Chapter 39 Bird
BIRD
Either society collapses at the stroke of twelve, like the past hundred years have just been some kind of Cinderella-esque dream and we’re about to be plunged back into the Dark Ages, or the spell will hold and things will move ahead like they have been, no one the wiser.
It takes me ten tries, but I get my last clove cigarette lit.
There’s no sound anywhere except the hissing of my lungs sucking in the smoke and pushing it back out again.
Time is running out on college applications and I don’t have any plans and I honestly don’t even really care.
No word from Kayla since last week, after our friendship imploded.
But that’s freed up space for my brain to hop back on the Jessa train with a vengeance.
Especially tonight. Because not too long ago I imagined I’d finally have someone to kiss at midnight, and even though I’m still so mad at her, it’s New Year’s Eve, and if the world is ending in seven hours, I want to hear her voice.
Feel her touch. Hell, even if the world isn’t ending, that’s what I want.
I lie down on the ground and make snow angels all by myself.
I’m pretty sure I’m clinically depressed.
I hear the screech of the back door. I stop angeling, but I bring the clove to my mouth again and inhale deeply.
“Are you friggin’ getting high out here?” Liv says.
I tip my head back and look at her, upside down, standing on the top step in slippers, her arms wrapped around her body, covered only by a midriff sweater, which strikes me as the most pointless article of clothing to ever be designed.
I raise the black cigarette in the air. “It’s a Djarum. And haven’t you been practicing how to ignore me for the past eight years? Can’t you just, like, do that now?”
“You need to pull your shit together, Bird.”
“Why, ’cause I’m embarrassing you?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I feel sorry for you, then… embarrassing that easily. Must be tough to be you, Liv.”
“Such a bitch,” she mutters to herself as she goes inside and slams the door behind her.
Something in my head slams closed too, or maybe it’s finally cracking open. I jump to my feet and don’t even savor the last drag off my very last clove; I just let it slip from my fingers and fall into the snow.
I follow after her and I don’t even take my coat or boots off. I catch up to her in the living room, where Daniel and my mom are sitting with Bailey and the twins, watching TV.
“Birdie, come on—you’re tracking snow in,” my mom says.
I shove past Liv and she shrieks.
“Hey!” Daniel almost yells… as close as he comes to yelling, anyway.
I’m pounding up the stairs and I push the door to our room open as hard as I can, letting it smash into the wall. My hands are aching to do something. They could tear down her pictures and posters. But no. That’s not enough.
My eyes focus on the stupid silver duct tape.
She walks into the room behind me just in time to witness me pulling that line up; the ripping sound it makes as it tears away from the carpet is more satisfying than any words I could think to say to her right now.
I gather the tape in a giant gross sticky ball and throw it at her face.
“Ahh! What is wrong with you?” she shouts, deflecting the duct-tape ball in what I’m sure is a volleyball move she’s perfected.
And now Mom and Daniel are calling up the stairs. “What’s going on? Girls?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me, Liv!” I shout. “That’s the point—nothing is wrong with me!”
I shove past her again, make my feet loud on the stairs. I’m headed for the door. But Mom’s following, saying, “Hold on, what is the problem?”
Liv is halfway down the stairs and I think she’s going to pile on, but she just sits down on a step and watches.
“Hey,” Daniel says, grabbing my arm, albeit gently. “Where do you think you’re going? Your mother’s talking to you.”
“Oh, Daniel.” I laugh through his name, shaking his hand off me. “Don’t try to act like you’re my father all of a sudden.”
“Elizabeth!” Mom shouts. “How dare you talk to him like that?”
“It’s okay,” Daniel says.
“No, it’s not!” she yells at Daniel, then to me: “Apologize right now.”
“Why?” I ask her. “It’s true. Do I call him Dad ? Did Charlie ever call him Dad ?”
Mom lets out this exaggerated breath and glances back at the younger kids, who are staring up at us. “Daniel, can you…?” She gestures and he gets it.
“Come on, guys. Bailey, Liv. Help me get the twins—we’re gonna give them some space.” Liv actually stands up and helps for once. Mom waits to say anything until they’re gone.
“What’s this really all about?” she finally asks, crossing her arms as she stands opposite me in front of the door.
“Does it need to be about something else?”
“Did Charlie put you up to this?” she asks. “Because I already told him to drop it.”
Charlie didn’t say anything about having any kind of conversation with our mom. But good for him. “Well, I’m not dropping it. We have a father out there somewhere, and it’s not fair for you to act like he doesn’t exist.”
“Daniel is your father!”
“But he’s not. He’s our stepfather. And you’re Liv’s stepmother. You’re not her mother—she has one already—and I don’t see anyone forcing her to pretend differently! I want to know where he is.”
“He left us, Bird!”
“He left you, maybe, but not me. Not Charlie. I was young, but I remember him and he loved us. He wouldn’t have wanted to never see us again. I want to know where he is,” I repeat, more firmly. “Now.”
She stands so still she’s almost vibrating. “You’re being naive.”
“And you’re being selfish!”
Daniel emerges from the other room now. He walks up to Mom, whose jaw is clenched so hard I think her teeth might crack, arms crossed so tight, and places his hands on her shoulders. “Just tell her, honey.”
So, even Daniel knows more about my own father than I do.
“Tell me what?”
She shakes her head, looks back at Daniel, uncrosses her arms, and goes over to the computer desk.
After pulling a small silver key out of a piece of Charlie’s childhood pottery, she opens the one locked file cabinet drawer and reveals a stack of mail.
Handfuls of envelopes. It looks like Dad’s handwriting.
She wouldn’t. She thumbs through them and selects one, holding it out to me.
“I don’t have a current phone number, but here. You can write to him.” She’s handing me the cream-colored envelope, pristine and crisp, as if it was just delivered. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I take it from her. As I turn it over, I see there’s a stamped postmark in the top right corner that says BOSTON and 1994.
The envelope has my name on it. His address in Boston is in the top left corner.
I run my finger under the seal and tear the envelope open, its contents not easily dislodging after five years.
It’s a card. A watercolor of a small bird on the front.
Finch, I think. Inside, a ten-dollar bill slides out into my hands, revealing careful cursive handwriting that reads: Happy 12th birthday, my Birdie!
This card reminded me of you. I hope you’re spreading your wings. Love always, Dad.
I look up at my mom, at the stack of mail still in her hand. I can make out Charlie’s name on one of the envelopes.
“Are those all from him?”
She doesn’t need to answer.
“I can’t believe you,” is all I can say.
“Birdie,” Daniel begins, “you don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t understand!”
“You’re old enough to know.” She takes a giant breath and looks at Daniel for support. “Your father left us for another man.”
“What?” I breathe.
“Yes, that’s right. He’s been living in Boston with another man all this time, Birdie.”
“Well… s-s-so what?” I shout. “Would it be different if he was with a woman? Would you have let him exist if he had left you for a woman instead? What gave you the right to just… just, just erase him from—”
“I was trying to protect you!” she interrupts.
I laugh, even though I’m starting to cry, even though I’m more angry and hurt right now than I’ve ever been in my entire life. “That’s a terrible excuse, you know that?”
I grab my bag and coat off the rack and open the door. Mom snatches my coat from my hands. “Stop it, Birdie. We need to talk!”
“You had ten years to talk—you never talked! You never said a word. And I’m not going to sit here and listen to you try to justify keeping him away from his own kids.”
She’s shaking her head. “You’re my kids—I’d never let someone like that around my children.”
“We’re his children too!”
“He has AIDS, Birdie,” my mom blurts out, in a pathetic attempt to stop me in my tracks. It has to be a lie, I know that, but still. My heart. Just. Stops. “So, yes, I was protecting you. And your brother,” she shouts at me. “I’ve always been protecting you.”
“You’re lying!”
“She’s not lying,” Daniel says, quieter.
Now my heart pumps double time, fluttering yet so unbelievably heavy inside my chest, because I don’t think Daniel would participate in this kind of deranged story, even for my mom.
“I can’t,” I’m saying. “I c-can’t even… I need to go. I need to get of here.” I yank my coat from her grasp and I’m out the door.
I need Jessa.
I start walking in the direction of her house, and I’m crying so hard now I can barely see two feet in front of me.
If it’s true—it can’t be true, but if it is—I have to stop to catch my breath.
If he’s sick, there’s no time to wait and wonder and waste.
I make it three blocks before I realize I’m still holding the envelope.
I wipe my eyes and look at it before I carefully tuck it inside my notebook.
I know what I need to do. But I’m terrified I’ve found my courage too late.
The headlights blind me and I get ready for round two with Mom, but then I realize it’s Jessa calling my name. It’s Jessa running toward me. It’s Jessa, here when I need her the most.
We hug and kiss and I can’t really understand what she’s saying. I think we’re both trying to apologize over each other.
And then I see the blood.