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uglycousin2
march 2007 |
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uglycousin2
march 2007 |
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The Chalk Birds
by
Patty Somlo
It wasn’t hard to imagine her standing there, outside the chain link fence. She must have arrived late, precious minutes before dark, once the sun had set and dusk powdered the sky with pastel. At that hour the playground would have been empty. She stood there, I imagine, thinking about the magic trapped in the asphalt that can only emerge when the children are there. She might have pictured little girls telling stories, using their paper dolls as characters. She stood, I feel certain, on the sidewalk, convinced she could hear the laughter and delighted shrieks of kids flying high on swings and madly circling on the merry-go-round. Then she unhooked the metal gate and stepped to the center of the playground. That’s when she thought about the birds, how children are like birds. It only made sense for her to kneel down then, pull a piece of chalk out of her pocket and sketch a beautiful blue bird. As I stood outside the chain link fence on an unseasonably balmy April afternoon, I noticed the birds – one blue, one pink and one yellow. I wondered if she had sketched them on the asphalt playground all at the same time. “The birds are beautiful, don’t you think?” My shoulders clenched, as I whirled around. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.” a woman who’d arrived to stand next to me at the fence said. “Oh, no.” The pale eyes were a perfect compliment to her peach-tinged cheeks. “No. I was just looking at the birds.” “I sketched the blue one and came back the next day to see if it was still here. I found the pink one next to it.” “What about the yellow one?” “The yellow one appeared the day after that.” “So now you’re waiting for a fourth?” “Yes, of course,” she said and smiled. The next week I noticed a bird sketched in blue chalk a block away, on the white wall of a building on Sanchez Street. I came back the following afternoon and saw a heart, the red paint shiny and damp, small ovals of paint dropping like tears from the center. I returned the next morning to find spray-painted in thick yellow underneath the heart, “Te adoro, Maria. Tu amor, Luis.” Every day after that, I returned. Within a month’s time, the wall had become a multicolored communication center. At first, the messages were simple and a little clichéd, in both English and Spanish. Alejandro loves Marisol. Things like that. But in no time the sad notes began to appear. Pleas were written by parents to runaway children. “Sylvia, please come home. Your mother loves you.” Apologies were penned by husbands asking for their wives back. “Kathy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I can’t live without you.” And then, of course, came the replies. “I will only come back if you stop drinking.” Signed by Kathy. And “You don’t ever act like you love me. You’re always telling me what to do.” Signed Sylvia. Two months passed and now the wall was too full to fit even one extra message. That’s when people started to write on the sidewalk. It got to the point where you couldn’t walk on that side of Sanchez Street because there was such a crowd. Older women with long gray braids twisted into knots at the back of their heads stood gossiping in small groups. Women with fading eyesight who had left their glasses on the night table by the bed edged up close to the wall, trying to read. Girls too short to see the messages high on the wall waited for a tall young guy to pass. As soon as he did, they would smile and ask for a boost up so they could see. As always happens in such situations, enterprising businesspeople set up stands on each side of the wall, selling fresh-squeezed lemonade, spicy beef and chicken tacos, and fat cones of shaved white ice saturated with sweet blue, yellow and pink syrup. The crowds on the sidewalk reading, writing, eating and chatting with newfound friends they had met at the wall began spilling onto the street. And one day the inevitable happened. A motorist stretching his neck out the window to see if anyone had left a message for him struck a six year-old girl. The girl named Alicia had wandered into the street while her mother, Maria Carmen, was writing a message to Alicia’s father, Arturo. The message read: “You have a new son, Arturo, and I have named him Arturo, Jr. Please come home.” The day after Alicia with the astonishing burst of black curls died after being struck by a just waxed 1967 red Chevrolet Impala, the city supervisors voted to permanently close the block of Sanchez between Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets to motor vehicle traffic. That afternoon, a procession wound down the center of Sanchez Street to mourn the death of the little girl. Altar boys from St. Peter’s carried a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe above their shoulders. The Virgin’s sad brown eyes looked down as she passed on the men, women and kids pressed like wet leaves to the sides of the street. Fresh pink, blue and yellow dyed carnations were twisted into a wreath around the Virgin’s long white dress. The next day there appeared, in the center of Sanchez Street, at the very spot where the little girl was struck down by the shiny red Impala, a bright blue bird. Its wings were open wide. The day after that, someone wrote in yellow chalk, “Sweet Alicia. How we miss you.” And one day after that, a red painted heart appeared with the words, “Alicia, your father Arturo will always love you.” The message was signed in red paint by Alicia’s father, Arturo Mendez Murguia. The message was signed as he cradled his one week-old son, Arturo, Jr., in his left arm. The tiny brown body of the baby was wrapped in a blanket. The powder blue blanket was covered with birds.
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