Just Under the Clouds Read online

  She smiles when she sees me and then her eyes mirror Sabina behind me, curious and having to know. “Hi,” she says fast and bright.

  Sabina doesn’t startle, like some people do. She just says hi right back.

  I swing my arm out to present her. “This is Sabina.”

  Adare’s smile softens and she waves, and as she jumps from one step to the next, I remember the last time Sabina saw her, shoes off, hair tangled, sitting on Miss Li’s filthy floor.

  “We’re going on a walk,” I tell her.

  Adare takes my hand and I say a quick prayer in my head that her shoes stay on.

  “You lead,” I tell Sabina.

  “I think you’re gonna like this.” Then she shuffles ahead.

  We take Smith Street. I scan trees. Lots of honey locusts and pin oaks, and blocks with no trees at all.

  Sabina switches arms, crushes her books against her side. I watch how she keeps her eyes on the ground, braids slipping to her nose, staying close to the fence the way she did the other day after school.

  “Don’t your arms get tired from all the books?” I ask.

  “Not really. This way I just have what I need. Don’t your shoulders hurt with that backpack?”

  “Sometimes,” I admit.

  Her stride is big and she takes us to the Ninth Street Bridge. The subway sneaks above us. The canal water sits in its stink below. I look into it. There’s a reflection of blue sky that melts into the murky brown sludge. The junkyard sits with piles of scrap metal in giant heaps. The arm of the crane is stretched out and frozen.

  I think we’re going straight toward Miss Li’s, but she turns toward the canal and slips along the gray branches of old bushes and logs.

  I stop. “Are we allowed over here?”

  She doesn’t look back. Just marches ahead. “Of course.”

  I hold tight to Adare, look around, and see there’s nobody here. There’s the little dip of a stone wall toward the water, and a stretching plank of mud and grass next to the junkyard.

  “How far is it?” I ask.

  “Just up there,” she calls back, pointing toward a red warehouse and a big, old tree whose roots dig deep into the mud.

  “Come on.” I lead Adare along the narrow path. The smell of the canal is wet and sweet, sticking to the air all gummy.

  We walk along the edge of the canal, beside a metal barrier. The rocks slip to the water and we keep our feet on the dirt. Tall grass juts out, hanging over the dirt like it can’t hold itself up.

  Before I can wonder what might be mine, what she wants to show me, the gray and silver and brown of everything here lights up Adare’s eyes. She rips her hand from mine and sinks to the wet ground.

  I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  It’s the charcoal cat. His eyes are caught somewhere between blue and yellow, a leafy emerald green.

  “You found him,” I say to Sabina.

  “More like he found me.”

  “That’s amazing. How’d you remember him?”

  “Just did,” she says.

  “Does he come here every day?” I ask.

  “Yup. Isn’t he sweet?”

  “I promised Adare I’d find him,” I tell her. “I thought it was a dumb promise.”

  “Guess it worked out.” She smiles.

  Adare strokes the cat, who isn’t scared like he was at Miss Li’s. He stretches out. A ball of fur beneath a sun that feels like it’s trying to hang on longer to the day.

  I look around. There are empty tuna fish cans, damp cardboard, and a broken picture frame, its glass cut out in puzzle shapes.

  At the edge of the warehouse, there’s a fallen tree trunk. It rests in a drawn-out line, all hollow and wet from old rain. Next to it stands a big, sturdy tree. Fifty, sixty feet, maybe. Tall and straight, with the wind tossing all the leafless stems.

  I move toward it. The bark is a twist of gray and brown, running lines that sweep up and up. I can’t believe what I think I’m seeing.

  I throw my backpack to the ground, rip it open, and grab my Tree Book. I flip the pages to a photograph of the tree of heaven.

  I match the two barks. Both their bumps are scattered in the shape of broken diamonds.

  “The tree of heaven,” I whisper.

  “What?” Sabina asks.

  I speak up. “The tree of heaven.”

  “So?”

  “This…is my dad’s tree,” I tell her. “He studied it for a long time. I think this is it.”

  I make sure I’ve got it right.

  I look at the polluted canal. A tree that can grow in the worst conditions. I study the photograph again, placing all of us here. Daddy, the photograph, the tree, me. And that’s when I match the fallen tree beside us. There’s even a tip of the red warehouse in the corner. All of it’s right there in the photo and right next to me.

  My heart beats fast.

  “This is it,” I say. “For sure.”

  Beneath the tree it’s cooler and darker. The empty spaces between branches carve out broken pieces of sky. I feel my feet in the dirt, imagining Daddy right here the day he died. Then I imagine myself inside the tree.

  I want to get up in it.

  I study the branches. The first nook for my foot is way too high. Even if I hug my legs and arms around it to get up, it’d scrape my wrists and hands.

  I move closer, trying to figure it out. A ladder would help. Or a rope. I stand against the rough column of its bark. The roots don’t Halloween-crawl out like some of the other trees. They are buried deep. If I look up, I stand beneath a crown of bending arms, reaching around one another.

  “So this is where I keep everything,” Sabina tells me.

  I’d almost forgotten she was there.

  I open my eyes quick. “Keep what?”

  While Adare strokes the charcoal cat, Sabina crouches to the ground and points into the hollow of the fallen tree. I kneel beside her and look in. Nestled inside the bark are neat stacks of crumpled paper.

  “What are they?”

  “Grocery lists. Letters. Doodles. Once I found this postcard that was all old-school, about riding roller coasters at Coney Island. It was signed Miss Grayson. Like she was somebody’s neighbor or teacher or something. Look at this.” She grabs from one stack and holds out a wrinkled yellow paper. “A love letter.”

  I look it over. Dear Karen, in wild, looping script.

  “I found it on top of the garbage, next to a broken photo frame. Someone’s breakup. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” I look at all the tidy stacks. “Why do you keep them?”

  “They’re somebody’s memories.”

  “Why here? They could get all wet and ruined.”

  “I’ve got too many boxes filled up at home. I’ve been collecting notes for years. You’d be surprised what people lose.”

  I run my fingers over the letter. Dear Karen, There’s so much I wasn’t able to say.

  There’s a rustle in the water and it startles both of us. We stand up quick. I look across the canal at a string of three houseboats. A boy sits in a wooden canoe with a skinny pole slipping into the water. His hair is a big, wild nest above his head.

  “My brother.”

  “Brother? When you said you live on the canal, you actually meant on it?”

  “Yup. In that houseboat, just over there.” Her hand stretches out to the white boat across the narrow water.

  I’ve heard of people living on houseboats but never met anyone who did.

  The boy stops in the middle of the canal.

  “Should we go?” I ask.

  “Nah. He’s just shy.”

  Adare rests her head against the fallen tree. Her arms curl around the charcoal cat, stroking his fur. I know she’s not going anywhere.

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nbsp; The wind crawls over us. There’s the steady whish of the expressway and a siren calling, far away. The boy’s paddle slips through the water and Adare lifts the cat to her lap. She stands up slow, stroking and shushing him, the way she does with Sookie.

  The canoe slaps against a lopsided dock, and he ties a busted-up rope to anchor it.

  His thick, wild hair is like something from a fairy tale. The fading blue sky matches the blaze of his eyes, and he wears an oversize hoodie over swishy pants and the same tall rubber boots as his sister.

  Sabina extends her arm, like she’s taking a bow. “You can show them, if you want.”

  He’s cautious. He walks to the far end of the dock. Then onto the grass. Then he marches to us. Sabina ruffles his hair as he plunges quickly to the ground, resting on his stomach, peering into the hollowed-out tree.

  He jumps back to his feet and places his finger over his lips to hush me. The other hand bows out toward the black yawning trunk, like he’s telling me to look.

  I walk over and kneel on the damp grass. The scratchy tufts gnaw at my hands. Then I peer in, looking real close. I piece together an image inside the dark cavity. Soft matching feathers, folded napkin-neat. And two huge yellow-swamped eyes staring back at me.

  I place my hands in the grass, careful not to say a word, staring at this no-necked bird with cat ears.

  It’s quiet and knowing and not quite scared, just tucked away, like it found the only place in the world it belongs. I stare into its eyes and wonder how it came to be right here.

  Then I stand up and whisper, “What is it?”

  “A screech owl,” the boy says.

  “Where’d it come from?”

  He shakes his head. He looks like some kind of forest creature, tangled and messy.

  “This is Jacob,” Sabina tells me.

  “I’m Cora,” I say. “And this is Adare—”

  “Hi—” Adare says at the exact same time.

  Jacob is confused at her friendliness and doesn’t say anything back. He marches past the screech owl toward Adare and the cat. He clicks his tongue a few times. “Come ’ere.”

  The cat’s loving and nestling against Adare’s legs, looping through her bent elbow.

  Jacob scoops the cat in his arms and folds him against his chest.

  Adare smiles at the cat. She runs her fingers across his back one more time, not worrying about the boy’s protective hug. “I love him,” she says, the same way she told me the night we escaped Miss Li’s, as if it’s the simple truth.

  “You can have him,” Sabina says.

  Adare’s eyes grow big.

  “No, she can’t,” Jacob chimes in, real fast.

  I watch Adare’s hand stay rooted on the cat’s humped-up spine. Jacob doesn’t know that Adare’s got a way with cats. If Adare wanted him, he’d be hers.

  “I love him,” she says again.

  I look around—at the tree of heaven and the way the ground slopes so that the trunk leans over the canal. It was here that Sabina found him and led us. To Daddy’s tree. And I don’t want to disturb a thing. I shake my head, firm. “No. He belongs here.” I turn to Jacob, wondering out loud, “Do you go to Adare’s school?”

  “No.”

  “Jacob does homeschool on the boat,” Sabina tells me. “After years of whining about it, I finally got my dad to let me go to a real school. He thinks it shows self-reliance.”

  Suddenly, it makes sense how Sabina walks around without caring what anyone thinks of her, plays weird games like jump the river, talks back to Meredith, and never carries a schoolbag. She doesn’t know a thing about school.

  “It’s snack time,” Jacob reminds her.

  “I know.” Then she turns to me. “Wanna come over for a snack?”

  Jacob doesn’t look up to hear my answer. Instead, he glares at Sabina, who says, “What?” Then she turns to me. “You don’t have to come, but you can.”

  I look at the tree of heaven like I’ve finally got closer to Daddy again. Now all I have to do is figure out a way to get in it. But I feel my empty stomach, and even if I know an entire pantry’s waiting at Willa’s, I can’t seem to say no to food. Not ever. “We’ll come.”

  Sabina smiles.

  Jacob runs to the canoe, loosening the rope and tossing it back to the dock.

  We follow him there. The cat leaps along, his little legs balancing on the wooden seat planks.

  We cross the canal, leaving the screech owl and its wide eyes creeping. This is the closest I’ve ever been to the canal water, which is army green and still, like a big, flat tarp, all spread out. There’s a rainbow swirl of oil and soap foam. Garbage sits tangled in brushwood that barely moves, even as Sabina paddles.

  “Don’t touch the water,” she warns us.

  I wouldn’t want to. Even Adare, who doesn’t usually follow rules, keeps her hands buried in her lap as we float across to the opposite dock.

  “This guy keeps swimming in the canal, to prove it’s okay or whatever,” Sabina tells us. “It’s like some activist thing. But I’m pretty sure he’s going to be a mutant someday. I mean, right? Seriously.”

  Their houseboat is big but narrow and it noses out in front. There’s a series of overgrown plants dangling from the awning over the entrance. I wonder how they grow on a boat that could take off and sail away.

  Jacob doesn’t say much, just stares a lot at me and Adare, but Sabina leads us like she’s a tour guide. “The back, here, is called the stern. Left is port. Right is starboard. You have to know that if you want to sail because that’s how people say it and you don’t want to look like you don’t know what you’re doing. You get to the cabin from this little door right here.” She points as we walk the tiny deck, our shoes flapping against the wood panels, and then she shoves it open.

  Jacob goes in and says, “Look, Mom. Sabina’s got friends.”

  He says it not like he’s announcing we’re here but like he’s announcing our relationship to Sabina. Like it might be a big deal that she has friends. I wonder if we can be called that. She saved me from Meredith, gave me the bottle-cap necklace, and brought me here. But when I look at her, her face has nothing written on it for me to know.

  I grab tight to Adare’s hand and we duck our heads so they don’t bump the top of the door. We stay bent and crunched as we walk the narrow steps. I’m surprised—when we reach the cabin, it looks less like a boat and more like a house, with curtains tied with ribbons along the tiny windows, and there’s the littlest kitchen. All the utensils and pots and pans hang from colorful hooks along the wood walls. There’s even a flowered teapot on a burner and cups and plates stacked neat in a metal rack.

  We stand on a series of rugs woven of blue and burgundy and green straw. They’re circling the floor like Olympic rings. There’s a sitting chair with an afghan and throw pillows, and four bunks, two on each side. They’re folded up against the wall, so when you pull them down, they become real beds to sleep on. They have something like them in the bed and bath department at Mom’s store. Murphy beds, she calls them, and she always says with this sad kind of look in her eye that they’re perfect for even the tiniest spaces in Brooklyn.

  Mrs. Griffin stands at the sink, washing dishes, and when Adare says “Hi,” she turns around. She’s tall, like Sabina. The frizz of her hair grazes the slanting roof of the cabin.

  “Well, hello,” she says back.

  “This is Cora and Adare,” Sabina says. She reaches up to a shelf stuffed with jars and boxes—like Willa’s pantry, only Willa’s is organized by size and type and this is a mixed-up jumble. She pulls out a box, opens it, and hands over a sleeve of graham crackers. “Cinnamon,” she clarifies, and I think again of Meema as I rip open the package and slip the crisp squares out.

  Mrs. Griffin sets a dishrag at her hip, looks between me and Adare, and smiles, easy
-like. She extends her arms, talks with a big laugh in her voice, “Welcome to our humble abode.”

  “This place is so—”

  “Tiny,” Sabina interrupts.

  “I was going to say cool.”

  “We live untethered,” Sabina says. “The electricity runs on the sun. And we collect rainwater through a filtration system Dad set up on the deck. We’re tied to nothing. Nobody.”

  “I like that.” It sounds like a way of living that Mom would like, too. I think how nice it would be to have the same home no matter where you are.

  Then Mrs. Griffin spins to a clock on the wall. “Almost homework time,” she announces, and her eyebrow flips up with a warning. “We run a tight ship around here.” Again, with a laugh, like it’s always bubbling up inside her and she can’t help but let it slip out. She turns to me and Adare. “You’re welcome to stay.”

  “We’ve got a timer and everything.” Sabina holds up an egg timer and rolls her eyes.

  “Don’t want to overcook.” Mrs. Griffin laughs.

  It’d be nice to sit cozied up beneath the low roof, working through assignments. But I think of Adare. I imagine trying to have her sit still with her to-do lists and her sighs, her refusals and whines. I don’t think that would work inside Mrs. Griffin’s tight ship. That’s probably not what she thinks of as homework time.

  “We can’t. We’ve got to…” I pause, not sure. “…get back.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got your own homework rules at your house,” Mrs. Griffin says.

  “Right.” I nod, fast, because there’s something about Mrs. Griffin, no matter how soft her laugh, like you’d better have answers, like you’d better not dillydally.

  “You live in Gowanus?” she asks.

  “We used to.”

  “Rough around the edges here, huh?”

  “I guess, but…” She waits for me to say more, like she’s interested in what I’ve got to say. And something makes me feel like I can explain. “I like it. It’s kind of—I don’t know—on its way. To getting better.”