Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

EMIGRATION

The hummingbirds swarmed my garden, randomly at first, but then hovered and formed themselves into midair letters. It took seventeen hummingbirds to make an “A” and twenty-eight to make a “W.” In this way, feather by feather, letter by letter, the hummingbirds spelled my mother’s full name.

I hadn’t called her for at least a month, so it was obvious these birds had come to remind me of family duties.

“Hello, Mother,” I said.

“Who is this?” she asked. “The voice is so familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”

“It’s me,” I said.

“I’m sorry. Who is this again?”

“It’s your son.”

“Which son?” she asked.

“The distant one,” I said.

“It took you long enough,” she said. “I sent those hummingbirds last Friday.”

“They flew in maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“Damn hummingbirds,” she said. “How can animals that quick always be so late?”

“You could have just used the phone.”

“And you would have let it go to voice mail. Like you always do.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You’ve got my full attention now. What’s up?”

“You promised you’d send my granddaughters’ school photos.”

“Oh, shit, Mom, I forgot again. I’ll mail them out today.”

“You said that the last time.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “It would be so much easier if you got a computer. Then I could e-mail them to you.”

“Ah, I don’t need anything fancy like that,” she said. “And I don’t understand how they work anyway.”

“I’ll head to the post office right after I hang up. I’ll overnight the photos.”

“They better be here,” she said. “Or I’m going to send the hornets. And you know how mean and disciplined they are.”

“And what are you going to make them spell for me?”

“They’re just going to swarm your house and spell the word ‘guilt’ everywhere. Those hornets are going to be like miniature Catholic priests. And they’re going to sting, sting, sting.”

I laughed; she laughed. I mailed the photos twenty minutes after I got off the phone with her. But she still sent a few dozen hornets. They didn’t arrive angry. Instead, they settled on my shoulders and murmured something that I couldn’t quite hear.

So, yes, as you might imagine, I am jealous of my mother’s magic. And I am jealous of my three daughters. They can make the tallest pine trees lean close, pick them up with their branches, and lift them high into the city sky.

As the years have passed, my daughters have spent more and more time up among the highest branches. They are soon going to leave me as I long ago left my mother. But I fled my family on foot. My daughters will be carried by trees back to my reservation to live with my mother, their grandmother. And our people will celebrate. The trees that transported my daughters will happily accept flame. And they will burn. And their smoke will rise into the dark and spell words from the tribal language that I never learned to speak.