Bird Song (71 page)

A metal rattle that felt far too heavy for any baby to carry was resting in a box, along with a lock of dark brown hair tied together with a pale green ribbon.

“I hope there was some left on my head when this was taken off,” I groaned.

Another package of tissue revealed what I assumed was a traditional Korean dress that I would have worn on my first birthday.
 
I had seen pictures of it somewhere around the house, though Dad had long since packed most of the photos of my childhood away.

A soft, sage and lavender chenille blanket, folded into eighths rested over an album that lay at the bottom of the box.
 
It was an unusually large album, judging by the cover, and I had to tilt the box on its side just to pry it loose from its tight wedging.
 
Once I had it in my lap, I began to examine it, admiring the deep, textured grain in the black leather cover.
 
The pattern was unusual, and reminded me of a heavy snake skin.

I lifted the cover to read the inscription on the inside.

“
How priceless is your unfailing love!
 
Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.
”

The writing was the same flowing script that I knew to be my mothers, and I couldn’t help but trace each letter with my fingers, trying to imagine her sitting with this book in her lap, writing these words down as she prepared for my arrival.
 
I felt the twinges of anger and resentment start to build up within me when I stopped for a second to recognize that she wasn’t here to explain to me why she had chosen what she had written, what its meaning was, its significance to her…to me.

As with the album that Graham had purchased for Dad and Janice, this one had a thick sheet of vellum between each page, and I lifted the yellowed, translucent page to reveal an aged photograph of several strangely-garbed women seated around a black, rectangular table just a foot off the ground.
 
Their dark hair was pulled back in tight knots, their faces—what I could see of them anyway—were very serene.

One of them wore a sly smile beneath a swatch of lost pigment, everything but her smile gone forever.
 
Beneath the image my mother had written several names, including one that read “Great-Great-Grandma
Ahn
Bi”.
 
I immediately adopted the woman with the missing face, save for the smile as my great-great-grandmother.
 
That was the type of smile I would have loved to have inherited—spectacular all on its own, needing no other ornament—even the rest of a face—to enhance its beauty.

I turned the page to see another aged image, this time of several men seated around a bar.
 
They varied in ages, though none appeared older than my father.
 
Their names were listed beneath each of them, but only one bore any particular title:
 
“Great-Uncle
Llehmai
”.

He appeared the most prominent one in the group, his strong, handsome face standing out the most clearly.
 
His hair was dark, but not the darkest.
 
His face was handsome, his mouth lifted only on one side as if he knew that was all he needed.
 
He did not look Korean, but he wore the same style of clothes that the other men in the photos did.

“Maybe he was adopted.”

I continued to flip through several pages, stopping at each one to inspect and admire the various vintage photographs of individuals given labels ranging from “Aunt This” and “Cousin That”, the faces all so similar looking, varying only by slight degrees in height or slant of the cheekbones, tilt of the smile.
 
I could see myself in the faces of these family members, just as I could see myself in Dad’s face, and I felt comforted somehow, seeing that my family ties extended beyond just my mother, even if only through some old photographs.

I got to the last two pages in the album and frowned.
 
The second to the last page contained an image of me as a young girl, wearing a dress that I didn’t recognize, holding the hand of someone I did.

My eyes were raised up, instead of looking towards the camera.
 
I was smiling, happy, my gaze focused on the person whose hand gripped mine nearly as tightly as I was gripping theirs.
 
Though the photo was in black and white, I could see that my dress was probably green—mom liked to dress me in green for some reason—and my hair was pulled back with two clips that looked like they were made out of feathers, topped with flowers.
 
I was missing teeth, and my gap-toothed grin only accentuated the deep dimple in my cheek.

I turned my attention away from the image of me to the one of the individual who was staring back into the camera.
 
Her smile was incredibly bright, as though it were creating its own flash.
 
In her eyes I could see hints of my own, and in her hair she wore matching clips, looking ridiculous but not caring as she beamed for whomever it was taking the picture.

Her dress looked to be of the same shade of green as my own, but hers was cut to flaunt the figure that I was somehow not blessed with.
 
I laughed as I realized that our feet were both bare, our toes pointed towards each other, despite the obvious appearance of snow on the ground.
 
Without her shoes on, I could tell that mom was a fairly short woman, my head coming up to her chest quite easily, despite my youth.

Beneath the image was a caption written in mom’s clean penmanship:
 
“Grace and I at Mother-Daughter day, February 7
^th
”.

It was the last picture that had been taken of my mother and I, one of the last things she did before she died, and I felt a need to keep this photograph with me.
 
I gently pried it out of the metal corners that had kept it in place for over eleven years and turned it over, half-expecting to see nothing, and half-expecting to see something—anything—and feeling a sense of disappointment when all I saw on the back was the brand of photo paper used.

I chuckled and shook my head.
 
I took a quick look at the last page, the empty photo corners there now matching the ones on the page directly next to it.
 
I closed the book and proceeded to fit everything back into the box when something urged me to return to the photo album.

I again flipped through the images, the family that I had never known all welcoming me back with their familiar eyes and smiles.
 
It felt good.

And then I reached those final two pages once more, this time both empty.

But also both with something written beneath the photo area in the little caption box provided for notes.

I re-read the one my mother had written describing our mother-daughter day.
 
The photo in my hand was proof that it had been there.

Then my eyes glanced over to the page that I had assumed would be blank, its page free of a picture and thus, a comment.

But a comment was there, in Mom’s handwriting, describing an image that wasn’t there…and simply couldn’t have been.

“Grace and Maia: Mother and Daughter”

Six words had never brought out such a non-reaction from me before as I stared dumbfounded at their implication.
 
Had my mother done the unthinkable and began planning her grandchildren before her daughter had reached puberty?
 
Was this some misplaced page, and there was another family member whose name was Grace somewhere in my mother’s family tree?

I lifted the page to inspect the back, but saw that it was completely bare, no photo corners, no area for writing notes.
 
It was a simple ending for what was a simple album.

I placed the page back down and stared at it, trying to figure out what my mother’s intentions had been when she wrote this particular caption.
 
Her words to me in my dream started to echo in my head, and I slammed the album shut, hoping the loud clap would be enough to snap me out of it.

Instead, my mother’s voice grew louder and the only thing I could think to do to escape its incessant hounding was by distracting myself.
 
I stood up and pushed aside the curtain in Matthew’s room.
 
I could see the countless pots of
lillies
still sitting in the lawn, slowly withering away in the sun from the lack of care they were receiving.

In the fresh light, I quickly repacked the box of things that had been intended for me by my mother and carried it, as well as the picture I removed from the album back to my room.
 
I placed the box on my bed and approached the mirror.
 
The residue of tape from the pictures that I had removed was still visible on the glass, the outlines of the images clearly formed in dust against the reflection of the afternoon sun beating down in my room.

I stuck the photo of my mother and me to the very top of the mirror, and smiled at her face, almost imagining that while the seven year-old me gazed up at her from the eleven year-old picture, she was more interested and pleased with seeing the eighteen year-old me looking back at her.

I glanced quickly at my own reflection and sighed at what I saw.
 
There was no way a mother would have been pleased at seeing what was reflected at me in the mirror.
 
My skin looked waxy and gray, my eyes puffy from endless nights spent crying and days spent sitting in denial.
 
I had bitten my lips so hard trying to keep my sobbing to a minimum so as not to disturb Graham that they were now cracked and scabbed over.
 
I hadn’t taken a shower since coming home and it showed in my hair, which lay on my head like a tattered blanket.

My clothes needed to be changed, but with Dad gone, laundry hadn’t been done in almost a week and I didn’t have any clean shirts left.
 
The one that I wore hung on my body like a sack and I bit back a hysterical giggle as I saw that it was a shirt very similar in style to the one that I had worn on the day I had first met…I couldn’t even bring myself to think his name.

I shook my head and turned towards my bed.
 
I moved the box over and crawled onto my comforter, wrapping my arms around my poor pillow—it had taken far too much abuse this past year by way of my tears and would soon need to be put out of its misery.

I stayed that way as the sun crossed over the sky and began to set just beyond my window.
 
My room became a kaleidoscope of colors as the bright, white glow of daylight twisted and warped with the oranges, pinks, purples, and finally blues of dusk creeping into the still quiet of twilight.

I didn’t move as I heard a soft knock on my door, and remained silent as I heard the door open and then softly shut.
 
My bed creaked as the weight of another body forced the springs downward.
 
I felt a hot teardrop pool in the small hollow that formed between my nose and the inner corner of my eye as I remembered that it had never once made a sound whenever…
he
would do the very same thing.

A pair of strong, sure arms wrapped around me and pulled me against a solid yet giving chest, my back feeling the unmistakable rhythm of a beating heart, and soon the tiny pool began to overflow.

He held me, content to let me cry as long as I needed to, for whatever reason.
 
He didn’t move or complain about stiffness or cramping, and I started to feel guilty.

“You shouldn’t have to lay here and deal with me like this,” I sniffled.

“Bah.
 
You’re my best friend.
 
Besides, after what I put you through last year, I think I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Graham.”

“Just shut-up and let me comfort you, okay?”

We lay there in silence for a little while before my mouth started moving again.

“You should be talking to Lark.
 
It’s not her fault, you know—none of this is.”

He let out a long sigh.
 
“I know.
 
Stacy’s been hammering me on this every day since all of this happened.
 
It doesn’t matter, though.
 
She still knew and didn’t say or do anything—I don’t think I can accept that, Grace.
 
You’re my best friend.
 
I can’t see living my life without you there with me, and knowing that she and Robert almost guaranteed that that’s not possible with this Sam guy on the loose…I just can’t deal with that right now.
 
And neither should you.”

My heart pained at the idea of Graham already contemplating losing me, the grim reality that I had a target not just on my life, but on my very soul suddenly turning every precious moment together into something much more than just time.

“Stacy’s going on some kind of trial drug program to see if it’ll help fight off the cancer, and she’s using that as a reason to tell me that I’m being stupid for not giving…
him
a second chance—that if she can fight for what she wants, why can’t I.
 
The problem is that I don’t know what I want anymore.”

Graham’s breathing slowed as he contemplated what I said.
 
“Well, the only way to figure that out is to go over the things that you could have.
 
Do you want to work things out with Robert?”