Skeletons

Dear Bird,

Maria’s hands shook a little, ink splattering dark against the white notebook paper. Tears pooled in her eyes and her throat stung but she sighed and kept on writing.

He’s five today. Can you believe it? Five years old.

A sob caught in Maria’s throat and she wiped away the tears that were now trickling freely down her cheeks. A few splattered on the paper in front of her, making little puckers and dips and dark spots. Jay looked up from his place beside her, turning his attention away from the construction paper and Crayolas in front of him.

“Hey, Mama, you okay?” he asked, clambering into her lap and placing his warm, sticky little palm against her cheek. She closed her eyes, leaning her head against his.

“Yeah, baby. Mama’s just sad.”

Maria cleared her throat, trying to paste on a happy face. Jay didn’t buy it.

“Oh… you writing to Daddy?” Jay questioned, pressing his face against her chest and twining his hands in her hair, rubbing the ends between his little fingers. She cradled him there, like he was still a baby. She wished he was still a baby. Still a hot little bundle in her arms, concerned only with her face and her voice and her breast, consumed entirely by the sustenance she provided.

But he wasn’t. He was growing every day. He looked just like Bird, too. Same dark, shaggy hair, same deep green eyes, same tan skin sprinkled with freckles. She leaned down, kissing that tiny, freckled button nose.

“Yeah, kid. I’m writing to Daddy,” she paused, taking a deep breath. “You feel like going to see him today?”

Jay’s eyes lit up.

“Yeah! Let’s go see Daddy! Can we bring him a piece of cake?” Jay pointed excitedly to the box of confetti cake mix lying on the Formica counter. Maria couldn’t help but laugh.

“Sure, baby. We’ll take him a piece of cake. He’ll love that. Why don’t you draw him a picture, too?” she suggested brightly, kissing the top of Jay’s fuzzy head and sitting him down in the chair beside her. He nodded, his eyes lit up like it was the most brilliant idea in the world. He picked up his crayon – the green one, his favorite color, just like Bird’s- and started in on a whole landscape of trees and shrubs and little dogs running around. She started in again on her letter. All was quiet except for the rhythmic thumping of Jay’s feet against the bottom of the table. Maria didn’t even bother to look up from her letter.

“What did I tell you about kicking the table?” she reminded him gently. Jay looked up at her with those big, pleading green eyes, and her heart skipped a beat.

He was so like his Daddy.

“Not to do it,” Jay sighed.

“That’s right. So cut it out, boy scout.”

Jay dissolved into giggles, parroting, “Cut it out, boy scout,” under his breath. But he stopped kicking the table, so Maria let that one slide.

After a few moments of relative silence, Maria signed the letter with a flourish, a heart, and a tiny sketch of a sparrow, the same way she’d signed all of the love letters that she and Bird had exchanged during high school. She closed her eyes, smiling, thinking of him. She could still smell his hair, all wild and wiry, and taste his skin, all salty and musky, and feel him, all muscle and sinew, pressed against her in the backseat of his ’58 Bel Air. He’d been such a Romeo, giving her flowers and cheap chocolate and helping her sneak out of her window in the middle of the night to go watch shooting stars from the old cemetery on McElroy’s hill. They’d drunk cheap wine and laid on a ratty old quilt, just waiting for a comet to streak through the sky. A lump rose in her throat and she opened her eyes, looking at Jay’s picture. He was putting the finishing touches on it, adding a smiling face to the sun placed strategically in the corner of the paper. She saw a lumpy looking figure with a Cheshire cat grin scribbled in underneath the sun, and she noticed that Jay was working more intently on it then anything else in the picture.

“What’s that, Jaybird?” she asked, pointing to the figure. He smiled, pride smeared across his face just as clear as the grape jam from his sandwich at lunch.

“It’s Daddy. He’s smiling. See?”

Maria wanted to throw herself on the floor and have a grand tantrum, but she swallowed, smiling widely.

“Yeah, I see that! Looks just like him, kiddo. How about we go make that cake now?”

Jay hopped up, his attention diverted for a moment. He trotted into the kitchen behind Maria, holding on to the back of her shirt and pretending that she was a pony and he was a wagon driver. It was just like the movie he’d seen on TV yesterday. Didn’t she know that all cowpokes had to have a mess wagon and all mess wagons had to have a driver so giddy up, Mama! She rolled her eyes and tried not to stumble over his feet as she pulled out a mixing bowl, a spoon, and oil.

“Hey, squirt, how about you take a break from being a wagon driver and get me two eggs, huh?” she asked, pouring the mix into the bowl. He nodded enthusiastically, and as carefully as a five year old boy could be, got two eggs out of the refrigerator and handed them to her painfully slowly. She hoisted him up onto the counter and let him crack the eggs into the bowl, picking the pieces of eggshell out when he wasn’t looking. After pouring in the oil and the water, she mixed up the batter, thinking, It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, with every stroke of the wooden spoon. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that, because of one mistake, her little boy had to grow up without a father.

“Mama, I’m going to go finish my drawing. Will you be okay without me?”

Jay’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts and she looked at him, his face completely and utterly serious. She kissed his nose, picking him up and setting him down on the floor.

“I think I can manage. You go play.”

He wriggled away, dancing to a little tune he was humming under his breath. A song he’d made up, no doubt. And she thought she could hear him whispering, Cut it out, boy scout, all sing-song to go along with his tune.

She laughed, watching him shake his hips and bob his head as he clambered back into the chair, settling back into his coloring. Moments like these, she thought, were moments that made single motherhood worth it. Everything she’d had to do alone, every sleepless night and potty training mishap and days spent doing nothing but cleaning up after him was erased, nullified, and made absolutely meaningless by moments like these.

Even if she had to experience them alone.

An hour later, the cake was cooled, frosted, and sitting underneath clear plastic on the dining room table. One piece, though, was wrapped in tin foil, resting on a squirmy five year old’s lap.

“Mama, are we there yet?” Jay whined, fidgeting in the seat. Maria grasped the wheel a little tighter. Driving made her nervous as it was, let alone with Jay acting up.

“Easy, tiger. Almost. Be still, don’t squish the cake.”

Jay sighed with all the air of a martyr and cut the fidgeting down to what he thought was an acceptable minimum. She turned on the radio, still amazed at the clarity of the ’58 Bel Air’s system. She would have thought it would have been completely dead by now, the old dinosaur, but it kept on trucking.

“Ooh, Charlie Daniels!” Jay squealed, dancing as much as he could in his seat as ol’ CBD came pouring out of the radio. Maria sang along with Jay, smiling as he belted out every word about being proud to be a rebel ‘cause the south’s gonna do it again.

“We’re here!” Jay sang out as they drove through the front gates. “I got Daddy’s picture, I got Daddy’s cake, you got your letter, mama?”

“I do, I do,” Maria whispered, maneuvering her way down the tiny gravel avenues. Finally, they reached the farthest corner of the big spread out field, where the large headstones gradually got tinier and tinier, leaving the last patch to the tiny plots with unkempt flowers and roughly hewn gravestones. She parked the car and reached over and unbuckled Jay, watching as he sprang out of the car and bounded over to Bird’s grave. She broke down then, finally letting all of the day’s tears out as she watched her little boy settle himself down on her husband’s grave.

As she cried herself out in the car, mourning the loss of her husband of one year to a lousy, trigger happy cop, Jay sat there, chatting away, telling Bird all about his day and the cake and how he was going to kindergarten soon. The way Jay talked, you would think that Bird was sitting right there, answering all of Jay’s endless questions and laughing at his corny jokes, because chickens crossing roads are always funny. After a bit, Maria got out of Bird’s old Bel Air and laid down on the grass beside Jay, joining the conversation.

“Hey, Bird,” she whispered, laying her hand on the headstone, tracing her fingers over the writing.

Here rests Jim “Bird” Weiss, beloved son, loving husband, cherished father.
B. June 12, 1952
D. November 14, 1973.

“Mama?” Jay questioned, laying his head in her lap.

“Yeah?” she whispered, stroking his hair.

“You miss Daddy?”

Maria inhaled shakily.

“Yeah, baby. I miss him. I miss him a lot. So, so much. “

“Did you love him?”

“Yes, Jay. I loved him bunches,” she said. She’d thought she’d cried herself out, but Jay’s questions were beginning to make her think otherwise.

“Did you love him as much as you love me?”

“Just exactly as much as I love you,” she said, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. He sighed contentedly, clinging to her skirts.

“Tell me about Daddy.”

Maria smiled, and she told him the same stories about Bird that she told him every time they came to the cemetery. She told him about how he and Grandpa fought over football, and how his favorite thing to eat was potato soup, just like him, and she told him how they had the same hair, hair that wouldn’t stay down no matter how much they brushed it. Jay bolted up, all excited.

“Am I gonna look like Daddy when I grow up?” he asked frantically, his eyes wide.

Maria pretended to deliberate. She grabbed his chin, turned his face this way and that, made him turn around, and then finally answered, with all the seriousness of a judge.

“You know, I think you will.”

Jay laid back down in her lap, his face lit up with excitement.

"I'm gonna look like Daddy," he whispered, so quiet that Maria wasn't sure he said it at first. She hugged him to her, and they lay like that, all by themselves, their perfect little broken family unit.

"Mama, I want the cake now."

Jay broke the silence right as the sun was starting go down.

"Okay, baby. We can eat the cake."

Maria unwrapped the cake and they shared it, eating with their fingers, and Jay told Bird all about how good it was, and then they both lay there silent in the cemetery on McElroy’s hill, waiting for the sky to darken and the shooting stars to come out.