Four and Twenty Blackbirds

I always chased the birds away from the ponds and puddles, determined to save my frog buddies; but then I climbed a tree and saw a nest filled with downy baby birds, chirruping with hunger, waiting for their parents to bring them food.

My mother smiled when I asked her—should I chase the birds or let the frogs get eaten? "Well," she said, "they all gotta eat. It'll balance out in the end, with or without you chasing 'em."

So when I saw a bird get a frog, I closed my eyes and remembered the baby birds and how they'd all gotta eat. And this was how it was bound to be, whether or not I was there to interfere. But in the meantime, I played with the frogs in the backyard, and I loved them while I had them. And I was always careful not to step on them, even though they were sometimes hard to see out there in the grass.

I crouched down and poked at one, pushing it onto my open fingers. Its little throat inflated and it let out a happy gribbit.

"Hello, froggie."

Behind me, up in the cabin, something splintered and broke. It sounded like someone was falling. I scrunched my forehead and listened closer. No, there wasn't anything. All was quiet. Mother was cooking. She must have dropped something.

My froggie's throat swelled again and it started its hoarse song. I held him up to my face and felt his whispering breath. They usually didn't let me hold them so long. It was the neatest thing I'd ever seen. I wanted to share it with my momma. I stood slowly, making sure not to disturb the frog prince and his music. I covered him with my other hand, cupping him carefully so that his singing echoed around in my palm.

With cautious steps, I made my way back to the house.

Gotta show Momma.

I shifted my eyes from my hands to the ground. Gotta walk easy. It took me five full minutes to get to the front of the house.

One step. Took it so soft it didn't even creak.

Two steps. Didn't make a sound on that one either. I stared at my hands, then stared at the ground. I stared at my feet. Lifted them again . . . so slow. Stared at the top stair of the porch. Stepped up onto it without a sound.

I held out the frog and lifted my head, prepared to announce my wonderful new pal—and stopped myself. My father was there. His back was to the door. My mother was on the bed. She wasn't moving. Her arm was hanging down, almost touching the floor. A long trail of red spilled down it, dripping from her middle finger to form a small puddle on the floor.

Another drop fell with a little splash.

And another. And another.

My father was doing something to her—something I couldn't see. His arm was cranking back and forth, and the one-roomed home was filled with the sounds of uneven sawing, the rubbing of sharp metal teeth across something solid but wet.

The little fellow in my hand chose exactly this moment to speak.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

My father stopped what he was doing. He turned. And I saw . . . and I saw . . . I saw what he was doing. I saw Momma's right hand hanging by a sliver of skin. I saw the white bones poking through the red, shredded flesh. I saw her eyes gone up in her head, and her mouth open and her skin going pale and gray. And my father had done this to her.

And he had seen me.

I took one step back.

"Now, pretty one . . . now . . ."

I took another step back.

"Miabella."

Without taking my eyes away from my father's, I squatted down and put the frog on the edge of the porch. It hopped down and disappeared into the weeds.

"Miabella," he said again.

But by then I was already running.

My little legs pumped hard, and fast, and my bare feet did not even notice the twigs and roots they stomped across. I was always barefoot, and the naked ground did not intimidate me. It did not slow me.

Footsteps pounded hard behind me, drawing closer until I took a turn through a more narrow place, a place where the trees grew closer together. A place where the ground was soggier, and then downright wet. I was splashing and ducking, and he was not keeping up. I didn't know where I was going, but my father couldn't catch me, and that was all that mattered.

"Miabella? Miabella! Miabella!" He was crying louder, but his voice was growing more distant. I was losing him. I was getting away.

And then I was falling.

Falling through water, so black and thick that when I opened my eyes I saw nothing. My feet could not feel the bottom below, and my hands could not find the air above. At first I went wild and thrashed, fighting to find which way might be up, even if it meant my father was there. But the water was all mud, and creeping things were swimming about. I felt small, webbed toes shove off against my arm and was less afraid. No, not afraid at all.

My father was above, covered with my mother's blood.

I had gone below, with the creeping things, and the hopping things. It was better there. The frogs would care for me, as I had cared for them. They would keep me safe here in the mud, where I played with them when the sun was warm and the grass was tall.

They would . . . sing me to sleep in this new . . . in this new, thick darkness. They . . . would watch over me. They would . . . protect me. The frogs were my keepers, and they would keep me . . . from harm. Yes. Everything . . . was going to be . . . fine. The frogs would help me.

Or perhaps the. . . birds.

Epilogue

"You haven't got a mark on you," Lulu said, shifting to position herself more lazily in the big bed she and Dave share at home. "Rather miraculous, I'd say."

"No more so than your recovery." I squeezed her hand and she let me, then pried it away in pursuit of orange juice.

"Nothing to recover from."

"And there was nothing to mark me," I retorted, watching her down the juice and reclaiming her hand when she set it down again. I played with the wedding ring there, twisting the band in a groove around her finger. "I don't know why you were so worried, anyway."

She sighed and leaned her head back into the pillows, which aimed her eyes safely away from me and at the ceiling. "That old woman, you know. That's all. And that damned boy. They never did catch him, did they?"

"I don't think they did, no. Not last I heard."

Harry had argued about that one, at first. But in the end, I couldn't let them take Malachi. I'm not sure why—maybe because he'd tried to help me, or maybe because I was still so sorry for him, even after all this time. Maybe it was just as simple as that Malachi was the only link I had to my father, and though he hadn't wanted anything to do with me, I wanted some connection to him regardless.

Malachi made me feel less marooned. He made me feel like there was someone out there I didn't have to explain anything to. That's why I bullied Harry the way I did, and got him to take my brother back to the monastery. There he'll be cared for by the priests and the other penitents in their quiet, reflective world. I can't think of a better place for him. Lulu and Dave would probably freak out if they knew, and insist that I take him to the police, and let them handle him.

Maybe one day I will, and maybe I won't. He's family, after all.

And whether Lulu meant to or not, she's managed to teach me that there are times you should forgive family, even though you don't want to, and even though you wouldn't forgive anyone else on earth if they treated you that way. I felt a strange little ache when I thought about Lulu and her mother, and how they'd gone for fifteen years with a wall between them because of a misunderstanding. Sure, Grandma could have and likely should have handled things differently; she should have let Lulu and Michelle go and visit my mother. She should have told them what was really going on.

Then again, my mother could have told them too, and she didn't. It was hard to sort out, though it might have been easier if I'd known either of them at all.

"It's kind of your fault, you know," I complained gently at my aunt, who was posing there on the duvet. She was so beautiful that it made my chest hurt; and I was so happy that she was alive, and she was well enough to be pretty while weak. I was delighted that she was healthy enough to milk the hospital visit for every ounce, and I was overjoyed to see Dave bouncing from room to room, playing nursemaid.

"What do you mean, my fault?"

"I mean, if you'd been willing to talk about my mother once in a while, I wouldn't have wondered so hard that I went talking to other people."

"But I didn't know the answers to half of what you wanted."

"That seems to be true," I admitted, "but the answers wouldn't have been half so important if you'd been . . ." I dropped it. There wasn't a good way to finish the thought, so I didn't. "All I want to say is, I wish you'd been more willing to talk about her. If I'd known something, I wouldn't have been so desperate to know anything at all."

"You never asked much."

"Touché."

She was right, I hadn't. I didn't want her to think I didn't value the people who'd brought me up, and I didn't want her to think I loved her any less because I was curious. An image flashed through my head, of Dave, there in the hotel lobby in Macon. I hadn't wanted to talk to him about finding my father for the same stupid reason. Poor Dave. He has his questions, but he's so happy to have us both back that he doesn't ask them. I love that about him. I love him more than I think I could love him even if he were my biological father. Family is family, and I say he's part of mine.

I could have gone on—I could have said more, and said it pointedly. I could have told her that I finally understood. But what would be the point? She didn't talk about Leslie because it was hard and it hurt her. I love Lulu, and I'm glad I could save her, but things are different now. She's lost her secrets and I've lost my ignorance. And now there's a wall between me and her. It's not like the one she set up to keep her own mother at bay, but it's there all the same. I'm not sure what it's made of, and I don't know how to knock it down, but every day I seek some way to climb it. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">