Sparrows Falling From The Sky 6 & 7

^^^SIX^^^

THE MORNING AFTER I CAME HOME, MY MOM WASHED my hair. “You have such beautiful hair,” she said.

“I think I’ll grow it long,” I said. Like I had a choice. A trip to a barber shop would have been a nightmare.

She gave me a sponge bath.

I closed my eyes and sat still for her.

She shaved me.

When she left the room, I broke down and sobbed. I had never been this sad. I have never been this sad. I have never been this sad.

My heart hurt even more than my legs.

^^^SEVEN^^^

IT WAS A RAINY SUMMER. EVERY AFTERNOON, THE clouds would gather like a flock of crows, and it would rain. I fell in love with the thunder. I finished reading the Grapes of Wrath. Then I finished reading War and Peace. I decided I wanted to read all the books by Ernest Hemingway. My father decided he would read everything that I read. Maybe that was our way of talking.

Dante came over every day.

Mostly Dante would talk and I would listen. He decided that he should read The Sun Also Rises to me aloud. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I was never going to out-stubborn Dante Quintana. So every day he would read a chapter of the book. And then we would talk about it.

“It’s a sad book,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s why you like it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly right.”

He never asked me anything about what I thought of his sketches. I was glad about that. I had placed his sketchbook under my bed and refused to look at it. I think I was punishing Dante. He had given me a piece of himself that he had never given to another human being. And I hadn’t even bothered to look at it. Why was I doing that?

One day he blurted out that he’d finally gone to see a counselor.

I was hoping he wouldn’t tell me anything about his counseling session. He didn’t. I was glad about that. And then I was sort of mad he didn’t. Okay, so I was moody. And inconsistent. Yeah, that’s what I was.

Dante kept looking at me.

“What?”

“Are you going to go?”

“Where?”

“To see a counselor, you idiot.”

“No.”

“No?”

I looked at my legs.

I could see he wanted to say “I’m sorry” again. But he didn’t.

“It helped,” he said. “Going to the counselor. It wasn’t so bad. It really did help.”

“Are you going back?”

“Maybe.”

I nodded. “Talking doesn’t help everybody.”

Dante smiled. “Not that you’d know.”

I smiled back. “Yeah. Not that I’d know.”

I know my mom heard me. She had the decency to let me cry alone.

I stared out the window most of the day. I practiced pushing myself on the wheelchair through the house. My mom kept rearranging things to make it easier.

We smiled at each other a lot.

“You can watch television,” she said.

“Brain rot,” I said. “I have a book.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of hard. Not the words. But, you know, what it’s about. I guess Mexicans aren’t the only poor people in the world.”

We looked at each other. We didn’t really smile. But we were smiling at each other on the inside.

My sisters came over for dinner. My nephews and nieces signed my cast. I think I smiled a lot and everyone was talking and laughing and it all seemed so normal. And I was glad for my mom and dad because I think it was me who was making the house sad.

When my sisters left, I asked my dad if we could sit on the front porch.

I sat on Fidel. My mother and father sat on their outdoor rocking chairs.

We drank coffee.

My mother and father held hands. I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

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