Birdspell Read online

  I guess it would be just as hard to understand the anxiety that gripped me on my way up the stairs to my apartment, knowing my mother was back.

  The last couple of visits with Mom at the hospital had been okay. So that was good. Not so good was the fact that the talks I’d hoped for hadn’t happened. She just got angry when I didn’t go along with her, pretending everything was fine. Which meant none of the things bothering me got discussed. Not with Mom anyway.

  I did talk to Sitta.

  “No pressure, buddy, but if you have any secret powers, don’t be shy to use them.”

  Sitta’s response was a tilted head followed by a bit of preening. I told myself I wasn’t disappointed. I hadn’t really expected him to do anything. Or, if I had, it was in a small and not-at-all serious way.

  Because of course I know he didn’t actually do anything the night he said, “Spell, spell!” I’m not superstitious enough to think it was anything more than a coincidence — the way everything changed dramatically right after that.

  As I stood in the hallway outside our apartment, I wondered what I might have to deal with inside. It shouldn’t be anything — not yet. Not this soon after the last spiral.

  The pattern rarely varies. Mom is a bit like a balloon — floating along peacefully for a while and then, as if someone stuck a pin into her, flying around like mad until she lands face down on the floor, limp and deflated.

  I took a deep breath, stuck my key in the lock, and turned the doorknob.

  “Corbin? Is that you, hon?” Mom’s voice greeted me before her smile. She emerged from the kitchen and hurried toward me.

  “Hi, Mom.” A grin showed up on my face. She looked happy. And pretty.

  “I was going to cook a nice dinner for you,” she said as she reached out for a hug. “But Mike’s bringing something. Chicken, I hope.”

  “I hope so too,” I agreed.

  “The place looks great,” she said. “You guys took good care of things.”

  “Mike made a schedule,” I told her.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Maybe we should make one too.”

  I almost suggested using Mike’s. Almost. What stopped me was the sudden realization that Mom’s eyes weren’t smiling. It stopped at her mouth. That told me she was trying to look and feel a whole lot happier than she actually did. It also meant it would be a bad idea to contradict anything she said. Even something simple could upset whatever thin grip she had on her forced good cheer.

  “Sure!” I agreed. Because when Mom’s trying so hard, I try right along with her. A couple of pretenders, but sometimes it feels pretty close to real.

  I took care of Sitta and then Mom and I went to the kitchen and sat at the table. Mom made herself a cup of tea and I poured a glass of milk. I knew she’d have questions. She always does when she’s been absent, even if her absence hasn’t actually taken her out of wherever we’re living. It’s like she needs to fill in the gap. She admitted once that she feels guilty for missing chunks of my life.

  Sure enough, she started asking me things.

  — How was school going? (Fine. Good, really.)

  — Did the girl I got Sitta from — what was her name again — still come over? (Her name’s Izelle and yes, she comes to visit Sitta on Mondays. He likes it when she comes to see him.)>

  — Was I enjoying having the bird? (A lot. And I’ve learned some cool things about taking care of a bird, like sprouting things for him and stuff.)

  When she asked me if there was anything new going on with me, I knew that would be the last question. I told her about the babysitting job with Molly, even though it wasn’t exactly new, because I hadn’t told her about it before.

  “Well,” Mom said, “I guess we’re all caught up now.”

  She reached over and patted my hand. A tell. I waited for what I knew was coming next.

  “Corbin, I know things have been hard on you lately.”

  “I’m okay,” I told her.

  “That’s not the point. You shouldn’t have to be worrying about me, and I know you do. Because of the illness.”

  I said nothing to that. My throat gets tight at this part of our catch-up talk.

  “I just want you to know that things are going to be different from now on.”

  Sure they are. No. Try to be optimistic. This could be the time!

  “I promise.”

  Promise number — I’ve lost track. Forty, maybe?

  Again I tell myself to stop. Turn off the cynicism. But I couldn’t quite find the valve as she continued.

  She spent a good half hour trying to persuade me to believe her. Not that I said I didn’t, but if you’ve broken your word as many times as Mom has, you probably know you’ve really got to sell it.

  And the thin thread of hope I’ve been clutching for so long told me one more time that it’s possible. It’s always possible. This time could be different.

  Mike got there just after I’d finished doing my homework.

  He brought Thai food. Mom told him it was exactly what she’d been hoping for.

  Twenty-five

  MOM HAS BEEN BACK at home for nearly two months and so far she’s doing pretty well. That used to be practically the only thing that mattered in my world, because so much depended on it. But lately I’ve realized something else that’s important. To me.

  I want to stay here, in our apartment on Westlester Street, until I graduate.

  Before we moved here, the longest we’d ever lived in one place was when we had an apartment on Standing Crescent. The landlord there was nice. He rode out a couple of Mom’s episodes and even let her work off a delinquent month’s rent by having her clean the hallways for a while.

  That was a few years ago, and we lived there for nine months. I didn’t like it though. The apartment was dark and musty and there always seemed to be a lot of noise in the hallways.

  There was a homeless man who often sat near our building there, and I used to watch the way people hurried past, acting as if they didn’t even see him. In a strange way I felt like we were kind of the same, because there were times when I needed help and no one saw how scared or desperate I was.

  I wished I could do something for the homeless man, but of course I had no money and it seemed I had nothing to offer him. Except, I discovered that wasn’t quite true. I did have something.

  For the rest of the time we lived there, I stopped and talked to him whenever I was going by. Not about anything important. Just, “Hi, how are you?” kind of stuff.

  His name was Carl.

  Talking to Carl didn’t put food in his stomach, or warm socks on his feet, but I saw, after a while, that it gave him something else. Exactly what, I’m not sure, but whatever it was, it made him smile.

  After we moved, I realized that the whole time we lived there, Carl was the only one who got to know my name or asked me how I was doing.

  I didn’t miss the place when the landlord finally ran out of patience, but I kind of missed Carl. I still think about him now and then and I hope he’s okay.

  The apartment we’re in now is different than anywhere else I can remember living. It’s the first one that’s felt like home. Like there’s a community we belong to.

  Mr. Zinbendal is nothing like he seemed at first. I like him a lot, especially the cool stories he tells about the old days. He plays cribbage with me and pretends he’s trying to cheat, but I know he isn’t really because he always makes sure I catch him. It makes both of us laugh.

  He’s become friends with Mom too, although sometimes I see him looking at her sadly and I know he’s thinking about his own daughter. A month after Mom got out of the hospital he gave us a recliner he had in his storage unit. It used to be his wife’s favorite chair and he never could bring himself to sit in it after she had a stroke and died. It’s really comfortable, and it makes him ha
ppy to see us using it.

  Most weeks we take turns having meals at each others’ places. Mom says Mr. Zinbendal reminds her a little of her grandfather and he says we’ve become like family.

  And there’s Taylor and Molly and their mom, Sandra. I met their dad once too, but a long haul trucker isn’t home that much. Molly runs and hugs me when I go there to babysit. She calls me Cobin and she trusts me for things like making sure her food isn’t too hot, or catching her when she flings herself off the couch.

  And there’s Izelle, who I count even though she doesn’t live in the building. She still comes to see Sitta every week, but we also hang out sometimes. Ever since I told her the truth about my mom she keeps proving I was right to be honest with her. For one thing, she didn’t start acting all different, and — more important — she didn’t blab it around school. Not a word. That made it easy to tell her other stuff I’ve never talked about before — to anyone. Of course, she can’t fix my problems or anything like that, but just having someone to talk to makes a big difference. It sort of makes me feel, I don’t know, lighter, in a way.

  Then there’s Mom.

  Mom got a job not long after her last hospital stay, at a dry-cleaning place called So Fresh Cleaners. She works the counter, waiting on the customers when they bring garments in or pick them up. It’s a twenty-minute bus ride each way and her shift starts at 8:00 every morning, which means I have the apartment to myself before school.

  Every weekend we go grocery shopping and Mom lets me help pick things out, since I do a lot of the cooking. Sometimes Mike takes us and we all have lunch out somewhere, but if he’s busy, Mom and I manage okay on the bus.

  One day, as we were putting away our grub, Mom noticed a can of black olives in the cupboard.

  “When did we get these?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. Mom isn’t a fan of olives.

  “Mike got them when he was staying here,” I said.

  Mom put the can back. She was silent for a few seconds and then, without warning, she reached over and gave me a fierce hug.

  “I’m sorry things get so hard sometimes,” she said. “I hope you know, in spite of all that, how much — how very much I love you.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said. I hugged her back.

  “You’re the only thing,” she said, leaning away enough to look me in the eyes, “the only thing that really, truly matters to me.”

  She let go then and put the olives back in the cupboard.

  “That’s why I made those arrangements with Mike,” she said quietly, “even though I hated the idea of someone else here in my place.”

  “Everything’s okay now, though,” I said. “Better than okay.” And it was true.

  Evenings are good too. Mom goes to bed early most nights — she gets tired easily, but I’m not sure if it’s just that. Mike gave us a sweet deal on the television he brought here (an excuse to get a bigger one for his place he said) so it’s ours now, but Mom doesn’t seem to enjoy watching it. She keeps complaining that it’s hard to follow what’s happening because the story lines jump around too much. Except, I can tell she’s not really paying attention most of the time, which is probably because of the meds she’s on. Her doctor always tells her to be patient and wait out the side effects.

  That doesn’t really bother me since I like watching TV alone anyway.

  So, yeah. Things have been decent. Which is what got me thinking about how much I want it to stay that way. And how great it would be to stay here.

  It took me a while to bring that up with Mom. That had to be handled just right, by which I mean approached casually. Otherwise, Mom might have felt I was making accusations and gotten defensive. This time, I just worked it into the conversation.

  It was Sunday afternoon. We’d gone to church that morning (something we do once in a while when Mom gets the urge) and walked home after the service was over.

  On the way, we stopped at a place where they sell pizza by the slice. Mom got pepperoni and I got one Hawaiian and one deluxe. Just up the road from there was a tiny park — the kind with a tree, a couple of bushes, a patch of grass, and a bench. We sat there to eat — Mom taking nibble-sized bites of her slice while I wolfed mine down. She was only halfway through hers when I’d finished.

  “This is a nice spot,” I observed, looking around. “You couldn’t tell it was here when it was still snowy.”

  “Not very private, though,” Mom said.

  “True. But I like this neighborhood. I’m glad we moved here.”

  “Mmm,” said Mom.

  “I like our building too.”

  Mom stopped eating and looked at me. “What do you like about it?”

  “The people, I guess. They’re nicer than other places we’ve lived.”

  Mom seemed to consider that. She’s not dumb, so she had to know the difference had more to do with how things were going in our lives. I mean, you can find nice people and not so nice people pretty much anywhere.

  “We do have a good neighbor,” she said after a bit.

  “Do you think we can stay here?”

  “That’s something you want?” she said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s pretty hard to make permanent plans,” Mom told me.

  “Not permanent, exactly. But could we stay until I finish high school?”

  Mom bit into her pizza again. She chewed and swallowed before answering.

  “We have to live somewhere,” she said. “Might as well be where we are now, if you like it so much.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I could hardly believe how well the conversation had gone. I wasn’t sure I should press my luck, but I couldn’t help it. Just a little. I did something that Mom used to do with me a lot when I was younger.

  “Care to do a pinkie swear?” I said, leaning in and speaking in a whisper the way she always had.

  Mom’s eyes lit up with laughter. She held up her right hand and circled my little finger with hers.

  “You’ve got it,” she said. “I swear!”

  It was the most hopeful I could ever remember feeling.

  Twenty-six

  “I TOLD YOU SITTA was brilliant! Just look at him!”

  Sitta is smart, don’t get me wrong, but I had to hide a smile at the boast Izelle had just made. I turned to her.

  “What did he do?” I asked, even though I’d been watching too.

  “Molly tried to sneak up on him — didn’t you see it? Sitta kept moving just out of her reach until he reached the corner, then he flew back to where he started.”

  “Molly’s pretty scary sometimes,” I said.

  Izelle laughed. “To you maybe. I think she’s as cute as a button.”

  “I haven’t seen a lot of super cute buttons,” I said, watching as Molly gave up her stealth approach and made a stubby-legged run at Sitta, who lifted into the air at the last second.

  “See? He’s a genius!” Izelle insisted.

  “Even though the human he’s outsmarting is still in diapers?” I asked. This got me a playful swat on the arm.

  “Muffoo,” said Molly. She’d abandoned the chase and had come to stand squarely in front of me.

  “We don’t have any muffins,” I told her, “but I think I can find you a snack if Izelle will watch you while I go check.”

  “Sure.” Izelle reached for the bag of toys Taylor had dropped off along with Molly about half an hour earlier.

  It was the first time I’d ever babysat Molly at my place. Taylor had come to the door looking agitated only minutes after Izelle and I got there after school.

  “Can you watch Molly for, maybe an hour or so?” she asked. Then, spying Izelle, “Oh. You have company. But I can bring her here if that’s okay.”

  I’d agreed, although I didn’t know what Izelle would think of a toddler running around while she was having her visi
t with Sitta. Molly can get pretty wild.

  Izelle hadn’t minded at all. The sound of the two of them singing Itsy Bitsy Spider reached me as I washed, cored, and sliced an apple. I put some little cheese cubes in the center of a plate and arranged the apple slices around it like flower petals, because Molly loves it when her food looks special.

  “Oooh!” Izelle said when I took the snack to Molly. “Look, Molly! What’s this?”

  “Fower!” Molly said. She’s not a big fan of the letter L yet.

  “That’s right … flower!” Izelle said. She clapped so of course Molly and I joined in.

  “FOWER!” Molly said again, much louder. Her eyes snapped and shone with excitement and pride.

  There was a lot of clapping for the next few minutes as Molly repeated her big announcement, looking back and forth between me and Izelle. Eventually, she either got bored or hunger won out, and she wound down and gobbled the “fower” up.

  Taylor was back in less than an hour. She smiled, but it was obviously forced and her eyes were angry.

  “Thanks, Corbin,” she said. “I’ll take pea pod off your hands now.”

  Molly was already racing toward her, arms lifted and joy on her little face. Taylor scooped her up and planted a kiss on her chubby cheek. “Were you good for Corbin?” she asked.

  “Of course she was,” I said. “Hang on and I’ll grab her stuff.”

  I did that, with Izelle’s help, while Molly chattered away with her own private language. I can never figure out if she’s actually trying to say something, or just mimicking conversation with random sounds.

  When I passed Taylor the bag with Molly’s things, she leaned in and said, “If DJ ever comes to my place when you’re watching Molly, don’t let him in.”

  “What did he do?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

  “Nothing to her,” Taylor said, quickly. “But I just broke up with the cheating lowlife and I don’t want him around.”