Sunshine Picklelime (16 page)

“That’s God’s work on earth?”

“A big part of God’s work, yes, PJ. Does that help?”

“It makes me
think
. Do you know Mr. Splitzky, the ‘bearded beekeeper’? And Blossom, his dog? He said I should talk to a lot of people, ask a lot of questions about life and death.”

Mr. Flax nodded. Everyone knew Mr. Splitzky and Blossom. “Mr. Splitzky’s honeybees actually stop caterpillars from eating plants in your neighborhood. Caterpillars don’t like the vibration
bzzz-bzzzing
the air, so they move away!”

“He never told us that,” said PJ. “That’s great news for our gardens!”

“It sure is. He’s a good man and he’s given you good advice,” said Mr. Flax, gathering up his books. “Keep on asking questions, PJ. You will get many different answers.
Don’t be confused. Let different questions and answers play around in your thoughts like different tunes. You know how that goes? Until a favorite tune keeps on playing over and over in your mind?” Pausing to pick up his laptop, he smiled at her. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Your art teacher, Mr. Santos, and I are planning an exciting project together for the end of the semester. I know you’re quite the artist. You’ll love it!”

“What’s the project?”

“Can’t tell you now.”

PJ turned away. “Mr. Flax, I haven’t been able to draw anything since Ruth died.”

Mr. Flax said, “Look at me, PJ. Grief hits all of us in different ways. Some feel sad. Others feel angry. Some kids shut down so they don’t feel anything at all. Be patient with yourself. Your art is just taking a rest.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so. That’s another reason why you should go talk to Mr. Santos.”

the gull gang

Pablo dos Santos y Sanchez
did a swift U-turn on his racing bike and pedaled after PJ when he spotted her cycling toward a jagged split in the cliffside not far from Mrs. Patel’s waterfall. Below, the ocean was a choppy, restless gray, flecked with foam.

“Whoa!” he said. “You are cycling like the wind these days, PJ! Mr. Splitzky and Mr. Flax said you wanted to see me. Come—let’s drop our bikes over there by that big boulder and talk a little!”

Mr. Santos was not only PJ’s art teacher but a wonderful sculptor who created beautiful objects and fountains in stone for meditation gardens and to catch the eye
of people who walked into office buildings and universities. He ordered his stone from surrounding quarries.

“I add shape to what I see in nature,” he told PJ. “Nature does eighty percent of the work. See this?” Mr. Santos sat down in a bowl-like niche on the boulder, which was deeply scalloped by centuries of wind and water. He tapped the rock as PJ sat down beside him. “Look at all these contours and funny shapes,” he said. “Look how tiny sea creatures got trapped here and here.” He pointed out some shellfish fossils. “See where little plants and flowers sprouted out of a few grains of dust blown here by the wind.
Milagro!
A miracle!”

“Mr. Santos, you sound like Mr. Flax. He also taught us how to look for tiny plants growing out of rocks and roofs.” Feeling the warmth of the rock through her hands, PJ asked, “How would you sculpt this rock if nature has done most of the work?”

Mr. Santos got up and circled it thoughtfully. Every now and then, he bobbed down to examine some crevice or to run his long fingers over a jagged edge. “Perfect,” he said. “I’d leave the areas that nature has claimed exactly as you see them here. Then, ah, then I would use this lovely bowl shape on the top for a special fountain. Sand it carefully to smooth out the roughness so you can
see the grain in the stone. Look at all these lovely patterns. Look at the seams of pink quartz, PJ … PJ? Hello? Anyone at home?”

PJ didn’t respond and Mr. Santos just smiled and said, “Eh!”

Clouds raced across a gray sky that matched the color of the ocean. The waves seemed choppier than usual. Everything seemed to be churning, including PJ’s own emotions. She appreciated Mr. Santos’s intensity, but her mind was far away. “My neighbors have been sharing all their thoughts with me about what happens after death. What’s your belief?”

“Well, I’m an artist, PJ, so that’s what I will share,” he said. “Not some traditional Catholic belief!”

“That’s OK,” said PJ. “I hate it when people talk to me like a baby and say Ruth is ‘in a better place’ or ‘up there’ somewhere,” she said, gesturing toward the sky. “Up where?”

Mr. Santos folded his hands. “When I was a schoolboy of your age in Spain,” he said, “my teachers were monks who drummed dramatic ideas in our head about mortal sin and heaven and hell, and a sort of midway place called purgatory, where you went if you weren’t bad enough for hell or good enough for heaven.
Pffffft!”
he
said with a flick of a hand. “By the time I went to art school, I shed all that like a skin. I began to see life and especially art as one big school. Training us to learn. To be sensitive. Kind. To listen. To observe. Yes, to do crazy things sometimes and fall down.” He laughed in his musical way. “We also learn from one another—as you learned from Ruth. You are growing through everything she taught you. So, in many ways, she is still among us. Only her
physical
form is not.”

“It’s still hard, Mr. Santos.”

“I know, PJ. Ask yourself this. What would your life be like if you had not met Ruth?”

PJ thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t have learned so much or have all these cool animal and bird friends!”

“Ah. So her work with you was complete? You learn fast. Now, does it help you to think of her in some invisible form somewhere, teaching others?”

PJ sighed. “What you are saying is that I need to
share
her with the universe, right?”

“You could think of it that way, why not?” Mr. Santos said.

“I’ll try, Mr. Santos,” she said, close to tears. “I don’t understand why I can’t seem to draw anything at the moment. I can’t even draw Ruth.”

“Don’t worry, PJ. Don’t force yourself. Wait until things happen spontaneously. Just spend these days doing things that come easily. Cycle, garden, work extra hard at school. Ah, go to the library and enjoy the most beautiful art books.”

That seemed like a good idea to PJ and was also an excuse to talk to the librarian, Mrs. Martins.

Mr. Santos leaned down and let a handful of sand trickle through his fingers. “Look, PJ, nothing is separate from us,” he said. “We are all made up of tiny particles moving at different speeds and in different shapes and forms. Even this sand has minerals in it that we also have in our bodies.”

“Is that art? Or science?” PJ asked.

“Oh, PJ, an artist would say art. A scientist would say science. What do you think?”

“Is there really a difference?”

“Is ice cream art or science?”

“Both!” PJ smiled.

“Good! Let’s jump on our bikes to see if we agree on that over vanilla cones swirled with peanut butter, caramel, and crushed nuts. I’ll tell you about the art show Mr. Flax and I are planning for the end of the semester. We’re looking for some hot creativity from you!”

“PJ, is that you, my girl?” Mrs. Martins came
tap-tap-tap
ping down her ladder after replacing books on the top shelf in the library’s science section.

PJ waited below, arms laden with art books. “Hi, Mrs. Martins. Do you have ten minutes for me?”

“Come into my little den, PJ.” Mrs. Martins led the way through the stacks and between tables of readers by the bay windows to an office behind the front desk. She ruffled PJ’s hair and said, “Doesn’t take long for it to grrrrrow wild again, hey, PJ? When the sea air’s heavy and damp like today, we say bushy hair like ours is ‘going home to Africa,’ you know?”

PJ liked that idea and thought about the way her curls helped mop up oil on the waves. Perhaps her hair floated all the way to Africa, along with Lemon Pie? It was nice to hear Mrs. Martins’s clipped accent and rolled
rrrrr’s
because they reminded her of Messenger Gull’s b-mail visit.

She perched herself on a tall stool opposite Mrs. Martins and said, “I’m asking all my neighbors to help me understand life and death.”

Mrs. Martins’s eyebrows shot up. “And you’re trying
to find answers in art books?” she said. “Fire away, PJ. Ask anything you like.”

“Mr. Splitzky said you were a Protestant.”

Mrs. Martins hooted with laughter. “Nay, my girl. I can’t be pinned down in a box like that. Remember I grrrrrew up in an area of Cape Town where we had Muslim spice sellers on one side of the street, Indian textile merchants on the other side, and a Jewish furniture shop on the corner. One little Catholic church squeezed in here, and a Methodist church squeezed in there. One family worshiped on Friday, another on Saturday, and others on Sunday. So I thought, God is far too overworked. When our minister started on about repenting sins and looking for grace through Christ for everlasting life, I thought, wait. It’s action that counts. Not words.”

PJ leaned forward. “How old were you, Mrs. Martins?”

“A few years older than you, my girl. But remember I grew up under a terrrrrible past political system that was hell on earth. I didn’t need some minister to tell me about an abstract hell. We lived it, hey? I thought to myself, I have responsibility for my own soul in the same way I have responsibility for my body. Exercise, eat the rrrrright foods, no cigarettes or booze. In the same way,
feed and exercise the soul. Think. Change political darkness to light in the community. Spread goodness. Swim, walk in the mountains. Feel God’s abundance. Be aware, hey?”

“You make it sound so simple, Mrs. Martins,” said PJ. She remembered Lemon Pie’s b-mail about spreading seeds from the sacred fig tree that started to bear fruit again when the politics of South Africa changed.

“It
is
simple, PJ. Create a special energy around yourself to give others joy, hope. God supplies the raw material. It’s up to us what we do with it.”

“Ruth did a lot.”

“That’s it! Otherwise you wouldn’t be rrrrrunning around asking all these questions, my girl.”

That evening, PJ sat on her window seat and replayed everything she had learned that day, the beach activities, and all the thoughts she had shared with Mr. Flax, Mr. Santos, and Mrs. Martins. Breezes brought the smell of the ocean right into her room. She could hear the comforting and familiar sound of Mrs. Patel’s melodic metal chimes across the road. The moon was crystal clear, like a
circle of pure ice in the sky, forming a perfect triangle with two brilliant stars. The owls were silent tonight, or perhaps it was too early? Her dad was watching TV downstairs, but all she could hear was a faint murmur.

A feeling of peace came over her for the first time in days. Her mind wasn’t racing like a bicycle going downhill without brakes anymore, but she knew this was also probably because she felt weary in a nice way. Outside, the rosebush was just a dark shape against the fence. She could also see the outlines of the little orange trees and the small pink and red flowering bushes she had planted within view of her windows to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

PJ especially loved the idea that Mr. Splitzky’s bees might visit her flowers and keep caterpillars away. One day she would taste his honey and know that some of that nectar came from her garden.