Silhouette of a Sparrow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  Black-Capped Chickadee - (Poecile atricapilla)

  Ruffed Grouse - (Bonasa umbellus)

  Blue Jay - (Cyanocitta cristata)

  Double-Crested Cormorant - (Phalacrocorax auritus)

  Ruby-Throated Hummingbird - (Archilochus colubris)

  Snowy Egret - (Egretta thula)

  Scarlet Tanager - (Piranga olivacea)

  Ring-Billed Gull - (Larus delawarensis)

  American White Pelican - (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos)

  Great Egret - (Ardea alba)

  Chipping Sparrow - (Spizella passerina)

  Red-Tailed Hawk - (Buteo jamaicensis)

  Downy Woodpecker - (Picoides pubescens)

  White-Breasted Nuthatch - (Sitta carolinensis)

  European Starling - (Sturnus vulgaris)

  Northern Oriole - (Icterus galbula)

  Mourning Dove - (Zenaida macroura)

  Great Blue Heron - (Ardea herodias)

  Common Loon - (Gavia immer)

  Eastern Screech Owl - (Otus asio)

  Northern Cardinal - (Cardinalis cardinalis)

  Common Grackle - (Quiscalus quiscula)

  Mallard - (Anas platyrhynchos)

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MILKWEED EDITIONS

  Copyright Page

  Also by Molly Beth Griffin

  Loon Baby

  For Emer, of course.

  Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

  Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

  —Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921

  PROLOGUE

  American Robin

  (Turdus migratorius)

  I was born blue. Life ripped me early from my safe place and thrust me into the world. It was all so astonishing that I forgot to breathe.

  But the puffed-up robin that sang outside the window of the birthing room came early too, that March of 1910, and just in time. He flew north before the spring came so he could sing me into the world. His song said Breathe child, this life was meant for you. When I finally let out my first scream I flushed red as that robin—red: the color of life, blood, love, and fury. At that moment I earned my name, Garnet, after the deep red stone that’s meant to bring courage. “Garnet, for courage,” Aunt Rachel, the midwife, said to me, when I was just a squalling baby.

  My mother gave me life that day, but I was the one who decided to take it. I claimed it for myself.

  That’s how the story goes. At least, that’s the way Aunt Rachel told it to me a hundred times over, even after I knew it by heart. That’s the version I asked to hear again and again as a child, so I could wrap those pretty words around me like a familiar blanket and fall asleep thinking I knew exactly who I was.

  Black-Capped Chickadee

  (Poecile atricapilla)

  It was the seventeenth of June, 1926, and the Thursday morning streetcar was four minutes late.

  On the streetcar platform, tiny birds hopped and pecked around the feet of the waiting crowd. My eyes locked onto one bird, and as I took in the curve of its breast and the fringe of its tail feathers, my fingers worked with sewing scissors, snipping the image out of black paper. Faithfully, the chickadee recreated itself in my hands. A perfect silhouette.

  The bird hopped too close to Mother’s tapping foot, and with a startled ruffle of wings it hurried away. I tucked its paper twin into my pocket along with the scissors.

  “Mind Mrs. Harrington,” Mother said, frisking invisible dust from the collar of my dress. “And write us often.” Mother fretted on my left, her nervous energy expressed in fidgets and little bursts of conversation like, “We can’t have you getting polio, now can we?” and, “Oh, we will miss you, dear. Won’t we miss her, Albert?”

  Father brooded, still and silent as a ghost on my right. He gazed off across the tracks, probably reliving some painful memory of the Battle of the Argonne Forest for the thousandth time. He didn’t need to speak and neither did I. Mother did it all for us, prattling on about polio, which was her far-flung excuse for sending me to the country for the summer to “take the lake air” with a wealthy distant relation and her daughter.

  At sixteen, I was hardly at risk for polio, but the real reasons for my going were among the many things unsaid between the three of us as we waited for that streetcar. Mother needed time alone with Father, to try once more to bring him home from the war, and I knew it. I also knew that if I didn’t go away for the summer I might end up engaged to Teddy Hopkins before I finished up with school. Finally, Mother’s desire to expose me to the civilizing company of her husband’s rich relations made transparent her concerns that I (like so many young people these days, as she’d say with a sigh) might stray from the path to true womanhood.

  I’d given her no cause for alarm; years earlier I’d abandoned dissecting owl pellets and climbing trees to look into nests in favor of ladylike bird watching and silhouette cutting. Perhaps the modern woman had been liberated from corsets and granted the right to vote, but there were some things that still weren’t done. I knew that, and she had no need to worry. But worry was what Mother did best, and there was no way to stop her.

  Where was that streetcar?

  Mother brushed off her skirt and pinned up a loose wisp of hair. Then she shifted her weight from left to right and back again. “Where could it be?” she fussed. “I hope it’s not too late; I asked Mrs. Harrington to meet you at the station in Excelsior and she won’t like to wait. The streetcar will drop you off right at the amusement park and it would be awfully confusing for you to find the hotel from there.”

  At last, as if conjured by those magical words amusement park, the streetcar swung into the station. Its rear doors creaked open and the crowd pressed toward the tracks.

  Mother gripped my shoulders in her hands and kissed me on the forehead. Then she let go and nudged Father, still staring blankly ahead. “She’s got to go, Albert.” His name woke him from his trance and he bent to pick up my bags. He handed me the small trunk and the traveling case, and then his cold lips brushed my cheek.

  “Good-bye, Daddy,” I said. It was the right thing to say at that moment, but the words felt too heavy in my mouth, so I added, “Wish me luck.”

  He nodded once and a flicker of a smile passed across his pale face. “Good-bye, Gigi,” he mumbled. Garnet Grace Richardson—Gigi. He so rarely used my little-girl nickname these days that the word flooded my mind with images of him tossing me in the air (Fly, Gigi, fly!), tugging my ponytail, suiting me up in his big rubber waders for a trek through the bog. Maybe Mother would be able to bring that man back to us—I couldn’t help but hope.

  I tightened my grip on my bags and pushed into the rush and jostle of the crowd.

  Inside, the car buzzed with energy—full of families headed off to the amusement park for the weekend, and women and children going to the lake for the summer to escape the heat and crowds of the city. I dropped my token into the fare box and then the conductor, in his pressed uniform, took my suitcase and led me to an open seat. I slid down the bench toward the window and he placed the little trunk on the floor beside my feet. I settled my traveling case in my lap and watched through the window as Mother and Father walked down the platform with a foot of empty space between them. Soon they were out of sight and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

  In another moment, the car startled to life like a cat out of sleep, sending the women’s ribbons fluttering in the breeze that came through the open front windows. I pressed my face against the glass as the city rushed by. Streets and houses flowed aw
ay like water down a drain and soon we were in open country, soaring like a hawk beside our shadow.

  Hawk, I thought, and the memory swooped in on me out of nowhere.

  “Mama, look what Daddy and I found!” The long, speckled feather arched out of my band beautifully. “It was a northern barrier, a female, I’m sure of it! She caught a snake down at the marsh—flew off with it dangling from her talons. It was amazing.”

  “Garnet, do not track that mud into the house. Just look at your dress! What are we going to do with you? Albert, must you encourage her?”

  I shook the memory away and reached into my pocket. I rubbed my thumb against the handle of the crane-shaped scissors for comfort. The bird’s legs stood atop the thumb and finger holes, and its body arched up into handles. Its eye made the hinge and its sharp beak formed the blades. When Father went to war and Mother insisted I come in from the citified remnants of forest and field and start learning to be a lady, I began to cut silhouettes of the birds I could see from the window seat of my bedroom, from the front porch, from the backyard, and from the sidewalk on my trips to school and back. After Father had come home and failed to take up my side of the argument again, Mother showed her approval of this quaint Victorian pastime by buying me a special pair of scissors for my twelfth birthday. Or maybe she just didn’t want me to dull my regular sewing scissors on the paper. No matter the reason for the gift, as the hobby turned into a passion, the delicate pair of scissors became my constant companion.

  I pulled the chickadee cutout from my pocket and a nib of white chalk I kept wrapped in a handkerchief. The chalk was for marking patterns on cloth, but to me its purpose was to scrawl Latin names on the backs of silhouettes—names that, when I tacked the cutouts to the wall above my bed, remained hidden. I still remembered most of the Latin from the days when I pored over bird books in all of my spare time. Now that idle moments were spent helping Mother around the house and preparing needlework for my hope chest, I held onto this practice of scientific naming as a small rebellion—a secret whispered between me, the silhouettes, and my bedroom wall.

  Poecile atricapilla.

  I folded the chalk back into the handkerchief. My fingers itched.

  Would there be hawks in Excelsior? Herons? Woodpeckers? I had to wonder. Would it be like our trips to Grandmother’s farm when I was little, when pre war Daddy would take me out into the fields and the woods to look for foxholes and pheasant feathers? The flocks of sparrows and chickadees and pigeons above my bed cried out for variation that was hard to come by without venturing off the beaten track. Maybe in the country, I thought, without Mother around for ten whole weeks . . .

  I stopped myself. What silliness. I was not a child anymore, and Mrs. Harrington would make sure I didn’t forget it.

  I pulled my embroidery hoop out of my traveling case and set to work. I was halfway through the m in Bless Our Home on the corner of a pillowcase. That trunk at the foot of my bed was almost full; my childhood was almost over.

  Mother’s education in the “feminine arts” encompassed more than just needlework. She’d taught me how to budget the housekeeping money, when to buy fresh produce and when to use canned, where to find the highest-quality fabrics at reasonable prices, and how to turn those fabrics into replicas of the premade dresses in department store windows. (Exact replicas, except that I always sewed mine with oversized pockets for carrying paper and scissors and chalk.) We’re not wealthy, Garnet, Mother would always remind me. We don’t have servants to take care of these things for us and we can’t afford to buy everything premade. You shouldn’t expect to marry into that kind of life either. But with a little know-how you can live respectably and fashionably on a moderate income. In just a few short years she’d turned me from a tousled little girl into a capable young woman with a hope chest full of linens and a mind full of thoughts of housekeeping and family life. If only I could ignore the fact that my heart was as heavy as that trunk, I might be happy.

  Outside my window, the terrain grew wilder as we journeyed farther into the countryside.

  When I finished the pillowcase, I looked over my embroidery. The letters stood up straight, but the pinwheel daisies around them drooped a little on one side. The overall effect was pretty good. I was admiring my handiwork when the streetcar lurched and braked suddenly. I fumbled my hoop and jabbed my needle into my finger.

  With a little yelp I stuck the injured finger into my mouth. The metallic taste of blood hit my tongue and then was gone. Just a prick.

  “Excelsior, end of the line,” the conductor bellowed as the motorman brought the car to a screeching stop at the station. The passengers scurried to collect their things, jabbering excitedly. I stowed my embroidery, careful to keep my pricked finger off the fabric in case another drop of blood escaped, but then I kept my seat a moment and looked out the window while everyone bustled around me.

  A fat woman dressed in head-to-toe Victorian whites stood on the platform, leaning on a silver-topped cane. A slender girl of about fourteen stood in the shadow of the woman’s bulk, dripping in outdated lace. Behind them cowered a colored girl dressed in simple servant garb. I waited for the crowd to disembark, looking at the trio and beyond them—to the whiz and whir of the gigantic amusement park.

  Oh, how it called to me! My heart skipped around in my chest for a moment as I gazed out at the glittering spectacle that dangled before my eyes. The tiny broken-down rides at the state fair in St. Paul had never held much appeal for me, so I hadn’t expected the amusement park to draw me in this way. The bright, quick beauty of the place sparked a yearning in me—for what, exactly? I will go, I promised myself. I must.

  Beyond the hubbub of the park the lake sparkled. The serene expanse of water calmed me, reined in my wild heart, slowed my breath. Finally, I retied the ribbons on my sun hat, rose from my seat, and collected my luggage. Clutching my bags in a firm grip, I marched down the aisle of the streetcar and descended the stairs, stepping into the heat of the day and the buttery smell of popcorn. It was time to meet my summer guardian.

  Ruffed Grouse

  (Bonasa umbellus)

  She presided over the streetcar platform like a grouse stuffed into an albino peacock costume.

  I opened my mouth to address her—

  “You are Garnet, then?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, dipping a quick curtsy that seemed expected of me.

  “I am Mrs. Harrington, your father’s cousin on his mother’s side. This is my daughter, Hannah.” At her name, the thin girl whose angular limbs seemed to be drowning in their lace and ribbons nodded her pointed chin to me in terse politeness. The haughtiness of the greeting made me dislike her immediately.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am, miss.”

  “Take her bags up to the Galpin House and unpack them, Charlotte,” Mrs. Harrington said to her maid. “Have the dresses pressed. We’ll be up shortly.” The young woman dropped a deep curtsy and took my trunk and traveling case. She paused a moment, her dark eyes laughing with obvious surprise and relief at the lightness of my luggage, and then hurried away. I would’ve preferred to unpack my own things, but I was not about to argue. Mrs. Harrington whipped open her fan and fluttered it at her damp face. “Dreadfully hot,” she murmured.

  “Have you already settled in, then?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. We take the train up from St. Louis the moment Hannah’s tutor stops lessons for the summer.” She said tutor with emphasis, and her meaning wasn’t lost on me; Mrs. Harrington’s exceptional children did not bother with something so common as a regular school—like the one I’d attended all my life. “Mr. Harrington and my boys care for the estate while we come up here and make our home at the Galpin in the summertime,” she continued. “The summers are simply unbearable down there if you ask me. We’ve been coming up for years, since well before they built that horrid amusement park last spring and the riffraff started arriving. Shall we make our way up to the hotel now? I’m afraid it’s a bit of a walk.”

/>   Without waiting for an answer she snapped her fan shut and set off at a leisurely waddle down the walkway. I stifled a giggle, thinking of the ruffed grouse as Hannah turned to follow and I started to do the same.

  But then something caught my eye. “Mrs. Harrington, what is that enormous building?” I pointed to a huge structure off to my right as we moved in the opposite direction. Hannah shook her head as if to stop me from asking, but the question was already out.

  Mrs. Harrington stopped abruptly and turned back to me. “That, my dear, is the dance hall,” she said, biting the words off and brandishing her closed fan like a weapon. “That is where nice young ladies and gentlemen go to corrupt themselves with drink and dancing.” And that was all she had to say on the subject.

  The dance hall tugged at me as if by a strand of fishing line anchored beneath my ribs. Something in there seemed to be calling to me, and I was surprised to discover that I longed to go see what it was. I’d always been fascinated by the one near my house in Minneapolis, perhaps because it was off-limits and my best friend, Alice, was always scheming ways to get in. Mrs. Harrington moved off away from the offending structure and I had no choice but to follow. The dance hall, like the amusement park, would have to wait.

  While we walked, I sized up Hannah. Although Father had visited these cousins a few times before the war, I had not met them. They came into the city briefly on one of their summer trips, but I was too young to remember the visit, and Hannah must’ve been a baby in the arms of her nurse then. Now, although she was younger than me and smaller than me, she tried hard to look grown-up. Not only had she dressed in expensive white lace, but she’d also twisted her hair back in an elaborate style that exactly matched her mother’s. Or maybe her mother had done the dressing and the hair twisting, using her daughter as a turn-of-the-century doll. I couldn’t help but dislike Hannah for her vanity and arrogance, but I pitied her too. She looked so uncomfortable in that outfit, and it didn’t suit her a bit. If I sewed her a proper dress, I wondered, a simpler one, a looser one, a sundress or a summer suit—would her mother let her wear it? I doubted it, and I was sure the offer would offend them both. The Harringtons may have been family, but our families were far from close. They didn’t even know about Father’s condition. I needed to tread carefully.