First Came the Owl (2 page)

It was cold on the playground, almost too cold to snow. Nita put on her earmuffs and shivered.

“Come on, Nita,” said Anne and ran into the
Run, Sheep, Run
circle. Nita just couldn't step inside that running pack. Instead she climbed to the top of the monkey bars and watched Henry finish tying his sneaker laces.

As he finished, she looked away, but not before he saw her watching. Henry stayed crouched on the ground, scratched under his arms, and cried, “Chee, chee, chee.” He bounced sideways and scraped the backs of his hands along the ground in an apelike way. Nita was afraid to eat the banana she had brought for her snack, because then Henry would really go crazy. I never should have climbed these monkey bars, either, she thought.

She wriggled her nose at Henry, but she was so far away, he probably didn't notice. “Rat,” she said softly. Henry's nose
was
kind of pointed, and he did stick it into everything. Maybe he could find some rat bars to climb.

She looked at the sun. The sun was white and shiny in the gray winter sky. It looks like my hard-boiled egg when I peel it at lunchtime, thought Nita. It doesn't feel warm at all. She was getting hungry. Was Henry gone? He was in the sheep circle now. Nita turned her back on the game and sneaked her banana out of her pocket.

Across the pond she could see the back of the laboratory where Anne's parents were busy in their geology lab. Nita wished her mother would go to an office or a lab, or water her orchids or
something.
Everyone is busy with something, except Mom. She thought of her mother lying on her bed. Even though we've moved around a lot, she argued to herself, we were always the Orson family, we were always fine, and now … now we're not fine.

She turned back and looked down from the monkey bars at Anne and Henry, Pete and Brenda, in the snowy circle. Brenda was the fastest sheep, with her long, red hair streaming behind her. Henry was the wolf, of course. The rat-wolf.

They all seemed far away from Nita's perch high up on the monkey bars. When she was in school, she liked to
be
in school; when she was at home, she liked to be there with her Mom and Dad, the way things had always been.

“Time to go,” shouted the bell monitor. He swung the big hand bell. Kids jostled toward the door and pushed into line. Nita made her way slowly to the lineup, but she felt as though she were invisible, because Henry trampled right over her foot and Anne was talking with Brenda. They were talking about the play.

Two

“N
ITA
!” Back in the classroom, Anne leaned over the back of Nita's seat and looked at her as if a question needed to be answered. “
Please
be in the play! It will be so fun if we're both in it.”

“What could I be?” asked Nita cautiously. After all, the tryouts weren't until day after tomorrow. It wouldn't hurt to ask about the play a little bit.

“We could both be dwarfs. They wear red hats and sing and dance!” Anne's eyes sparkled at Nita.

“I can't dance.”

“Also, the dwarfs take care of Snow White,” said Anne.

“I can do that,” said Nita, thinking of her mother.

“Also, dwarfs are
boys,
” said Henry, bursting in on the conversation from his seat across the aisle.

“Well, there must be
some
girl dwarfs,” said Anne.

“There aren't,” said Henry. “Dwarfs are miners.”

“Well, what about baby dwarfs? There must be some mothers.”

Henry's face turned red and he pulled his head down into his shirt so he looked like a shirt with hair. He was quiet for one whole minute. Then he gradually sat up, coming out of his shirt like a turtle. When he saw Nita watching him, he made little claws with his hands. “I'm a dwarf,” he said menacingly. “Now I'm coming to gobble you up!”

He must mean a troll, Nita thought. Even though she knew it was stupid, his claws made her shiver.

“Boys and girls,” said Mrs. Sommers. “I want to give you back these math tests. What a debacle!”

Somebody started to say, “What does…?”

“Look it up in your dictionaries,”
chorused at least twenty voices. Mrs. Sommers always said this, and today the class beat her to it.

The day sped on. Math, lunch, it seemed to Nita to go faster as it got toward the end and she knew she would have to go home. Pete got some people to go skating, but Nita didn't have her skates. The Sporoni bus picked up its passengers and left, with Henry sitting quietly in a front seat. His mother was the bus driver, and the only known human who was able to control Henry.

Nita dragged her feet as she went down School Street. She didn't feel like going home. It would be too quiet and scary.

Water Street was nice, and she slowed down to enjoy it. The post office had evergreen wreaths and fake candles in the windows, and she knew she could go in and have a gumdrop. Even grownups ate them, so they could joke around with John the Postmaster. But Nita didn't feel up to joking.

The bookstore was bright with the shiny covers of new books, and the other store in the bookstore building had a golden sun right in its window. Nita looked at the real sky, with only a pale gray glare where the sun should be. The one in the store window was
much
better. Up close, Nita could see it was made of little bits of fabric, a quilted sun. She smiled back at the glowing window.

Suddenly, Brenda came flying around the corner. “Race you to the bike path,” she shouted. Nita started running without thinking, and she almost caught her. “Last one there is a rotten egg!” shouted Brenda. Nita sped up and just managed to tag the back of Brenda's jacket as she ran through the ferry parking lot gate and took off up the bike path. Not too rotten, Nita said to herself.

Now she was farther toward home. She walked slowly under the railroad bridge, staying on the side that had no pigeons cooing in the beams.

It will be fine, it will be okay, Dad will be home soon, but why is Mom so sad? Nita walked and worried up the shortcut, down the street and all the way down the beach, up the driveway, and into the white house by the lighthouse whose light was flashing out over the bay.

Warning! Rocks and shoals! Warning! flashed the big light.

Three

C
RACK
! Nita cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. It looked fine. What was a rotten egg? she wondered. Her mind went back to the race with Brenda.

“What's a rotten egg like?” she asked her father.

“Sulfur.” He bent down and sniffed the bowl. “But those eggs aren't rotten. They'd smell like sulfur. Like the fires of hell.”

Nita laughed. Her father had fancy ways of saying things. Boy, sulfur must be awful. But she was tired of eggs—an egg for lunch, and now, eggs for dinner. No one was doing the shopping, that's why.

Dad smiled at Nita, and his blue eyes creased around the edges. It always surprised Nita that she could have such a blue-eyed dad. He had explained to her about genes and blue eyes, how if one parent had brown eyes and no gene for blue eyes that the children would always have brown eyes. But it wasn't only that. Nita
looked
like her mother, dark eyes, black hair, brown skin. Her father was pale skinned and blue eyed and looked like what Nita thought of as American. She didn't think she looked half American, though Dad said she had inherited his stubborn look and his love of potato chips.

Now she beat the eggs with a fork. “I'm going to cook them. You could get Mom.”

Nita heard him in the other room, coaxing Mom. She put some bean sprouts and green onions into the egg mixture and dropped little egg pancakes into the sizzling pan. The rice was done.

When Mom came to the table she was quiet. She looks so mysterious, thought Nita. What is she thinking? Her smooth brown face didn't give away her thoughts. Mom was sealed off like someone in a space capsule going to the moon. Earth to Mom, thought Nita. Talk to me. Why won't she talk to me? Nita felt so lonely right there next to her mother with Silence sitting like a fourth person at the table.

She put her mother's plate down in front of her.

Dad tried to keep the conversation going, but it was hard to talk to Silence. So he turned to Nita.

“How was school?”

“It was … school-like. Oh, and there's going to be a play—
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
”

Mom didn't pick up her fork. Dad cut a little bite and tried to put the fork in her hand. Nita knew he hated to feed Mom because he felt she wouldn't like being treated like a baby. Tonight Mom just shook her head.

Nita tried again. “I saw something on my way to school—I think it was a big bird, and it wasn't a seagull.”

No one seemed to be listening. Nita felt a burst of anger in her chest, but she knew that wasn't fair. Dad had explained to her about depression. She can't help it, he said. But it would be so easy to just pick up that fork and
eat!
Nita knew Dad would be unhappy if she said that, so she stuffed her mouth with egg and finished her supper quickly.

Then she took the phone into her room.

“Hello, is Anne there?” She hoped Dad wasn't listening. He thought she should say, “Hello, this is Nita. May I please speak to Anne?” But
no
one said all that, especially when it was Anne's sister Petrova who answered. Nita was sure Petrova didn't like her. She was so abrupt.

“Hold on,” said Petrova, and dropped the phone, or at least that's how it sounded.

“Listen, I can't talk long,” said Anne. “My parents are ‘helping' me with my math.” Anne's parents and her sister were all very good at math, and they couldn't believe that Anne wasn't. So they “helped” her, it seemed like for hours, when they weren't too busy. Fortunately, that wasn't very often.

Dad poked his head around the door, looking serious. “Nita, I need to use the phone,” he said. “Will you go sit with Mom? In fact, is that Anne? Ask her if I can talk to her mother, will you?”

All these questions. Silently, Nita handed him the phone and let him ask for Anne's mother. Then he gestured at Nita, to shoo her out the door, and reluctantly, she went. It was her room, after all, and what were they going to talk about anyway? Why did he want to talk to Mrs. S.? Now Nita was the one with all the questions. As she dawdled out of the room, she heard him say, “I'm going to ask you a big favor, Marian.”

Mom was back on her bed. She lay on her side facing the wood-paneled wall and pick, picked at the varnish. Long shreds of wood were coming off, and as Nita looked closer, she saw there was blood on the tips of her mother's fingers. Nita took her mother's hand. There was a big splinter in one finger. Her mother rolled onto her back and her dark eyes looked past Nita to the window.

Carefully, Nita laid down the hand and whispered, “I'll be right back. I'll fix it.” She hurried into the kitchen and got the splinter needle that was stuck in the bulletin board by the phone. She lit the stove and sterilized the tip of the needle in the flame. Then she went back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.

Gently, Nita picked up her mother's hand again. It was practically no bigger than Nita's own hand, and soft. Nita picked at the splinter. She was afraid it might hurt, but Mom didn't seem to even feel it. There! The splinter eased out. It
was
out. But a big drop of blood came out after it, and dropped on the bedspread.

Tears rushed to Nita's eyes. “Mom!” she burst out. “I'm sorry!” She tried to hug her mother. To do this she had to kneel on the floor and squeeze Mom's shoulders. Mom was so thin. She didn't answer Nita, but she looked at the spot of blood on the white bedspread.

Mom had slipped away into another world, like the fairy-tale world where princesses slept for a hundred years or queens wished for daughters as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony. She was far away and Nita couldn't think of any way to get to her there.

Nita rested her forehead on the bedspread and her tears dripped onto Mom's silky black hair.

“Nita,” said Dad from the doorway. “Nita, come in here for a minute.”

Nita left the still figure on the bed and followed Dad into the living room. When he put his arm around her, she leaned against him and wiped her eyes on his shirt.

“I'm going to take her to the hospital,” he said. “Anne's mother says you can stay with them tonight. Okay?”

“It's—” Nita was going to say,
not
okay. She didn't like to stay overnight at other people's houses, even Anne's. But Dad looked so worried that she heard herself say, “Okay. Can they … can the hospital get her to feel better?”

“They have some different medication, they have things they can try.”

“But why won't she talk?”

“She can't,” said Dad.

“Is there something the matter with her throat?” Nita asked.

“No.”

“Then she
can
talk.”

“She can't.” Dad spread his hands out by his sides, as if he didn't know what to do. “Nita, I know you're upset. But remember, Mom's had a hard life, and I think her trip reminded her of some sad things.”

Nita did remember one of Mom's stories. A story told long ago, in whispers, of a long escape through the trees, a dark night, and a hunt. Soldiers hunting her mother's family, who ran and ran through the jungle.

But now, Mom wouldn't even tell stories. She was like a clock not working—running down, ticking slower and slower, and finally not working. As if the whole world could just stop. Somehow, Nita felt if Mom would say one word, only one word, the world wouldn't stop. But Mom couldn't.

“Pack some stuff,” Dad said. “Marian is coming to get you. I'll call you tomorrow.”

He's not looking at me, thought Nita. All he thinks about is her, her, her. Or maybe … he's afraid, too? That was the worst thought of all.