The Bone Sparrow

I guess Beaver’s meanness just picks its moments. Or maybe it just picks its people. Eli reckons Beaver saving him is why Harvey can’t ever say bad against Beaver, even though he wouldn’t stand for any other Jacket treating people the way Beaver does. Eli reckons that makes Harvey spineless and not worth spit, but I kind of get it. I think.

And something happens to those men when they live all together like that, without their families, without being able to work or learn or do anything, having to listen to the Jackets and their jangling keys all the time. It changes a person, Eli says. Some of those men can be real mean to a kid when they want to be.

I can see all that working its way through Eli’s brain, just the same way it’s working its way through mine, because both of us saw what happened to that boy when he’d eventually been let into Family. By then, it was too late, is all. After he tried to bleed himself out on the fence, they moved him to Ford, his brain so mushed that he wasn’t even really there.

Writing does lie. It lies all the time.

The way Queeny tells it is that they’ve been here too long, is all. She reckons they used to be just like me, except maybe not so annoying.

Harvey thinks they’re bored, is all. But I get bored and I don’t get mean the way these boys do. I won’t either, no matter how long I’m here.

Eli reckons they just aren’t worth spit.

I told those boys to jam it. I told those boys that they could beat me with sticks as much as they wanted and I still wouldn’t kill a thing. I told those boys that they weren’t worth spit and then I went and broke all their traps so they’ll never build them again.

Except I didn’t. Except I couldn’t. I don’t tell Eli. And after, when I wiped that blood and fur off my hands and on to the dirt, the rats, all hidden in the shadows, watched me and shook their heads and turned away.

Then Queeny pulls out a camera. A real camera. The only cameras I’ve ever seen were when the newspaper guys came and took a big photo of all of us in here, waiting. I was right at the front and smiling, which Queeny said was stupid because we weren’t meant to be happy. I told her I was happy, though, and then she said something so quiet and low that I couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t ask her to repeat it.

‘You don’t get it, Subhi,’ Queeny says. ‘It’s so the Outside will remember us.’

When I don’t answer, she shakes her head at me. ‘That’s why we’re all dumped out here in the bum end of nowhere, Subhi. So everyone forgets us. Don’t you see? This way, we don’t even exist.’

Queeny says that kind of stuff a lot. And she thinks I’m the stupid one.

I never used to know what Queeny meant when she said that, about being invisible. But then I think of Eli and I think of Nasir, and I think of the different I feel when Jimmie is here. Like someone is really seeing me, really listening. I haven’t felt like that before. So when Queeny asks me if I understand, I do. And I wonder if maybe that’s how everyone is feeling. I wonder if maybe that’s the sad angry sick that’s all over the place and funking up the air.

And I wish I didn’t understand, because understanding doesn’t fix it. Understanding just makes it worse.

Jimmie wants to ask more. Wants to find out how they can help, so that no one has to sew their lips together. Wants to know why they have been locked up in there for so long. Why no one is listening. Why it is illegal for people to try to save their families. Why it is illegal to want to live. Jimmie wants to know.

But her dad has already slid the paper across the table and is flicking through to the sports pages.

‘A knife?’ the duck says. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell. ‘How would anyone get a knife in here?’

‘Through the packages I guess. The stuff of kings.’

The duck looks at me again and says, ‘Why would a king want a knife?’

‘To cut stuff, né?’

‘Pah,’ the duck says.

‘What would you know? You’re just a stupid duck.’

So much for a problem shared. The duck is just making it worse.

That Shakespeare duck looks at me then, and raises one eyebrow the way Maá used to when Queeny and I riled her up with our arguing. ‘What would you know? You’re just a stupid boy. In some countries in the world, ducks are kings, you know.’

Then we both smile and I tell the duck he’s quackers and we smile even more.

I’m frozen just watching. More and more black angry smoke clouds up from the camp, and I just want to be with Maá and Queeny and Eli, no matter if it means sizzling right up like a sausage along with them.

I look at Harvey. I think of Oto and Anka and Iliya and Ba and Maá and Queeny and Eli and all of us. All of them all that time ago, and all of us now. Just trying to find somewhere to be safe. Just walking our journey to peace. I can hear Queeny’s words in my head and now they make sense. I get it now.

‘We’re the dead rats, Harvey. Just like Queeny said. Left out to rot so no one else bothers to try. There’s no keeping safe for us.’

Harvey looks at me like he’s never seen me before. But he doesn’t say I’m wrong.

The whale raises his head so his eyes are level with mine, and in the whale’s eye I see exactly what I have to do. For Eli. So everyone everywhere can feel that ache, fierce and strong. So no one ever forgets.

Queeny is wrong. We do exist. Eli existed. And now he’s gone. And everyone needs to know, to feel that pain tearing at them, even if just for a bit. Just so they know that once there lived a Limbo kid named Eli, and he had something important to do.

I scream out my tears now, and the sea thrashes and the Night Creatures are screeching, whirling and heaving themselves in and out of the water. All the little fish roll on to their backs and pop up to the surface of the sea, their eyes cloudy, their gills still.

‘The sparrow in the house. Queeny was right after all. It did mean death. Eli...’ But Jimmie hears me. She hears and her eyes go soft and she shakes her head and brings my hand up to her cheek.

‘No, Subhi, you’re wrong. A sparrow in the house doesn’t mean death. It means change. Waking up new and starting again. Subhi, a sparrow in the house is a sign of hope.’