The Nature of Small Birds Page 8

  “Oh, that’s right. I did,” Linda says. “Bruce, do you remember how Mindy would stand in the kitchen and stare at it when she first came home to us?”

  “Yup.” The memory makes me smile. “We kept finding her up on the countertop so she could get a better look at it.”

  “Why?” Holly asks.

  “I was a weird kid,” Mindy answers.

  “You know what I just remembered?” Sonny says. “Mindy, you know when I got into your drawer to borrow money before my first date with Mike?”

  “You mean you were going to steal money, right?”

  “Details.” Sonny rolls her eyes. “Anyway, there was a picture from some magazine. You know what I’m talking about? A baby holding a bird or something.”

  “Oh yeah.” Mindy nods. “It was a chicken.”

  “Where did you find a picture like that?” Linda asks.

  “It was in a National Geographic in Grammy and Grumpy’s attic. I was looking through one about Vietnam—I was just really curious, you know—and saw it. Something about it triggered a memory for me.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Yeah. It was like I’d seen that kind of picture before.”

  “I have no idea what any of you are talking about,” Holly said, turning her head and squinting at her big sisters.

  “Sorry, Hol.” Mindy grabbed her phone, typing on the screen with her thumbs. “So, there’s this village in Vietnam where they make these woodcut paintings.”

  “Of kids holding chickens?”

  “Well, sometimes.” Mindy holds up her phone. “See?”

  I have to put on my cheaters to see the picture on her screen. The artist used bold colors when painting the bald-headed baby holding an enormous yellow fish. Mindy flicks through to show one where the child is holding a chicken, then one with a duck, even one with a lumpy-looking frog.

  “Weird,” Holly says.

  “They aren’t weird, Holly,” Sonny says. “They’re just different from what you’re used to.”

  Holly rolls her eyes, and I have to bite my tongue so I don’t scold her. She’s an adult. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that.

  “Anyway,” Mindy says, “I did a little research on them a while back.”

  “Nerd,” Sonny says.

  “Yup. And proud of it.” Mindy smiles. “They’re supposed to bring good luck and prosperity. From what I understand, the people of that town have been making these paintings since the eleventh century or something.”

  “Where did you find out about this?” I ask.

  “Google.” Mindy lifts one shoulder. “It’s kind of near Da Nang. On the coast. There was an American military base there. So, the orphanage was pretty full.”

  “Oh,” Linda said, putting one hand to her cheek.

  “What does that mean?” Holly asks.

  She’s a smart girl. Valedictorian of her high school class and summa cum laude in college. See? Smart. But though she’s rich in brains, she’s a little lacking in common sense.

  “Well,” Sonny says, “I think Mindy’s saying that some of the American soldiers hooked up with Vietnamese women and got them pregnant.”

  “Ah.” Holly’s eyes go wide. “Do you think your birth dad was an American?”

  “No clue,” Mindy says. “I’d have to take a DNA test to find out. It’s possible, though.”

  “Maybe if you find your mom you could ask her.” Holly unwraps a chocolate and pops it in her mouth.

  “Mom is my mom,” Mindy says, voice soft. She swallows hard.

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “The woman in Vietnam is my birth mother,” Mindy says. “And I’m not even sure she’s alive.”

  “Okay.” Holly looks down. “I’m sorry. I should be more careful with my words.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Linda catches my eye and pulls her mouth into a cringe. I nod.

  I try to think of something to say that might defuse the situation, or at least ease the tension. I can tell Linda is doing the same. I don’t know about her, but I’m coming up with a big, fat nothing.

  “Oh my word, Mom,” Sonny says out of the blue, holding up one of the albums. “Why did you keep this picture?”

  Linda lowers her reading glasses from the top of her head and leans forward to see. Her shoulders relax and so do mine.

  “Because you looked so pretty,” Linda says, smiling.

  “But this is the prom I got dumped at.” Sonny rolls her eyes.

  “Oh my gosh,” Mindy says, grabbing the picture. “I can’t believe we all thought that guy was so cool.”

  “That mullet, right?”

  Holly, who’s never heard the story, insists that we tell her right this moment. In the middle of the telling, I’m sure I see Mindy mouth the words “thank you” to Sonny, who answers with a wink.

  I left the ladies to it when they put in An Affair to Remember. Not because I don’t like the movie. I do a whole lot. It’s just that it gets the waterworks going as soon as Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr first meet. And they don’t let up until the credits roll.

  My heart was already tender as it was after looking at all those old pictures. The last thing I needed was a tearjerker movie on top of it.

  So, I went to bed with the intention of reading a little Wendell Berry. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve read Hannah Coulter, but I know I’ll give it as many readings as I can. It’s a beauty of a novel.

  But, intentions being what they are, I end up jolting awake, the book open on my lap, and Linda apologizing for startling me. A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s well past one in the morning.

  “I was just going to sneak into bed,” she whispers, adjusting her pillow.

  “It’s all right.” I blink hard, my eyes feeling so dry. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  She takes my book, making sure to save my place with a scrap of paper.

  “Your neck’s going to be sore tomorrow.” She gives me a sympathetic frown. “Honey, you’re too old to fall asleep in that position.”

  “Don’t I know it.” I tilt my head back and forth, feeling an ache that’s settled into my muscles. “How was the movie?”

  “Good,” she answers. “Of course.”

  I wait until she’s in bed before I roll over and reach for the light switch.

  From downstairs comes a loud laugh and then a shushing sound.

  It reminds me of a line from Hannah Coulter about love being the thing that carries us. That, even in the dark, love is always there.

  In my bed, the lights off and the house mostly still, I wonder at that idea. As I sink into the warmth of falling back to sleep, I can’t help but feel deep gratitude for this family I’ve been given.

  It’s nice to have them here tonight.

  CHAPTER

  Eleven

  Linda, 1975

  Bruce and I stood on either side of Sonny where she sat on her brand-new, lemon-yellow Schwinn. We each had ahold of a handlebar and the back of the banana seat.

  “Ready?” Bruce asked.

  Sonny shook her head no, making her pigtails flutter. She had her little jaw clenched, and her knuckles were white from holding on so hard.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” I asked, leaning down to her level.

  “I don’t wanna fall,” she answered, keeping her face trained straight ahead as if turning her head might end up tipping her over.

  “Daddy won’t let you fall.”

  “What if he does?”

  “Well, what’s the worst thing that would happen?” I tilted my head. “You might get a skinned knee. That’s all.”

  “I don’t like getting skinned knees.”

  “Well, I don’t think anybody does,” I said. “Hey, remember when you went to the playground with me last week? What did you like the most there?”

  “The balance thing.”

  “Yup. The balance beam.” I pushed a few wisps of stray hair out of her face. “This is a lot like that. Yo
u’ve just got to figure out how to balance, that’s all there is to it. Once you’ve got that, you’ll be surprised how easy peasy it is.”

  Bruce crouched down so he could look her in the eye, a wide smile on his face. “Tell you what, you pedal down to the end of our driveway and back with me holding on, and I’ll take you out for an ice cream cone.”

  That little girl sat up straighter, let her jaw relax, and nodded.

  Anything for ice cream.

  “Okay.”

  “What kind do you want?” Bruce asked, standing and getting himself ready to guide her.

  “Pink and brown and white.”

  She meant Neapolitan. Her favorite. She thought she was getting three times as much ice cream when she had it.

  “All righty.” Bruce nodded at me to let go. “Ready now?”

  “Yup.”

  I watched them go and she got started right off, pedaling her feet and pumping her legs up and down as Bruce trotted alongside her. About halfway down the drive, he took his hand off the seat. Then let go of the handle, all the while keeping his arms outstretched and ready should she wobble.

  When she did, he steadied her with a hand on the back of the seat and she kept going.

  “I’m such a big girl,” she yelled.

  I hoped he would get her a double scoop. She deserved it.

  From inside the house, the telephone rang. I thought about letting it go. If it was important, whoever it was would call back. But, as much as I wanted to stay there and watch Sonny on her bike, I had a feeling that I needed to see who was calling.

  I sometimes had an intuition about things like that.

  I got to the phone on the fifth ring.

  “Mrs. Matthews?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

  “That’s me,” I answered.

  “Hi. This is Jan from Northern Michigan Family Services. I’m sorry for calling on a Saturday.”

  “That’s all right.” I swallowed hard.

  I’d been waiting on that call for a little over a week. It was the one where they’d tell me there was a baby boy in need of a home. We’d all hop into the car to meet him at whichever hospital he’d just been born at.

  We’d even put together a list of names we liked, waiting to pick the exactly perfect one until after we held our son for the first time. I turned toward the refrigerator where we’d hung the list. Bruce had marked a star next to the name Jason. I’d circled the name Andrew.

  At the bottom of the page in red crayon was Sonny’s pick.

  Matt. She thought Matt Matthews had a nice ring to it.

  I lifted a hand, placing it over my racing heart. This was it. We were going to meet our baby boy, give him a name, bring him home. He’d be ours and we’d be his.

  I forced myself to take a deep and very slow breath in and out to calm myself so I wouldn’t scream from excitement. There would be time for that after I hung up the phone.

  “I’m calling because we have a bit of an unusual situation and I wondered if you might be willing to help,” Jan said. “Do you have a few minutes to chat?”

  “Sure.”

  Unusual? I was certain my heart had skipped a beat at that word.

  I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, the telephone cord pulled taut. From there I could see Bruce and Sonny. He helped her turn around at the end of the driveway, keeping her steady for the ride back toward the house.

  “We have your paperwork here,” she said.

  “Oh, is everything all right with it?” I asked. “If we made a mistake . . .”

  “No, this isn’t about anything like that. Everything looks good,” she said. “I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the Babylift out of Vietnam.”

  “Yes, I’m familiar with it.” I cleared my throat.

  Outside, Bruce took his hands off the bike, and Sonny panicked. The handlebars weeble-wobbled, and she fell down. My stomach dropped. He didn’t hesitate to scoop her up, putting her on her feet so he could check her knees and elbows. Dusting her off, he said something that made her nod and wipe what I imagined was a tear from under her eye. When he noticed me watching, he gave a big thumbs-up. Sonny turned and did the same, adding a wide grin.

  “We’ve had a few of the children come to Michigan,” Jan said. “Placing them with families has been relatively easy.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “But there’s one . . .”

  She hesitated, and the line went silent.

  “Are you still there?” I asked, worried that our call had been disconnected.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “One of the adoptions fell through.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, in this case it means that the adoptive parents decided not to, well, adopt the child.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “They said that they didn’t want her.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, my stomach dropped.

  “Why not?” I asked again.

  “Well, this little girl has some impetigo on her face.”

  “And?”

  “The family said they didn’t expect it,” Jan said. “They declined.”

  “But it’s treatable, isn’t it? It’s just a rash. Didn’t they know that?”

  “She’s been on penicillin since she arrived in the States.” She sighed and it came through very clear over the line. “We tried explaining that it would clear up soon but they . . . you know, some people are just like that.”

  “I simply can’t imagine.”

  “Me either. Anyway, I’m calling to see if you’d be interested in adopting her.” She paused. “I know that you requested a baby boy, but we thought it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Minh,” she answered.

  “Minh,” I said, trying the word out. “How is that spelled?”

  I grabbed a piece of scrap paper from the junk drawer, writing the name out.

  Minh.

  “And how old is she?”

  “We believe she’s between four and five years old,” Jan said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “There’s not a whole lot of paperwork from the orphanage.”

  “Really?” I said. “How can that be?”

  “From what I understand, they left Vietnam as fast as they could. Some kids’ files got left behind or mixed up with another child.” She cleared her throat. “It’s sort of lucky that Minh has any paperwork at all. It’s been a bit of a nightmare for those of us who like order.”

  “I imagine it has.”

  I closed my eyes, seeing the images from the news of people running through the streets of Saigon, the clogged traffic, the women handing babies up into the arms of strangers. That little boy in the baseball cap. Then the pictures in the paper of children sitting on the floor of a cargo plane or babies in boxes strapped in rows of seats.

  Then I thought of the bassinet we’d bought at a garage sale the day after filing our paperwork and the hand-me-downs from baby Teddy that Dana had offered.

  Another little girl wasn’t in the plan. We’d had our hearts set on a Jason or Andrew or Matt.

  I turned, looking at the scrap of paper on the kitchen counter, running my finger under the name I’d written across the top. Minh.

  “I met her just a little bit ago,” Jan said. “She’s a sweet girl. We all just want the very best for her.”

  “Can I talk it over with my husband?” I cradled the receiver between my cheek and shoulder and picked up the pencil so I could draw a heart next to the name.

  “Sure.”

  “When do we need to let you know?”

  “As soon as you can.”

  She gave me all the details she could, which weren’t many, and I jotted them down along with the phone number where I could reach her over the weekend before letting her go and hanging up the phone.

  When I looked back out the window, Sonny was riding w
ithout any help.

  CHAPTER

  Twelve

  Sonny, 1988

  Graduation lasted forever. I was sure I was going to sweat to death wearing that mustard yellow gown, which, by the way, did nothing to complement my skin tone. Fanning myself with a program, I wondered how anybody had thought it was a good idea to jam hundreds of people into a school gym that had no air-conditioning.

  Somehow in my class of thirty-eight we’d ended up with a four-way tie for valedictorian, and each of them got to deliver a speech. Add to that the special academic awards the principal acknowledged and the choir’s mini-concert and a sermon from the superintendent, etc., etc.—I thought we were all going to die in that stuffy gym.

  The only thing that made it bearable was that I knew that at the end of the ceremony—whenever it came—I would be a high school graduate and well on my way to actual adulthood. Well, that and Mike was in the row ahead of me and kept half turning to smile at me.

  When it was finally time for us to go up and receive our diplomas, I stood with the rest of my class, asking the kid next to me if my hair looked okay.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess.”

  It would have to do.

  I adjusted the gold braided cords that hung from my neck, making sure they were even, and waited for my name to be called.

  When it was, I stepped up onto the stage, careful in the heels I’d worn to what had become known as my ill-fated prom—they weren’t cheap, and I decided I might as well get at least one more use out of them even if they did clash with the yellow gown.

  Mr. Shepherd, the principal, handed me my diploma with a smile and a handshake, and I turned to see my family. They occupied an entire row. Uncle Chris and Aunt Dana were there with Teddy, who just glared at me as if I was the cause for all the misery in his life. Grumpy yelled out a very loud “Way to go, Sonny!” and Grammy elbowed him.

  It only made him shout it again, and with more volume.

  Then there were Mom and Dad and Mindy. Dad gave me a thumbs-up and a smile, but I could tell he was trying really hard not to cry. Mom, on the other hand, wasn’t trying to hold it back. Not even a little. And I was sure that I could hear her sniffling all the way across the room.

  Mindy, though, gave me her biggest, cheesiest smile and waved like a madwoman. What a weirdo.