecoat and her muddy garden boots dragging a big black snake into the yard of Casa Rosaâmy yard and the American Pomodoro yard now, too. She shoves the snake into our woodpile and says, “
Ciao, ciao. Avanti!
”
The snake is not fast moving in the chilly morning, but it manages to keep pace with Signora Divino, following her back to her yard. She turns and sees it. “Acka!” She says some other words, too, words no one should hear, they are so ugly. She picks up the snake and drags it back into the yard of Casa Rosa and says, “
Avanti, avanti!
” She spits at the snake to show she means business corporate.
I drop a pinecone from the tower and it lands on the Signora's head. It does not hurt her, but it makes her mad. She shakes her fist at the air and says some more ugly words.
Later in the morning a banana peel flies over the hedge from the Divino yard into our yard. You do not do this in Switzerland. You do not make garbage fly around.
Next comes a rotten apple.
Splut!
A soft fig.
Splut!
Two pieces of salami.
Suh. Suh.
I am just getting ready to toss a pinecone when Zola zigs out of the house and yells into the bushes. “Stop that, whoever is doing that! Stop it right now!”
Another fig.
Splut.
Zola, she surprises me, she turns into a bull cow and blasts through the bushes, and I have to float fast so I can see her lean toward Vinny and say, “Listen, you piffling toad, you keep your garbage in your own yard, you hear me?”
The piffling toad steps away from her and says, “
Non capisco!
Ha!” He doesn't know what she has said.
This makes Zola very mad. She says, “You
capro
! You
porco
! You
gallo
!”
I guess she does not know the word for
toad.
Instead, she has called Vinny a goat, a pig, and a rooster.
Vinny says, “
Pomodoro
means
tomato
!” Then he runs into his grandmother's house and slams the door.
Zola Pomodoro stares at the door. “Nuthead!”
Y
ou won't believe this, but there are peoples who pay money to other peoples to wash their hairs and even to paint colors on their toes. Is really! And in the same world of peoples there are other peoples who have to crawl in the dirt scrounging for a measly piece of garbage to eat. I am not fabbagrating! Don't get me started.
At night I swish in the heads of the peoples with the clean hairs and feets, showing them the peoples crawling in the dirt, but in the morning when the clean peoples wake up they have already forgotten. I think maybe it is my fault that they forget so quick and so it is my fault that there are peoples who have to crawl in the dirt. I am not knowing enough. What are the other angels doing?
I
am leaning over the balcony of my tower watching Signora Divino gather fat orange slugs in her yard. She is wearing her sturdy black shoes and her plain black dress and over the top of the dress is a pink bedjacket. This is shockful because Signora Divino only and always wears black to show that she was once a married lady but now her husband is dead. But here she is with the pink bedjacket. Signora Divino does not wear pink and peoples do not normally wear bedjackets outside.
It is while I am wondering about this pink bedjacket that Zola clabbers up the winding steps to the tower and saysâwithout any politeness of hello or
ciao
â“Angel! You have to do something about the kids in the barn!”
I do not like it when peoples tell me I
have
to do something. It makes me want to
not do
the something. I pretend I am not hearing today.
“Angel! Why haven't you done something about the kids in the barn?”
I pretend I am studying the cobwebs under the roof. Zola, she is all orange and yellow and turquoise, with three skirts and a blouse and a shawl and a purple ribbon wound around her ankle and green feathers in her hair. I glance at Signora Divino, gathering slugs in her pink bedjacket. The pink bedjacket does not appear so strange now.
“Angel!”
Zola is not going to let me alone, I can see. I am not
stupido
.
“What barn?” I say. “What kids?”
“On the path up to Montagnola,” she says. “That ancient barn.”
“What ancient barn?” All the buildings here are ancient, but there are no barns left in the village.
“On the path going up the hill. Across from the pink house. On the right. Upâyou knowâup there.” She wivvles her arm toward the path and the hill.
“Oh,” I say. “That shidâshadâshed broken thing? That used to hold chickens? That thing?”
Zola gruntles, not very happy. “I don't know what you call it or what used to be there, but I'm talking about the kids that are there now.”
“What kids?”
“Angel! You're supposed to know everything!”
I am? This is a little shock to me. No, it is a big shock. Because I am not knowing many, many things.
Zola does not look too happy with me. She says, “There are kids there, living there, in that dark and dirty and cold place. A bunch of them. Eight or ten. Maybe more. They're skinny and hungry and dirty. It is extremely tragical.”
“Why are they living there?”
“Angel!” Zola holds her head in her hands as if I am giving her a very big headache. “That's what I'm asking
you.
You're supposed to know these things. You're supposed to fix these things.”
Know
and
fix? How does Zola know these things? Why does she know them and I don't? I am not feeling so good.
I
float
rapido
up to the shid-shad-shed which used to hold the chickens of the family Polterini and before that many long years ago the chickens and very nasty rooster of the family Zucchini, and before thatâwell, I am only saying that I have been around a long time and I know exactly this place Zola is talking about, and I would know if there were childrens living there, especially if the childrens were skinny and hungry and dirty. I do not like peoples to be hungry. Especially I do not like them to be hungry when other peoples give money to someones for painting their toes.
But this is Switzerland, and childrens should not go hungry here. I think it is against the law. So it is impossible what Zola says, right?
And see? The shad is empty. No childrens. When Zola arrives, I say, “Empty.”
“Are you sure?” Zola scrambles over the fence and up the hill and peers in through the straggly wire fencing. “They're probably out scavenging for food,” she says.
I make a snort sound, which Zola does not like.
“Angel, you are disappointing me!”
What?
This hurts my feeling.
Zola is standing with her hands on her hips and giving me a muddy look. “Angel! Come back when it is dark. You'll see.” Zola runs down the path. I think she's supposed to be helping Mr. Pomodoro get the school ready for students from all over the world who are going to be nice to each other and make the world peaceful.
I wonder how they think this is going to happen, the peaceful part. I have been watching peoples a long time and they get mad at one another very easily. They are not calming down.
At night I return to the chicken place, not expecting to find anything except maybe some snakes and bats, but to my surprisement there are kids there, about eight or nine of them, skinny and dirty. They are huddled in a corner under one torn blanket and they are gnawing at a loaf of bread. The youngest one, maybe he is five or six years old, is sniveling. “Mama,” he whimpers. “I want Mama.”
“
Zitti!
” says a bigger kid. “Somebody'll hear you and then we'll all get carted off to jail.”
This makes the youngest cry harder. I float over and beam warm beams down on them. Poor little things. No mamas. Cold. In the dark.
I am being confused. Where do they come from? How long have they been there? Why haven't
I
seen them? I am not knowing what to do.
T
hat night I do not sleep. I float here and there and far up in the mountains where the goats are closing their eyes and leaning against each other. I float past the huts and meadows and bridges and streams. I peer in the chicken shads and the pigpens. There are chickens and pigs there. No childrens. The childrens are in the huts and casas with their mamas and papas where they belong.
The next morning I whiz south, back to my tower in the Ticino. The tower is sitting in a cloud. It is the misty driplets that come some mornings and wrap around the village so that all you can see around you is the white cloud. You cannot see the mountains opposite, you cannot see the houses on the hillside or even the roads or the lake down below. The sounds are miffled, as if a big scarf is wrapped around the village.
When I float through the house, I see Mr. Pomodoro in a baggy robe standing in front of the mantel, staring at the photo of the little boy. Mr. Pomodoro's hair is in bed mess and his shoulders are aslump. He puts his finger on the photograph in such a tender way that you can see his heart is very big for this little boy. I float back to my tower to wonder about the boy.
It is so quiet, quiet, until Vinny bangs on a metal bucket and his grandmother, Signora Divino, shouts at him to shut downâ
“Zitti! Zitti!”
âbut he keeps on banging. Then Zola joggets out of her house and bellows into the hedge, “Stop that racket, you artichoke!” But the artichoke doesn't stop, and Zola pushes through the gate and grabs the metal bucket and throws it into the pond of frogs.
Signora Divino hobbles out of her house in her pink bedjacket (again!) and says many ugly words to Zola in Italian and Zola says them right back at her, even though I do not think Zola knows what they mean.
Signora Divino is
molto
insulted that Zola has spoken to her in this rude way. “I tell your father!” Signora Divino threatens.
“I have no father,” Zola says. “I am an orphan and my name is Fillipa Millipa.”
I am thinking angels should not be having headaches, but I am having one, very pounding one.
Zola shouts up at the tower, “Can't you do anything about these morons?”
I wish Zola would not be talking to me like that, out in the air. Signora Divino and her grandson, Vinny, glance up at the tower and then at each other and then at Zola. They do not see me.
Zola says to Vinny, “If you want to bang on something, why don't you bang on some drums?”
Vinny stamps his foot like a horse and makes his neck very straight like a goose. “I
do
drums,” he says. “
Molto
years.
Molto
good.”
Zola presses her small hand to her heart theatrically. “I most sincerely doubt that,” Zola says, and she leaves, which makes Vinny even madder, because he is left with only his grandma to give the show-off to.
Zola zips right up to the tower. “Angel! Where were you last night? And what are you doing about the children in the chicken barn?”
This Zola is a lot bossy.