Up High in the Trees Read online

  Praise for Up High in the Trees:

  “Brinkman has chosen the perfect story for a debut. With a mother’s patience, she brings Sebby step-by-step back into the world of the living.”

  —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

  “[A] luminous—and ultimately uplifting—debut novel.”

  —Linda Fears, Parents

  “A very beautiful and deeply strange little book.”

  —Suzanne Kleid, KQED Arts & Literature

  “This is an astonishing debut by a gifted young writer. Up High in the Trees captures, pitch-perfectly, the voice of one eight-year-old boy. That the story is also compelling, beautifully written, humorous, and heartbreaking makes it necessary reading. Sebby Lane is a Little Prince for our times.”

  —Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban

  “[Brinkman has the] impressive ability to connect with and portray the myopic grief of a bereft child.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Up High in the Trees is a beautiful—and fearless—book. In Sebby, Kiara Brink-man has created an indelible character whose voice is at once lyrical and absolutely real. A haunting, deeply moving work by a shockingly talented new writer.”

  —Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House

  “A very moving and perfectly convincing evocation of the inner life of an unusual boy…. Brinkman’s portrait of Sebby and his family is humane and uncompromising, never maudlin, and, in the end, we root for Sebby as if he were our own.”

  —Dave Eggers, author of What Is the What

  “An achingly beautiful story … The surprise in this novel is the assured talent of such a young writer and the wisdom of such a little boy.”

  —Mary Jo Anderson, The Chronicle Herald (Canada)

  “[A] sincere, sober debut … told in brief, poetic vignettes, the novel moves quickly and episodically, like a series of snapshots from the camera of Sebby’s unique mind.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The real gem of this novel [is] Sebby’s somewhat robotic, distant voice that lingers long after the book ends.”

  —Rachel Aydt, Quest

  “Up High in the Trees is a hauntingly beautiful debut, a stunner. Kiara Brinkman has masterfully created an enchanting, poignant, and wholly original child narrator out of taut, spooky, electric sentences and elegant, musical concisions…. [A] riveting, often terrifying, depiction of the other-world that is childhood.”

  —Maud Casey, author of The Shape of Things to Come

  “A quiet book, often poetic and moving … Touching.”

  —Elizabeth Gold, San Francisco Chronicle

  “A visceral, heart-wrenching, gorgeous book. What moves me most about Brinkman’s first novel is the voice: it’s pitch- perfect and mesmerizing. With Up High in the Trees, Brinkman has created a fully realized, wholly original, and powerfully felt world.”

  —Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals

  UP HIGH IN THE TREES

  UP HIGH IN THE TREES

  A Novel

  Kiara Brinkman

  Copyright © 2007 by Kiara Brinkman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brinkman, Kiara.

  Up high in the trees / Kiara Brinkman.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4612-1

  1. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction.

  3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Dreams—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R53185U6 2007

  813′.6—dc22 2006052161

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  for my family

  ACCIDENTS

  Here it is in my head, right in the place where I keep feeling it and knowing it. Dad knocks on my head like my head is a door. He knocks softly because Dad has big, soft hands. He says my name, Sebby.

  Sebby, he says, earth to Sebby.

  I come back then, but the things I know stay stuck where they are and I keep knowing them. Dad picks me up and lifts me high so I can reach into the leaves of our tree. Dad tries to hold me up for a long time. His face turns red and a deep sound comes out of his throat, because I’m getting bigger and Dad isn’t so strong. He puts me down.

  What is it? Dad asks.

  I shrug my shoulders to say, Dad, I don’t know, so he’ll think that it’s all gone now. But it’s here in my head, in the dark place where you hold things and carry them around.

  One thing I know is that I’m going to live for a very, very long time.

  Mother liked to run in the middle of the night.

  She’d wake me up and ask if I wanted to go with her. I nodded, yes. My eyes were sticky. I had to blink a lot to make them stay open.

  I held Mother’s hand and we walked to the garage. She put me in my old blue stroller that smelled dirty and cold, like how the garage smelled. I was too big, but I could still fit.

  Mother pushed me in fast circles around the block. The houses were dark and quiet. Nothing was moving except for us and we were going so fast.

  It rained one time and we stopped under a tree.

  The rain dripped off the leaves in big, slow drops.

  Are you okay? Mother asked.

  I nodded, yes. The rain made my stroller smell dirtier and older. Mother took off her T-shirt and her shorts. Mother was soft white like the glass on a frosty white lightbulb. The rain made her shine.

  It feels nice, Mother said. She pushed my stroller and we went fast.

  I liked how her feet sounded—tap, tap, tap—clean on the wet sidewalk.

  I need to sleep, because my head hurts in the dark spots behind my eyes.

  Sebastian, Teacher says.

  I can hear Teacher’s feet click-walking closer to me. Click, click, click, closer. She puts her hand on my arm.

  Are you okay, Sebastian? Teacher asks.

  Behind me, Ryan pinches my back.

  Ouch, I say.

  The kids are laughing. Katya looks at me. She is my friend.

  You’re okay, Teacher tells me.

  I close my eyes and Teacher lets me sleep.

  The bell’s ringing wakes me up. It’s the end of the day and everyone’s lined up at the door. They push each other outside and run. I stand up to go.

  Wait, Teacher says and makes her mouth smile.

  She folds a piece of paper and tells me it’s a note to give to Dad. I take it from her.

  Okay, bye, I say and leave.

  I walk until I’m outside of school and then stop to unfold the paper. The note says:

  Dear Mr. Lane,

  I’m worried that Sebastian may not be getting a full night of sleep at home. Recently, he’s been dozing off in class. I’ve also noticed him squinting and rubbing his eyes—maybe he needs glasses? As you know, I am so pleased to have Sebastian in my class—I just want to ensure that he’s getting as much as possible out of his school day. Please
call me so we can discuss this.

  Thank you, Judy Lambert

  I don’t want Dad to read the note, so I rip it up and then I let go. The pieces blow all around. They sound like leaves on the sidewalk.

  A long time ago, Mother let her papers go in the rainstorm. I followed her outside.

  She said, Go back in, you’ll get yourself sick again.

  I went in and watched her from the window. She ripped up her papers and let them fly in the wind. When she came back inside, her face was so white and her eyes were staring off far away, not seeing anything.

  All your poems, Dad said to her.

  Mother said, Sebby, I’m lonely, come sit with me.

  So I sat with her and hid my face in her hair. I wanted to bite her because she smelled so good.

  The rain stopped and we went out to look. Little wet papers were stuck onto the house. Dad said to help, so I helped Dad peel them off. We found one with a whole word that didn’t get washed off by the rain and Dad said to put it in my pocket, because it was for me.

  What does it say? I asked.

  Dad said the word said baby.

  I want to be home now. The ripped-up note from Teacher is flying all around me. I run away from the note.

  At home, the door is unlocked.

  Sebby, that you? my brother’s voice asks from the kitchen.

  It’s me, I say. My forehead is sweating. The inside air feels cold on my face. I go to the kitchen and there’s Leo, eating pickles.

  What’d you do, run all the way home? he asks.

  I don’t say anything. Leo tells me he has to go to the library.

  Do you want to come with? he asks. Leo’s in eleventh grade and he’s in smart classes at his school because he reads so much. He can read a whole book with chapters in two hours. I like to watch his eyes moving back and forth, back and forth over the pages.

  I can’t tell him about the note from Teacher. The note is a secret. Now I know it was not right to rip it up because Ms. Lambert is a good teacher to me. She lets me go outside and breathe the air by myself when I need to. I like it when she comes close to look at my work and her brown-black hair touches the top of my desk and her smell is like the Chap Stick she puts on her lips.

  I follow Leo to the library. I walk behind him so I can step in the same places he steps. Leo doesn’t like it when I do this. He stops still all of a sudden and makes me bump into his back.

  Cut it out, he says.

  The library has so many books you can smell the sour smell of the pages getting old. Leo takes out all his folders and his pencil pouch. He puts up his arms and reaches as high as he can because that makes him feel ready to work. The ceiling is far away and Leo’s happy because there’s space for stretching and thinking. I tap him on the shoulder.

  Not now, Sebby, he says, I have to study for my chemistry test.

  I slide down off my chair and go under the table where it’s dark. My eyes are hurting. There’s too much time and I want to fall asleep, so I close my eyes, but I can’t sleep, because I have a question in my head. The air is quiet. I open my eyes and watch my brother’s foot tapping.

  Then I crawl back up onto my chair and sit next to him. He doesn’t look at me, so I write down my question in big letters at the top of one of his papers and I push it in front of him.

  Who told you that? he asks me.

  I don’t say anything.

  You don’t look like a girl, he says, you need a haircut is all.

  Okay, I say. I stand up and push in my chair.

  Where are you going? he asks.

  I shrug.

  Just don’t hide from me again, he says.

  Okay, I say.

  I liked to sit in the cabinet under the sink.

  Dad said, I don’t understand why you hide under there.

  I hugged my knees tight to make myself smaller.

  If you sit under there like that for too long, you’ll stop growing, Dad said.

  Stop it, Mother told him.

  They got mad at each other then and I held very still.

  Under the sink was the dirty smell, like cooked carrots. It’s true that carrots grow down instead of up. I thought of growing down into the ground, deeper and deeper, and I knew then that the whole inside of the earth smelled like dirty carrots.

  If he wants to hide, Mother said, let him hide.

  Dad said, It’s not normal. Dad’s voice was loud and mean.

  Why are you so worried about what’s normal? Mother asked. Her voice was louder now, too.

  Louise, Dad said and he put up both of his hands, like two stop signs.

  You’re not worried about him, she yelled, you’re worried about what’s normal.

  Just tell me why you’re so mad, will you? Dad asked.

  I can’t, Mother said. I’m leaving, she said and then she left.

  Downstairs in the library, the books reach all the way to the ceiling. You have to climb up a ladder to touch the highest ones. I don’t like how there are so many books. I don’t know which one to pick out and read so I don’t read any of them. I put my face up close to the pages and they smell peppery, like how the wood floor smells at home.

  I walk until I find the right spot. At the very top, one shelf has a long empty space. I climb up the ladder to the empty space and make myself fit. I have to lie on my side because when I lie on my back, it feels like I’m going to fall off.

  Leo said not to hide.

  In the quiet you can tell when you are doing something wrong, because the quiet gets more quiet. I try to hold very still. I think about how nobody’s seeing me and nobody’s hearing me and then I can pretend to be not here at all. But the shelf is hard and I can feel my body against the shelf and I know I am here.

  Leo said not to hide, so I climb down the ladder.

  To make the time go by, I look at all the reading posters on the wall. President George Bush reading, and Bill and Ted, from the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, both reading and trying to make their faces look smart. My favorite is the one with the kittens climbing around on a pile of books. You can tell the kitten poster is old because it has yellow, turned-up corners and rips fixed with tape.

  Upstairs, I go stand by Leo. He looks at me and nods, but doesn’t say anything because he’s in the middle of thinking about something. If he talks, then he loses what he’s thinking about and gets mad. I crawl under the table and watch his foot tap. I press my ear against the floor and I can feel the tapping in the back of my head.

  Why’s he asleep down there? says my sister’s voice. She sometimes comes with the car to give us a ride home.

  I’m not asleep, I say with my eyes closed.

  Why’re you lying on your back like a dead man? she asks me. Why’s he lying like that? she asks Leo. It’s creepy, she says.

  I open my eyes and Leo is bent over, looking down at me.

  Why didn’t you tell him to stop doing that? she asks him.

  I’m not doing anything, I say.

  Leo laughs at me. My sister stares hard at his face and then walks away.

  Cass, Leo calls in a voice that’s half-loud and half whisper, because the rule in the library is that you have to be quiet.

  Cass keeps walking away.

  Cass, he calls. He says her name again and that makes it sound funny, like it’s someone else’s name and not a name I know.

  I say her name in my head, Cass, Cass, Cass.

  Mother named my sister after Mama Cass because Mama Cass had such a sweet voice it could lift you right up off the floor and carry you away. That’s what Mother said. Mother showed me a picture of Mama Cass singing alone on a dark stage. In the picture Mama Cass is wearing a long red dress that looks big and full like a red balloon.

  I crawl out from under the table and watch Leo put all his papers into different colored folders. Then he puts the folders and books into his red backpack, and that makes his backpack so full, it’s hard to zip closed.

  We go to the parking lot, but Cass
and the green car are gone.

  Shit, Leo says.

  The way home has a big hill. Leo starts walking fast because he’s so mad that he can walk fast even with his heavy backpack. I try to walk fast too, but I’m tired now. I hold on to Leo’s coat and practice walking with my eyes closed.

  Stop pulling on me, Leo says when we get to the hill, so I let go.

  I can still walk with my eyes closed. I listen to Leo’s steps on the sidewalk and I copy them.

  Our feet make a crunching sound when we get to our gravelly driveway. I open my eyes. Leo kicks up the gravel rocks. He looks tall and angry now and his breathing is fast.

  Just go in and leave me alone, Leo says. He throws his backpack against the house and the house makes no sound.

  I wait for a sound, but the house is like a giant pillow. Damn you, Leo screams at the house. He goes and picks up his backpack where it landed in Mother’s garden.

  We had fat, ripe tomatoes. There’s a picture in Dad’s office of Leo and Cass sitting on a yellow chair, holding Mother’s tomatoes. It’s like the really old pictures with nobody smiling. The tomatoes are big and round like empty faces.

  Dad said I used to eat Mother’s tomatoes just like they were apples. He said it made Mother happy to watch me eat.

  Dad said, You know, it was hard to make Mother happy.

  I didn’t know that.

  When I was little, I practiced drawing different kinds of faces.

  Mother sang a song for me:

  This is happy

  This is sad

  This is scared

  This is mad.

  She made her face match the words.

  Leo’s mad at the house. He doesn’t want to go inside, so I walk to the door by myself. Dad’s music is there on the front porch. I can hear his voice singing. Dad gets loud when he sings. I open the door and all the music inside jumps out. It sounds like this: Goodbye to Rosie. I know how the Rosie in the song looks. She’s blue like how the ghost lady looks on the cover of one of Mother’s records. Dad says the blue lady is Joni Mitchell. We don’t listen to her record, though, because her voice gives Dad the goose bumps.