Silent Bird Read online

  I tugged at his hand. “Let’s go in the water. Come!"

  And we ran. Both of us falling and scrambling like Keystone Cops, we undressed right there on the open beach—a feat for me though I still glanced around to be sure no one was watching. Jeannot's shirt dangled by one sleeve; my underwear trapped me at the knees. We pointed at each other, giggling like imbeciles.

  “Last one in is a rotten egg!"

  “Quoi? I do not understand that language!"

  “Then study it if you want to be my husband!"

  I did the final kick, and my underwear—square-looking and as ugly as a dust-rag—flew up and landed in the sand like a flag of surrender.

  The sea felt delicious: smooth and nourishing. We couldn’t move our hands fast enough, couldn’t catch our balance. Half-kneeling in the shallows tide, Jeannot climbed on top of me. I held myself up with one hand and leaned back my head. The world swirled; the water splashed. I balanced the moon on the tip of my nose.

  Together we were tricking the fates—and it felt glorious.

  Jeannot panted and grunted as we rolled in the water; my hair flowed from my face like luxurious seaweed. Eventually the softness of our watery touches led to the usual determined hardness—of course. But it felt different somehow, half-submerged like this. Almost magical.

  “Did you come?” Jeannot asked when it was over.

  I wiped at the water still dripping from my face. “What?”

  “Did you come?”

  Does that feel good, Pilar? Do you like that?

  When did the water get so cold? “Don’t ask me that,” I said. “Please. It doesn’t matter.”

  He frowned. “But of course it matters, Chérie. Does it bother you that I ask?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “I only want to be sure you have pleasure. Tonight felt good to me. So very, very good. I want to know about you.”

  “Then just look at me,” I shot back—and to my dismay, my voice broke. “Do we need to write it in blood?”

  He reached out. “Pilar? What was that? What is wrong?”

  “Nothing. Forget it, please. I am fine,” I said, and wrapped my cold arms around Jeannot and kissed him with every leftover shred of passion I still had.

  V

  We kissed for a long time. Somehow we even ended up churning in the water again, humping mindlessly like sea creatures desperate to find nourishment.

  But it was not the same. Not for me, anyway.

  At least there was no more talk of orgasms. There was not much talk left in us. We drove home in silence and collapsed in our own bed, too tired to say even goodnight.

  And that was when a germ of a thought caught up with me and nearly made me cry out.

  My period. It’s late!

  Could that be? I slipped out of bed to find a calendar and recounted three times, trying to factor in things like stress and changes in diet and who knew what else. But the answer never varied.

  Period due end of August and no sign of it so far...which made thirteen years, almost to the day, since the last time I’d missed a period…and had been pregnant.

  Dumbstruck, I climbed beside Jeannot again and lay there, eyes wide open, my mind scurrying around like a lab rat on speed. I’d been on birth control, of course. How could this happen? Had I forgotten a day? Sabotaged myself? Or just been plain old unlucky?

  Trick the Fates, indeed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I

  Feeling as numb as a witch about to be martyred, I sit down across from Mom to announce my news.

  “I'm pregnant,” I blurt—and Mom spits out her tea.

  “What?” she manages to ask through her choking. “Say that again.”

  I’d rather have my toenails ripped off. I’d rather be tarred and feathered and hung on a goalpost. Or find my friends at the railroad track and tell them. Sure, those “friends” would have a field day gossiping about me, passing rumors back and forth like joints. At least they wouldn’t break down in shock and horror. They wouldn’t feel guilty about everything but do nothing about it.

  “I said, I’m pregnant.”

  “Good God.”

  I help her wipe the pools of tea off the table; help her see that I am still here and that what I said is true. None of it is going away.

  She stares at me, pretty blue eyes watering. The pain is setting in. “Well. I gather Theodore’s the father?”

  Theodore Allen Garfield, that is—my boyfriend since the beginning of ninth grade. Mom knows he likes to be called TAG. Or better yet, Asshole-in-Chief of the Piddles: an impressive title for a kid who prides himself on hanging out on Dr. Piddle’s doorstep. But to me, TAG is so much more than his silly name, so much more than his local status and wholesome blond looks. He is a boy who treats me well. Who asked permission before he touched me for the first time. And who waited until I gave it.

  I can’t stop thinking about that.

  “Of course TAG’s the father. He is my boyfriend, you know.”

  “But you’re—only fourteen!”

  “That’s old enough.”

  This riles her; I shouldn’t have said it. “Old enough? For God’s sake. Old enough for what, Pilar? For this kind of…behavior with a boy?”

  Of course she would put it that way. Grandma had told her how distasteful the marital bed is, how women don’t want it if they don’t have to do it. So how can her daughter—my mother—possibly understand why I’m doing it so young, without a husband to please or a decent bed to do it in?

  How can she understand just how long I have been doing it?

  Mom coughs back a sob. “This is just so…hard to believe. I hardly know this Theodore person. I had no idea you…were doing…that.”

  “I didn’t tell you, so how could you know?”

  “I’ve always wanted to be your friend.”

  “You can’t be my friend.” My tears come in a burst: no warning, which surprises me. “I need a mother! Not someone who doesn’t notice when…when…”

  To my dismay, she sobs right along with me. When she fumbles for a tissue, I hand her the whole damn box.

  “Haven’t I always been on your side, Pilar? Didn’t I tell you to come to me if you were ever in trouble? Sorry, I know I shouldn’t do…this. I’m making you feel worse.” She looks up without hiding her eyes, and there it is.

  The pain. The devastation.

  Oh God, can’t I inherit something else?

  I hesitate, trying to frame this next part, which is so important. “Look, Ma, it's not your fault. TAG and I are in love and it happened. I know we’re young. But I want to be with him forever. That’s why…I’ve decided to have an abortion.”

  “What?” She jumps off her chair. “Pilar, no!”

  “I can’t have a baby.”

  “We’ll talk about it. Let’s call your father.”

  “No!” Now I jump; my chair tips over and crashes to the floor.

  I right the chair and sit again.

  Mom says, “Okay, okay, don’t tell him. But no abortion, please! Not yet. What does Theodore say?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t know?” Pause. “Shouldn’t you tell him?”

  “I don’t want to. I'm only in ninth grade, but he’s in eleventh and smart. He has a future! I don’t want to do anything to stop him going to college…or loving me…"

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “It wasn’t just sex, Mom! It was real.”

  “Who are you trying to convince?”

  “I'm not trying to convince anybody!"

  “Don’t shout at me, young lady. This isn’t easy for me either, you know.”

  She begins shredding unused tissue. Her hair is graying more at the top, I notice suddenly—as if she’s aging before my eyes. This feels like a movie speeding up. Unfamiliar pockets of fatigue begin to shadow her eyes, and there are new wrinkles around her mouth. Disappointment and wrinkles…

  She says, “Your grandma is hard to talk to, not me. She would have k
illed me if I'd come home pregnant—literally killed me, and she told me so! She says girls today are like dogs. I tell her that's unkind and a lot of nonsense, and here my own daughter…"

  The kitchen falls silent with her unfinished sentence.

  Staring at the dish towels near the sink, I whisper, “It isn’t like that. I am not a dog.”

  And Mom flinches. “Oh, honey, I'm sorry! I didn’t mean it like that. I'm just shocked. But it’ll be okay, baby, we’ll figure everything out. We’ll do it together, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “In the meantime let's have a nice dinner, hmm? I’ll make the veal the way you love it, breaded, with sour cream sauce and noodles.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you need to feel better, Pilar. Right? We both do. Believe me, we’ll eat the veal.”

  II

  “Honey? Are you okay? You’re dreaming with your eyes open. Please, wake up!” Mama cries.

  Disoriented, I stare at her.

  Mom. Here at home. And she looks young again. Where am I? When am I?

  Have I been dreaming? Sleepwalking again? Night Terrors?

  She grasps my shoulders and holds me against her and she’s so beautiful and warm it takes my breath away: black hair, blue eyes, heart-shaped face. No gray hair at all.

  “I can’t believe I’m here,” I murmur into her sweater, which smells like rose water lotion, a wonderful scent of summer and beach and happiness. “I thought I went to France. I must have been dreaming.”

  “You were screaming, eyes open,” she says, cradling me. “I hate when you do that, Sweetie. It’s so scary, like you’re going crazy.”

  “I know, Mom. I am going crazy.”

  “I don’t understand why this is happening. Why are you so upset? Can’t you hear me, Sweetie? Are you awake?”

  “I’m fine,” I manage to say, and mean it too. If we are home on Long Island, I must be young, too, a little girl. I’m small, only reaching her waist.

  I can do this better. I can help her understand.

  “We’ll go see a Healer,” Mama says. “I don’t know what else to do. How can I when nobody knows what’s wrong with you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I explain patiently. “It’s what’s wrong with everyone else. I’m just a little girl.”

  Grandma appears in the doorway. Her withered face is full of grief, for Grandpa is gone and she is alone, and no one wants people when they’re old. Not even me; I left her. I didn’t do the right thing.

  “I told you, it’s the Evil Eye,” Grandma says.

  “I’m sorry I went to France,” I say. “That was evil.”

  “You can’t run away; all you’ll leave is footprints all over the world. Then you’ll never find your way home.”

  I am really home, right? Am I home?

  I start running to the door and swing it open. To my shock, someone tall and muscular blocks my way. I smell cotton and coffee and something else I can’t place—and I back away.

  The man moves forward to grab me with his large hands.

  I scream.

  III

  “Pilar! Look at me. Please. Chérie, can you hear me?”

  I try to focus but feel so confused. I’m on the Trabbant ride at Great Adventure and can’t stop spinning.

  “Ah, thank God you are awake now. You scared me!” he said. Jeannot said.

  This is crazy. A dream within a dream within a dream?

  I open my eyes. I’m standing between the open patio doors of our bedroom, facing the brilliance of a summer morning in the South of France. Bunches of yellow mimosa bobbing in the trees. Their scent overpowering. No rose water lotion. No Mom.

  And Grandma is dying in New York without me.

  Jeannot led me inside to a chair. “I was in the kitchen when I heard you screaming. I was afraid you had hurt yourself. So I ran out and grabbed you.”

  Night Terrors again, damn them. I wished I could get my brain erased—no, cleansed. Tabula Rasa for real.

  Or better yet: that I could relive only kind dreams from my earlier life. Like opening my eyes in my little yellow bedroom to see Mommy on the white rocker, smiling and singing. The pussy willows in full bloom outside my bedroom window. Daddy and Mommy holding hands in front of the television. Go even earlier. No bathtub, no confusion. An innocent child.

  Jeannot waited patiently for me to say something. So I did.

  “I’m much better, thanks for waking me up.”

  “My pleasure. Dream gone now?”

  “Yes, very gone. I’m ready to enjoy breakfast on the balcony.” I held out my arm, and he took it.

  “Fantastique,” he said.

  IV

  The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I wonder who the hell said that.

  A wise person, no doubt. For I did have the best of intentions in how I acted with Jeannot after missing my period. But maybe that’s akin to having a good obsession. Like, for example, if you prefer cleanliness and order rather than squalor so you scrub the healthy skin right off your hands.

  What use is your good intention then?

  “I am half-Jewish, you know,” I announced later that day while he was practicing the piano.

  He stopped playing to look at me; stopped skipping his fingers up and down the keys to make a bird trill with the high notes. He wore shorts and no shirt and nothing on his feet and had a cup of espresso perched on a sheet of music next to him on the bench. “Quoi?” he said, expression distracted and yes, a little annoyed.

  I said, “I was thinking. I never told you that I’m Jewish. And you need to know. In case that’s a problem for you or for…your family.”

  “But why would it….” He paused. “Ah, I see. You are referring to the conversation we had the other night? About my parents. You think you will not be accepted, n’est-ce pas?”

  I nodded.

  He patted the piano bench beside him. “All right. Are you saying that you practice Judaism? That you are a religious person and I never noticed?”

  “Well. I do celebrate Jewish holidays.”

  Ha. I didn’t eat Kosher, never referred in word or action to any religion at all. I also celebrated Christmas and Easter if I happened to be around Christmas trees and chocolate eggs. And the way Mom and I celebrated Jewish holidays wasn’t exactly…Orthodox. Betting on Hannukah candles, on which candle would be the first one to go out? A harmless practice that drove Grandma mad.

  “I believe you underestimate me,” Jeannot said. “Religion is not important. You must know that.”

  I nodded again.

  His expression softened. “Listen, Chérie, I am not stupid. You have made small comments here and there. That you do not attend any church, that you do not have godparents. So I did believe, yes, perhaps you are Jewish. But your background is not important. In my opinion, you are exotic. I like that.”

  “But your family…?”

  “No problem there either, I assure you. If you prefer, you and I will celebrate all the holidays.”

  I smiled. That sounded good. Wonderful, in fact. Not that his parents would ever bet on Hannukah candles….

  “Let’s sit together on the sofa,” Jeannot said, and his voice was thick with emotion. For a long moment we simply held each other, inhaling the scents of morning breath and coffee.

  “Are your parents religious?” I asked after a while.

  “No, they attend church, but that is simply tradition. My mother enjoys her friends, the community. And my father is—how can I say?—a man who likes clean categories. He believes in rules and definitions. He wants immigrants to learn French and become assimilated into the culture. He wants children to respect their elders.”—Jeannot paused—“Do you recall my story about the sheep?”

  “It’s difficult to forget exploding sheep.”

  A faint smile passed over his lips. “After my uncle beat me, I hated him and my father for Allowing it. I thought they were both harsh. But I had to understand that in their day rule
s were clearer. The world is changing so fast. Not everyone can change with it.”

  “What did your father say? About the beating?”

  “That is my point. Although Papa did not hit me, he did not speak against it. He lives in a simpler world. More black and white, you could say.”

  “What if…this black and white world believes that marrying an American who’s half-Jewish is bad?”

  “Which half?” he joked, grinning crookedly.

  I lightly slugged his shoulder. “Really. Maybe he thinks races and religions should not mix.”

  “Papa does not take his beliefs that far.”

  “But if he did. Would that be a problem for you?”

  Jeannot shook his head emphatically. “Never. You cannot think that of me.”

  I had hurt his feelings now, which was the last thing I wanted. For a long time we hugged, and I could feel Jeannot’s heart beating through his thin white T-shirt.

  Finally I said: “I haven’t been myself lately. I think it is because…my period is late. A week.”

  Jeannot pulled back to look at me. “It is? But…you take the Pill!”

  “Yes, I know. I don’t know how it happened.”

  He seemed speechless—and scared. Then he gazed directly at me, eyes bright. “It is all right,” he said. “Even if you are pregnant.”

  I held my breath; waited for him to finish.

  “Seriously, I would not mind if we had a baby early rather than later. This is life, yes? It does not happen on a schedule.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” That’s for sure.

  We both sat there thinking, no longer hugging.

  “So we must buy a test and find out,” he said. “And if you are pregnant, we will celebrate.”

  There was another silence but a different one: peppered with tenderness and relief.

  “Je t’aime,” he said.

  “Je t’aime,” I said back, feeling the words in some new way, as if there had been no translation necessary for once, not even in my own head.

  Briskly he stood up. “Now, if you do not mind, I want to call my parents.”