Sophie was too exhausted to wake her mother from the couch and coax her into bed. She felt a pang, thinking about her mom waking up in her work clothes, her body crumpled and sore, but she felt a flare of annoyance, too: Why keep falling asleep on the couch, then? But Sophie knew she should be grateful for her mother’s narcolepsy. Without it she would not have been able to sneak away these past nights, out of her house and into her destiny.
Sophie walked through her mother’s empty room and into her own cramped space, her twin mattress on its twin frame facing a stout wooden dresser, old looking. It had been Andrea’s when she was a child, something Sophie hadn’t learned until after she’d found how easy it was to carve onto the surface with her house key, and spent an hour on the phone with Ella idly carving spirals, stars, and hearts into the dresser. Andrea had been so upset she simply stared at the furniture, her tongue working to conjure the proper words from deep in her throat. “That was mine,” she said simply. “When I was your age. That was an antique.” She rubbed her fingers over the vandalism. Sophie felt defensive. She hated getting in trouble for things she hadn’t known she wasn’t supposed to do.
“I thought it was mine,” she said. “I thought I could do what I wanted to it.”
“Just because something is yours doesn’t give you the right to ruin it. It doesn’t mean you get to treat it disrespectfully.” Andrea ran her fingers in the deep, rough grooves of a heart her daughter had bore onto the surface. “Or, I guess it does. Do what you want. Draw all over the walls, why don’t you? It’s ‘your’ room.”
But Sophie would never do such a thing; she knew it wasn’t her room at all, but the landlord’s room. She’d thought the dresser was hers. She didn’t know why she’d carved on it, it didn’t look good, she’d simply wanted to do it at the time and so she’d done it. She felt embarrassed, and hated how beaten down her mother was being about it. She preferred Andrea angry to this limp and hopeless version. “I’m sorry,” she offered, wondering what other things she thought were her own were in fact not. Her mother had left the bedroom, and the defacement was never spoken of again.
Lying in her bed, with the candle in its paper bag stashed beneath it, Sophie watched as the slowly rising sun lit her room, illuminating the carvings on her dresser. She was perhaps more tired than she had ever been. She wondered if she had to pull up her shield right then, if she could even do it. She’d surely collapse. She lay flat on her back because she liked to feel the weight of the sea glass on her sternum, cool and flat and precious. At least that was hers, she was certain. She pulled her sheet over her head to shield her eyes from the coming day, and tried to get some sleep before heading back to the dump.
* * *
IT SEEMED LIKE Sophie had just shut her eyes, and her mother was calling her. But it wasn’t her crisp, drill-sergeant mother, it was some croaking, weakened, frog version of her mother.
“Sophie,” her voice was raspy. “I’m sick.” Andrea was seated on the edge of her bed, in a room adjacent to Sophie’s own. Sophie pulled herself up with effort; her eyes did not want to be open.
“What’s wrong?”
Andrea felt around her throat. “My lymph nodes are swollen,” she said. “And my throat is sore. I think I have a fever. Will you feel my forehead?”
Sophie climbed out of bed and brought the cool inside of her wrist up to her mother’s forehead, feeling the throbbing heat of the skin there. The air around her shimmered, and a part of herself magnetized toward her mother. She reined herself in. “You have a fever.”
“That goddamn old man sneezed on me,” Andrea grumbled. “I washed my face and Purelled and everything but it’s no use. I work in a germ factory. They should give us all extra sick days.” Andrea took off her work pants and slid into bed in her t-shirt and underwear, bringing the sheet over her body limply. Her head sunk into a pillow. “Ooooh,” she groaned, a mixture of relief and pain. “I forgot what it’s like to lie down in a bed. It’s so nice.”
“What about me, Ma?” Sophie asked. “How will I get to the dump?” She held her breath hopefully, keeping a cheerful, earnest look on her face. Even though her mother couldn’t read her, she brought her wall up anyway, just for practice. She felt snug and safe inside it, like a tree house had sprung up beneath her, and from its heights she spied everything but no one spied her.
“No dump,” Andrea said. “You’ll stay here. I’ll need you to stick around and go to the store for me later. Call your grandmother and tell her you’re not coming. And call the clinic, would you? Tell them I’m not feeling good. Ugh.” Andrea kicked off the sheet and spread her limbs across the bed as far as she could, feeling for a spot that felt cool. “Nothing is worse than being sick in the heat,” she said. “I feel like a dog, a sick dog.”
Sophie walked over and kissed the burning top of Andrea’s brow. Her hairline was damp, the hair sticky with sweat. She petted her mother’s head, pushing the full roundness of her hair back onto the pillow. Bobby pins jabbed her hand; Sophie removed them so they wouldn’t poke her mother in the skull, laid them on her bedside table. “Okay, Ma,” she said. Then Sophie walked solemnly into the kitchen and, once out of Andrea’s view, did a happy dance. She wiggled her hips and punched her fists in front of her, kicking her legs. Her mother falling ill was the best thing that could have happened.
She called the clinic first. Who was her mother’s boss? She wasn’t sure, actually. There was a long list of people at the clinic her mother complained about on the regular, and Sophie wasn’t sure who was who. She let the voice mail take her through the workforce. None of the names were familiar. Betsy Chen, the robotic voice intoned. Sophie hit pound, and the phone began to ring in Dr. Chen’s office.
“Hello,” the doctor answered.
“Hi, Dr. Chen?”
“Yeeees.” Something about the way the doctor spoke made Sophie feel like she was half-singing her words. It was similar to the pigeons, she realized. How they spoke in such soothing, cooing melodies. Dr. Chen’s voice was not so different.
“Hi, it’s Sophie Swankowski. I’m calling about my mother. She woke up really sick and she’s not going to be able to come in today.”
“Oh, no!” Dr. Chen exclaimed. “Well, I’m so sorry. What is wrong with her?”
“Um, her lymph nodes are swollen and her throat is sore and she’s got a fever.”
“Uh-huh.” Sophie imagined the doctor’s face nodding, her smooth bob swaying above her shoulders. “That’s what’s going around. She’ll probably need some antibiotics. Perhaps I can stop by later and look in on her.”
“Sure,” Sophie said, suddenly alarmed at the thought of Dr. Chen inside her dumpy house. Dr. Chen was a doctor. The perfect, sharp cut of her hair suggested a person with money to blow on a fancy salon, someplace in Boston, Sophie bet. Though she knew the doctor grew up in Chelsea, lived here still, Sophie couldn’t imagine why. Dr. Chen was too good for Chelsea. The thought sat uncomfortably inside her. Sophie didn’t like thinking anyone was too good or not good enough for anything, ever.
On the line, the doctor could sense Sophie’s reluctance. “Well, you let me know, okay? I’m only thinking about your mom. I’ll let reception know. Please tell her I hope she feels better. And,” she finished, “Livia says hello.”
Sophie felt a burst of excitement at the dove’s name. “Is Livia your favorite?” she asked the doctor, knowing immediately it was a sort of lousy question.
“They are all my favorites, but Livia is so special, isn’t she?”
“She never gets ruffled,” Sophie said. “She’s very capable. Very sensible.”
“It’s true. But there are good things about Arthur’s temperament, too. Arthur gets very ruffled, but he’s passionate, and passion can accomplish quite a lot. What about Giddy?”
“Giddy is so sweet!” Sophie gushed. “She makes me want to take care of her.”
“Well, she’s still young. But yes, she’s very purehearted, very sincere. Roy, too. They’re good mates for each other. Roy is very loyal. But then, all the pigeons are. Loyalty is a pigeon trait. They mate for life, you know. How about Bix, have you met him?”
“Yes!” It felt good to talk about the pigeons with someone else who knew them, who knew them so well.
“Bix is a poet,” Dr. Chen said. “He is very learned. He’s yet to find a mate; I think his standards are too high.” Sophie caught her breath as she realized the conversation they were having. A casual conversation about pigeons being capable, or passionate, or learned poets. “You’ve caught some of Bix’s quotations, no?”
“I have,” Sophie said. She felt like she was admitting to, or confirming, much, much more.
“Well, if you would ever like to see their dovecote you’re welcome to visit. Let them know, they’ll bring you over. I’d be happy to see you, Sophie.”
“Okay,” Sophie said.
“You’re doing okay with everything?”
“With everything?” Sophie couldn’t be sure what the doctor was asking, and even more, she could not be certain she was doing okay. “Yeah,” she lied.
“No more passing out?”
“Once more,” she said. “I did it once more.”
“What happened?”
“I saw the mermaid. I was out for an hour and woke up with water in my lungs and a fish in my mouth and now my best friend is mad at me.”
She heard the doctor take a deep breath on the other end. “Oh, Sophie,” she said. “You really must stop. The mermaid will find you, please stop doing that. To be out for an hour—you could have put yourself in a coma. It’s quite serious.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling small.
“When do you start high school? A couple months?”
High school? The thought was ridiculous. All this insanity—talking pigeons, Polish mermaids, mind reading or heart reading or whatever that craziness was, and she was supposed to go to high school? Chelsea High at that, to get shoved in the halls by kids tougher than her, to suffer through the dull classes by day, and what? Save humanity by night? The effects of two nights without sleep were working to derange Sophie a bit. Her emotions felt right at the surface, tears felt close. “I guess,” she said. “I guess I’m supposed to go to high school.”
“Well, you’ll need another physical,” Dr. Chen said in a clipped, business-y voice, still musical, though, still a voice with a flute tied to its tail, whistling pleasantly as it spoke. “I’ll make you an appointment. A follow-up for that last one, just to make sure you’re okay. I’ll schedule it for when your mother is working, just you and me. And no more passing out.”
“Okay,” Sophie felt grateful to the doctor. With so many strange characters watching out for her, it felt good to have a doctor on her team. Even if it was a rather strange doctor.
“And maybe I’ll see you later,” she said. “Goodbye.”
* * *
BEFORE SOPHIE DIALED up the junkyard she pulled her shield up high over her emotional body. She made sure it went above her head, imagined it closing over her skull, sealing her inside an impenetrable bubble. Kishka picked up on the first ring.
“Sophia,” she said before Sophie said a word. “You’re late.”
Her grandmother was being aggressively psychic. The boldness of it threw Sophie off balance, but her shield stayed strong around her.
“H-Hi, Nana,” she said, composing herself.
“Let me guess,” Kishka began. “Your poor, overworked mother is sick, and there is no one to take you to the dump today.”
Sophie’s body rang with alarm. How did Kishka know all this? She remembered Ronald’s dull pronouncement: She knows everything. She imagined her grandmother hovering over a crystal ball, like in The Wizard of Oz, Sophie trapped in the orb like Dorothy.
“Anyone could have guessed such a thing,” said Kishka, annoyed with Sophie’s breathless silence. “All that woman does is work and work and work, with a bunch of slobs who don’t know how to take care of themselves. It’s a wonder she doesn’t get sick all the time.” Kishka exhaled heavily on the other line. Sophie imagined a burst of smoke leaving her mouth, like steam from a train. “I could come get you,” Kishka suggested, freezing Sophie’s heart. “But I’m sure you want to stay at home and help your mother like a good daughter. I bet you have lots and lots of little things to busy yourself with.”
Sophie could feel a patter upon her shield, like raindrops on a windowpane. The patter grew harder, rain becoming hail. The insistent shower of it stung, but Sophie felt snug inside her shield. A new fear bloomed inside her, though—that her grandmother would know that Sophie could hide her emotions. That in itself was confirmation of so many things. Satisfied, Kishka pulled away from her granddaughter. The hailstorm ceased. Sophie breathed a sigh of relief, but kept her shield strong. Her grandmother could not get in, at least not this time. She thought of her mom lying sick in bed. Kishka must have read her when they didn’t show up at the dump on time. Sophie realized that she would have to keep her shield up more often, possibly all the time. The thought made her worried. Didn’t Angel say that it was good for humans to pick up each other’s emotions? Sophie didn’t want to be cut off from the world. The thought made her lonely, and her feelings rose wildly inside their container. A can of feelings, Sophie thought.
“I do want to take care of my mother,” Sophie said. “She needs me to run errands for her, and just hang around. The house is dirty. Dr. Chen might come by.”
“Dr. Chen?” Sophie felt another rain of Kishka’s attentions upon her. “That loon who keeps the pigeons? I’m about to have the city do something about her. Those goddamn winged rats are all over my dump. I’ve got enough problems with the seagulls and the actual rats.”
“I’ll mention it to her,” Sophie said, alarmed. “I’m sure you don’t have to talk to the city. Dr. Chen is really nice; she wouldn’t want to be a problem to anyone.”
“What do you care?” Kishka snapped, then softened. “Oh, my poor granddaughter,” she cooed, sounding almost like an actual, loving grandmother. “Look what it’s done to you. Being a latchkey kid, an only child, no father, your mother barely looking after you. You’ve grown up too fast,” Kishka said. “You’re a little adult, trying to take care of everything. The responsibility you must feel! But you’re just a little girl. You don’t have to take care of it all. Who is taking care of you, Sophie?”
The truth in Kishka’s observations made Sophie’s eyes sting, and she wrapped the shield around her like a blanket. Sophie knew who was taking care of her. She brought them up in her mind: the pigeons, Angel, even Angel’s mother had fixed her a candle and cooked her those beans, would cook her more food if she was hungry, Sophie knew it. Was the mermaid taking care of her? The mermaid caused her to nearly drown, Sophie thought, but she knew the creature would be there for her in her strange, cranky way. Dr. Chen would take care of her, of this Sophie was certain. She felt a tingle in her heart, a loneliness growing. These were her people, weren’t they? Her strange crew. Would they be enough to make up for no father, and an overworked, neglectful mother?
“It’s probably enough to make you feel a little cuckoo,” Kishka continued in her falsely soothing voice. “Neglected children often make up imaginary friends to make themselves feel better. You’re not doing that, are you, Sophie? Hmmmm, but maybe that’s the wrong question. Because you would think the friends were real…”
Sophie had to get off the phone with her grandmother. The woman was trying to crack her shield, make her question her sanity.
“Sophie!” she heard her mother croak from the bedroom. “Would you bring me some water?”
“I have to go,” she said to her grandmother. “Ma has a sore throat and she’s asking for water.”
“Well, maybe I’ll stop by,” Kishka sighed. “I should check on my girls. You are still my girl, aren’t you, Sophie? You would never betray your own grandmother, would you?
“N-No, Nana!” Kishka rattled inside Sophie’s shield. “Of course not.”
“You do know it’s always worse to lie than to tell the truth, don’t you? Because when you lie—well, that makes two infractions. Double the trouble. You don’t want to trouble your grandmother, do you? Your flesh and blood?”
“No, Nana, of course not!” Sophie tried playing it cool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Kishka said coldly. “You know exactly what I am talking about, Sophia. And you can bury yourself in that rock of yours, but you cannot hide from me. And your friends, all your little friends, they are all even weaker.” Kishka exhaled, and Sophie could almost smell the cigarette smoke through the telephone. “You will not win a fight with me, dear. Whatever lies these people might be filling you with. You are just a girl, a simple, common girl. You are not special. And you will lose every battle you try, so if I were you I would call pest control and tell them you are having some problems with the pigeons in your neighborhood. And stay away from the creek.”
Her grandmother hung up the phone, leaving a crackle in her ear, the sense that even though the connection had been cut, the conversation continued.
SOPHIE BROUGHT HER mother a glass of water clacking with ice cubes. She shook a bottle of aspirin. “I brought you this,” she said. “But I think you should take this.” She waved another bottle at her, nighttime cold medicine. “It’ll knock you out, so you can sleep off your cold. You really need to sleep, Ma.”
Sophie’s guilt was bunched up inside her shield, known only to her. To her mother she sounded like a concerned and thoughtful daughter, and she was—Sophie did want her mom to be well, to sleep a deep and healing sleep. But Sophie also wanted her mother out. Knocked out. Sophie had a lot to do, and she could do it best, and safest, with her mother zonked out on cold medicine. Am I trying to drug my own mother? Sophie worried. She kept the medicines held out to her mom. “Your choice,” she chirped. Andrea selected the cold medicine, and Sophie felt a rush of relief and excitement.
“Did you make those calls?” Andrea asked. Her hair was triple bedheaded, first from the couch, then from her restless slumber, and then from the sweat of her fever dampening the tangles. Her face was flushed and her eyes looked dull. Sophie kissed her warm cheek.
“Dr. Chen might come by, to see if you need antibiotics,” she said, and Andrea rolled her eyes.
“Right. Get me better quick so I can go right back to work,” she said cynically. It occurred to Sophie that maybe her mother wanted to be sick. Maybe this was the only break Andrea could manage to take.
“No, she’s just concerned for you, Ma. She wants you to feel better. Nana might stop by, too.”
“Gosh, I’m so popular,” she quipped. “I’d better put some pants on. Will you bring me some shorts from my dresser?”
Sophie rifled through her mother’s drawers, a sweet lemony smell filling her nose. Her mother kept little bundles of herbs stashed among her clothes, the perfume of it rose into the air. Sophie found a pair of pajama shorts patterned with ducks and brought them to her mother.
“Go to the store and get orange juice, and those instant soup packets. And some honey and lemon.”
“Right now?” Sophie asked.
“Whenever,” Andrea said. “Go later. Take my purse with you. Just let me sleep. But remember, you’re still punished. No running off with Ella or passing yourself out or anything. I’ll know if you do,” Andrea threatened, full of maternal bravado. Sophie knew she could do all that and more and her mother would never be the wiser. It gave Sophie a sad feeling, that her mother should be so easy to trick.
“Okay, Mom,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”
* * *
THE FIRST THING Sophie did was take plastic bowls from under the sink and fill them with tap water. She carried the sloshing containers out into her yard and lined them up against the back fence. Livia swooped down from a telephone line with a whistle.
“How lovely of you,” she thanked Sophie, and entered the bowl with a splash. Sophie cupped some water into her palms and poured a stream over the pigeon’s grimy head. Livia shut her eyes as Sophie massaged the dirt from her wet feathers. “Oh, my,” she cooed. “That feels wonderful.” Soon the yard around her was fluttering with pigeons wanting a hand washing.
“Me next, me next,” Arthur insisted.
“Would you do that to me, Sophie?” Giddy asked in her tender voice. Beside her, Roy bobbed his neck from side to side.
“I think I really threw something out doing loop-de-loops,” he complained. “Would you mind giving it a rub?”
“And me,” Bix inserted. “If you would.”
And so Sophie spent the next hour of her morning bathing each pigeon, one by one. She stole from her bathroom her mother’s shampoo, which smelled like bright fruit, and she lathered their feathers into a froth. “Ooooh,” they cooed uniformly. “Aaaah.”
They emerged from their baths with their feathers wetted to their wings, looking ugly and drowned. Sophie was certain the birds had never been so clean. They rose to the telephone wires to dry in the sun, growing fluffy, sticking their beaks into their bodies to huff their candy-sweet stink, becoming pretty and noble once again.
“I smell so good I want to take a bite outta myself,” Arthur said happily.
Sophie refreshed the water and left it out for them, then got to work washing the birdshit from her mother’s car roof. The pigeons sat shamefaced above her, watching.
“ ‘I watch, and long have watched, with calm regret,’ ” spoke Bix. “William Wordsworth. Poet Laureate of Great Britain, 1843 to 1850. I am so, so sorry that any of my kind has shat upon your carriage.”
“It’s fine,” Sophie said. The sponge removed the crust of excrement fairly easily. She scrambled up and over the roof of the car. “I just want to finish this now, in case my grandmother comes.”
“Wordsworth had a dreadful grandmother too,” Bix said. “She nearly drove him to suicide. But the romantics, they were very weak, and dramatic. You are something different, dear Sophie.”
Sophie cast half an eye at the bird, and kept scrubbing.
“ ‘Queen of my tub, I merrily sing, while the white foam raises high,’ ” Bix carried on. “Louisa May Alcott. Best known for Little Women, but she was a poet as well, you know.”
“Bix, you are becoming annoying,” Livia said.
“Oh, dear.” The bird shuffled his feathers nervously. “I’m very sorry.”
* * *
WITH THE BIRDS and the car clean and shining, Sophie returned to the house to check on her mother. The cold medicine held her in its druggy grip; Andrea breathed deeply, her sleep solid. Sophie found her purse in the living room, on the edge of the couch. It was a roomy bag, fake leather slowly peeling where the strap wore against Andrea’s shoulder. Sophie fetched the paper bag from beneath her bed and stuffed the candle into it. “Mom?” she spoke softly into the bedroom. Andrea answered with a snore. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
Sophie left the house, the birds following above, flying ahead and roosting on wires as Sophie made her way down Heard Street, mercifully ignored by a pack of boys clustered on a porch, their dirt bikes in a tumble upon the sidewalk, further still, past the rows of neglected houses. Neglected. Sophie mused upon the word. Neglected like her. What Kishka said had truth in it: Sophie was a neglected kid, she knew she was. Her mother didn’t mean it; Andrea just worked so much— she was consumed with their tiny family’s survival. Consumed, too, with her resentment of it; how unfair it was, how she wished it wasn’t so. In the swirl of Andrea’s mind Sophie got lost, bobbing into view only when she misbehaved. Sophie felt a sort of respect for Kishka. Her grandmother was not a fool. She knew Sophie’s weak spots, so Sophie had better know them, too.