Time to Fly

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  He perches on the fence between our yard and Mr. Cowan’s and cocks his head at me. I love his bright blue head and the way his beak is orange on the upper part and black on the lower. He’s so cute! And smart, too—I can tell by the way he watches me. It’s as if we are playing a game and he’s daring me to try and catch him.

  Dr. Timmons’s words came back to me: The odds of a hand-fed bird surviving for very long in the wild are slim…

  Now’s your chance, Zoe, I tell myself.

  I approach E.T. slowly, talking quietly. “Hello, E.T. Good boy. I won’t hurt you…” I hold out my arm and show him the grapes in my hand. If he’s used to people, maybe he’ll fly to me, just as he used to fly to his owner. “Come on,” I whisper. “Please?”

  But he doesn’t come to me. Instead, he gives me a Bronx cheer—“Brwaak!”—then flutters his wings and swoops into Mr. Cowan’s yard.

  I hesitate a second, then unlatch the gate and follow him. As quietly as possible, I sneak across Mr. Cowan’s yard. There’s no sign of Mr. Cowan, but I’m afraid to call him or go and get him—that might scare E.T. away.

  E.T. starts eating some nuts Mr. Cowan spread out on the railing of his deck. Good, just stay right there, E.T., where I can reach you. I realize I don’t have a towel to wrap around him, the way Gran did the other day with Pickles. Maybe my sweatshirt will do. I ease it off over my head, then slowly, slowly move forward, one step at a time, barely daring to breathe. I’m so close…

  How exactly did Gran capture Pickles? Now that I’m just a few feet from E.T., I realize catching him will not be as easy as Gran made it look. Heart pounding, I exhale slowly. E.T. cocks his head at me.

  I freeze.

  He ruffles his feathers, watching me warily. The moment is now—I’ve got to do something before he flies off. I lunge toward him, throwing my sweatshirt over him like a net.

  Startled, E.T. struggles beneath the thick fabric, squawking in alarm. I try to pick up the shirt with the bird in it, but he struggles so much, it frightens me. He’s much bigger and stronger than I thought—and I realize with a sinking feeling that it’s not so easy to just grab a bird when you’ve never even held one before. I keep thinking of Gran’s warning: If you squeeze his chest too tightly you can suffocate him. What if I grab him the wrong way?

  Now E.T. is so frightened, he’s screaming and shrieking and oh, my gosh, this is not turning out the way I wanted! But I’ve got to do something. I snatch him up, and his head pokes out. Just as I’m remembering what Dr. Timmons said about having powerful beaks, E.T. clamps his beak on my wrist. It hurts! Without meaning to, I gasp and drop the sweatshirt onto the deck, with E.T. still in it.

  With ear-splitting shrieks, E.T. fights his way out from under the shirt and manages to crawl free. He beats his wings to escape, looking disoriented. He takes flight but suddenly veers sideways, smashes into the sliding glass door, and falls to the ground.

  Chapter Eight

  The small bird lies on Mr. Cowan’s deck, not moving. I’m afraid to touch him, afraid I’ll hurt him more.

  What have I done?!

  I run back to our yard, shouting urgently, “Gran—help!” Can she hear me from the clinic? “Help!”

  Suddenly Mom bolts onto our deck. “Zoe! Are you all right?”

  I shake my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Mom, it’s E.T. He’s hurt.”

  “Where?”

  “Next door.” I dash back across the lawn and through the gate, with Mom right behind me. When we get to Mr. Cowan’s deck, I point at the green bird, still lying motionless. “I tried to catch him and he flew into the window. Oh Mom, what if he’s—” I hiccup and start to sob.

  Mom kneels down beside E.T. My sweatshirt’s still lying near the railing, and I hand it to her. With a quick, smooth motion—just like Gran—she picks him up in the sweatshirt. I follow her as she walks swiftly back across the yard to the clinic.

  Gran looks up as we barge into the exam room. “What’s going on?” she asks. Fortunately she’s between patients, but she looks a bit annoyed at the sudden intrusion.

  “It’s all my fault, Gran!” I blurt out. “I—I just wanted to help him…”

  Silently Mom hands her the sweatshirt with the limp bird.

  Gran lays E.T. out on the exam table. His eyes are closed. His wing looks crooked. And he’s got blood on his chest.

  “OK, Zoe, tell me what happened,” Gran orders as she pulls out her stethoscope.

  I tell her.

  “Mmm,” Gran says, a slight frown on her face as she examines the injured bird.

  “I’m so sorry, Gran. All I could think about was rescuing him and making sure he has a good home,” I say, blinking back tears. “I see now it was a bad idea.” I wish desperately that I could turn back the clock and make E.T. whole again, happily eating nuts on Mr. Cowan’s deck. I think of what Gran said to me this morning: Sometimes people do make bad decisions, Zoe, even though they may be trying to do the right thing. Boy, was she ever on the money.

  “Come on, E.T., wake up,” Gran murmurs. She looks at me and Mom. “There’s a heartbeat, so there’s still hope. But with head trauma, if a bird’s unconscious more than a few minutes, he usually won’t make it.”

  Mom takes my hand, and I glance at her. Her eyes are wet, too.

  “Please, E.T.,” I whisper. “Don’t die on me!”

  Mom and Gran exchange a look. I can see they’re thinking the worst.

  No. I can’t bear it if he dies. I’ll be the one who killed him. Come on, E.T., I beg silently. Please give me a chance to learn the right way to hold you.

  A feather twitches.

  I hold my breath. Is he awake? I lean forward, staring at the little white patch encircling his closed eye. Come on, please!

  He twitches. I hold my breath. He twitches again—and then opens his eye and blinks at me.

  “He’s awake!” I whisper.

  “And,” Gran adds, with a big smile, “if he wakes up, he’ll probably make it.” She quickly gives E.T. a shot of cortisone, which, she explains, will help shrink any brain swelling from the head trauma.

  “What about all that blood on his chest?” I ask.

  “There does seem to be rather a lot, and it certainly looks ominous, but I don’t see any wound on his chest,” Gran says, gently turning the bird over. “His cere—that’s the area above his beak—isn’t bloody, so I don’t think he’s bleeding from the nostrils, which is good. But look, he’s damaged the tip of his beak. That’s where the blood’s coming from. It must have happened when he hit the window. I’ll just cauterize the end of it and it should be fine.”

  “Really?” I exhale with relief.

  “It’s not unusual,” Gran explains. “Lots of blood, but no lasting damage. It can be life threatening if the bleeding isn’t controlled, though.”

  Gran gently extends one wing and then the other. E.T. gives a weak squawk. “Yup, I know, you’ve got a broken wing. We’ll set that for you in a little bit.”

  Gran puts E.T. into the oxygen cage, just as she did with Pickles. When he comes out, he seems a little stronger, so Gran takes an X-ray of his wing.

  I roll the anesthesia machine into the X-ray room. On one end of the machine is a long, thin tube with a small plastic cone attached to the end. Before slipping the cone over the bird’s head, Gran does something weird: she takes a rubber surgical glove and ties the fingers together, then snips a small cut in the hand of the glove.

  Puzzled, I ask Gran what she’s doing.

  Gran smiles. “What would happen if I put this cone over E.T.’s head?”

  I frown and study the cone. Then I see the problem. The cone is sized for dogs and cats. If Gran were to put it over E.T.’s little head, “The gas would leak out,” I reply.

  Nodding, she stretches the open end of the glove—the part you put your hand in—over the cone. Then she carefully slips the small cut opening over E.T.’s beak and face, until his entire head is inside the glove.

  I
figure E.T. will freak out, but he seems perfectly calm. “Why isn’t he afraid?” I ask.

  “Most birds become completely quiet and docile in the dark,” Gran says. “They just think it’s time to sleep. And, of course, the gas takes effect right away.”

  Mom settles the limp bird on a cassette of X-ray film, chest up. Gran spreads his wings out and, to my surprise, tapes them down with masking tape. When she sees my surprised expression, she explains, “It sticks to everything but feathers.”

  E.T. keeps sleeping, breathing in the gas, and Gran lets me check his heartbeat with her stethoscope to make sure it’s normal. Then she hustles us all out of the room, so we won’t be exposed to the radiation, and quickly pushes the pedal to shoot the X-ray. Mom and I go back in to E.T., and I check his heart rate again—about 300 beats a minute, just what Gran said it should be.

  A few minutes later, Gran returns from the darkroom. She holds up the X-ray, and it clearly shows the breakage in E.T.’s wing. Gran says it’s in the “radius,” which is basically the same bone we have in our forearms. Quickly Gran positions the wing and wraps it against the parrot’s body with a cloth bandage so it can heal. She gives E.T. an injection for pain, and then Mom removes the glove from his head, stopping the gas. In about a minute, E.T. comes to.

  I prepare a cage with water and food, and Gran places him inside. “He’ll have a rough day or two,” she says, “but soon he’ll be almost as good as new. The wing should heal in three or four weeks.”

  Mom and I carry E.T.’s cage into a dark, quiet room where he can rest and recuperate in a peaceful environment.

  We peek into his cage to say good night. “Do you think he’s really going to be all right? “ I ask Mom.

  Mom puts her arm across my shoulders. “I think he’ll be fine.”

  That night, Mom and I sit on my bed in our pj’s, and Mom tells me all about how she and Joanne used to help Gran at Dr. Mac’s Place, just as Maggie and I do now. It’s funny how life sometimes comes full circle, often in the ways you least expect.

  Sneakers leaps onto the bed with us, and I’m amazed when Mom scoops him into her arms. All my life, she’s avoided having anything to do with animals, yet I saw how concerned she was about E.T. today, and now here she is snuggling with Sneakers! I can’t stand it anymore. I have to ask her the burning question: “Mom, why don’t you want Sneakers to come to Los Angeles?”

  “Zoe, I told you—”

  “I know you’ll be busy, but I’m old enough to take care of Sneakers myself. I already do!”

  “I know, honey, you’ve done a great job with Sneakers. But—” She falters, then continues. “If anything should happen to him—”

  “That’s your whole concern? You didn’t want me to keep Sneakers because he’s going to die someday?” I can’t quite buy this explanation. Mom’s a risk taker. Since when has a risk ever held her back from doing something she wanted?

  Then Mom gets that sad look in her eyes again, and suddenly I wish I could snatch my question back. “Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. It’s none of my business,” I murmur.

  “No, I should tell you. It’s just…hard to talk about.”

  “Gran says I’m a good listener,” I say encour agingly.

  Mom smiles, then begins. “I had a dog once. I named her Lady. She was a stray that showed up in the neighborhood. We wound up adopting her—”

  “Just like Sneakers!”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Mom takes a deep breath, then continues. “I’d always begged for my own pet, and finally Ma and Pop agreed. I took her everywhere.” She pats my bed. “She even slept with me, at the foot of this very bed. I loved that dog.”

  I swallow. Something bad is coming.

  “Ma always nagged me about keeping her on a leash when we were out. But Lady didn’t really like the leash, so when I took her on walks where Ma couldn’t see us, I’d let her loose.” Mom stares off in the distance. “Oh, Zoe, you should have seen her run. She could really move.”

  Mom doesn’t say any more for a few moments. At last I whisper, “What happened to her?”

  “One day I let her off the leash and she ran into the street…” Mom shrugs her shoulders and blinks back tears.

  She doesn’t have to tell me what happened.

  “Ma and Pop told me not to blame myself, that it was an accident. But I knew it was my fault. I swore I’d never have another pet. Because I couldn’t bear to feel that kind of sorrow again.” Her voice almost a whisper, she adds, “And I never, ever wanted to hurt another animal.”

  I think about all the family members she’s lost in her life since losing Lady: Her dad, who died when she was ten. Joanne, her sister. Not to mention my dad, who left her when I was a toddler.

  “Sometimes it’s just easier not to have something, even if it’s something you might want,” she says.

  I can’t help it—I have to ask: “Is that why it was so easy for you to leave me?”

  “Zoe! Is that what you think? No, it wasn’t easy—it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And it was only supposed to be for a little while. I never planned on it being this long.” She takes my face in her hands. “Oh, sweetheart, I wish I could go back and redo this year. I know I made some promises I couldn’t keep. You see, if I’d known we’d be apart for nearly a year, I never would have done it. The whole time, I wanted to believe that you’d be coming out soon, so I just acted as if it were true. But I was fooling myself, and it was horribly unfair to you.” She takes a big breath. “I want you back home with me, Zoe. Seeing you here, it’s really hit me how much you’ve grown up since we left New York. And I don’t want to miss another minute.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  We hold each other for a few minutes without saying a word. Then she asks softly, “What do you think, Zoe? Do you want to come home now?”

  For a moment I hold my breath. I wish I could be in two places at once. Or somehow blend both places into one.

  But I have to make a choice. And I’ve made up my mind. I know what I want to do.

  Chapter Nine

  “Hurry up!” Maggie hollers up the stairs on Wednesday morning.

  “Don’t you mean hurry down?” I yell back at my cousin from the second floor, just to annoy her.

  Sunita runs up the stairs to my room, holding a stack of folded shirts. “These were on the dryer. Do they go in a suitcase?”

  I groan. “Mom,” I call over my shoulder, “how could you possibly wear eight shirts in three days?”

  “Zoe, honey, do you know where my contacts are?” is her only reply.

  “Check your purse,” I say, shaking my head.

  Really, I don’t know how she got along without me this past year. When I get to California, things are going to be different.

  Because I’ve decided: I’m going to move to L.A. with her. Only I’m not going right away.

  Mom and I talked for a long time Monday night. I finally summoned the nerve to ask her what came between her and Gran. It’s as I suspected: Gran never wanted Mom to be a professional actress. In fact, they had colossal fights about it, especially when Mom dropped out of college to go to New York. Gran knew that show business is a hard profession and very few actors make it. She’d always hoped Mom would go to vet school and eventually come to work in the clinic with her. But after Lady died, Mom just turned away from animals completely.

  Talking about all these painful events of the past, especially with Sneakers right there on the bed with us, seemed to help Mom come around to the idea that it might be OK to have a pet again. I told her about how my friend Jane’s dog, Yum-Yum, died of cancer last fall, right around the time Sneakers came into my life. Jane was incredibly sad to lose Yum-Yum, but—as I pointed out to Mom—that didn’t mean Jane was sorry she’d ever had Yum-Yum for a pet. I think this helped Mom realize that I’ve seen animals die and that I’m old enough to have some perspective on it and be able to handle it when it happens.

  So when school is out, in about six we
eks, Sneakers and I will be moving out to California. Gran says she might even take a rare vacation and come with us to see Mom’s new place. I want Maggie to come, too. Maybe she can even stay for part of the summer.

  Since Mom won’t be seeing me for another six weeks, she decided to stay here one more day with Gran and me. We had a great day yesterday. First, Mom and I slept in, because we were up talking half the night. I got to play hooky again, and since the clinic wasn’t very busy, Gran left Dr. Gabe in charge and we all went out for lunch. (“In L.A. they call this ‘doing lunch,’” Mom informed us.) In the afternoon, while Mom studied her new script, I visited Mr. Cowan and told him all about the sheriff’s phone call and what happened to E.T. Mr. Cowan liked my ideas for encouraging people around Ambler to put out fruit and vegetables for the parrots, along with birdseed.

  Today, as soon as we get back from taking Mom to the airport, I’m going to e-mail the California Parrot Project and ask about volunteer opportunities out there. Sunita has already told me she’d be glad to set up and run a Web site for our Ambler parrots, to keep track of the flock and educate the public about the birds. So when I move out to L.A., I’ll be able to check on the Ambler parrots anytime, just by going to the Web site.

  As I head downstairs, David pops his head into the hallway from the clinic door. “Uh, is this parrot supposed to be out of its cage?”

  “E.T.!” I don’t have to ask which of our feathered patients he’s referring to. Pickles is a quiet, cooperative bird, but E.T. is an escape artist. That’s probably how he got loose from his former owner. Dr. Gabe has nicknamed him Houdini. “I’ll go get him,” I tell David.

  “Time to fly!” E.T. squawks as I gently return him to his cage. Yesterday Gran showed me how to hold a bird, and I practiced on Pickles.

  “You got that right!” I laugh. “It’s my mom you need to tell!”

  E.T. looks like he’s going to recover almost as quickly as his namesake did in the movie. We’ve notified all the animal shelters, and we’re going to run a “found” ad in the newspaper, just in case. If nobody claims him, Gran says maybe—just maybe—I can take him with me to California. I think she realizes I’m determined to become an expert on parrots, and by the time I leave, I’ll know enough about parrot care to be able to give him a good home.