October 22, 2008

Humans have a strange regard for birthdays. Why do they celebrate the person who was born instead of the woman that gave birth to that person? Children’s birthdays are observed with balloons, cake, presents, games, and laughter. Adults don’t seem to care much for their own birthdays, perhaps because they know they are marching toward their last. Children are blissfully unaware of what it means to grow older, to grow weary. They celebrate their existence, punctuating each day with a renewed sense of joy and frivolity.

Mary Moore Searight

I am flying over Mary Moore Searight park, with its winding trails and wide, open spaces. The pavilion is decorated with crepe paper and balloons. I smell cardboard and candy--a piñata is somewhere nearby. Children chase each other, stopping occasionally to shout or shriek. Mothers sit with each other, bouncing babies on their knees.

Three children have left the others: two girls and one boy. The girls share freckled faces and long, dark hair. The boy is a redhead and has holes in the knees of his jeans. They are all small, no older than eight or nine. They are walking toward the stream, the boy carrying a large stick. I decide to follow them.

“What did you get Kayla for her birthday?” one of the girls asks.

The boy is dragging the stick, which is so long as to almost be a pole, in the dirt behind him. “I got her an art set. My mom picked it out. You?”

“Two DVDs—Hannah Montana and High School Musical.”

“Girl stuff!” the boy shouts, making a face and sticking out his tongue. “I bet she likes mine better.”

The girl shrugs. “If she doesn’t want ‘em, she can give ‘em to me. I like Hannah Montana.”

The three children walk along the path quietly a few paces. Then the boy says, “Are you going to Jackson’s birthday? It’s gonna be laser tag. It’s gonna be so cool.”

The Hannah Montana girl sighs, shaking her head. She looks sad. “I wasn’t invited,” she says. “Jackson calls me Emily-weirdo.”

The other little girl presses her hands to her mouth to hide a laugh, but neither of the other two children seems to notice. “You are kind of weird,” the boy says, raising an eyebrow. “But people wouldn’t think you were so weird if you didn’t play with Lily all the time.”

Emily glances over her shoulder at Lily who, unlike her jeans-clad friends, is wearing a pristine pink-and-white gingham dress, ruffle socks, and bright pink Crocs. She looks out of place, especially for a birthday party at a park, especially in October.

Lily smiles and winks. Emily rolls her eyes.

“I know,” she says. “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t just ignore her. That would hurt her feelings, Benjamin.”

The boy swings his stick at a flitting moth. “Yeah, maybe, but then you could do stuff like go to Jackson’s birthday party and play laser tag.”

Emily shrugs. “That’s okay; I don’t like Jackson anyway.”

Benjamin knows Emily is lying, but decides not to pursue the matter. “Are you going to be on Club Penguin tonight?”

Emily shakes her head. “No. Mom says it will be too late after the party’s finished to get online. I can play tomorrow after school though. Do you want to meet me? My penguin is a tour guide now.”

The boy thinks a minute, and then nods. “Yeah, I can meet you tomorrow. But you better actually be there this time. Don’t tell me later you got distracted by ghostie”

Lily shrieks with laughter, covering her mouth with her hands. I stutter mid-flight, swooping to the ground to take a closer look. I am embarrassed that I didn’t notice it right away. Lily smells different, green, like saltwater and grass. Not like ghosts, which smell like earth and snow, but not like little girls, either, who smell nothing like sugar or spice.

“I’m not a ghost,” the little girl says. “Ghosts are spirits of dead people. I’m not dead. I was never born. But I can understand how he’d make that mistake.”

It takes a second before I realize that she’s talking to me.

She squats down to meet me face to face. Up this close, I see how clear and bright her eyes are. I want to preen and dance in them. “I got lost on the way to being born,” she explains. “There was a long, golden pathway, like the one in Wizard of Oz. And there were flowers and butterflies. And I was supposed to walk down the golden path into the bright light at the end. And I was! I was going! But there were flowers, and butterflies, and I went running after one with big, purple wings that sparkled. And when I stopped chasing it, I wasn’t on the path anymore. And it was getting dark. And the stars were coming out, so I laid in the grass with my hands folded on my stomach and I watched the stars. And there were fireworks, and in Heaven they don’t make explodey sounds, they just appear and vanish, appear and vanish, and I watched the stars and the fireworks until I fell asleep. And the next morning I forgot all about the path and the light, and so I didn’t even look for it. So by the time I found my way home it was already years and years too late. My teeny tiny body had already turned to dust and gone away.” Her expression has gone soft and dreamy.

“That’s my sister,” she says, pointing. “My big sister. She’s one year older. But it took me a long time to find her. And Daddy. And Mama, too, but Mama can’t see me or hear me. I don’t know why.”

Her eyes drift away and she stands up. The other two are taking turns jumping off a large rock. “She just showed up one day,” Emily is saying, swinging her arms in preparation for her jump. “Daddy was helping me ride my bike and she came up to us and started playing. We just thought she was another kid from the neighborhood. We didn’t know nobody else could see her.”

Lily laughs, her eyes twinkling. “I remember that,” she says. “They invited me in the house to meet Mama, but she thought they were just playing a joke on her. It was a long time before they realized...” Her voice trails off, and she sighs. “Sometimes I wish I was a born kid like Emily. She can eat apples. I can’t eat apples,” she says.

I think I understand. I cannot eat apples either.

Benjamin is taking a wild leap off a boulder, and has tumbled to the ground. Proving he’s not hurt, he picks up his stick and points westward. “Hey, you want to take our shoes off and walk in the water? My mom says there’s no snakes at this park. Want to?”

Suddenly, Lily screams and hurries away from the other two, away from the water, shaking her head. “No, Emily,” she says quietly. She is trembling.

“Lily doesn’t want to,” Emily says.

The boy swings his stick at the dirt. “Aw, c’mon, Emily. How come we always have to do what Lily wants?”

“I’ve never seen her change her clothes,” Emily says. Her non-sequitor catches even me by surprise. “Sometimes her shoes are different. She started wearing pink Crocs when I got mine. But I’ve never seen her take them off.”

Benjamin makes a screwy face. “What are you talking about?” he asks.

Emily isn’t dissuaded. Her logic is perfectly sensible to her. “I mean maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to get wet. Cuz she can’t change her clothes.”

Emily goes quiet, looking down at the ground as she walks. Lily creeps up beside her, slipping her hand in her sister’s. The two girls swing their linked arms, shuffling a few paces behind the boy, their heads pressed together in quiet conversation. Finally, Emily looks up, stepping away from Lily and dropping her hand. “How come you believe me, Benjamin? How come you believe me about Lily? Nobody else does.”

Benjamin swats his hair out of his eyes. “Your dad believes you,” he says.

Emily shakes her head and Lily brings her hands to her mouth, giggling. “Well, he sees her, too. It’s not the same thing. You can’t see her, can you?”

Benjamin spins on his heels, dropping the stick in the dirt. The two girls halt as well. Emily is looking directly at Benjamin, but Lily switches her gaze from the boy to the girl, like a spectator at a tennis match. Cocking his head slightly to the side, Benjamin peers around, searching, as Emily’s breath catches in her throat. She wants something from him.

There is a beat of silence, a brief moment where something passes between them but in an instant it is gone. He moves away, picking the stick up off the ground. “No, I can’t see her,” he says.

Emily lets out her breath, her deflated little body a picture of disappointment. “Then how come you believe me?”

As they arrive at the stream, Benjamin drops to the ground, pulling of his shoes. Although she has protested, Emily follows suit, peeling off her socks and carefully tucking them into her sneakers. The other girl hangs back, smoothing her skirt over her knees and scowling.

“I don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “I just do.”

Except, he does know.

I used to have two grandmas, but now I only have one.

Grandma Flatley is my dad’s mom. She had an accent and walked with a cane. She wore ugly dresses with flowers on them and her hair was a weird orangey-white that she wore in tight curls all over her head. She smelled like moth balls and antacid.

But she was my favorite.

Grandma Flatley loved to read. She would sit on the edge of my bed and read me the books I borrowed from the library, and she made all the characters do different voices. Harry Potter whined a lot, and Hazel from Watership Down talked with an English accent and made munching sounds. She’d read to me after dinner, sometimes until I fell asleep, and she never tried to cheat me the next day by saying we had gotten further in the story than we really had. She always made sure I knew what was happening in the book, and if I managed to stay awake she would ask me what I thought would happen next.

Sometimes I would come up with outrageous plot twists, like the time I was feeling ornery and told Grandma Flatley that I thought Hazel and Bigwig would be captured and turned into rabbit soup and that would be the end of them. I didn’t like Watership Down because I don’t care for rabbits. I thought Grandma Flatley would get mad, but she hooted and howled and slapped her knee. And she held a finger to her mouth and whispered, “You can’t tell anyone I told you, Benjy, but when I was your age and my brother would make me mad, I would lie in bed at night and imagine that I skinned his cat and fed it to the neighbor’s dog.” And she hooted and howled some more, but I thought that was gross and mean because I like cats, so I never said things like that at story time again.

One night last year, I was sitting on the porch swing with Grandma Flatley. We were going to start a new book called The Hobbit. I was drinking lemonade. Usually Grandma Flatley drank lemonade with me, too, but this time she wasn’t. And she looked a little sad.

“I won’t be able to come and see you for a while, Benjy,” she said putting her hand on mine. Her skin was wrinkly and soft. “But I want you to know that I love you so much. So much, Benjy. You’re a fine, wonderful boy and you’re going to grow into a fine, wonderful man. And I want you to read that book, The Hobbit, and you should read Lord of the Rings, but maybe not until you’re a little older.

“And when you’re done with The Hobbit, Benjy, I want you to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And after that, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and The Phantom Tollbooth, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. Promise me, Benjy. Promise me you won’t stop reading no matter what.”

“I promise,” I said. “I promise, Grandma Flatley.”

Grandma Flatley nodded and patted my hand again. And then she said, “I think I hear your mother calling you, sweetheart. Go inside and see what she needs. I love you, Benjy.”

I went inside to find my mom, but she wasn’t calling for me. She was on the phone, and she was clutching the kitchen counter.

Mom was clicking off her phone when she noticed me standing in the kitchen. She rushed over to me, gathered me in her arms. “Benjy, Daddy just called. He had some bad news sweetheart.” She was brushing my hair out of my eyes like she does when she’s worried or nervous. “Grandma died.”

I had two grandmas, though, and I didn’t know who she meant. “Which Grandma?” I asked.

Mom bit her lip, her eyes full of tears. “Grandma Flatley, baby. She died this afternoon.”

I shook my head, confused. “But Grandma Flatley’s outside on the swing.” I grabbed Mom’s hand and pulled her out the door. But we were the only ones on the porch.

I had never heard of most of those books Grandma Flatley told me to read. But I found every one of them at the school library. Every one of them. (But I don’t think I’ll read Alice in Wonderland. That looks like girl stuff.)

Close.

He stands up and wades into the water, shivering from its cold bite. It doesn’t reach any higher than his ankles, but his white skin pimples over as far up his legs as I can see. He uses his stick to guide himself from rock to rock. “How come your mom can’t see her?”

Emily looks to Lily, whose expression is soft and sad. But Lily only shrugs one shoulder, refusing to meet her sister’s eyes. “We don’t know,” she says. “We’ve stopped bringing it up. It makes Mama sad and upset. Daddy said if we kept talking to her about it, she might leave us. So now Lily is our secret. But it also makes Lily sad. She loves Mama.”

Emily turns, looking over her shoulder toward the pavilion. “Hey, we should get back, Benjamin. They might do the piñata without us.”

Benjamin grins, revealing the charming jack-o-lantern smile so many children this age sport. “They can’t,” he says, triumphantly waving his stick in the air. “I got their stick!”

Their laughter trails behind me as I hop from one rock to another, and finally take to the air. In a moment I can no longer hear them, but when I look down, I see Lily standing there, head titled skyward, waving her pretty arms at me, and smiling.

Although I relish the idea of bringing one of these wonderful beings to Carrie, I know that I cannot. The bodiless one has only just found her family; her attachment to them is too strong to be rent asunder. The boy is the only real friend Emily has; I will not take him. She needs him. As for Emily, as sweet and pretty and kind as she is, her strangeness might not be appreciated by Carrie who is neat and normal and cannot, as far as I know, see children who got lost on their way to being born.

These relationships are both too complex and too tidy for my beak to neatly snip apart. But the city is filled with good, ordinary people, and one of them will make the perfect gift for Carrie.

I fly again.