A Rain of Frogs

By now the weather had turned hot, and the world had begun to talk about “greenhouse effects” and ozone layers. Meteorologists predicted the hottest summer in memory, and the springtime was backing them up.

Without much fanfare, the casts came off. Having them cut off was a liberating experience. I felt like a bird, spreading my wings and ready to leap into the sky. I relished the cool hospital air against the pale skin of my hands, relished the way the blood flowed unhindered to my fingertips.

It took me a while to be able to bend my fingers again, and even longer to be able to do anything as simple as hold a pencil or play piano. I worked at it. Every day my hands grew stronger and more capable.

And every day I thought about Amy’s words. She seemed to be deliberately avoiding me. I hadn’t seen her since that day by the road, and I missed her. I would go to the Silo and rattle around the circular room at its top, hoping she would come back. I felt lost and alone.

I couldn’t locate any of my pencils, only a gnarled, beat up old thing with a rust red colored lead. I drew in my sketchbook with it, deliberately avoiding the pages Amy had filled with her spindly drawings, each reminding me acutely of her absence. No matter what subject I set out to capture on paper, the same image would emerge in sanguine tones, over and over, page after page.

I thought about the people who hurt me, thought about how I did nothing to stop them. I would hear her words, like a whisper on the breeze. I’d see that crumpled heap of red feathers rolling limply and unnaturally down the road. I’d see that dead, glazed eye staring into my soul.

That eye haunted me. That crumpled heap of feathers twitching in the breeze filled my mind and my sketchbook, a silent indictment in my daydreams and nightmares.

Winter slid slowly into spring. It had been one of the warmest, wettest winters on record, and spring looked to be much the same. By mid-April the birds were already singing in the trees, and lawns were lush and green.

Once it had become clear that I would be unable to do homework or write tests without assistance, Sister Maria Corvi had made arrangements for me to spend time in the library, reading to the kindergarten classes and helping any way my casts would permit.

The questions about the casts had provided some morbid interest in class, and had prompted a few callous jokes at my expense, but the veneer of novelty wore away quickly and everyone had accepted the story I had told them, about the broken window in our house and the way it slammed down on my hands as I was trying to close it. My mother had so horrified herself that she had stopped drinking, and for a little while, things had been good in our house.

My thumbs had remained unbroken and therefore free of the casts, able to move at least in a limited way. I was spared the indignity of needing help dressing, or – god forbid – in the bathroom.

I made it up to the Silo several times, but the climb was difficult and dangerous, so Amy decided we would sit at its base. Sometimes when the sun was warm and the ground was dry, we’d sit by the road and wait for cars race by. They’d crest the small hill in silence and blast past us, the drone of their engines fading and dropping in pitch. Seconds later we’d brace ourselves as the gust of wind from their passage would swirl around us and push into our lungs, making it hard to breathe. But it was a country road in a small town, so the cars were few and far between.

“Do you think you’ll still be able to play?” she asked.

I thought about this for a while before answering.

“Probably. They don’t think it’ll affect my ability to do stuff, so yeah.”

I was thinking about my mom, and Jay. I was questioning myself, what I could have done to have stopped them, how I could have changed things so that whatever it was about me that made them so full of anger, whatever it was that made them hate me so, could go away.

Silence settled around us like a cloak. A brilliant red cardinal strutted across the road between us and the crest of the hill, pecking at the pebbles on the ground.

“When are you going to stop crucifying yourself for everyone else’s sins?”

I looked at her. She had a thick woolen sweater on, and a knitted hat. She looked like any ten year old girl, pretty and vital and full of energy, but her eyes were deep and full of concern.

“When are you going to stop letting them hurt you? Stop letting them use you as a punching bag and a dumping ground for their problems? Stop carrying the weight of their worlds on your shoulders? How hurt do you have to be before you tell them all you’ve had enough?”

She was very upset, I could see it, but she was trying hard to remain calm, not to cry. She turned away from me and watched the bird pecking at the road.

“You can’t change the things that happen to you, Adrian. You can only change the way you react.”

A car startled both of us, blasting past at what felt like a thousand miles per hour. Amy actually screamed. The wave of wind it pushed blew her hat off and almost knocked me over.

The cardinal, now nothing more than a crumpled heap of feathers flopping down the road in the wake of the car eventually came to rest directly in front of Amy. There was no blood, but it was twisted at odd, unnatural angles. One wing raised and lowered in the breeze, and its glazed eye stared straight through me.

“Or will you wait till its too late?”

There are watershed moments of such singularity that all other events are forever redefined as having happened either before or after. Some are part of the collective, like Kennedy’s assassination (where were you?) or the first man in space. Some are personal, like weddings, the death of a parent or the birth of a child.

My tenth birthday stands out for me as such a singularity.

It started as any other birthday might. In our house, birthday’s were special, but not extraordinarily so. My parents both wished me a good day on their way out to work, and my sister hugged me tight and welcomed me to the world of two-digit living with a kiss on the cheek.

Happy birthday to me.

At school the day was largely ignored. Sister Maria Corvi was not one to celebrate trivial events like birthdays, and most especially not one that everyone else in the class had celebrated the year before.

Not everyone let the day pass uneventfully. A girl named Kimberly offered birthday wishes, but it was off hand and affected – something she did because it was what people did. It was nice, even if it didn’t mean anything.

Jay chose the day to renew hostilities by cornering me after school. His cruelty had been held in check since the park by fear of being caught, but a hatred that I’d never understand had finally overcome his concern. HIs cronies held my arms behind me while he slammed his fist into my stomach, over and over, once for each year. I tried not to cry when he spit in my face. A pinch to grow an inch, I heard him laugh as he left.

Happy birthday to me.

We went out for dinner that night, though I wasn’t very hungry. I made an effort to enjoy myself, to be a happy boy. We had steak, even though I never much cared for beef, and we had birthday desserts and my mom even gave me a sip of her wine to celebrate.

We had presents. My sister gave me the new Michael Jackson album, called Thriller, and my parents gave me all sorts of presents, as they always did. New shoes and clothes, a new sketchbook, several books they thought I’d enjoy. It was a wonderful dinner.

Afterward we went home. I had to practice, and it was getting late. An hour and a half of piano every night, whether I was in the mood or not. With each note I played, each page of music I turned, I grew more and more upset about the day, about Jay’s hatred for me. Eventually I threw my music books across the room and started hammering on the piano, beating a tantrum on the keys.

My mother had made it perfectly clear that an hour and a half of piano was an hour and a half of deep concentration and musical perfection. She was not paying for lessons so that I could be another piano dropout. I would be the best. She yelled at me over the wall of sound I was making and I beat the piano harder to drown out her voice.

I saw it coming. I could have moved my hands. In one lightning quick movement she slammed the keyboard cover down over the keys. The sound of my fingers breaking, like dry twigs popping in the cold winter air filled the sudden, dreadful silence.

Happy birthday, dear Adrian.

I cried, later in the hospital, against my sister’s shoulder. I cried as a kindly nurse with the lopsided smile finished with the casts on my hands. She told me it was okay, that it would stop hurting soon, and I nodded to ease her mind. But I didn’t know if it would ever stop hurting.

Happy birthday to me.

“You have to stop giving everyone a piece of you.”

She was in a very serious mood, despite dancing barefoot around the silo.

“I don’t understand.” I said to her. I was watching the way the hem of her school uniform spun and lifted up her bare legs.

“They use you up, tear strips off your soul, and you let them, just so they’ll leave you alone. You have to stop giving yourself to them, and start taking. Or there’ll be nothing left.”

I sighed. Watching Amy move was mesmerizing. She flowed like water around the circular room atop the silo.

“Why can’t they find happiness all by themselves? I just want them to leave me alone, let me be me. Like you do.” I said to her.

She stopped so suddenly in front of me I put my hands up. She dropped to her knees in front of me and leaned forward so our noses were inches apart. Her hands rested gently on my casts.

“You can be you without losing any of you. I don’t consume you. Or do I?” she asked breathlessly.

I looked at her, really looked at her. I stared into her eyes, trying to find meaning there. It was like staring into grey-blue pools deeper than the universe. The deeper I looked, the deeper they seemed to get. My heart raced.

“No. I don’t think you do.” I finally answered, “but you’re different.”

She smiled sweetly and nodded her head emphatically.

“You bet I’m different. As different as you.”

If nothing else, my visits to the therapist had made it abundantly clear to me that Amy was my only friend. I hadn’t been able to supply any others for his scrutiny. I watched her as she jumped up and resumed her dance across the floor.

“I don’t want to be different. I just want to be happy.” I said.

She stopped one more time, cocked her head and turned to me.

“You’ll never be happy till you reach out and take it.”

Gradually, my scholastic performance improved.

The improvement had little to do with the therapist, and a lot to do with me. I grew tired of adults worrying about me, prying and poking at me. I got tired of the therapist asking me about Amy over and over.

I had told him about her, that I had met her right after the attack, and that she had proven to be a great friend. I didn’t tell him about the Silo, or much that we talked about. It wasn’t his business. It was between her and I, and it felt sacred.

He would try to steer my thoughts this way or that, try to gauge my interest in her, or her influence over me. He’d guess at her motives. His methods were transparent, always looking for an easy label, to find something in his books that fit me, that would make it easy to deal with me. He never looked deeper than the surface, never touched the real me. Nobody but Amy ever did, really.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I had lost interest in school, but it had nothing to do with the attack. School was boring. The work was easy, and I was learning nothing. I found my mind wandering in class, I would doodle endlessly in my notebooks. Sometimes I thought about Amy, but sometimes I thought about music, or something I had read. Sometimes I’d just stare out the window at the grey sky and wonder how I could get out there.

Sister Maria Corvi would try to catch me, try to embarrass me into paying attention. She’d call my name when she was sure I wasn’t paying attention, call on me to answer. It would frustrate her to no end when I could pick up the thread of a lesson, answer the question she had posed even though I had barely heard it.

So it became easier to just do the schoolwork and feign interest. It took little effort, and everyone else won. Sister Maria Corvi could pat herself on the back for being such an excellent teacher.

The therapist could congratulate himself on another mind saved, another life improved and another point for medical science.

My mother could point to a rare success in parenting, that she had done the difficult but right thing by her child and atoned for so many of her past mistakes.

And every day I told myself it was easier this way – to make all of them feel better, to make them leave me be. The tiny piece of my soul that burned off every day was a small price to pay.