Freeing Finch Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Dedicated to those with more courage than fear

  and to Linda and Kate Rohr

  What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

  —The Left Hand of Darkness,

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Hope” is the thing with feathers -

  That perches in the soul -

  —Emily Dickinson

  People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles.

  —Lillie Devereux Blake,

  novelist, essayist, and reformer

  [The universe] gave us three things to make life bearable—hope, jokes and dogs, but the greatest of these was dogs.

  —Tracks,

  Robyn Davidson

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  I

  My name is Morgan Delgado, Junior. I was eight when Maddy Baxter, our nearest neighbor, began calling me Finch. The bird she named me after hit our front window a couple of days after my father left. It sounded like someone had thrown a clod of dirt.

  Momma jumped sky-high and turned from the stove. “Jesus, Morgan, what was that?” Her hair was coming in all soft and fuzzy. “Chemo hair,” she called it, curly instead of straight the way it had been before the treatments. The ceiling light made it look like she was wearing a halo.

  I’d been watching TV and got up to see what happened. There was the powdery print of a bird’s breast and wings against the glass. The longest feathers were outlined like angel wings, ghostly and beautiful on the pane.

  I looked at Momma. “A bird hit the window.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Everything made her cry back then.

  I unlocked the front door. “I’m gonna go see if it’s dead.”

  The bird lay on the deck in the blaze of light from the living room lamps. I thought for sure it was dead, but when I picked it up, little clicking sounds came from its open beak like it was struggling to breathe. I could feel its heart beating against my palm.

  “Take it down to Maddy,” Momma said when I came into the kitchen carrying the bird. “She’ll know what to do. I’ll call and tell her you’re coming.”

  Momma held the bird against her cheek while I put on my knockoff Uggs and a coat. She handed me the bird and a flashlight from the kitchen drawer.

  I clamped the flashlight in my armpit and ran down the road to Maddy’s driveway with the bird cupped in my hands. Her porch light came on when I got near the house and the front door opened. Maddy is really old but knows everything there is to know about wildlife.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got.” She put on her glasses.

  I opened my hands and held up the coldcocked bird.

  “It’s a female house finch.” She took it from me.

  “What was it doing flying at night?”

  “Something probably startled it and it flew toward the light. Were your lights on?”

  “Uh-huh. Momma don’t like it dark anymore.”

  Maddy looked at me over the tops of her reading glasses like she still has a habit of doing when there’s a lesson to learn. “Doesn’t like. She doesn’t like it dark anymore.”

  I ducked my head. “It hit real hard.”

  Inside Maddy’s kitchen, I punched holes in the lid of a shoebox with a pencil while she lined the bottom with a few clean rags. The bird looked like it was lying in a coffin before Maddy taped the lid down.

  “Don’t … doesn’t it need food and water?”

  “Do you eat when you’re sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. We’ll put it someplace warm and dark. If it survives the night, we’ll let it go in the morning.”

  I trailed her to the hall closet and watched her put the shoebox on the top shelf. Rufus, one of Maddy’s three cats, followed. “Not for you,” Maddy said. Rufus turned and padded away.

  “He acts like he understands you.”

  “He does. He reads my mind and I read his.” Maddy closed the louvered doors.

  When I got home, Momma was waiting for me on the porch. “What did she say?”

  “It’s a female house finch, and she thinks it will be okay.” I’m not sure why I didn’t tell the truth. Maddy said maybe it would die, or maybe it wouldn’t.

  “That’s good, honey, but don’t get your hopes up. It hit that window pretty hard.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  Momma was shivering. She hugged herself and rubbed her arms but took a moment to look up at the stars before following me inside.

  First thing the next morning, I ran down the road to Maddy’s.

  “I’m glad you showed up. I’d forgotten all about that bird.”

  Rufus and I followed Maddy to the closet. As soon as she picked up the box, we heard the bird fluttering inside.

  I grinned up at Maddy and she patted the top of my head.

  “We’ll test-fly her in the bathroom to make sure she doesn’t have a broken wing.” She shooed Rufus, who’d followed us into the small downstairs bathroom. She closed the door, then nodded for me to open the lid. The bird was standing up. She blinked at us, flew straight at the mirror, hit it lightly, and fell behind a bottle of mouthwash.

  Maddy caught her and held her with the bird’s neck between two middle fingers.

  “Aren’t you choking her?”

  “Not at all. Birds have skinny little necks under all those feathers.” She held her up to the light, pulled first one wing away from her body, and then the other.

  “Whatcha looking for?”

  “Mites. She’s clean.”

  Maddy tested the bird’s feet, which clamped down on her index finger. “The only thing wrong with this bird is she doesn’t appreciate that you saved her life. Shall we?” Maddy nodded toward the door, which I opened.

  In the yard, we turned to face my house. “That’s the way home,” Maddy said. The bird’s feet were still clamped around Maddy’s finger. She kissed the top of its head and moved her other hand away. The bird stayed perched as if she were as tame as a parakeet.

  I held my breath. After a few seconds, I said, “Maybe she is hurt.”

  The bird looked at me, chirped once, and poof, was gone.

  “Guess not.” I laughed, spread my arms like I had wings, and flew in a circle around Maddy.

  “One lucky bird,” Maddy said. “A voice with wings.” She held her hand up and we high-fived. “From now on,” she said, “I think I’ll call you Finch. Do you mind?”

  I giggled, but shook my head. “But how come?”

  Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe so every time I see you, I’ll say ‘Hi, Finch,’ and we’ll both remember this moment.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t bring you a skunk.”

/>   Maddy laughed. “You saved a little life. Even if the bird isn’t grateful, I am.” She leaned and kissed the top of my head, as she’d done to the bird’s before setting it free.

  “Anybody would have done the same thing,” I said.

  “I wish that were true. You’ll discover people are either givers or takers, and a good way to judge is by what they can turn their backs on.”

  We stood side by side, watching the chickadees mobbing the feeder on her front deck.

  “I wish I could save Momma.”

  Maddy put her hand on my shoulder. “Your momma’s fighting hard to stay here with you. That will make all the difference.”

  It occurred to me that Maddy hadn’t asked if we’d heard from Dad.

  “Why’d you really decide to call me Finch all of a sudden?”

  She didn’t look at me when she answered. “Sometimes I give people animal names so I can remember what they brought me that needed help.”

  “Not because I’m named after my dad and you hate him?” She didn’t know I heard her say “good riddance” when Momma called crying to tell her she thought Daddy had left for good this time.

  Maddy didn’t answer.

  I picked at a scab on my elbow. “It’s my fault he left.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “What in the world makes you think that?”

  “’Cause. You know. The thing that’s wrong with me.”

  She knelt and hugged me. “Finch, honey, that’s not the reason, and if it was, he should rot in hell.”

  “He told Momma she was raising a Nancy boy. What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s an ignorant—” Maddy’s lips compressed. “Look, Finch, it’s an offensive term, like calling a boy a sissy. You are not a sissy. You’re a tough-as-nails little girl. I don’t care that you were born a boy. Neither does your mom. It happens. There are lots of kids out in the world like you.”

  “There are?”

  “Absolutely. Hundreds. Thousands, even. You’re what you are in your head and heart, Finch, not what it says on your birth certificate.”

  I wanted to believe her, but thought it was just Maddy trying to make me feel not so different from other kids.

  CHAPTER 2

  I

  I don’t remember much about my mother’s first battle with cancer. I was five and a half. What I do remember are like pictures in an album. Lying on my stomach outside the bathroom door listening to her throwing up. Coming home from kindergarten to see her riding our lawn mower up and down the yard wearing a flaming red wig. After the radiation treatments started, I remember walking into the bathroom and seeing her in the tub. The red wig hung on the doorknob, and the few hairs left on her head were stringy. There was a long scar where her right breast had been, and her skin, all the way to her shoulder, looked crusty brown from the radiation.

  Momma opened her eyes, caught me staring, and started to cover her chest with the washcloth. But she didn’t.

  I said, “What did they do with the one they cut off?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, honey. Threw it away, I guess.”

  “Now you’re half girl, half boy like me.”

  “We’re both still girls, we’re just missing a few of the parts.” She reached for my hand. “When this is over, I’m going to pretend this scar is a stem.” She traced it with a finger. “I’ll have a rose tattooed right here.” She pointed to the top of the scar. “What color shall we make it?”

  “Purple,” I answered.

  Momma smiled. “Purple it will be.”

  “No, maybe red. To match your wig.”

  “Okay.” She closed her eyes, and ladled handfuls of warm water onto her chest, avoiding the burned side.

  “Momma?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Do we have any scissors?”

  “Sure. There’s a pair in my sewing box, and another in the drawer under the microwave.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Why?”

  “I want to cut my pee-pee off and throw it away.”

  “Oh, Morgan, honey.” She sat up and wrapped her wet arms around me. “That would hurt terribly, sweetheart.” Tears filled her eyes. “There’s nothing we can do about your anatomy until you’re older. You have to be patient.”

  “I hate it.”

  “I know, but promise me you’ll never do anything to hurt yourself.”

  My father still lived with us back then. I remember his bathrobe hanging from a hook on the back of the door. “I promise,” I whispered

  II

  They found cancer in her other breast when I was seven and a half. My most vivid memory of that time is Momma, wearing only panties, standing in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door. She looked at me and smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Now I’ll be able to walk without listing to port.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Leaning to the left. It’s a nautical term. Starboard is the right side of a boat, port the left.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “I suppose so.” She ran her index finger over the ridge of stitches.

  After Momma got sick the second time, Dad was around less and less. She told me he’d found construction work out of town. It might have been true.

  They fought a lot, often because of me. He said she was turning me into a sissy.

  “My father used to call ’em Nancy boys,” Daddy said, during one of those fights.

  “Shame on you,” Momma said, then turned and saw me standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “What’s a Nancy boy?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Momma said. “There’s no such thing.”

  “See.” Daddy opened the refrigerator and took out a beer. “You’re letting him get away with this malarkey. He needs to man up.”

  I was four or five when Momma told my father I was insisting I was a girl. He said I just needed a good thrashing to get that out of my system. Momma never mentioned it again, and told me it was not something we needed to discuss with my father.

  Daddy put his beer on the counter and made two fists. “Put ’em up.” He punched my shoulder, then jabbed the air between us and hopped from side to side.

  I laughed, made fists, and danced just out of his reach.

  “Jesus, son. That’s what I mean. Get your thumbs out of your fists. If you hit someone with those girly things, your thumbs will snap off at the joints like crab claws.”

  III

  A couple weeks after my eighth birthday, Dad left and never came back, even though he promised he would. They must have gotten a divorce because less than a year later Momma met and married my stepfather, Stan. Her cancer was in remission at the time and our lives seemed normal for a while. I never understood why she had to get married, why she couldn’t wait for my father to come back. That’s the one thing I hold against her: she gave up on my dad too soon, then died and left me with a man who was little more than a stranger.

  Maddy’s told me time and again that my mother was just looking for a little happiness after everything she’d been through, but I still get angry about it—though usually only after some flare-up with Stan. Six months after their wedding, the cancer came back, this time in her bones and her liver. After that, and until she died, I practically lived at Maddy’s house.

  It seems I took a long time to realize Momma was going to die. I remember resenting that she couldn’t get better and be there for me like a real mom. I feel guilty about that now, but back then it seemed like she could get better if she tried harder.

  IV

  Momma died a year and a half ago, when I was almost ten, leaving me with my stepfather. Eleven months and four days after she passed, he married Cindee. Cindee used to work at Sherwood Oaks, a local nursing home. She was also a hospice volunteer, which is how Stan met her. She helped with my mom. Now she does home health three days a week.

  I liked her fine when she was taking care of Mom and didn’t think much of it when Stan invited her over for dinner a couple of
times after Mom died. We always told Mom stories and laughed about her mowing the yard wearing that red wig, or how she was the only person who could pick up a pill bug—“or would want to,” Cindee interjected with a shudder—and not have it roll into a defensive little ball.

  Cindee’s the opposite of my mother, short and pudgy, bleached blonde, lots of makeup. It never crossed my mind that Stan liked her in that way, until he came home one night and told me they were going to Las Vegas to get married.

  That I didn’t ask about their trip didn’t stop Cindee from getting all giggly when she told me the story. They went to a drive-through wedding chapel, both wearing sunglasses. Stan kept his foot on the brake and the engine running. The justice of the peace leaned out the window and said before he’d marry them, they’d have to take off their sunglasses and turn off the car. “This is a drive-through wedding chapel, not a drive-by.”

  It was funny, I guess, but all I could think about was, I had just turned eleven and was now stuck with living with them until I’m eighteen unless Dad comes back. Cindee’s nice enough, and Stan’s okay, but I have a real father out there somewhere, and my real mother is dead.

  PART II

  CHAPTER 3

  I

  Cindee’s at the kitchen sink with her back to me. She’s plucking feathers from one of the four ducks Stan shot on his weekend hunting trip to Sacramento.

  Her purse is lying open on a stool at the kitchen counter. I’ve just taken two crumpled bills from it when Cindee glances over her shoulder. “Want to help me with this?”

  My stomach lurches, but she doesn’t act like she saw me. I curl the money into my fist and put my hand in the pocket of my hoodie. “Not really.”

  “I don’t blame you. If he shoots them, he should clean them, that’s what I say.”

  “So why are you doing it?”