Bird Read Online Free PDF Page B

like your dad.” She looked up to the ceiling, like she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Then she started folding clothes again, pressing each fold carefully, like I had never said anything at all.
    I never mentioned being a geologist again.
    But being a geologist was the only thing I could think about as I weeded Dad’s garden. How fantastic is it that Iowa used to be the bottom of a shallow sea, like the Gulf of Mexico, and that our hills, rolling and swelling like the ocean, used to be actual waves? The dirt that my hands scoop up used to be brachiopods, echinoderms, and corals. They used to be living and swimming, and now they’re dirt. And everything that’s living now will someday be dirt, too.
    Dirt is everything.
    I’m not sure how weeding will help me become a teacher.
    â€œNeed any help?”
    I jumped and twisted my head up toward John’s voice. His jean shorts and T-shirt looked incredibly clean next to my grubby, dirt-covered clothes. “How’d you know I live here?” I said. I was more alarmed that I’d get in trouble for having someone over than the fact that, again, John had found me. Mom would say a guest would distract me from my chores.
    John tried to hide a smile. “Looks like there’s a lot of weeds to be pulled.”
    I sighed. “I’m learning how to be a teacher.”
    John’s eyebrows raised briefly. He knelt down next to me and started pulling up weeds and tossing them into my pile. “Not a geologist? They pick rocks, not weeds.”
    â€œThey pick weeds when their mothers tell them to,” I said, ripping out a fistful of deep dandelion roots. Sweat already prickled my forehead. “Don’t say too much about geology around here,” I said. “Mom doesn’t like it.”
    We worked side by side under the lifting June sun, weeding our way through Dad’s garden. It was nice to have someone help me.
    â€œWhat are these plants?” John asked, pointing at Dad’s tiny sprouts of coconut and soursop and breadfruit.
    â€œThey’re Jamaican tree saplings,” I said. “Dad thinks they’ll grow here. He wants a grove.”
    John gave me a look. “In Iowa?”
    â€œI know. Wrong soil.”
    â€œWrong everything.” John grunted as he dug up some thick roots.
    I yanked another weed. “But he keeps telling me that maybe they’ll get used to it.”
    John paused. “That tropical trees will get used to Iowa?” he asked slowly.
    I nodded. I knew how stupid it sounded. Dad can be kind of optimistic like that.
    â€œHuh.” John sat back on his heels and looked at the contrails in the sky. “Your dad’s something else, you know.” He studied the planes overhead.
    â€œThe cerasee is doing better than the trees,” I said, pointing to one corner of the garden. “I keep telling him to give up on the saplings, but he says those trees are good for the duppies.”
    That got his attention. “The what?”
    â€œDuppies,” I said. John was looking at me strangely, so I continued. “You have a soul and a spirit, and when you die, the soul goes to heaven and the spirit stays on earth for a couple more days with the body. If someone’s tears fall on the body during the funeral, or if something else like that happens, then the spirit is stuck on earth and haunts people. Makes trouble.”
    John’s eyes were pretty big by now.
    â€œDuppies don’t like some kinds of trees and plants,” I continued, “and if you plant them around your house, it helps keep them away.”
    â€œReally.”
    â€œIt’s a Jamaican thing.”
    We weeded for a while in silence, and then he said, “What kind of trouble do duppies make?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said, even though every fiber in me was screaming, Bird . I lowered my face between my shoulders so he couldn’t see my