First Came the Owl Read online

  Nita felt tears prickle her eyelids. “Where’s the bathroom?” she muttered. Amy pointed down the hall, and Nita held her breath until she was safely behind the closed bathroom door.

  She stared at herself in the mirror. Her brown face was smooth, her eyes dark. Her bangs parted a little in the middle, as if the wind had blown them apart. She was sad, confused, and scared, and it didn’t even show on her face, like it would on, say, Amy’s face, with her flushed pink cheeks and wild hair.

  Mom was the same way. You could only tell she was upset when she got even quieter than usual. Were people from Thailand always like that? But even if they are always like that, I am only half Thai, thought Nita. I hardly even remember Thailand. Furiously, she messed up half her hair and stuck out her tongue at the mirror, but her silky hair slid back into place, and, after a few seconds, she slid her tongue in, too. She felt silly. Silly, but at least she didn’t feel like crying anymore.

  And maybe the owl was good. It would bemoan Mom and then she’d get better! Nita remembered the great feeling she had when she saw that huge, snowy bird. As if she were special to have it come near her and look at her with those yellow eyes.

  “Nita!” Anne called to her from outside the bathroom door. “Come on, we’ve got to talk about the parts.”

  Nita opened the bathroom door. She felt much better, and it was the thought of the wild, free bird that had done it.

  “I absolutely want to be a dwarf,” said Anne. “I mean, if you pick me. I love to dance and sing.”

  “What about you, Nita?” asked Amy. She wrote on her clipboard.

  “Well,” said Nita, “I don’t want to be a dwarf.” Then she surprised herself. “I want to be—Snow White!”

  The words came out as if some new person were speaking them.

  Anne bounced up on the bed in surprise. “You do?” she said.

  “Yes,” she said, a bit more firmly, still wondering why. Nothing had happened that was different except the owl. The owl. It had something to do with the owl, and something to do with Mom, and a new feeling that was growing inside her.

  Amy gave Nita a considering look. “You’d be a good Snow White,” said Amy. “I’ll put you down on my list.” Then she went back to writing on her clipboard.

  “Amy!” came a voice from downstairs. “I need your help, and Anne’s mom is here for her and Nita.”

  The girls thundered down the stairs. There was a flurry of dogs, boys, and good-byes.

  Then Anne and Nita were outside for a freezing minute until they got in the warm car.

  “Guess what, Mom?” said Anne. “Nita’s going to try out for Snow White!”

  The old Nita slouched way down in her seat, wishing she’d never said she would do anything so scary.

  Six

  AT THE STILLWATERS’, they found Petrova in the kitchen, bent over her homework. “Want some popcorn?” she said, in a friendly enough way so that Nita didn’t feel too nervous to talk to her. The warm smell filled the kitchen and Nita slid onto the bench across from Anne’s fourteen-year-old sister.

  “I saw a snowy owl,” said Nita.

  Petrova gave her full attention. “You’re sure?”

  “A huge white one. Well, it had some brown flecks, and it sat on a sand dune and watched me. Not afraid at all. It was about this big.” Nita measured at least two feet above the table. “With yellow eyes! They stared right at me.”

  “A snowy,” said Petrova. “That’s so great! That’s the kind I’ve been banding, but I’ve never seen one here in the Landing.”

  “I thought owls only came out at night,” said Anne.

  “Not snowies. They hunt in the day,” answered Petrova.

  “What do they hunt?” asked Nita, reaching for some popcorn. She remembered the way the owl’s head swiveled when it heard the truck. She was sure they were good hunters.

  “Oh, little birds. Or animals. They could even eat a Canada goose.”

  “I wish they would,” said Anne. “Those geese make such a mess on the soccer field. Did you know there’s an owl in our play? Right there in Snow White?”

  Nita thought about what Petrova had said. It was unusual for a snowy owl to come here to the Landing. “So why did the owl come just when we were going to have our play?” she asked.

  “Like a fairy tale coming to life,” said Anne.

  “The owl didn’t come because of your dumb play,” said Petrova sarcastically. “You’re having a play. The owl is on the beach. It’s called a coincidence.” Nita could hear the word “idiot” floating at the end of the last sentence.

  “It’s not a dumb play,” Anne said angrily. “It’s an old famous story that a lot of people have liked, even Russians like you!” She turned and stomped up a couple of stairs. “Come on, Nita. Don’t talk to her. She tries to spoil everything.”

  Petrova shrugged her shoulders and looked back at her homework. Nita crept up the stairs after Anne, but Petrova had made her feel better by not believing the owl was any kind of spirit, good or bad. When they reached the safety of Anne’s room, Nita said, “You and Petrova sure are different.”

  Anne’s mood changed. She laughed. “Mom says I’m like Dad’s mother, who’s my Granny, who sends me fairy-tale books. Mom says Petrova is like our other Grandma, who was a scientist in Russia! We call her Babushka—that’s Russian for grandmother.”

  “When I was little,” said Nita shyly, “I called my Mom … Ma-jah.” The word felt strange on her tongue. “That’s how you say Mom in Thai.” It was the first time in a long, long time Nita had said even one word in Thai. And that word, just one word, filled her mind with warm air, sunlight through palm trees, and a little lizard sitting on a stone. It was a different world than outside Anne’s bedroom window in Maushope’s Landing.

  For a minute, Nita was very small. She sat by the stone and looked at the lizard. “What is it, Ma-jah?” she asked.

  “A lizard,” said Ma-jah, and she laughed at the sight of Nita’s amazement. “Jing-jok,” she said in Thai. Her laugh fell on Nita like the sun through the trees, making little dancing spots of light in her world.

  Back on her chair-bed in Anne’s room, Nita felt amazed all over again that a word could call up a world. One word had carried her back to the mango farm in Thailand that belonged to her mother’s family. It was amazing. And even more amazing, and sad, was that Nita had almost forgotten her mother’s laugh. Ma-jah hadn’t laughed for such a long time now.

  The bright green and gold memory faded, and Nita looked out at the winter sky of Maushope’s Landing. She pressed her pillow to her chest. She wanted to go home, but there was no home if Ma-jah wasn’t there.

  Suddenly she wondered if that’s how Ma-jah felt about the mango farm. That had been her home. And when she came back to the Landing after her visit, Dad said she was homesick. Nita had never wondered before if Mom missed Thailand. It had always been her and Mom and Dad, the three of them. Thailand was long ago and far away. But did Mom think Thailand was her real home?

  Nita rolled over. I don’t know, she thought. I just want her to come home! I’m homesick. The picture in her mind was of the lighthouse, but now there were palm trees planted out front in the snow.

  Anne had picked up her orange fairy-tale book while Nita was daydreaming. She had a set of these books in lots of colors including pink, green, purple, and blue.

  “Anne,” said Nita, “have you ever had a mango?”

  “No,” said Anne, looking up from her book. “What is a mango? It sounds like a dance.”

  Nita laughed. “It’s a fruit. A fruit from Thailand—orange inside like the outside of that book.”

  “Dee-licious,” said Anne. She pretended to bite off the corner of her book. “Tell me more about this wonderful country.”

  “I wish I knew more,” said Nita sadly.

  Seven

  DAD CAME and picked Nita up early the next morning, before school. “We’ve got to both get packed, Nita,” he said, as they drove through the Landing.
“I’ve got to go out on one of the boats, but just for one night, at the very most two.” He looked officially busy, in his blue Coast Guard clothes, and worried.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go, Dad,” said Nita. “What about Mom?” She was glad to see that no palm trees had sprung up in the snow by the lighthouse, though a string of colored holiday lights encircled the tower.

  “I know, I know, but I have to go.” He unlocked the door to their house and went off into the kitchen. His voice said, indistinctly, “… testing equipment … broken…”

  Nita wasn’t really listening until she heard him say, “I saw Mom this morning … you can visit.… Mrs. S. will…” The house was not very warm, and Dad’s footsteps seemed to echo on the wooden floor.

  She followed him into the kitchen. Dad was polishing his shoes. He had work shoes and dress shoes and he kept them all perfectly polished. The shoes were neat and thin, like their owner. Nita stuck her foot into the row of shoes. Her dirty sneaker didn’t look very Coast Guard–like. Dad pretended to dab some black polish on her sneaker, and she snatched her foot away.

  “I’ll need some new shoes if I get picked to be Snow White,” she said. “Do you think Mom will come to the play? If I’m in it?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I think she’d really like to come to your play,” he said, finally. Dad looked unhappy. The lines in his face were deep and long. He went over to the window and sprayed a few of Mom’s orchid plants. They didn’t look so great. A few leaves were turning brown and they looked dusty.

  Maybe I won’t even try out, thought Nita. She felt cold, as if a little piece of winter ice had gotten stuck in her chest. Here she was at home, and it didn’t even feel like home.

  “Come on, kiddo,” said Dad. He sighed as though he were just too tired for discussion. Then he zipped his shoes into his duffel and held the door for Nita. She picked up her duffel bag. On the way to the car, she scooped some birdseed onto the feeder. The birds had not a single seed left. It was Mom who usually fed them.

  The wind was strong and the blue water was edged with whitecaps. Nita looked hard at every dune as they drove along the beach. No yellow eyes looked back.

  “I saw a snowy owl here yesterday,” said Nita.

  “Great!” said Dad, but he didn’t sound very enthusiastic. He looked over the beach, out across the water. “And Nita…” he said.

  “I know. I’ll be helpful and do my homework and say please and thank you.”

  “Try not to worry too much about Mom. She has a good doctor, and Mrs. Stillwater will take you to the hospital to see her tonight.”

  “She will?”

  Why doesn’t anyone ask me if I want to go see her? she wondered. They have it all planned. They have me all packed up and labeled, like my duffel.

  “Let’s drop off your duffel at the Stillwaters’. Then you’ve got time to go to the dock before school.”

  Nobody asks me anything, thought Nita. They just assume I’ll do what they plan.

  Dad fiddled with the radio on the way to the Stillwaters’ and waited while Nita put her duffel in the house. Then they drove down to the Coast Guard base, the radio playing piano music and Nita picking at a hole in her shoe. “I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said.

  Dad parked the car and hurried toward the gate. Nita followed more slowly. See? He just assumes I’ll follow him, like a dog or something.

  The dock looked like a postcard, with the white cutter, the flags, and the Coast Guard people all dressed in blue. Dad looked more and more cheerful the closer he got to that stupid boat.

  “Hey, Nita.”

  “Hi, kid.” Two officers greeted Nita.

  Dad gave her another of his one-arm hugs, but Nita couldn’t look at him or smile. He ran up the gangplank and jumped down onto the deck.

  The whistle blasted and the shore crew loosed the lines. Dad waved to her from the deck, and the icy blue water made a widening space between them, just like in the movies. Nita’s eyes prickled and her arm shot up. Then she put her arm down. See, I’m playing my part in this movie, she thought. Acting. I won’t wave to him; he’s being a jerk.

  She turned away and almost missed seeing the captain of the cutter throw something in a high arc toward the dock. A little dog leaped into the air and caught a dog biscuit! The crowd cheered, the shore crew laughed, and Dad’s face became a blur under his blue hat. Soon all the dark blue dots on the deck looked the same. The cutter passed the marker buoys and headed out of the harbor into the sound.

  Nita reached down and patted the captain’s little dog, who had come over and drooped against her leg. I know how he feels, she thought. Is it better to be a person? At least the dog got a biscuit.

  A big, smiling man with gold on his hat hurried toward Nita. “Hi there,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  Nita glared at him. She edged toward the gate with the dog at her heels.

  “Because if you need … I mean, well, have a good day at school!” said the officer. His face seemed to get redder, but it had been red to begin with. Nita remembered him now. Captain Pudge! Only she was sure that was not his real name. He used to go fishing with Dad. His friendly smile wavered as he saw Nita’s glare.

  “I can’t take this dog, though,” said Nita. She was trying to be nice. It wasn’t his fault that Dad was a jerk.

  “Oh, I’ll keep him. I always keep him when Dick Turner goes out. Come on, fella. Snack time!” The little dog trotted back inside the gate. Nita headed toward school, feeling hungry.

  Now I’m an orphan, she thought, because my parents are both gone. Maybe it will start to snow. There’s even a hole in my shoe—it’s not a very big one, but it might get bigger. An orphan, all alone in the world.

  She stopped at the drugstore and bought yellow Banana Peels chewing gum. Orphans don’t usually have any money, she thought, but maybe I earned it selling matches on snowy streets, like in that story Anne is reading.

  It was not going to snow on such a sunny day, but it was still freezing cold. Maushope’s Landing looked polished by the wind. The trees had not one loose leaf or twig. Stiff gray branches waved against the blue sky and all the buildings looked white in the morning sunlight.

  Clang! Clang! Now the old school bell tolled in the belfry. Some lucky person, probably Henry, was pulling on the bell rope. People were supposed to take turns, but he seemed to get more than his share.

  Nita was caught in the playground swirl, but she moved through it like a fish through the coral and sharks of a dangerous sea. She found Anne down by the back fence.

  “Oh, hi, Nita, thank goodness you got here,” said Anne. She looked as if she hadn’t seen Nita for days, though they’d had breakfast together about two hours ago, before Dad had picked Nita up. The ice chip in Nita’s chest melted a little bit more. “Remember, Amy is coming here for the tryouts.”

  “She’s not coming until last period,” said Brenda. “And anyway, Nita doesn’t care about the tryouts,” said Brenda. “I’ve been taking acting lessons.” She bounced on her toes and tossed her hair. “I was in The Wizard of Oz at the Maushop Playhouse.”

  “You were a Munchkin,” said Max. “You were a doughnut hole, munch, munch, munch.”

  “That is what they call them at the doughnut shop,” said Henry’s buddy Pete, imitating the way Brenda talked. He tossed his head, mimicking Brenda with her red ponytail.

  “I wasn’t a doughnut hole,” said Brenda, outraged.

  Nita saw Henry grin when he saw that Brenda was mad. Then he noticed Nita and made his troll face. His hands curved into claws and he took two giant steps slo-o-wly toward her.

  Don’t run, Nita said to herself, but her heart beat faster as his face got closer and closer and the claws were—Clang! Clang! Only the second bell saved her.

  Up in the classroom, the morning crashed and swirled around Nita. She liked the old classroom with the view of masts and seagulls out the window, the class guinea pig Juliet with her gold earring, and the poster that said GIV
E THEM BOOKS, GIVE THEM WINGS over a picture of a flying book. But she did not like Henry. She couldn’t help it—he scared her because she could never tell what he would do next. She remembered those claws right next to her face and shivered. And those tryouts … and her report!

  She still couldn’t think of a subject for her report. Nita opened her binder to a blank sheet of paper. She cleared everything else off her desk. She held up her Mayflower pen and made the tiny boat sail back and forth in the capsule of fluid. When it sailed toward the ink end of the pen, the boat sailed forward and arrived at Plymouth Rock, but when it sailed toward the blunt end and headed back toward England, the Mayflower went backward all the way. Nita wondered what mayflowers were like, she wondered if this writing period would ever be over, she imagined Brenda as a dancing doughnut hole, she wondered what Mom was doing right this minute. (Mom, in the hospital! Were they doing something horrible to her? Operating on her brain?)

  Finally, it was lunchtime. The afternoon was no better. Nita daydreamed until Amy stuck her wild head of hair around the door and smiled at Mrs. Sommers.

  “All right, play people,” said Mrs. Sommers, “if you’re trying out, go quietly—quietly, Henry—down to the kindergarten room.”

  Amy and her friend David were very organized. David took kids who wanted to be in the technical crew, and Amy got everyone who wanted to act. Each person had to sing, walk, and see if they could talk loud enough so Amy could hear them in the back of the room. This cut out a lot of people. Brenda sang the Munchkin song “Lollipop Land,” while Henry and Pete stuck their fingers down their throats and made gagging noises.

  “If you guys do that anymore, you’re out of here,” said Amy.

  Why did they even want to be in a play, anyway? Nita couldn’t understand it. They refused to sing. Well, so did Nita, and Anne looked worried.

  “Snow White doesn’t sing,” Nita told her, and she spoke up loudly so Amy could hear her. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” It was funny how she didn’t mind speaking up as long as it wasn’t her own thoughts and words she had to say.