Sunshine Picklelime (14 page)

Very early the next morning, PJ opened a window to see a familiar figure hunched up in a hoodie at her front gate. He held a canvas shopping bag that had something bulky, and something live, jumping up and down inside.

“Josh?
Is that you?” PJ called out.

He waited for her to join him in the garden.

“Josh, I’ve been wanting to see you.” PJ ran toward him.

He shook his head. “It’s a nightmare, PJ. I can’t feel anything. I can’t even cry. Take Squirt and hide him,” he said, and handed her the canvas bag. “Don’t tell anyone. Those moron doctors are trying to say Ruth must have caught bird flu or rabies or something weird from the animals. If you and I aren’t sick, how can they say that? I told my parents the birds and Squirt left already. Oh, I’m also giving you Ruth’s soccer ball. I found him spread-eagled over it.”

PJ took the bag carefully and held it close to her chest to calm Squirt. “They’d kill Squirt, wouldn’t they?”

Josh nodded and dug his hands in his pockets. “Ruth wouldn’t want that.”

“Of course not.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Then PJ said, “I heard your parents want me to have the tree house.”

“It’s my decision,” Josh said tightly. “I can’t bear to look at it knowing Ruth isn’t there. She’d want you to have it, PJ.”

“OK, but why not keep the tree house for a little while in case you change your mind?” PJ suggested.

“I won’t change my mind,” he said, and placed his hand over hers. “I better go home now. Thanks for taking care of Squirt.”

“Anytime,” she replied.

Joshua withdrew his hand slowly and turned away. PJ watched him walk to the corner. All the spring had gone out of his step. She looked from left to right, thankful no one had seen the exchange of the wriggling canvas bag. Now she had to navigate Squirt by her parents and into her room.

“Squirt, chill, OK?” she said, peeking into the bag when he started his usual
brrrkbrrrkbrrrking
. “I’m taking you home with me.”

Mrs. Picklelime met her at the front door. “Who was that in the garden, PJ?”

“Joshua. He gave me Ruth’s soccer ball,” PJ said, crossing her arms protectively over the bag to keep Squirt quiet.

“How thoughtful of him,” her mom said. She raised one eyebrow at the bag.

PJ turned to go up to her room.

“I’ll be working down here if you need me, honey.”

“OK, Mom, thanks,” said PJ, climbing the stairs two at a time. She closed her door, headed straight for the freshly painted window seat, and opened the canvas bag. Squirt jumped out. His spiky gray fur looked as though someone had plugged his tail into an electric outlet.

PJ bounced the soccer ball a few times, hugged it tightly, and placed it beside the squirrel. He nudged it with his nose. She then went for the box she had once used for Messenger Gull’s layover. It was still lined with an old red fleecy tartan shirt. Squirt jumped in. He lay there, looking up at PJ with sad eyes. His tail hung over the edge of the box, motionless.

PJ went over to her corkboard and studied the sketches she had done of Ruth recently. There was Ruth on her bicycle, pigtail flying in the wind. There was Ruth with Squirt dangling off her shoulder. PJ reached for her sketch pad to draw all of them in Mr. Splitzky’s barn with the owls while the image was still fresh in her mind. Somehow, she couldn’t seem to mix the right colors together. She couldn’t even draw the outlines. She tried several times but nothing seemed to work. Finally she just closed the pad and sat on the window seat, with one hand on Squirt and the other on the soccer ball.

Joshua called later to say the doctors had dismissed all suspicions of rabies or bird flu or any other animal-carried disease. “Some weird virus hit her,” he explained
in tears. “Ruth could have picked it up anywhere. Hit her like a meteorite,
bam!
She wasn’t even
sick!”

“But she seemed very tired all of a sudden, don’t you remember?”

There was silence on the phone. “Hey, you’re right, PJ,” he said after a while. “I just thought all the excitement was too much.”

“What about you, Josh?”

“Physically? Doctors gave me the all clear. What do they know? PJ, I’m feeling so empty. I want to rewind our lives like a movie. I keep thinking about things I wish I’d said.”

PJ heard his voice break before he cut the call.

A few days later, PJ, flanked by her parents, Mrs. Patel, Mr. Splitzky, Blossom, Ms. Lenz, and a huge tree full of birds and squirrels, attended Ruth’s graveside funeral, along with scores of her friends and neighbors. Everyone sang, and the birds lifted the sky with their lovely chorus of voices.

One by one, Ruth’s friends got up to talk about their best memories. PJ spoke about always seeing Ruth
cycling around the streets, hands off her handlebars, pigtail flying.

After Ruth’s coffin was lowered into the ground, they all lined up to scatter earth on their friend in a silent tribute. According to Jewish custom, they used the reverse side of the spade, a simple, symbolic way of showing how sad and difficult it was to say goodbye.

Big drops fell out of the sky. Everyone looked up, thinking it had started to rain. But it was actually tears from all the birds lined up on the branches of the leafy oak tree.

pj’s search

Before Mr. Splitzky could
dismantle the tree house and haul it over to the Picklelimes’ garden, PJ did exactly what he had advised. When her mom left again, she went from neighbor to neighbor to hear their thoughts on what happened to someone—especially a child—after death.

Tall, thin Mr. Kanafani placed two little stools under his favorite orange tree because it was full of blossoms and the air was heavily scented in just that spot. He crossed his long legs in front of him like a pair of scissors.

“PJ,” he began, staring into the distance, “yes, our sacred book the Koran talks a lot about
al-Akhirah
, the
afterlife. Yes, some higher being judges us according to our good deeds and our bad deeds. But then what? I don’t know. For me, Ruth was all about good deeds. Maybe that is all you need to know.” He reached up and picked some orange blossoms. He held them in the palm of his right hand and stroked them gently, then inhaled the lovely scent. “Cup your hands for me,” he said. He dropped soft petals into her upturned palms.

PJ buried her nostrils in the petals.

“You see, PJ,” he said, “like Mrs. Patel, I let nature’s cycles teach me all the mysteries I need to know. I grew my lovely orange trees from the seeds I brought with me from my hometown of Jericho. Every year my trees give me canopies of blossoms richer than the previous year. Then blossoms drop off and fruit begins to bud. Every year they give me more and more oranges, sweeter than the last year. We eat what we can. We boil peels in sugar for candies. We make marmalade and rich syrup for winter months.” Mr. Kanafani touched the trunk lovingly. “Wait here. I have some tiny trees growing in pots. I would like you to have them. Plant them somewhere special in Ruth’s memory.” Mr. Kanafani rose, went into his house, and returned with two leafy little trees in clay pots and gave them to her.

PJ took the pots onto her lap and hugged them. “Mrs.
Patel is teaching me all her gardening secrets, Mr. Kanafani,” she said. “I’ll plant these in a special place. One day my garden will smell as lovely as yours and hers.”

“You can enjoy those fragrances all year.” He smiled. “We also place the peels on our wood-burning stoves in winter so our
entire
house is scented like an orange grove!”

While she listened to his every word, PJ became almost dizzy with the scent of the blossoms overhead.

“When branches fall in the winds,” Mr. Kanafani explained, “we burn them and mix the ashes in our compost with leaves. When that breaks down into soil with scraps and peels from the kitchen, we dig it into the earth around the orange trees. So everything moves around and around in a cycle.”

“That’s so beautiful, Mr. Kanafani.”

“That’s my personal belief, dear PJ. It goes beyond anything I can read in the Koran about the afterlife. It’s my link to the past and something I give to my children.”

“Ruth didn’t have orange trees,” PJ said. “But she loved her live oaks and pecan trees.”

“Then honor her, by taking some acorns and pecans from her garden in the fall. Plant some in your garden along with orange and lemon trees. Plant some in pots for the winter. Watch them grow. Add the shells to your
own compost. Feed pecans to the birds and squirrels that loved her. This way, you keep her breath alive.”

“Not just by taking care of her tree house?”

Mr. Kanafani shook his head. “Ruth was a special girl. Honor her every way you can. And accept.”

“Accept?”

“By accepting her death you will find inner peace.”

PJ went home and planted the little orange trees within view of the kitchen window. She dug some of Mrs. Patel’s fresh compost into the soil, left a moat around the base of each tree, and watered them thoroughly. Then she took a pot of kitchen scraps and strips of newspaper out to her new composter and tumbled it around. The bin spun so fast PJ nearly flew off her feet.

Later, PJ went to see Ms. Kyoko Naguri from Nagasaki. She hadn’t spoken to her since the day of the funeral. They sat together on a wooden bench next to a lily pond filled with koi fish that flopped about as if to show off their vivid colors and splotchy bodies.

PJ smiled at them. “Ms. Naguri, they look as though someone started to paint them and then couldn’t finish.”

Ms. Naguri threw back her head and clapped her hands. “Oh, PJ, I love your imagination! Follow me.” She rose from the bench and led PJ across a curvy line of stepping stones to the other side of the pond. “Pause a little on each stone, PJ. Now, look down!”

Sure enough, the colorful koi came clustering around their feet. The fish flapped and flopped about in the deep green water and circled around the stepping stones. They were looking for treats, which PJ and Ms. Naguri gave them, encouraging yet more fish to jet across from the other side of the pond.

Ms. Naguri’s short black hair swung around her friendly face and twinkling eyes like curtains blown by the wind. As she and PJ jumped from one stone to the next, she listened to what PJ told her about her time under the orange tree with Mr. Kanafani.