Let Me Be A Hummingbird

            My cousin Naomi came to live with us when she was sixteen. I was nineteen and she was the only person in the world who called me Vlad instead of Vladimir. I had never met my cousin before she came to live with us. She was the daughter of my mother’s sister, who I had never met either. My parents didn’t tell me why she was coming to live with us just that she was. My aunt didn’t come, so I assumed it had something to do with that. No one knew who her father was.

            That summer was the strangest, most incredible summer of my life. I know that might sound corny, but there it is nonetheless. The summer my cousin Naomi came to live with us was the one that changed my life. That was the summer I saw my first hummingbird.

            I lived in a small town tucked away in the middle of Pennsylvania. My cousin coming to live with us was probably one of the most interesting things to happen in that bummblefuck town. I had come home that summer for break between semesters. I went to college in Philadelphia. Everyone at college called me Vladimir.

            I had two really good friends then, Freddie and Derrick. They both went to school in Philadelphia as well, and when they saw Naomi for the first time, they thought she was drop dead gorgeous. When they found out she was only sixteen, she was slightly downgraded to just beautiful as to not sound creepy.

            Despite that, I thought my cousin was the weirdest person I had ever met. The day she came to live with us, she ran up to me, flung her arms around my neck, and called me Vlad, as if we had known each other our whole lives. We were family, she said. And even though we had never met, that meant we knew each other wholly and completely. The giddiness in her voice made me want to vomit. She was pretty, I would admit that, but she was a ball of sunshine I wanted to throw rocks at.

            A week after she came, I still had the urge to throw rocks at her. The only difference was that at that point I wanted to use bigger rocks. She was just so weird. It wasn’t anything creepy or disturbing, but rather annoying. Her outright contentment toward life and visible innocence was downright nauseating. She spent everyday outside, rain or shine, doodling in that damned sketch book of hers or “trying new thing” as she said. In the evenings she tried to make me catch fireflies with her. And at night, she would teach my parents to dance. I mean like ballroom dancing. Stuff like the waltz and the foxtrot and the tango. Who the hell does stuff like that?

            After a month I got mostly used to Naomi being around. I gave up trying to sneak peeks at her sketch book, which she never let me see. She got me to go chasing fireflies one night, but only because she had convinced Freddie and Derrick. I was even getting used that stupid music she would play at night for dance lessons and those ridiculous movies she would watch with my mom on Thursday’s and Sunday’s.

            In that month, I had learned a lot about my cousin. Her favorite color was green. She was allergic to strawberries. She wanted to go to college to become a professional photographer slash poet. She wanted to travel the world and backpack across Europe with me one day. Her dream was to adopt some Russian or Thai kid and raise them right. She was just another one of those people who wanted to save the world for no goddamned reason whatsoever. People were generally good and each day brought new hope. So irritating. I would have to admit though, she grew on me.

The one thing I was never able to get out of her was why she had come to live with us. She was mum on that whole subject. She refused to tell me about her unknown father, her disappearing mother, her mysterious past. But what annoyed me the most was that she did it in such a cute way that I couldn’t help but to stop asking after a while despite the fact that the curiosity was eating away at me. Not even my parents would let on. That only meant one thing: something really bad had happened to my cousin Naomi. That in no way helped me in trying to figure out why she was so happy all the time.

Life’s not worth living unless you actually live it. That’s what she’d always tell me. Life’s not worth living unless you actually live it. What the hell did that mean? Everyone lives, don’t they?

God, she was so weird.

It was August second and it was raining. That’s the day the first big change happened. The electricity had gone out so we had lit candles all around the house. My cell phone was on its last bar and I had forgotten to charge my i-Pod the night before. And to top it off, it was a Tuesday. Freddie and Derrick both worked all day on Tuesdays. Even if the power was out in the movie theater, they still had to be there. I was bored out of my mind. But Naomi wasn’t. Nope, she was just fine and dandy.

I had been in the kitchen, holding my candle toward the cupboard to see if there was anything to snack on. That’s when I heard her humming. I poked my head out the front window to see her sitting on the porch in the swing. So I figured, what the hell? It was better than going crazy from boredom on the living room floor with a half empty bag of stale chips. So I went out onto the porch.

Naomi smiled when she saw it was me. The rain was still coming down hard and every so often there’d be a bolt of lightening and thunder. Making my way over the swing, I put the candle down on the ledge of the porch. She was drawing in that damn sketch book again. Yeah, the one she never let me look at. It drove me crazy. But that day, that day was different.

We sat in silence for a few minutes before she asked me why I wanted to know what she was drawing so bad. Why? Because I’m curious, I told her. Do you promise to let me teach you how to dance, she asked me. At this point, that exchange didn’t really seem all that bad considering how much I wanted to know what she was always doodling. So I agreed and she patted the swing beside her. I sat down next to her and she handed the sketch book to me.

Page after page of hummingbirds. Sometimes there were sketches of fireflies and people mixed in there, but most of the pictures were of hummingbirds. They were beautiful. So beautiful that I completely skipped passed the pictures of me, my parents, Freddie, Derrick, and the mysterious woman I had never seen before. My curiosity didn’t even get the best of me surprisingly. I didn’t ask who she was. I didn’t care. It wasn’t about who she was. It was the pictures. They were all so beautiful. I never knew Naomi could draw like this.

Why hummingbirds, I asked her. I didn’t look up at her. I was too absorbed in the sketches. I could tell that her smile grew, and she replied, Because, in my next life, I want to be a hummingbird. In your next life, I asked. But why? She seemed to beam at my curiosity. As if she was happy I had asked that question instead of something else. Had I known I was about to get a history lesson, I probably would have never asked.

The Native Americans used to tell stories about hummingbirds, she said. They were revered in many tribes. In a Pima legend, a hummingbird acted sort of like Noah's dove, bringing him back a flower to prove that the flood was ending. In Central America, Aztecs used to decorate their ceremonial cloaks with hummingbird feathers and the chieftains would wear hummingbird earrings and the Aztec priests had staves decorated with hummingbird feathers. They believed that the feathers gave the staves these supernatural abilities to suck evil out of people who had been cursed by sorcerers.

I couldn’t believe it myself, but what she was saying was actually interesting. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sketches. I was listening though. Naomi’s voice was something you always paid attention to. It was unavoidable. It stood out. Sometimes, it sounded more musical than anything. Her voice had a kind of soothing sensation to it. My mom used to call Naomi’s voice her chamomile tea lullaby. So I continued to look through the sketch book and listen to her stories about hummingbirds.

In another Aztec legend, they say the god of music and poetry took the form of a hummingbird and descended into the underworld to make love with a goddess, and then she gave birth to the first flower. She paused to giggle at this point, and I glanced over at her for a moment then returned to the pictures. In Trinidad, the Chayma believe that hummers, that’s what they call them, are the spirits of their dead ancestors. It’s taboo to harm one. One of the common beliefs is that hummingbirds are messengers between words. It’s said they help shamans keep nature and spirit in balance.

When she was done, Naomi brought her feet up onto the swing and hugged her legs. She placed her chin on her knees and sighed, staring out at the rain. She looked a little different. More tired than usual, but nothing too drastic to catch my eye. That’s when I reached the last picture. It was the first one I’d seen in the whole book of her. She was still working on it, but it looked gorgeous. I was a normal kind of guy. I liked cars and movies where things exploded every twenty-three seconds. Art was never something that caught my interest. But Naomi’s pictures caught my interest.

I can’t really tell exactly what set off the switch in my mind. I don’t know if it was the pictures, her stories about hummingbirds, or if it was just that I was finally getting used to all the ridiculous things she did. But I slowly began to realize why the hell she did the things she did. This girl was content with sitting outside and watching the rain fall while the rest of the world rushed through it all with multicolored, oversized umbrellas. She was a kid; an actual kid. Those didn’t exist anymore and there she was. And I was related to her to top it all off.

Life’s not worth living unless you actually live it.

To this day, I still don’t understand what made me do what I did next. I put the sketch book down on the swing, grabbed Naomi’s hand, and ran out into the rain. And all the while she was laughing. And so was I. I can’t remember if I had ever laughed as hard as I did that day, or if I ever will in the times to come. But there I was, playing in the rain like I was five years old. It freckin’ rocked.

So, I learned the foxtrot. I taught her to fish. When Freddie and Derrick came over, which was practically every day, we roasted marshmallows, chased fireflies, watched old movies, and I no longer cared about my cousin’s mysterious past.

It was weird. I was weird. I had turned into her, and I liked it. But the thing was I still didn’t fully understand it all. I saw the world differently, but I didn’t understand why. I didn’t care. It was like I was growing up all over again. A child doesn’t ask why they learn to walk or speak or play, they just learn unconditionally. Looking back, I think Naomi knew the difference. She knew I was getting it, but I wasn’t quite there yet. I had the idea of living, but I wasn’t actually doing it.

On the twenty-ninth of August, I got the phone call that, as stupid as it sounds, changed my life. There, I said it. Trust me, it sounds even stupider when I say it out loud, but that’s the only way I can think of describing it right. This was the event that made everything click. I finally understood. I wish it had never happened. Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? I would have rather gone on living without an understanding of why than to learn the truth. But it happened anyway.

I had gone away that weekend with Freddie and Derrick for our annual fishing and hiking weekend trip thing. I wasn’t in the house more than thirty seconds before my phone went off. My mom told me to meet her and my dad at the hospital. All they would tell me was that Naomi was there, but she was okay. Still, my cousin being rushed to the hospital suddenly was not normal and I had only known the girl one summer.

            The doctor assured me that my cousin’s condition was under control now. Condition? What condition? He didn’t seem surprised that I had no idea what he was talking about. He tried to explain to me that Naomi really did not want a lot of people knowing about her condition. Like hell was that a good enough answer for me. I had just gotten used to the little buggar being around. I had been content with not knowing, but not anymore. I was fed up with the secrets. I wanted answers and I wanted them at that moment. So what did I do? I stormed right into the room where she was and demanded to know what was going on of course. I feel like such an a*s every time I think about it now.

            I had never seen my cousin like that before and I was pretty damn sure I never wanted to see her like that ever again. I was used to seeing that little ball of sunshine I wanted to throw rocks at. Her porcelain skin looked yellowish-green. The spark in her eyes was all but extinguished. She looked lifeless, which wasn’t my cousin at all. If anything, my cousin was full of too much life. When she heard me come in the room, I got a smile, but it was only half the smile I was used to seeing on her. That wasn’t my cousin. That thing lying in the bed just couldn’t be my cousin.

            So I guess you have some questions for me then, she said to me softly. I registered what she said after a moment and nodded. She told me what the disease was called; I just wasn’t fully listening to catch the name. She had been fighting it a long time now, but it was progressing more rapidly now.

            When I asked her if it had anything to do with her life before she came to live with us, all she said was yes.

            When I asked what had happened, why she had come to live with us, why she had gotten so sick, all she said was that it was bad. Despite how long I had waited for an answer, that one was good enough. I really didn’t want to know anymore.

            When I asked her if all the “living” she had been doing since she came to stay with us had made her condition worse, she just looked at me for a moment. She didn’t need to say anything; I knew the answer was yes. She nodded.

And when I asked her if she was going to die, she smiled. She smiled and she said yes.

            Naomi made only two requests on the night she died. One, under no circumstances did she want to be buried. Don’t put me in a box, she said. She wanted to be cremated instead. And two, she wanted her ashes to lead her to her next life. Seriously, quote unquote, she said let my ashes take me to my next life. We, of course, had no idea what the hell she meant but we didn’t let her know that.

            On the second of September, we had Naomi’s body cremated. I wore a black suit and stood in the funeral home while people we knew came to pay their respects. When it was done, they put her ashes in a little clay box that she had apparently picked out herself just for this occasion. She knew all along she was dying. And the worst part was that she was preparing for it. She was getting ready to die.

            Naomi had told my parents while she was in the hospital that she had bought the clay box from a merchant just on the border of Mexico about two years ago. I didn’t really notice the box until we got home that night. I was in my room packing. I had e-mailed my professors at college, explaining to them that I would be a few days late. They all understood. Derrick and Freddie hadn’t left either. We were all going to drive up together.

            I went down to the living room to grab something and I saw the clay box again. Truth be told, I wanted to smash the damn thing with a sledgehammer. How could she just leave like that? How could she not tell me? She knew all along and she never let on. Why would she do this to me? What did I have left of her, huh? So I knew a stupid ballroom dance. So I had bounced around in the rain like a little kid. So I had roasted marshmallows and watched old movies and chased fireflies. So what? Naomi was gone now and I never had the time to say goodbye.

            For the first time since I saw her lying in that hospital bed, I felt my chest tighten up. I felt like I was swallowing sand. My knees gave out after a moment or two and I fell to the floor beside the table where the box was. I wasn’t exactly crying, more like trying to take a breath of air under water. I loosened the tie around my neck, throwing it to the ground, and successfully ripped off three buttons of the white shirt I was wearing trying to get some air. I wanted to scream, and I think I did. I can’t be sure though.

            I went to pick up the clay box with every intention of throwing it out the window. I stopped when I felt etches in the clay under my fingers. For the first time, I took a look at the box my cousin’s ashes were in. I no longer felt like I was swallowing hot sand. I still couldn’t feel my legs, but the pressure on my chest wasn’t as bad as before. The box had carvings of hummingbirds on it.

            That’s when I noticed it had gotten dark outside. With the box still in my hand, I forced myself to my feet and walked out onto the porch. Crickets were chirping; dragonflies were buzzing; fireflies were lighting up the tall grass. A quick gust of wind blew passed me. I closed my eyes. It felt good. I could breathe again. When I opened my eyes, I nearly dropped the box. I still don’t understand how it could have happened to this day. I didn’t believe in those sorts of things and there it was right in front of me.

            A hummingbird hovered a few feet in front of me, as if it was looking at me. Naomi, I heard myself say out loud. The hummingbird flew off in the direction the wind had blown. The sounds of the dragonflies and the crickets reached my consciousness again and I saw the lights of the fireflies. I think my mouth was hanging open, allowing me to take deep breaths. I was terrified and bursting with excitement all at once. It was the weirdest feeling ever. To this day I still haven’t found a way to duplicate that feeling. My entire body was trembling slightly. I don’t know whether it was from the fact that I was scared shitless or that I wanted to jump out of my skin I was so happy.

            Okay Naomi, I whispered. An odd sort of smile found its way across my mouth. Kinda like that “AH HA!” grin that the lead character gets at the end of a movie when everything comes together in that perfect way. Okay, you win, I laughed softly.

            Without looking down at the clay box with the hummingbird etchings, I yanked the cover off. I took one deep breath and tossed my cousin’s ashes into a gust of wind. I watched them fly through the air until I couldn’t see them anymore. From inside, I heard my parents put on that stupid ballroom dancing music. I couldn’t help but laugh. Not that mocking, “Oh my god, I can’t believe they’re listening to this s**t” laugh. No, it was more of a “happier than I’ve been in a while” kind of laugh.

            Naomi had given me a new way of life. She had even taught me how to live. She had left it up to me to figure out why I was living though. And I think, at the moment, I finally knew why. I understood. I had been given life, and now I knew how to live it.

Wow, that sounds so freckin’ corny, it’s not even funny. Crap, I really have turned into my cousin’s prodigy.

I sat down on my porch steps and listened to the crickets and watched the fireflies while the music played in the background. I stayed out there the whole night. I fell asleep on the swing just as the sun began to rise with the sound of the morning birds.

Let my ashes take me to my next life, she had said.

Let me be a hummingbird.

          

Reviews

[Creepy Swine Guy]

Absolutely incredible! One of the best things I have ever read at the Writers Cafe. The only booboo that I saw was in the line ...

"One of the common beliefs is that hummingbirds are messengers between words."

I think you wanted the last word there to be "world" not "word"

But that is so very trivial in comparison to the absolute moving power of this story. This goes into my favorites so that I can come back and read this over and over again. just astounding! Thank you so much for sharing it.

[Aislinn Gryffin ((Ashes..]

Wow...That's just so beautiful. I loved this story. I dont have any constructive critisism or anything, i just wanted to let you know how beautiful this was and how much i enjoyed it. I loved the informality of it. Wait, maybe informality is not the right word. I liked the way it wasn't stiff. That doesn' really describe it either. It's just beautiful and indescribable. It moved me and captivated my attention from beginning to very end.