Birdie's Book - Andrea Burden [19]
The maidens all dove, like synchronized swimmers, taking the bubble with them.
Kerka and I exchanged hesitant looks.
“I guess this is it,” I said. “Time to go!”
Kerka nodded. “I’m ready!”
I shouted “Good-bye!” (“Bonus!”) to the red flower before we dipped toward the darkness at the bottom of the river. Kerka and I followed the sound of the maidens’ musical voices.
“I like swimming like this,” I said.
“It’s like we were given gills,” Kerka agreed.
The thought of gilled girls made me giggle for some reason. A bouquet of shiny bubbles came from my mouth and sped toward the surface.
“By the way,” Kerka said then, swimming closer to me, “what did you say back there? Something about wishing your mother could see you?”
I didn’t even know Kerka had heard me! I searched for a reason for my Mom comment. A straightforward reason was that my mother had made me take Latin on Saturdays for the last two years (don’t ask why), and I think this was the first time I’d ever actually spoken it in real life (does a dream world count as real life?). Anyway, the other reason was that I wanted my mother to be happy for me, but I didn’t know if she actually could. You know how some moms always know the right thing to say to their kid? My mom wasn’t one of them. I mean, she was great in some ways (she liked to take me shopping, and she made a killer potato salad!), but my dad was the one I always went to for understanding. I did have a few memories of my mom being different, a long time ago, when I was really little.
“Birdie, I get the feeling that you and your mother have nothing in common,” Kerka said, rewinding her braid as she kicked ahead.
“We don’t,” I said frankly. As we swam deeper, the turquoise waters were growing darker, turning more cobalt blue. Up ahead, where we would soon be swimming, it looked dark as night. “Creepy, isn’t it?” I said.
“Creepy about not getting along with your mom? Or creepy about swimming into that darkness?” she asked.
“The darkness,” I said.
“Oh.” Kerka was quiet for a moment. “But about your mom,” she began again. (Obviously, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook.) “Could it be because you carry a part of her in you—like we each carry a part of our parents? Maybe you’re afraid you’ll become her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of how my mom turned her back on Mo, how it was more important for her to understand the people she worked with than to understand me. My mom had no idea about my hopes, my dreams. I wriggled my legs, shooting myself ahead in the direction of the maidens.
“Birdie?” Kerka caught up with me and waved her hand in front of my face, like I’d checked out of the conversation. “Do you resemble your mom? Or the other women in your family?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. “I guess I have Mom’s eyes. I look kind of like Mo, in my coloring. But I don’t remember my dad’s mom, since she died when I was two.”
“I don’t mean physical resemblance,” Kerka said, rolling her eyes. “Are you like them in spirit, the way you act?”
“Well, now that I’ve met her, I see I’m a lot like Granny Mo!” I said. It made me happy to know that, I realized. “My dad says Mo and Mom are like matches and gasoline together. Combustible. Mom calls Mo a crazy old bat, full of hocus-pocus. So far, Mo hasn’t really said anything about Mom, at least not about the way she is now.”
The walls of rock were now on all sides, as if we were in a vertical tunnel. The water had turned a darker blue, and it was getting harder to see the river maidens’ watercolor tails as they swam down ahead of us. What was left of the light from the surface reflected off the bubble holding Kerka’s belongings as the maidens tossed it back and forth.
“And what about your mom, Kerka?” I asked. I figured it was okay to ask her, now that I’d shared some of my own family … issues.
“I’m sorry, Birdie,” she said, her voice very soft. “I’m just not really ready to talk about it. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” I said. Now I felt bad that I’d asked, trying to make things even. “Even” shouldn’t count between