And unlike most big sisters, she let me play in her room. I had a swing set in the backyard, toys of my own, a box of arts and crafts supplies, and plenty of colored pencils and construction paper to keep me occupied. But despite these distractions, I couldn’t keep my hands off Ellie’s perfume bottle collection. Each with a different magical shape and hue and smell. The mini crystal sculptures were so pretty all lined up on their little shelf. And, shockingly, even prettier all smashed on the floor.
I didn’t mean to knock the biggest one over, causing a catastrophic crash. But once I did, I was mesmerized by the droplets of broken colored glass that smelled like flowers and candy. I reveled in the beauty of the destruction. I was so immersed, I didn’t hear Ellie come home and into her room. She found me happily playing in the glassy potpourri. I looked up, embarrassed. I saw the betrayal and fury on her face and she burst into tears. “How could you?!” she screamed at me. I too burst into tears. I explained it was a horrible accident, but it all looked so pretty that I couldn’t resist in making the best of it and playing in the aftermath of her perfume bottle massacre.
Ellie noticed my hand was bleeding. A shard of pink perfume bottle glass was lodged in the fleshy heel of my left palm. She removed the sliver and held a towel to the wound to stop the bleeding. She forgave me because she loved me more than she loved the glass bottles. She loved me as much as I loved her. And together we carefully cleaned up the sharp, sweet-smelling, colorful mess.
Unlike Duncan, I would never intentionally destroy anything that brought her joy. And she saw me sobbing, and she knew that. So she grieved for her broken bottles, but didn’t hold on to any anger toward me. That’s how amazing she was. She could let go of resentment and see the best in people, if they had any best in them. And I did. I had a lot of best in me.
My parents knew Duncan Reese was rotten, and my mother happily predicted that he would end up working at a gas station one day, while my sister would be successful and fabulous. To my mother, it seemed, working at a gas station was the lowest of the low. But that prediction didn’t help the situation at the moment. That didn’t stop Ellie’s scalp from bleeding. It didn’t quicken the months and months it took for her curl to grow back and reach a length that suited the other curls. By the time Duncan would be working at said gas station, Ellie would be so beaten down and haunted that she would never bloom into being successful and fabulous. And she would never be happy, a quality my mother left out of the equation.
Both my mother and father, who were contentedly married and more often on the same page than not, believed children were little individuals, capable of making their own decisions. In a new world of “helicopter moms,” they could have been best described as “submarine parents.” Always there, a giant lumbering presence, but often unseen and too deep to be accessible. They felt more like helpful landlords than parental figures. Each raised in a controlling, unpleasant household, they allowed the pendulum to swing perhaps too far the other way when raising their own offspring. They wanted us kids to work it out on our own. Learn to interact with all kinds, fill our toolboxes with skills, like being social, using negotiation tactics, and problem-solving with guile. They would, however, pop up from the depths from time to time to give advice and guidance. They actually wanted us to talk to strangers. My mother would point out a guy in the park.
“Go say hello.”
“To that man in the overcoat?”
“Yup. Give it a shot. Suss out for yourself if you like him or not.”
“But . . . why?”
“So you can learn to trust your own gut. If you don’t like him, walk away. Or run. But if you never make contact, you’ll never have your own barometer.”
My parents certainly weren’t perfect, but that was a lesson in self-preservation that has served me well. I know what I feel about people. Immediately. What to do with those feelings next is another question.
My parents never expected me or Ellie to rise above it all. We could lash out and complain and talk back, but we were expected ultimately to handle life and all its foibles and unfairness ourselves. So my parents didn’t hover. Instead they glided along the deep, and stayed out of the Duncan mess. I could not stay out of it. He was evil and he had to go. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. So that day on the beach, murder became another skill added to my toolbox. And once I saw how effective a tool it was, I kept it handy.
I was born with an inner strength that pushed me to help those who were weaker. In fact, just two weeks before that day in the ocean, I heard a pitiful squawking outside our den. I investigated, and in the grass behind the star fruit tree, I saw a small bird with a broken wing, trapped on the ground, bound by gravity like the rest of us. I gingerly scooped up the warbler and raced inside, hysterical. I yelled, “We have to do something!” My mother, effortlessly stunning, her long, wavy red hair barely tamed by a ribbon, put down the crossword puzzle and retied her thin sarong around her neck, as if to establish she was getting down to business.
“Grab the Yellow Pages,” she said. I did what I was told. She found what she was looking for, grabbed the phone, and dialed. After the first ring she handed it over to me, saying, “This is your discovery. Your patient. You should be the one to speak.”
I heard two more rings and then, “Bird Sanctuary. This is Benita.”
I was nervous. But spoke. “Hi, Benita. I’m Ruby. I found a bird.”
Not ten minutes later I was in the car, speeding to South Miami. My mother driving, me in the back seat holding the fluttering little soul gently in my hands.
Benita was about the same age as my mother, forty. But she was plumper and softer. Round and slow and comforting, superficially better suited to work at a panda sanctuary. I handed her the wounded package and she said, “You’re a good girl. It takes a kind spirit to understand that even the most common bird deserves a chance at a full and fruitful life.” I gulped down the compliment and looked around at the tropical flowers, bright and open, vulnerable to the world but still unafraid. I sensed the lush trees were teeming with so much avian energy that it seemed the trunks themselves could fly away. And I peered into the large well-kept cages filled with hopping rehabbing feathered creatures, beaks stoic yet delicate all at once. This was a good place. The right place. So why were there tears in my eyes?
Benita understood I had bonded with my small ward and didn’t want to say goodbye. She pet my head, just like I had pet the bird’s minutes before, and said, “Don’t worry, you can come back and visit anytime.” I nodded and turned to leave, keeping my head held high, to help the pressure of tears lessen against the inside of my eyelids. Then Benita called after me. “Wait! What is your bird’s name?”
At that time, I was the youngest kid in first grade and had already been put in the gifted program at my elementary school. The IQ test they had me take seemed like a fun game. “Which shape doesn’t fit? Which pattern is interrupted?” I had an inquisitive nature and a natural ability to eavesdrop undetected, so the world seemed an endless orb of intrigue. I had an impressive vocabulary for my age (encourage and fuchsia being my latest word additions) and a very active imagination. Spinning yarns about princess unicorns who imagine human children are make-believe.
I don’t want to be misleading. I was not a genius any more than I was a sociopath. I was not a prodigy. I didn’t play the violin or chess, I didn’t understand computer code, I didn’t learn Japanese. I am smart, above average, but certainly not an anomaly. I was simply very advanced, especially verbally. Probably because I was the youngest in a family of wordsmiths, trying to keep up with everyone else.