Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

The air feels light and insubstantial; time has pooled around their shoulders. Avis is trying to explain something or ask for something — what is it? She doesn’t know where to look or what to do with her hands or how to speak. She and Felice never used to touch at their meetings: it had seemed like a rule to Avis — the only way her daughter would consent to come near — and now she is still afraid. But there is the light sliding along strands of her daughter’s hair, the scent of lilac, and she can’t help herself, her gaze and her hands are drawn as if by magnetized forces; she brushes aside pieces of hair, cups her cheek, revealing the small, pale face breaking into tears. She takes Felice and holds her as if she’d caught her plummeting out of the air, feels the force of her daughter’s velocity in her arms and rib cage. There’s a sudden, surprising strength in her daughter’s grip — an adult fierceness. Energy runs through Avis, rippling. A rush of indecipherable breath in her ear — Felice is talking to her, trying to claim her in some way with the stream of language, talking too quickly to be understood. Avis tries to calm both of them, saying, “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you — I’ve got you now.” Until Felice quiets, not letting go, the two of them hanging on, gently, gradually collapsing together into the mutual silence of return.

FELICE WAKES TO THE RISE AND COMPRESSION of Emerson’s chest, the slow wavelength of his sleep in the early morning. She couldn’t sleep last night, twisting, kicking at the sheets, the air like a blanket, pressing her into the thin mattress. It was so dark — so hard to get used to after years of sleeping in an urban light haze — the blackness sank onto her body, lowering from the ceiling. It made her think of the night of the hurricane: they’d spread out on the blankets and let Stanley think they were asleep. The storm was like nothing she could remember, bending the palms nearly to the ground and tearing tiles out of the neighbors’ rooftops. Feeling the walls tremble, Felice thought the apartment was about to break apart, that they would all whirl into the black hammer of the wind. Emerson talked softly to her about the strength of the building, the fastness of old structures, the solid foundations left by the old bank downstairs. Eventually he fell asleep, and then she’d lain awake for hours, alone, listening to the howling in the windows, her eyes wide open in the dark.

Last night was another long passage of staring and thinking, and an awful feeling had come to her, how all these years, she’d clung to an idea of penance, the hope that someday she would be judged — her crime and her self-imposed punishment — and somehow absolved. But now the world seemed immense and lawless and she knew there was no judgment — not the kind she was waiting for. She’d felt a sort of dread, granular and heavy, like a half-dissolved paste; it tasted sweet, like souls, she thought, and she felt she would never be free of it.

But just the intimation of morning helps Felice to feel lighter. This is the day they’ve decided they will go, because she and Emerson agreed that if they don’t go now, it will become impossible. “We’re getting attached,” Emerson said the other day in the warehouse, surrounded by crates of Valencia oranges. “It’s all right with me if you’d rather we stay.”

Felice waits in a bed a little longer, eyes burning, but can’t fall back asleep. Eventually she curls out of bed, dresses quietly, uses the bathroom. When she emerges, the door to Stanley and Nieves’s room is still closed, but she hears soft noises in the kitchen. Nieves is there, working at the counter. “Hey.” She turns and pushes the hair from her face with the back of her wrist, a butter knife in her hand. “Go back to bed, weirdo.”

“What’re you doing?” Felice leans against the counter next to her, steals a piece of yellow cheddar from the cutting board.

“I’m doing none of your business. What do you think? I’m making sandwiches for your stupid trip.”

“For real?” Felice leans in for a better view. Particles of light are just beginning to drift through the windows. She feels better. Last night Emerson held her closely against his ribs and told her to breathe with him, to be calm, calm, calm. Breathe in, wait, breathe out slowly. He told her: This might take a while. In that dark spell she felt as if she’d forgotten her own name or who she ever was. Now the light in the kitchen is clean and vital and the terror has lifted like lace from her body.

Felice has watched Nieves for two weeks and knows she can be sharp and moody, but other times so quiet she barely seems to be present, an entrancing remoteness. On the cutting board there are two peanut butter and red currant jam sandwiches for Emerson and two Serrano ham, shaved cheddar, and apricot chutney sandwiches for Felice. Nieves wraps them smartly in waxed paper, tapes them, and puts them back in the fridge. There’s also a cooler Nieves opens: packed with trail mix, sliced pears and apples, and the lemon bars. Jarvis Firmin, another volunteer, is going to drive Felice and Emerson in his nursery truck as far as Pensacola. From there, a series of Stanley’s friends and former employees will drive them across country. Felice squints at the kitchen window, trying to imagine the network that will carry them. Nieves sighs as she fits the lid back on the cooler. “At least you won’t starve before Iowa City.”

“Really, thank you,” Felice says. For a second she feels a bitter little bead like fear or anger, like a remnant of a nightmare, surfacing at the center of her chest. She studies the floor with its cheap mustard-brown linoleum, so ugly. After a moment, the feeling softens again.

“If I thought it would do any good, I would tell you not to go.” Nieves stares at her. “Don’t go. Okay? Don’t do it.”

Felice gives the floor an aimless smile, wraps her arms across her chest. Nieves pinches the fabric of Felice’s shirt — which had until recently been Nieves’s shirt — between her fingers. “You’re not going right this second — come on outside with me.”

THE EASTERN SKY is beginning to take on depth as they push out of the apartment. A block away, there’s a murmur of light traffic on Krome Avenue. Nieves and Felice walk down the main street, the stores quiet, several still covered with plywood and storm shutters. The light is so gray and glassy it feels as if the two of them might be ghosts, as if they’d wandered out of someone’s dream. There’s a small square with benches where Felice has noticed a few homeless people, drifters, sleeping in the grass; but it’s empty now. They settle on one of the benches and watch coral streaks brighten and expand in the distance, pink wisps of clouds over purple wells of darkness. A whorled landscape of clouds piled on the tabletop of green fields.

The two girls sit close, their forearms bands of color in Felice’s peripheral vision — reddish brown and pale olive. Nieves slumps back against the bench. “You know, I used to be so pissed at my mother.”

“Oh yeah?” Felice stares shyly at her knees. “How come?”

“Mmm. I still am, a little bit,” she continues. “Though I guess these days I almost think, like, a good mother will let her kids be pissed at her, if they need to, you know?”

Felice smiles. “Ha. You think?”

Nieves slides one hand over the small globe of her belly. “It use to be like I practically hated her for drinking so much and feeling sorry for herself all the time. And going off on how horrible men were and then following home any giant loser who showed up. Like my stepdad.” Her fingers stop their slow circles and pat gently in place. “And then — just recently this was — I was at the market unloading artichokes? And I suddenly kind of knew that I only hated her because she had five kids and I was second to last and I just wanted her to myself. I was jealous.” She smiles lazily at Felice. “Isn’t that funny? How you can just know something all along but not, sort of, tell yourself?”