It was sort of a crazy idea, because it was already almost dark out—the dead game time of dusk—but I thought, why not? So Dad pulled out his old gloves and bat and a wiffle ball, and he pitched for Sky and me. I kept missing, but Dad gave me more than three strikes, and finally I got a good hit. Then Sky pitched to Dad, and he hit the ball clear over the roof! He loved this so much. “Your old man’s still got it!” Dad told me as he ran around the yard, crossing the imaginary bases, and finally calling out, “I made it home!”
It was pretty much totally dark by then, so we figured it was a good note to end on. Dad went to bed, and he was in such a good mood, he didn’t even kick Sky out before he said good night. Sky came into my room with me, and we both sat down on my bed.
“Your dad is really cool,” Sky said. “We should hang out with him more.”
“He likes you. I think it made him happy, you being here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Thank you for coming.”
“Of course.” He smiled.
I lay down on my pillow. Then I said, “So, my mom’s coming back. Next weekend. At least for the summer.”
“Oh, wow. Are you happy?”
“I don’t know. I want to be, but it’s like I don’t know if I trust it.”
Sky nodded. “I get that. When parents ditch out, it’s pretty hard to forgive them.”
He lay down next to me, and I reached out and let my hand fall onto his chest. “Was he good while he was around?” I asked. “Your dad?”
“Not really. He had his moments, but not so much.” Sky paused, and then he said, “I don’t know what will happen to my mom after next year, if I want to go away to college or something. I’m scared sometimes that I’ll turn out like him. Like I’ll always be the kind of person who leaves.”
I looked at him. “You’re better than your dad. But maybe it’s not your job to make up for him forever.”
His lip that falls a little crooked to the left straightened out when I said that. He was thinking about it.
We lay there next to each other on my bed, quiet for a while, looking up at the bumps in the ceiling that turned to shapes. I remembered lying in May’s top bunk and looking up, trying not to fall asleep so that I could see if she went out to fly.
“Look,” I said to Sky, pointing up. “That’s a face. She’s half girl, half ghost. You can see where she’s split—she only has long hair on the one side.” I pointed to the place where the paint gathered into tresses. “And there, that’s a hand. It belongs to a man living inside the wall. He’s collecting raindrops. He wants to come out and give them to the ghost-girl. She’ll fight off the spirit in her. And then they’ll go together and swim in that ocean”—I pointed—“over there.”
Sky laughed and nuzzled his face into my neck. I put my hand out and stroked his head. He seemed like a little boy just then, in a way that he never had before. Maybe because I felt stronger now, strong enough to hold him.
We didn’t kiss or anything else. We just lay together like that, breathing. I felt something between us shifting, like the hidden plates of the earth. You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that’s what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Elizabeth Bishop,
At school, everyone is buzzing with the energy of the coming summer, a week and a half away. I went up to Mrs. Buster’s desk today after class. I’d never really spoken to her voluntarily before. But there was something I had to tell her. “You know the assignment from the beginning of school? The letter?” I asked.
“Yes?” She looked surprised.
“Well, I’m still working on it.” And then I added, “Actually, I’ve been working on it all year. I have a whole notebook full of them. I just wanted you to know.”
“Oh, well, I’m really happy to hear that, Laurel.” She lit up when she said it, but then she kept looking at me in that way that she does, like she was waiting for something. Like she wanted me to say something about May. So finally I asked, “When May was in your class, what was she like?”
“She seemed like a girl who was struggling to figure out who she was, kind of like you are. She was very bright, in both senses of the word. I thought that she had a lot to offer. I think that you do, too.” She paused, and then she said, “I know what it’s like to lose someone, Laurel.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yes. I had a son—he passed.”
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.” I was searching for something better to say. It made my chest crush in to think of that happening to Mrs. Buster. “When—when did it happen?”
“He was young,” Mrs. Buster said. “It was a car accident.”
I stared at her big blue eyes, and they didn’t seem like bug eyes anymore. They seemed sad. It’s like all of a sudden she’d turned from a teacher into a person. I guess when you lose someone, sometimes it feels like you are the only one. But I’m not.
“I’m sorry about your son,” I said again. “And I’m sorry that I wasn’t nicer this year. I think you are a really good teacher. I loved all of the poetry you gave us. And I am—just really sorry—I wish there were something good to say. I guess there aren’t really any words for it, huh?”
“There are a lot of human experiences that challenge the limits of our language,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that we have poetry.” She smiled. “Here.” She fished something out of her desk. “I wanted to give you this. I’d copied it for you at the beginning of the year, since you seemed to like Bishop so much. But then—well, maybe you weren’t ready for it yet.”
I took the poem. “Thank you,” I said.
Then she said, “I’m proud of you. It’s not easy, and you’ve done a great job this year.” She didn’t have to be that nice to me, but she was.
I thanked her again for the poem. I was anxious to read it, so I found a bench and sat outside before I went to lunch. It was your poem called “The Armadillo.” I loved the poem so much, it stopped my heart. And I knew why Mrs. Buster had given it to me. It was about a certain kind of beauty we aspire to and how fragile it is. The poem starts out talking about fire balloons that people send off into the sky. The paper chambers flush and fill with light / that comes and goes, like hearts as they rise toward the stars. When the air is still, they steer between the kite sticks of the Southern Cross, but with a wind, they become dangerous. The end of the poem shows the tragedy that happens.