Sunshine Picklelime (4 page)

“‘They?’

“‘You don’t want to know. Hop in.’ And she disappeared
.

“So there I was, PJ, invited to become Lemon Pie, Chief Bouncer. I puffed out my chest and climbed on board Lady Weaver’s nest. She taught me how to dangle upside down off the nest, hanging on by my claws and swaying in the wind. All those noisy birds bothering her laughed and asked who her ‘freaky friend’ was. But I’m so used to being different, it didn’t bother me. All I could think was how boring they were. Lady Weaver and I became buddies. It made me think of you, PJ, because I haven’t had a good buddy since leaving you.”

Messenger Gull sipped some water and then continued.

“Lady Weaver told me about the floods that tore walls off houses and swept beaches into the sea and toppled tall palm trees that floated by like matchsticks. But even that force couldn’t destroy the weavers’ nests. Even though they swung and bucked dizzily in the storm, not one of them broke. Out came the TV crews and cameras, and they were on the evening news. But Lady Weaver told me she could do without the fame, because all those scruffy birds kept harassing her, thinking they could just
move in and freeload. ‘I’m very fussy about boyfriends,’ she said.”

Messenger Gull paused. The room became very quiet. He looked up at the corkboard. “Your Lemon Pie looks a little scruffier than that now, PJ. Listen, do you have any bananas downstairs?” he asked.

“Oh, oh yes, of course,” she said. She scrambled up and paused by the door to make sure her parents were still asleep. She returned in minutes with a plate of bananas and a knife and began peeling and slicing the fruit to share with Messenger Gull. He hopped down off the window seat and snuggled beside her.

“Mmmm
, nice, but not as dark and sweet as South African bananas.”

“These are from Guatemala. Don’t be rude!” PJ said.

Messenger Gull chuckled. He pecked at the banana bits, slurped some more water, and hopped back on the window seat. “Now, where was I?”

“Lady Weaver told Lemon Pie she was fussy about boyfriends.”

“Oh yes, yes, yes, now let me pick up the thread here … hmmmmm … yes….
Well, once the rascals …
” Messenger Gull cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and went on talking in Lemon Pie’s voice.
“Once those rascals
stopped harassing Lady Weaver, she had no more use for me, you see, PJ. She fed me one morning and said I had to move on. That was it. So I flew toward the Indian Ocean, hoping to meet some of the Cape gulls, as I felt a little lost. I’d been too comfortable for a while. And then, PJ, as I flew past the port with the big rusty storage tanks, you will never guess what happened.”

“What?” asked PJ.

“Shhh,” warned Messenger Gull. “Don’t interrupt me!”

“Oh, sorry.”

Messenger Gull paused, frowning, then, once again in Lemon Pie’s voice, he said,
“You’ll never guess what happened. I saw this huge tree by the port. So huge and bushy it reminded me of your hair, PJ, so I flew straight into it and perched on a branch. The sparkling blue Indian Ocean was behind me. And I faced a busy crossroads, opposite a steep hill with a bright green mosque and roads going from left to right. The tree was next to the port, in a scrubby field with piles of builders’ rubble, bricks, and broken bottles. The tree was full of birds. Some sounded like Canada geese but didn’t look like them. Oh, guinea fowl and peahens and colorful little birds I had never seen before, with bright turquoise tails. So, I began to twitter away in the voice you trained and didn’t
feel shy or embarrassed about not sounding like a true yellow warbler, because I was the only warbler around! There were also a few Cape gulls—wow, are they noisy—and some of those rascal weavers I chased away from Lady Weaver’s nest, who found it very funny to hear she had finally chased me away, too!

“We all got talking and they told me about the area around the port, called South End, where many wonderful families of all different colors and backgrounds and religions used to live. Many of them worked at the docks or on the fishing boats and factories close by. Only, the government was very cruel in those days and said only white families could live there. So the police came in with big bulldozers and smashed all the houses and shops—that’s why the field by the tree was bare except for piles of broken bricks and glass. And they sent Chinese families to the Chinese areas. Black families to the black areas. Mixed-race families to the mixed-race areas. Muslim families to the Muslim areas. Indian families to the Indian areas. They broke up the whole neighborhood, PJ. Isn’t that sad? But you know what happened? The white families refused to remain behind once the area was destroyed and all their friends were sent away. So they moved away, too.”

Messenger Gull shook his head and paused to sip some water.

PJ looked down, feeling the sadness he shared. Then she lifted her head and listened. The house was beginning to stir.

“I’m almost done,” said Messenger Gull before resuming Lemon Pie’s voice.

“I forgot to tell you what kind of tree this was. It’s a huge wild fig tree, PJ, and I mean huge, like a million times bigger than your hair, with a gnarled, twisted trunk. When South End was destroyed all those years ago, it stopped producing figs. Just stopped like that. But you know what? As I sit here, I can see tiny figs beginning to bud again, because there’s a democratic government now. All sorts of people can live, work, and study where they want. I’ll stay here and wait with the other birds until the fruit is ripe. Then I will eat a lot of it and fly away to drop and plant its seeds all along the coast to Cape Town. So goodbye, dear PJ. I love you!”

PJ bit her lip. Messenger Gull began to cry big drops of salty tears.

“And that’s it?” asked PJ. “Lemon Pie said he was just going to keep on flying?”

Messenger Gull nodded. He wiped away his tears with the tip of a wing and stared outside at the pink sky.

PJ sighed. After a quiet moment, she thanked Messenger Gull for the wonderful b-mail from Lemon Pie.
“Will you stay with me, Messenger Gull, so I can send a b-mail back to Lemon Pie?”

Messenger Gull shook his head sadly. “I wouldn’t know where to find your Lemon Pie,” he said. “Now I have to fly to Central Park in New York to deliver a b-mail to a silver-gray dove who lives in a tree by the boat basin.”

And with that, he pecked up the last of the banana pieces, hopped on the windowsill, spread his wings, and lifted off into the sky.

Mr. Flax, the botany teacher, was setting up his Power-Point as PJ rushed in late. Pencils tumbled out of her backpack and clattered all over the floor. Mr. Flax was a gangly, craggy man with smiling blue eyes, and he said to the class, “Seeds scatter just like our PJ’s pencils. Look!” He began showing various views of his garden that he had photographed last summer. Tall, wavy sunflowers zigzagged across a path and made crazy patterns on the lawn and soared out of beds of lavender and mint.

“Oooh.” “Oh wow.” “Cool.” “Look at that!” everyone said at once.

“I didn’t plant any of those sunflowers,” Mr. Flax chuckled. “Nature did the work. They’re all spontaneous. In some areas they sprouted out of compost. Or they grew out of seeds dropped by birds around the bird feeder. Or breezes brought them onto my path from sunflower farms in the next village. Come and look at what I saved,” he said, scattering sunflower seeds on his desk along with dried sunflowers, brittle stalks, and roots from his shed.

PJ remembered an earlier class when he had prompted them to be aware of tiny plants and trees sprouting out of crags and crevices in the cliffside. She felt thrilled, thinking about Lemon Pie’s plan to scatter seeds from the big fig tree by the port all the way down South Africa’s south coast.

“Mr. Flax,” she asked, “do sunflowers also grow out of trees when they fall down and rot and go all crumbly?”

“Good question, PJ. What do the rest of you think?”

Hands shot up. “Sunflowers need sun, don’t they?” piped a voice from the back.

“Sure.” Mr. Flax nodded. “I’ve seen sunflowers growing out of rotting tree trunks. Their stalks bend every which way to tilt their faces to the sun.”

“Broken trees in our backyard are full of creepy-crawlies
and funny mushroomy plants. But no sunflowers,” said another voice from the front of the class.

“Creepy-crawlies, heat, and rain help to break down the inside of a tree into all sorts of ecosystems,” said Mr. Flax. “In some places deep in the rain forests, you’ll find beautiful orchids, ferns, or mosses growing out of old tree trunks lying on the ground.” Turning to the whiteboard, he reached for green, red, and brown markers and began writing out their homework assignment for the next class. “See how many forms of life you can find in any old broken tree trunk. Spiders weaving webs. Mushrooms. All kinds of grasses. Twisted roots. Wildflowers, or maybe some young sunflowers?”

“Bugs?” PJ suggested.

“As many as you can spot,” said Mr. Flax. “Only don’t touch anything in case hundreds of fire ants come scurrying out!”

waterfalls

“Jump in, PJ,” said Mrs. Patel, rattling to a stop outside PJ’s school in an old VW Beetle of a brilliant rose red like the bougainvillea tumbling over her house.

“Oh, Mrs. Patel, I have homework,” pleaded PJ.

“No arguments,” said Mrs. Patel. She wagged her finger so fast, her jangly bracelets sounded like castanets. “I’ll have you home before sunset. Here, let me call your mom,” she added. She reached for her cell phone and speed-dialed the Picklelime home to leave a message.

“Done,” she said. “Come. I want to show you my waterfall.” And with that, she spun the VW around in a single motion and sped off toward the cliffs.

PJ eyed the sky just in case young Lemon Pie had decided to fly home, but in her heart she knew that was impossible. She told Mrs. Patel about the wonderful surprise in Messenger Gull’s b-mail and how Lemon Pie had ended up in the huge old wild fig tree down by the harbor of Port Elizabeth on the east coast of South Africa.

“A wild fig tree? Did he say anything special about it?” asked Mrs. Patel.

“Special? Well, it was filled with all sorts of birds, waiting to eat new figs.”

“No, there’s more. Didn’t Lemon Pie tell you the wild fig tree is sacred in southern Africa?”

“Sacred?” PJ said in surprise.

“You see, PJ,” Mrs. Patel went on, pausing at a red light. “For hundreds of years, families have gone to wild fig trees to talk to their ancestors and to ask for messages and guidance.”

“Their ancestors also lived in the wild fig tree?” PJ asked, puzzled.

Mrs. Patel laughed. The light turned green and the VW
varoomed
ahead. “No, child. The ancestors had passed on, one by one, invisible to us but all there in the memories of their loved ones. When family members had
a problem and needed to sort something out, they would visit the wild fig tree.”

“I don’t think Lemon Pie knew that, but he wants to drop wild fig seeds along the coast. Isn’t that great? More trees for more families to visit!”

“What a lovely idea!” said Mrs. Patel, moving the VW’s stick shift down to a lower gear.

Fascinated, PJ watched her. She was used to her mom’s Toyota automatic. They slowed down, turned onto a dirt track, and bounced over potholes toward the craggy clifftops.

“Mrs. Patel, how do you know about the wild fig tree?” she asked.

“Ah, that’s simple, PJ. You see, many Indian families went to live and work in South Africa’s sugar plantations a long time ago, mainly around a city called Durban on the east coast. It’s very hot and tropical and steamy and lush. Pineapples and bananas are deep gold in color and they are so sweet they make your head spin! I have uncles and aunties there and more cousins than I can count. That’s how I know about the wild fig tree. Your Lemon Pie will come back to us as a wise little bird after all these experiences.”

PJ was silent for a moment, trying to recall everything
Messenger Gull told her about Lemon Pie’s travels. She hung out the window to study the slope of the cliffs. Jagged ledges held wisps of former nests where Lemon Pie once protected the eggs of local laughing gulls. When would she meet some of those gulls, as Lemon Pie promised?