Gather the Sentient (4 page)

CHAPTER

5

JOSE

16 Years Ago

Phoenix

While taking a shortcut on their way home from school, nine-year-old Jose, his sister Sabina, and a few other neighborhood kids discovered a pigeon fluttering on the ground in the abandoned lot behind the liquor store. 

“It’s spazzing out,” Mateo said, kicking at the bird with his sneaker.  “Let’s throw it in the dumpster.”

“No!” cried Sabina.  “It’s just a baby!”

Doug reached down and poked at the bird’s wing with his pencil.  “It’s not a baby, stupid,” he said.  “But it’s as good as dead.  Which one of you wants to stomp on it to put it out of its misery?”

Jose couldn’t take his eyes off the pigeon, because although theoretically it was the same as every other pigeon scuttering about on his walk to and from school each day, there was something intriguing about this particular bird.  This one wasn’t pecking absentmindedly at the ground.  This one wasn’t lined atop the roofline with the rest of the flock, awash in a sea of grey plumage.  This one wasn’t staring at him with its beady, prehistoric eyes.

This one was dying, its misshapen wing contorted beneath its body, which instigated the bizarre flapping behavior as the bird attempted to right itself.

Jose thought of his mother, cursing about the pigeons which frequented his family’s restaurant.  Less than a month before, the health department shut down their outdoor patio seating until they could get their ‘vermin problem’ under control.  He’d watched in horror from the kitchen window as his mother attempted to poison them, setting out bowls of seed laced with rat poison, but for every one she successfully eliminated, another showed up in its place.  Here, just a block from the restaurant, was an opportunity to help her in her crusade against the winged scourge of his family.

“I’ll do it,” he told the others, kneeling beside the bird to scoop it into his hands.

He could feel his friends watching as he turned the bird over, caressing the broken wing between his fingers.  It was strange to hold a bird, a creature which, by all accounts, should never be touched by human hands.  It was both heavier and lighter than he expected it to be, and the pigeon attempted to flap its healthy wing in opposition to its confinement.  Jose closed his eyes, unable to ignore the ferocious thumping of the pigeon’s heart inside its tiny chest.  His own heart sped up, as if to mimic the panic seizing the bird, and he knew in that moment he could not wring its neck as he’d intended.

Warmth spread from his hands into the bird in much the same way as hot water when it is added to an already cooling tub.  The pigeon stilled for a moment, shocked into submission by the heat, and when at last it began to stir again, Jose knew instinctively to open his hands toward the hazy, afternoon sky.

And the bird knew instinctively to fly away.

“What the hell, Jose?” Mateo hushed, backing away until he bumped into the wall of the store.

Jose shrugged, as confused by what had just transpired as the others.  “I don’t know.  I guess maybe it was just pretending to be hurt.  Animals do that sometimes, don’t they?”

Doug shielded his eyes from the sun as he gazed up, still following the bird’s path.  “You mean like a possum or something?”

“They play dead, idiot,” Mateo said, already recovering from the shock of what he’d witnessed as he turned on his heel in the direction of his house.  “They don’t fake being hurt.  It just must not have been hurt that bad.”

Jose fell into step behind Mateo, and Sabina raced up beside him, her knapsack thudding noisily against her back.  “I’m glad you didn’t kill it,” she whispered up at her brother.  “I’m glad you fixed it, even though Momma doesn’t like them birds.”

As he and Sabina crossed the street and made their way down the alley between Monterey and Cheery Lynn, he thought about the sensation of the heat traveling from his hands into the bird and was suddenly embarrassed.  He shoved them hastily into his pockets, as if hiding them would prevent him from having to think any more about the stupid bird.  Had he healed it?  Had he fixed the bird’s wing without even knowing what he was doing?

Although he fully expected to be questioned further, the others didn’t bring up the incident again.  Not on the walk to school the following morning.  Not as they strode through a flock of pigeons on the way to the ball field Saturday afternoon.  It was as if they hadn’t given the bird’s resurrection a second thought.

Jose, on the other hand, hadn’t stopped thinking about it.

Which is why, when the others headed to the Dairy Freeze after shutting out the Padres in a 7-0 victory, he peeled off from the rest of the team and snuck behind the deserted bowling alley, where he knew the homeless people set up camp.  He’d been there before, in their makeshift city of cardboard boxes and weather-beaten tarps.  He knew he should probably be scared, because he’d overheard on the news about how a man was murdered there once, but he wasn’t afraid.  He’d followed a dog there many times before, and the dog always made him feel safe.

It was the dog he was searching for today.

As he wove between a dumpster and a makeshift lean-to, constructed of rotten pallet lumber and a sheet of torn construction plastic, he spotted Baxter.  He was curled up against a filthy blanket, the laceration on his left flank, oozing and raw – worse than it had been the week before.

“Hey, Bax,” he called cautiously to the dog as he drew near, crouching to make himself small in case the canine should feel threatened in his weakened condition.  “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that mean, old Doberman?  That dog’s nothing but trouble.  I hope you got a piece of him too.”

Despite the pain of the infection, the dog’s tail beat madly against the ground at the sound of the boy’s voice.  Baxter strained, hoisting himself up on his haunches.  Typically, the pup raced to greet his friend, but today, he only managed a weak scoot in his direction.

“It’s okay, boy,” Jose said, inching closer on his hands and knees.  “I’m here to help.  I’m just gonna give you a pat.”

Baxter lifted his head as Jose reached out to massage his snout and scratch behind his ears.  The fur felt matted and coarse along the dog’s protruding spine, and Baxter whimpered when the boy’s hand approached the wound.

“I brought you some scraps from the restaurant,” he murmured, “but if you want ‘em, you gotta be a good boy and let me touch it, just for a minute.”

As if he could understand what was about to happen, the dog acquiesced and relaxed onto the ground, allowing the boy full access to the gash.

After spending the better part of two days doubting himself, Jose remained hesitant, his palm hovering above the wound.  After feeling the warmth and watching the bird fly from his hands, he’d convinced himself that surely, it wasn’t what it seemed.  That there was no way he could have mended the bird’s broken wing simply by touching it. 

There had been no miracle.  Just nature playing tricks.

And yet, there he was in the homeless village, bent over the only injured soul he knew, his own curiosity compelling him forward.

If he was correct in his assumption that the pigeon was simply a fluke, then the dog would continue to suffer and he would return to his life, full of baseball practice and bike riding and fourth grade.  However, if he was wrong…

“I’ll do my best, but I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he confessed to Baxter quietly, as he finally worked up the courage to place his hands on his friend’s festering skin.

The sensation overtook him instantly.  Warmth radiated from his palms, and the dog’s head fell limply onto the blanket, his eyes shutting tightly.  For a moment, Jose was sure he’d killed the dog, but then, just as the heat from his hands became almost unbearable, Baxter opened his eyes and the pain retreated as quickly as it had arrived.  He lifted his hand to gaze at his palm, because he didn’t yet have the courage to look directly at the wound.  Where there should have been blood and fluid, there was nothing – only the pale smoothness of his own skin.  Upon seeing this, he forced his gaze to Baxter.

Where there was no mistaking the wound was gone.

CHAPTER

6

LANYING

Sunday, August 28

Shanghai

Lanying scanned the confirmation email from the airline on her phone, outlining her itinerary from Shanghai to Baltimore where she was scheduled to attend an obesity seminar the following month.  She’d already dragged her rolling luggage from her family’s storage closet in the basement of their high rise apartment building and as it lay zipped open on her bed, she wondered what she should pack.

Although her trip to Baltimore was still over a week away, her excitement about leaving the country for the first time in her life couldn’t be squelched.  She was attending the seminar as part of her graduate degree program in which she was studying to become a certified obesity counselor.  Her career choice was not a decision she’d taken lightly or one she’d fallen into accidentally.  Lanying was no stranger to obesity or the body shaming that frequently went along with being overweight, especially in the urban Chinese community in which she was raised.

In a culture where young women were encouraged to post online images of themselves successfully completing tasks like the A4 challenge, in which girls pose behind standard sheets of A4 paper to prove how tiny their waists are, Lanying was an anomaly.  Instead of embracing the notion that she should be able to completely hide her knees behind a six inch iPhone or wrap a 100 Yuan bill around her wrist, she wanted to challenge the ideology that the body images revered in her culture were healthy or attainable.  More than that, she wanted to help those individuals struggling with actual obesity to establish and maintain healthy lifestyles.

As she scanned the contents of her closet, contemplating possible blouse/skirt combinations for the conference, her mother appeared at her open bedroom door.

“What’s all this?” she asked, puckering her face into a disapproving scowl.

Lanying flinched at the critical sound of her mother’s voice.  It was the same tone she always used when speaking with her, but it’s frequent recurrence didn’t make it any less demoralizing.

“I’m, uh, just trying to get things ready for my trip,” she told her mother, sliding the closet door shut with her foot.

“Do they make appropriate apparel in your size?” she asked in her characteristically passive-aggressive way.  “I assume you’re going to be expected to wear something more sophisticated than those baggy jeans you’re always schlepping around in.”

Lanying balled her fists and forced herself to take a deep breath.  She wouldn’t let her mother offend her.  Still, it frustrated her to know that although she’d lost over 70 pounds in the years since being diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, better known as PCOS, her mother remained quite obviously embarrassed and ashamed of her appearance.  That a disorder had incited Lanying’s sudden and uncontrollable weight gain at the age of 13 was inconsequential to her mother.  All that mattered was the shame she’d brought to her family. 

“I have plenty of appropriate apparel in my size, thank you for asking,” she said finally.  “I was actually more interested in making sure my luggage is large enough to hold a week’s worth of clothes.”

Her mother scoffed.  “Well, it’s certainly big enough to hold a week’s worth of
my
clothes,” she said.  “But if all yours don’t fit, you’re welcome to borrow your father’s bag.  His is considerably larger.”

She thanked her mother for her generous offer and watched her retreat down the hall before returning to her closet.  Moments later, as she selected a teal dress, holding it across her hips to confirm it still fit, the periphery of her eyesight began to grow cloudy.  She prepared herself for what she knew was about to happen, managing to take a step backward toward her bed before the vision overtook her.  She wondered whose life she would be observing this time.  A neighbor?  A classmate?  A random stranger?

It turned out to be someone else entirely, and as her sight cleared she found herself in a relatively familiar place.  Familiar, not because she’d physically been to the location but because she’d witnessed the man seated at the piano in this living room many times over the years.

He was young and attractive and distinctly American, in both his speech and his mannerisms.  As she entered the vision now, he was playing an upbeat selection she didn’t recognize but was excited to continue listening to just the same.  She settled in, enjoying her private concert; just she and the man she’d dubbed ‘Billy Joel’ since he was the only real piano man she knew.

As she watched his fingers fly across the keys she recalled the first time she’d witnessed his abilities.  He’d been a sullen child in those days, and she as well.  Another time, another house, another piano.

Same boy.

Her visions of him had been increasing during recent months, and she wondered if there was a reason behind the surge.  She certainly wasn’t complaining.  Far better to enjoy being serenaded than ridiculed or ostracized when other’s thought she couldn’t hear them.  She never knew when a vision was going to be pleasant or distressing, and sadly, for most of her life, the scenes she encountered were more nightmare than daydream – one of the worst being the day she witnessed a girl she considered her best friend calling her a beached whale while laughing with other classmates about her size.

There was less ugliness in her visions these days and she was grateful.  Listening to the man’s performance brought her peace, welcome respite from her mother’s constant disparagement and her father’s seeming indifference.  As the vision ended and she pulled back into her physical self, the image of the man and the piano fading, she had the sudden inclination to thank him for being a part of her life.  It seemed silly and perhaps unrealistic, but there was no denying the beauty he’d infused into her woefully glum existence.

Maybe someday
, she thought. 
Maybe someday I’ll even learn your name.