Helen Oyeyemi - Boy, Snow, Bird

Don’t say I’m like her. Don’t say I’m like her. That’s what I was yelling inside.

“Hey, Bird—”

“Yeah?”

“Do I look forty?”

“Forty years old?” I asked, trying to buy time.

“Yes, forty years old.”

Her eyes flicked up toward the rearview mirror. I was sitting in the backseat because she doesn’t like to have anyone sitting next to her while she is driving. She says it makes her feel crowded in. I hadn’t shown up in her mirror at all that car ride. I begged that missing slice of me — hair, cheek, chin, and the top of my arm — to appear behind her before she started to feel funny about not seeing it there, but the mirror didn’t care whether Aunt Mia felt funny or not, or it was my reflection that didn’t care. Thanks a lot, rearview mirror. Between talking and watching the road and trying not to crash her car, Aunt Mia’s attention was fully booked anyway. Dad drives and Mrs. Chen drives but Aunt Mia just gets behind the wheel and hopes it’s another one of her lucky days. For a split second she lifted her hand to adjust the mirror — I could tell she was starting to feel funny, starting to feel that something didn’t fit, but couldn’t figure out exactly what — then she said, “Ha,” more to herself than to me, and looked ahead of her again.

“Well? Do I look forty?”

“Yeah.”

She muttered something in Italian. I think she was cursing.

“But aren’t you older than forty anyway?”

“ Cara … this ice you’re skating on is very thin.”

I told her that she was obviously also gorgeous, but she said she didn’t want to hear about gorgeous. She’d heard me calling a grilled cheese sandwich gorgeous just last week.

Neither of us said anything for a while, then I asked if she was okay.

“Sure I am.”

“But your stomachache…”

“Stomachache? Oh. Stomachs. Sometimes they ache. That’s life.”

She kept her eyes on the road and got her smile right on the second try. I sat back and told myself that I was letting her keep her secret, that I could find out whenever I wanted. If I was able to mimic Mom’s voice, that might even have been true. I could have called Aunt Mia up and got her talking. But Mom is impossible to copy. I try and try, and each try sounds less like her. I’m not able to play Mom’s voice back in my head the way I can other people’s. I’m beginning to think that it’s my ear. Maybe I don’t hear Mom properly in the first place.

—

louis chen slipped me a flower-scented envelope when he came over that dinnertime. Bird Whitman, c/o Louis Chen … Snow had perfected her handwriting to a copperplate script. I stuck the letter into the pocket of my overalls, where it rustled impatiently as we watched Batman and Louis tried to get me to say “Sorry, toots… I’m antisocial” just the way Catwoman said it. Everyone at school had moved on from Louis’s being a Vietcong, and he said there were no hard feelings. (I had some, but he didn’t ask me.) The new thing was a note someone had pinned to Carl Green’s locker. The note read BARBARA THOMAS IS FAST and inquiring minds wanted to know whether this was true, and what Barbara Thomas was going to do to try to prove her innocence. Louis looked as if he was feeling sorry for her, especially when I pointed out that the only way she could prove she wasn’t fast was by never kissing another boy until the day she died. But I couldn’t think of a better person for such a thing to happen to, so I laughed. Going to middle school in the same building as the high school students makes you see the reality. School is one long illness with symptoms that switch every five minutes so you think it’s getting better or worse. But really it’s the same thing for years and years.

Dear Bird,

Your letter was such a wonderful surprise; really it was. I’m still thinking about how to answer the question in your postscript. I wasn’t expecting you to insist on honesty. Don’t you find that most people try to make each other say things that aren’t true? Maybe because it’s easier, and because it saves time, and… now it sounds like I’m trying to sell you dinner that comes in a can. (“So they got us eatin’ dog food now,” Uncle J says.)

I haven’t met very many people who seem to want me to say what I really think. So I’m out of practice. Wait for the next letter. I’ve got a question for you, though — what do you mean when you say that you “don’t always show up in mirrors”?

Best love from

Your sister,

Snow

Hi, Snow,

It’s great that you wrote back. Thanks for the birdcage! Please find enclosed an extra-special pen. Wait’ll you find out what it does; you’ll flip.

I’m writing this to you from detention; I’d better tell you right off that I’m not a delinquent or anything, but I’m frequently in detention. I’ve got this piece of paper underneath an essay about Flax Hill back in 1600, and every couple of minutes I turn the page of my notepad and write to you a little more. I don’t know how much more I can say about Flax Hill back in 1600. According to the textbooks, this town was just a big grassy field and some primitive peoples, but Miss Fairfax says finding out more about the plants and what they could be used for is a way of finding out more about the people. So I’m listing plants that grew here back then. Clammy ground-cherry, starved panic grass, jack-in-the-pulpit, scaldweed, nimblewill — don’t they sound like the ingredients of some terrifying potion? I don’t think those are the real names for those plants. I mean, the people who saw those kinds of plants every day wouldn’t have given them names like that. I’m guessing somewhere along the line it was decided that the Native American names weren’t important because they were too difficult to spell, and then, abracadabra, scaldweed and panic grass. The other day I met a girl who said a lot of things are gone from the world and seemed to feel kind of cheated, and I guess this is just another thing she’d get disgusted about.

About being honest: so far I haven’t noticed anybody picking out lies for other people to tell. Please give an example. Dad may have already told you that nothing ever happens around here.

When I say I don’t always show up in mirrors, that is exactly what I mean, i.e., it is a statement of fact.

Your detained sister,

Bird

Dear Snow,

It was nice of you to reply to me using the pen I sent you, but as you may have realized by now, the ink goes invisible after a few hours, and all I can say is it’s a good thing you used a different pen for the address or the letter wouldn’t have reached me at all. I tried to retrieve your words by tracing over the marks the pen made on the paper, but the result leaves me hopelessly confused, so be a pal and send it again—

Bird

Dearest Bird,

The incident of the disappearing letter is only one tenth of the mischief that gift of yours caused in my life, but thanks anyway. I wanted my kid sister back and I got her back with a vengeance. Sisters come with a lot of benefits — let me know if you’re ever in the mood for reading a really long poem and I’ll send you “Goblin Market.”

For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands.

I used to think that was stuff a mom should do for you — I guess I felt I needed someone in my life to do those things and decided it should be a mom. But a sister or a friend, or a combination of both, that works too. Let’s be those kinds of sisters if we can.