Creative Writing from
Fairleigh Dickinson University
MFA Program

Las Golondrinas

Robin Parks

Although Oreos were her favorite snack, and she had a whole plate of them to herself, eight-year-old Toby was inconsolable. Her mother was leaving. Again. Toby rubbed her nose and squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. She knew crying would just fuel her mother's path out the door into the hot morning, away from her, away from Dad, too. Gone forever, every time. She settled for a whimper, breaking cookies into pieces.
      Lillian was on the telephone, scheduling to be picked up in fifteen minutes. Ed pleaded softly, “Don't go, don't go.” He pried Lillian's long fingers from the black receiver one by one. She dropped the phone and marched purposefully from the kitchen.
      Ed caught it and whispered into the receiver, “She's not going. Hello? She's cuh-cancelled. Can you hear me? She's made a meh-meh-mistake.” He tapped the hook several times while Toby watched, hopeful. She nodded her head in encouragement. “Tell them she's sorry, Dad.”
      An early June bug slipped into the kitchen through a tear in the bottom of the screen door and made buzzing swoops at Ed, who had finally given up on the call and was sitting quietly at the yellow formica table. Toby and Ed listened to Lillian zip and snap and drag her bags through the living room out onto the porch. When the front door opened and closed, Toby crawled into Ed's lap. He rested his sandpapery chin against her forehead. A moment later, a car pulled up, revved its engine, and Lillian's laughter joined with others. The car roared down the street and the sound of Lillian faded into children shrieking at play, a dog barking, a lawn mower rattling next door.
     
      Riding to school on her bike the next day, Toby passed Hody's Diner, not yet open at that hour but still busy with iridescent pigeons sashaying around the lot. Toby rode her bike up the pavement and stopped in space No. 11, one of Lillian's usual lanes. She thought about her mother's gleaming smile, like the toothpaste commercial, a burst of starlight glinting off her teeth as she pirouetted on her roller skates, a full tray balanced on her shoulder. Lillian didn't actually wear roller skates. But Toby had a photo of her mother when she was a roller-skating carhop in Canton, Ohio. Toby kept the photo stuck into the corner of the mirror of her vanity and practiced tilting her head and making her teeth match up, just like her mother's.
      At Hody's, Lillian wore red nail polish and each black curl on her head was perfectly formed. Her black and white uniform was starched and spotless. Toby imagined Lillian happy — happy about serving burgers and fries on metal trays, happy to see Toby and Ed, happy to come home. Instead, Toby knew, her mother read colorful brochures about other places, brochures that piled up week after week, month after month until the day when Lillian would announce she was going away.
      “She's gone for good this time, Dad, I can feel it,” Toby had wept into Ed's shirt.
      “She'll be back, Toby. She will.”
      But Toby knew differently. Toby saw the chagrin on Lillian's face when Ed meticulously cut coupons from the newspaper with little manicure scissors, painstakingly trimming the edges of each coupon. Or when he came in from the garden that day having dug up the entire backyard in search of a buried bone for their dog, Petey. Or when he stuttered into the telephone, over and over again, patiently trying to get his point across.
      What did her mother want? Toby could only guess, but she was sure it wasn't her father. Probably not Toby, either. Together Ed and Toby would sit in the old Rambler rapt at the efficient figure of Lillian at Hody's, neat and compact, ready to serve. Toby shivered with admiration as her mother sweet-talked a cab driver into an extra order of onion rings for a bigger tip. When she'd come to take their order, Toby and Ed would clutch each other's hands with delight. But Toby saw the distraction in her mother's eyes as Ed stammered out their order. Toby grinned maniacally and stroked her mother's hand to make up for Ed's failings. It was only a matter of time, Toby felt, when her mother would leave for good.
     
      Toby knew they needed help. She dragged Ed to the guidance counselor at school.
      “Tell her, Dad. Tell her it's not normal. Tell her it's awful.”
      Toby picked at a scab on her elbow while the counselor told them not to worry, Lillian just liked to take vacations. Ed chewed the nails on one hand, the one he used for the 10-key at Maxson Trucking, while he explained to the counselor that each time Lillian went away they worried that the charms of Ed's habits and Toby's quirks would fade a little more from Lillian's mind. Or that the almost painful satisfaction they shared at the taste of coarse salt on French fries, the blissful slurp of a malted, was not in any way shared by Lillian, who routinely, predictably, looked around at her life and said, “See ya.”
      The counselor didn't believe a word he said, Toby could tell by the way she eyed the shiny worn spots of Ed's corduroy pants and his chaotic hair.
      “Thank you very much,” Toby said with exaggerated decorum. “We'll be going now.” To Ed she whispered, “C'mon, Dad. Let's get the hell out.”
      After school when Ed placed a dish of twisted-open Oreos in front of Toby, she held onto his thin wrist.
      “She won't be back this time, Dad. You don't know. You don't know how much she hates us!”
      Ed bent down and held Toby's face nose to nose with his. Toby looked straight into her father's eyes, brown like hers, and tried to telepathically turn him into Prince Charming.
      Suddenly Ed stood up straight. “I have an idea.” He pointed to the sky. “A good one.”
      “Oh no.”
      Toby followed Ed into her bedroom. He pulled a suitcase from the closet.
      “Let's go.” Ed toss socks into the suitcase.
      “Go where?”
      “Get your stuff, Toby dear. We are leaving, too.”
      “But —?”
      “It's okay, Tobes.” He held a pair of underwear in one hand, a sneaker in the other. He smiled weakly. “Come with me, okay?”
      Toby fished around under her bed for the stash of See's suckers Ed gave Toby when Lillian wasn't looking. That and a sweater and she climbed into the Rambler.
     
      It usually took Ed three times around the approaching highway circle before he could maneuver the car into the lane toward Pacific Coast Highway. Toby held her breath and braced herself. Ed gripped the steering wheel with both hands. He careered around the circle twice, then veered just in time out onto the highway.
      “Good job, Dad.” Ed whistled nonchalantly.
      The sky was a rich, bright blue along the ocean when the highway finally made its way to the beach. It was the same color as her mother's eyes, which grew navy and twinkly at dusk.
      “I'm hungry,” she told Ed, just as he slammed on the brakes. Toby fell to the floor board. The car swerved right then left and Ed let out a whoop.
      “What was it?” Toby asked, knowing her father had risked everything — even Toby — for a raven or possum or a lost dog. She climbed back onto the seat and look out the back window.
      “Cat. Poor little cat,” Ed whispered, sadly shaking his head. “Lost its way. Looking for home, home, home,” Ed sang and then he hummed. Toby settled back in.
      She tried not to care where they were headed. It wouldn't help to ask her father since chances were slim he knew the way there, knew the direct route, the correct path. All asking would get Toby was a burning anxiety until they either arrived where he had planned or someplace else.
     
      After a while they pulled in at a roadside diner. Toby climbed onto a chrome and pink stool. A jukebox on the counter offered “Downtown,” Lillian's favorite song. Toby didn't even have to ask, Ed was that way. He automatically fished a nickel out of his pocket. Toby swung her legs side to side, humming along with Petula Clark. She wanted her mother, and a greasy paper bag of French fries, and the flapping wings of the pigeons at Hody's.
      “What would you like, Tobarino? Have anything.”
      “I want Mom.”
      Ed nodded. “How 'bout a grilled cheese?”
      “Okay.”
      A brunette waitress approached, smiling at Ed. She wore a white cap, and there was a little swatch of Kleenex sticking out of the low round collar of her pink uniform. She liked Ed right off the bat, Toby could tell by the way she leaned on the counter and wiggled her hips. Lillian did that, too, sometimes and it made Toby nervous, because there would be poor old Dad watching Mom twitch and smile for someone else.
      Toby admired the waitress's nice straight teeth, which she was showing full force to Ed.
      “No, that's all really. Two grilled cheese, two French fries, two colas. No coffee. No candy. No handy dandy.”
      The waitress laughed and nodded over to Toby.
      “So where you goin', huh? Out for a ride with Pop?”
      “I don't know. Ask him.” Toby nodded toward her father, who had emptied the salt shaker onto the counter. “Mom left us.”
      Ed drew circles in the salt distractedly. The waitress abruptly straightened up.
      “Sorry to hear that.” She frowned at Ed. “Just where are you going, huh?”
      They waited for Ed to look up from the pile of salt. Finally, Toby yelled, “Dad!”
      Ed jerked his head up. “Who?”
      “Where'ya taking the little girl, huh?” The waitress was peering intently at Ed.
      “There's something I want Toby to see,” Ed finally said, brushing the salt onto the floor.
      The waitress looked at Toby, who shrugged. “Don't ask me,” Toby said. “I only work here.” Ed smiled. This was a Lillian joke, but the waitress seemed to get it, too. She left to turn in their order, and Toby sighed.
      “Where?”
      “Someplace special, Tobarino. You'll see.”
      “Mexico?” Toby knew they were headed South. Mexico was the end of the line that way.
      “Kind of.”
      “Kind of? What's 'kind of' like Mexico except Mexico?”
      Toby was worried they weren't actually going anywhere, or even if there was a there to get to, her father wouldn't be able to find it. Like last week, when they were supposed to be going to her softball game but after twice bouncing over the meridian to head the opposite way, they still didn't make it to the game. Instead, they ended up at Lakewood Shopping Center circling the lot. Finally, Ed bought ice cream cones, one for her and one for Petey.
      Petey had picked up Ed's confusions early on. All Toby had to do was whisper the word “sit” and Petey would take off at breakneck speed. He ran the perimeter of the backyard, kicking up great chunks of Ed's garden. Ed ran after the dog, yelling “Sit, Petey! Sit!” which only made Petey run faster.
      The waitress walked by smiling again. Toby resisted the urge to reach out and grab her hand and beg her to point them in the right direction.
     
      They drove down Highway 1. After an hour or so, Ed pulled off the road at a little wooden shack painted yellow. He bought a bag of red pistachios and dried apricots for dinner, and ordered a date shake, which they divided into two tall cups. For miles, Ed and Toby happily sucked the thick sweet liquid through paper straws. Eventually, they passed a sign that read, “San Clemente.” Ed cruised by several motels, then chose one right on the beach. Toby waited patiently while the clerk asked Ed to repeat himself three times. Finally they got a key and went to their room.
      Ed turned the television to Ted Mack's Amateur Hour and Toby fell asleep to the swish swish of low tide, the heavy smell of nightblooming jasmine.
      In the morning, Ed stood at Toby's bedside as she awakened. He handed her a red bathing suit. He wore green trunks. Toby held his hand as they walked along the silky dark sand, stopping to pick up a piebald shell.
      “What is it?”
      “I think it's a scallop. See how it's scuh — scuh — . . . ridged?” Ed ran his long fingers around the wavy edge of the shell.
      “I want to keep it,” Toby said. “I'll save it for Mom. In case she ever comes back.”
      Ed held the shell, and then the next and the next. He cupped the shells stiffly, as if holding a bowl of holy water.
      Toby sunk her toes into the sand and was frightened when the water rushed up to her feet, surrounding them and sucking the sand out from under her. She sunk further and further. Ed stood sinking, too, smiling encouragement, lifting the shells in an attempt at waving.
      Toby splashed around in the salty, foaming water until she was scratchy with sand and hungry. They went back to the room, showered, then walked down the street to have breakfast, passing outcroppings of swaying pampas grass. They found a small cafe, Las Olas.
      Toby ate chorizo scrambled into eggs and soft corn tortillas. An ocean breeze swirled through the open doors of the restaurant. Toby's nose and cheeks were hot and burnt, and her skin felt soft as the sound of the waves.
      By the time they finished breakfast, the California sun had traveled high into the sky and the car was broiling inside. Ed turned on the fan and steered them off El Camino Real up Camino Capistrano, inland, away from the beach.
      “Where do you think she is?” Toby asked.
      “I don't know, Toby. Somewhere.” He yanked his earlobe twice.
      “Somewhere pretty, like here?”
      “I don't know, Tobes. I'm sorry.”
      Toby turned the radio on to distract her father and herself. What good would it do to think about her mother, where she might be? There were no answers. Ed and Toby sang along to the radio. “I got you, babe. I got you, babe.”
     
      They pulled into an asphalt parking lot in the midst of a whorl of narrow streets. Ed led Toby up the sidewalk along a low clay wall painted white, brilliant in the hot sun. The sidewalk led to a brick arch. There was a wooden cross on top of the arch.
      “Are we here?” Toby asked.
      “Yes, in we go!” and they passed through a turnstile.
      “Two, please,” Ed said into a window cut into the thick white wall. Toby read a sign, “Bienvenidos. Welcome to Mission San Juan Capistrano.”
      Toby felt as if she had walked onto another planet. The dirt beneath her sandals was pink and beige and sticky. A salamander, apricot but fading, ran by Toby's feet. She followed the tiny quick animal out into the sunlight, around a corner onto an open plaza, sand covered and undulant with crumbling walls, little paper flags marking significant sites, like candle forms and brick-making ovens.
      She looked around and spotted Ed sniffing candy-colored flowers dangling from baskets hung along a red brick wall. A fat bee-like thing hovered near his head.
      “What is it?”
      “A hummingbird, dear. And fuchsia. They love the fuchsia.”
      Together they walked around the plaza, reading wooden plaques describing artifacts. There was a huge stone wheel, “used for crushing olives for cooking oil,” Ed read from a booklet.
      “The walls are adobe, Toby. Adobe Toby. Toby adobe —”
      “Okay, Dad. Got it.”
      They strolled along paths shaded by the lacy branches of pepper trees. Ed stopped to finger the crook of a eucalyptus tree whose bark resembled skin, wrinkled and soft in the joints, flesh-colored and smooth along the limbs.
      “Listen to this, Toby,” Ed called out, bringing Toby back from plucking a lush gardenia she had buried her nose in.
      He read from the pamphlet as if performing on stage: “ 'The corridors you walk have known the soft footsteps of dark-eyed Indians and brown-robed Franciscans.'”
      “What's a Franciscan?”
      “Ummm — someone who likes to live alone, I think. Yes. That's it.” He turned a page. “Let's look at the chapel.”
      They wandered along the cool corridors. The afternoon sun was no match for the thick adobe walls, the terra cotta shingles. A complex threshold of twisted vines of coral and salmon and mother-of-pearl bougainvillea shaded the walkways. Honeysuckle and wisteria dripped sweet blossoms onto the brick paths.
      When they entered the dark interior of the church, Toby was alarmed.
      “Is something on fire?”
      “No-no-no-no. It's incense, Toby, it's the holy ghost. It's angels.”
      Thin spires of white smoke twirled upward to join in a thick cloud filling the small room. Toby watched Ed inhale deeply, his eyes closed, a faint smile spreading across his face. She slipped beneath the pew onto the stone floor. The smooth, cold hardness of the stone was solid and comforting. She thought about the bare feet of the Indian mothers, fat babies seeking crumbs.
      Ed bent down and peered at Toby. Then he lay down on his back and shuffled his body until they were shoulder to shoulder beneath the pew, his long legs sticking out into the aisle.
      “I remember your mother,” Ed said, and Toby thought miserably that she had been right all along. Her mother was gone for good.
      “She was so angry with me. I had gotten lost, you know.”
      Ed ran his thin index finger along the seam of the wood above their heads.
      “By the time we got off the highway it was 100 degrees. No shade anywhere. And then the next morning I made her get up at dawn to see them coming.”
      “See who? Are we meeting someone here?” Suddenly Toby felt a rush of hope. “Is it Mom? Is this where she is, Dad?” Toby's heart pounded.
      “No, Toby.” Ed maneuvered out from under the pew and stood up. His voice echoed above her. “She's not here . . . I don't think.”
      Suddenly Toby wanted to bite her father's white-socked ankle. Of course she wasn't here! She balled up her fists and pounded on the pew over her head.
      “Where-is-she-where-is-she-where is she?!” she shouted. “Where is my MOTHER!”
      “Toby, stop. Shush,” Ed grabbed at Toby under the pew, but she sidled out the other side. She ran out of the church. As she headed for the sunlight she heard Ed yell, “You look just like your mother when you're mad!”
      Toby walked disconsolately around the mission, trying to avoid her father who seemed bent on following her, reading aloud from the booklet just as if she were by his side. She hated herself and her mother and even her father. Why did he have to be so
. . . so . . .? Toby couldn't put her finger on what it was about her father, but there had to be something. There had to be some reason her mother left them over and over again. Or maybe it was just Toby. Her own selfish needs and whining and tears all the time.
      Of course Mom had left. Why not? Mom was a circle of black shiny hair and eyes filled with the sky, not the worrisome, awkward weight of Toby and Ed, stumbling along in life.
      “Your eyes are the ocean,” Toby would say, and her mother would say, “Yours are fields of wheat and the sun,” and Toby would stroke her curly hair, just the way Ed would while absentmindedly working a jigsaw puzzle. Her mother would stare right at him, thinking, no doubt, how to get the hell out.
      “Poor old dad,” Toby sighed, then walked back to Ed, who was mid-paragraph.
      “ 'the legend of the swallows is the favorite of them all.'”
      Ed rested his hand on Toby's head for a moment. “Let's look at the cactus.” He steered them out into the sunshine, to an enormous collection of cacti — some tall and thin and blooming one large pink flower, others round as pincushions, others tiny, like trees in a desert for gnomes.
      “ 'When the March sun is warm —'”
      “Like today?”
      “Yes, Toby. 'When the March sun is warm and the orange trees are heavy with sweet white blossoms —'”
      “I smelled them out in the backyard!”
      “Okay, Tobettes.” Ed continued: “ 'if you should say, what a beautiful spring day it is, the reply from los viejos' — that means old-timers, it says here — 'the reply would be si, a beautiful day, but when las golondrinas come back, then it will be spring.' ”
      “Say it again?”
      “Las golondrinas. That means the swallows.”
     
      Toby wandered back to the chapel to cool off while Ed settled onto a bench with his reading materials.
      She noticed a shallow door on the right side of the chapel. She pushed it open and stepped into a tiny, smoke filled room, hundreds of candles burning in small jars. The incense and smoke made her cough. Through the white smoke she made out a figure, a man it seemed, standing or kneeling on a table. Toby came closer and suddenly saw a statue of a man pointing to his own leg, a bloody gash stripping away the flesh. Toby backed away, trying to not cry out. She bumped into Ed and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his stomach. Ed took her hand and led her outside.
      “Your mother always says those saints aren't good for children to see.”
      “I'm tired, Dad. Let's go home, okay?”
      “We will, dear Toby, as soon as the swallows settle back in.”
      Ed and Toby wandered all through the mission until finally dusk began to fall. They sat on a stone bench in the plaza. Several other people stood with their heads tilted backwards, gazing at the sky. Ed placed a nickel in Toby's palm and she bought a pile of peanuts from a metal dispenser. She threw the nuts and pigeons swirled and landed. Toby sat next to her father.
      Ed watched the sky. “Lillian thought we were lost. Then she thought I was crazy.”
      “When?”
      “Before you were born. Before.”
      “Not like now, huh?”
      Ed laughed. “Well, we are always a little lost, huh Tobe? Always a little off, but—”
      Something zoomed in front of them, swift and small. Then three more. Tiny birds — Toby counted ten, then fifteen, then lost count — zigzagged, hovered, soared and then disappeared under the eaves of the mission. The people standing around applauded.
      “What are they, Dad? The swallows?”
      Ed nodded his head, his eyes closed and arms outstretched. “I can smell your mother's perfume.” He breathed deeply.
      Toby picked up the booklet and read: “ 'like strings of rosary beads, their gourd-like nests cling to the eaves of the limestone arches of the great stone church.' ”
      “I can still hear her gasp when the birds came. It was dawn and so lovely and cool.” Toby noticed for the first time that Ed's shirt was buttoned wrong. “She didn't believe me when I told her. Lillyput, darling, I said, it's magic. It's God. They come back exactly on March 19th.”
      “It's March 20th,” Toby said.
      “I know. It was then, too.”
     
      Ed parallel parked the Rambler by a restaurant on a short street a few blocks from the mission. They took a table outside on a patio overlooking a railroad. Impatiens hung from the terra cotta roof and nightblooming jasmine was everywhere.
      “The Atchinson, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” Ed sang, while Toby studied the darkening sky, navy and glimmering with stars. Ed ordered, stammering out Spanish words. Within a few minutes the waitress brought them crunchy folded tortillas filled with pieces of white fish and cilantro and tomatoes. Ed sprinkled a crushed lime onto half an avocado. On Toby's placemat was a drawing of the little birds.
      “Where do they go, Dad?”
      “Las golondrinas? I don't know, Toby. I suppose I could look it up.” Ed wiped salsa from his mouth. “However, I do absolutely know that they always come back.” He took a large bite out of his taco.
      “On March 20th?”
      “Legend says March 19th.” Ed scrunched up his shoulders. “Sometimes things get a little off. A little off, right?”
      Toby sipped her almond-flavored drink and watched her father lick each finger carefully, one by one.
     
      They drove back the long way, as Ed explained when Toby asked why they were not back on El Camino Real.
      “I'll bet it's the long way,” Toby mumbled, knowing it could be two nights before they reached home.
      “This road's better, Tobe, you'll see.”
      Toby peered out into the pitch black night. It would be two nights and her mother would have come and gone again, and the dog would be starved to death, lying out in that ditch in the backyard. After a while it began to rain. Ed slowly pulled the Rambler to the side of the road.
      “What are we doing, Dad?” Toby had dozed off and was dreaming that a salamander was chewing on her toes. She rolled down the window and a rush of fresh wet wind blew into the car.
      Ed got out and leaned against the car.
      “What do you smell, Toby?”
      “Dad . . . Dad please get back into the car.”
      “Horses?”
      Ed's eyes were closed, his hands in his pockets, raindrops splattering his hair and face. “I smell horses and mustard. And sage, smell that Tobes?” Ed began to walk down the road ahead of them, his eyes still closed. He listed to the left. Toby got out of the car.
      “Daa-aa-d! I want to go home!” She was cold and wet. And her father was leaving.
      Ed halted. “Listen! Hear that? It's an owl, Toby. A bird of the night.”
      Toby listened to a soft crashing sound, and then the reedy hooting of an owl. She shivered. Ed walked further away, disappearing into the darkness at the end of the light from the headlamps.
      Toby climbed back into the car and slammed the door. “Just go! Go on! I don't care!” Then she yelled, “I DON'T CARE!” She got to her knees and pumped the horn with all her might. “I don't care-I don't care-I don't CARE!”
      Ed reemerged from the shadows. He crawled into the car and pulled the door shut. He wiped the water from his face and took Toby's hand. “I'm so sorry, Toby. So so sorry.” He was crying.
      Toby held her father's cold, wet hand. She looked out into the night, into the chaparral and moonlit hills and thought about how round the earth was, how birds swirled around it to some unseen force. She imagined the force coming from somewhere inside of her, pulling her from the car. She would leap away from the car and her father and swoop up the road, up into the treetops. She'd stay there all through the night. In the morning she would take a long trip to someplace pretty and warm, and when she grew tired, she'd find the cool shade of a sacred eave. And she wouldn't come back. Ever.

        Originally published in Carve Magazine, 2:1, and The Best of Carve Magazine, Vol. 2, 2001