Silhouette of a Sparrow

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Also by Molly Beth Griffin

For Emer, of course.

American Robin
(
Turdus migratorius)

I was born blue. Life ripped me early from my safe place and thrust me into the world. It was all so astonishing that I forgot to breathe.

But the puffed-up robin that sang outside the window of the birthing room came early too, that March of 1910, and just in time. He flew north before the spring came so he could sing me into the world. His song said
Breathe child, this life was meant for you.
When I finally let out my first scream I flushed red as that robin—red: the color of life, blood, love, and fury. At that moment I earned my name, Garnet, after the deep red stone that’s meant to bring courage. “Garnet, for courage,” Aunt Rachel, the midwife, said to me, when I was just a squalling baby.

My mother gave me life that day, but I was the one who decided to take it. I claimed it for myself.

That’s how the story goes. At least, that’s the way Aunt
Rachel told it to me a hundred times over, even after I knew it by heart. That’s the version I asked to hear again and again as a child, so I could wrap those pretty words around me like a familiar blanket and fall asleep thinking I knew exactly who I was.

It was the seventeenth of June, 1926, and the Thursday morning streetcar was four minutes late.

On the streetcar platform, tiny birds hopped and pecked around the feet of the waiting crowd. My eyes locked onto one bird, and as I took in the curve of its breast and the fringe of its tail feathers, my fingers worked with sewing scissors, snipping the image out of black paper. Faithfully, the chickadee recreated itself in my hands. A perfect silhouette.

The bird hopped too close to Mother’s tapping foot, and with a startled ruffle of wings it hurried away. I tucked its paper twin into my pocket along with the scissors.

“Mind Mrs. Harrington,” Mother said, frisking invisible dust from the collar of my dress. “And write us often.” Mother fretted on my left, her nervous energy expressed in fidgets and little bursts of conversation like, “We can’t have
you getting polio, now can we?” and, “Oh, we will miss you, dear. Won’t we miss her, Albert?”

Father brooded, still and silent as a ghost on my right. He gazed off across the tracks, probably reliving some painful memory of the Battle of the Argonne Forest for the thousandth time. He didn’t need to speak and neither did I. Mother did it all for us, prattling on about polio, which was her far-flung excuse for sending me to the country for the summer to “take the lake air” with a wealthy distant relation and her daughter.

At sixteen, I was hardly at risk for polio, but the real reasons for my going were among the many things unsaid between the three of us as we waited for that streetcar. Mother needed time alone with Father, to try once more to bring him home from the war, and I knew it. I also knew that if I didn’t go away for the summer I might end up engaged to Teddy Hopkins before I finished up with school. Finally, Mother’s desire to expose me to the civilizing company of her husband’s rich relations made transparent her concerns that I (like so many young people these days, as she’d say with a sigh) might stray from the path to true womanhood.

I’d given her no cause for alarm; years earlier I’d abandoned dissecting owl pellets and climbing trees to look into nests in favor of ladylike bird watching and silhouette cutting. Perhaps the modern woman had been liberated from corsets and granted the right to vote, but there were some things that still weren’t done. I knew that, and she had no need to worry. But worry was what Mother did best, and there was no way to stop her.

Where
was
that streetcar?

Mother brushed off her skirt and pinned up a loose wisp of hair. Then she shifted her weight from left to right and back again. “Where could it be?” she fussed. “I hope it’s not too late; I asked Mrs. Harrington to meet you at the station in Excelsior and she won’t like to wait. The streetcar will drop you off right at the amusement park and it would be awfully confusing for you to find the hotel from there.”

At last, as if conjured by those magical words
amusement park,
the streetcar swung into the station. Its rear doors creaked open and the crowd pressed toward the tracks.

Mother gripped my shoulders in her hands and kissed me on the forehead. Then she let go and nudged Father, still staring blankly ahead. “She’s got to go, Albert.” His name woke him from his trance and he bent to pick up my bags. He handed me the small trunk and the traveling case, and then his cold lips brushed my cheek.

“Good-bye, Daddy,” I said. It was the right thing to say at that moment, but the words felt too heavy in my mouth, so I added, “Wish me luck.”

He nodded once and a flicker of a smile passed across his pale face. “Good-bye, Gigi,” he mumbled. Garnet Grace Richardson—Gigi. He so rarely used my little-girl nickname these days that the word flooded my mind with images of him tossing me in the air
(Fly, Gigi, fly!),
tugging my ponytail, suiting me up in his big rubber waders for a trek through the bog. Maybe Mother would be able to bring that man back to us—I couldn’t help but hope.

I tightened my grip on my bags and pushed into the rush and jostle of the crowd.

Inside, the car buzzed with energy—full of families headed off to the amusement park for the weekend, and women and children going to the lake for the summer to escape the heat and crowds of the city. I dropped my token into the fare box and then the conductor, in his pressed uniform, took my suitcase and led me to an open seat. I slid down the bench toward the window and he placed the little trunk on the floor beside my feet. I settled my traveling case in my lap and watched through the window as Mother and Father walked down the platform with a foot of empty space between them. Soon they were out of sight and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

In another moment, the car startled to life like a cat out of sleep, sending the women’s ribbons fluttering in the breeze that came through the open front windows. I pressed my face against the glass as the city rushed by. Streets and houses flowed away like water down a drain and soon we were in open country, soaring like a hawk beside our shadow.

Hawk, I thought, and the memory swooped in on me out of nowhere.

I shook the memory away and reached into my pocket. I rubbed my thumb against the handle of the crane-shaped scissors for comfort. The bird’s legs stood atop the thumb
and finger holes, and its body arched up into handles. Its eye made the hinge and its sharp beak formed the blades. When Father went to war and Mother insisted I come in from the citified remnants of forest and field and start learning to be a lady, I began to cut silhouettes of the birds I could see from the window seat of my bedroom, from the front porch, from the backyard, and from the sidewalk on my trips to school and back. After Father had come home and failed to take up my side of the argument again, Mother showed her approval of this quaint Victorian pastime by buying me a special pair of scissors for my twelfth birthday. Or maybe she just didn’t want me to dull my regular sewing scissors on the paper. No matter the reason for the gift, as the hobby turned into a passion, the delicate pair of scissors became my constant companion.