by C M Muller
She aims a handful of popcorn at the leg, the three pieces bouncing away from each other as they land.
Another leg emerges from underneath the other side of the bird’s front, curling into a moist spiral on the grass. A third leg oozes out a little bit halfway down the left side of the bird, but then does nothing else.
“Wanna bread?” Coriander spins a slice at the bird. It lands on its flat, rough back. A fourth leg, with a gum wrapper stuck to one of its stiff segments, snicks itself up from underneath and lays across the bread slice.
“Coriander?”
“She wants to stay!”
But Coriander dutifully gets up on her feet. She wobbles a bit at that height, one shoe accidentally stepping on the bird’s back.
The front of the bird makes little wet clicking noises. A long yellow-red beak, three colorless bristles sprouted on it, stickily pushes out. Down the length of the bird on either side a buzzing starts, and wide, dark wings flick out, then draw in to where they’re close to the body.
“Coriander!”
Coriander stops at the walk and carefully turns around to wave goodbye to the large bird still lying concealed in the grass.
“Cory, look at me baby, this is Sarah, she’s going to come over to our house tonight for dinner, isn’t that nice? Did you fall?” Nana wipes at Coriander’s chin with her thumb. Coriander stands still, concentrating on keeping her balance.
Nana looks at the pad of her thumb, then at Coriander’s chin. She pulls a lipstick-stained tissue out of the waistband of her shorts, spits on it, and starts rubbing it, despite Coriander’s facial protestations, against her chin.
Coriander looks at the other woman while her chin is being wiped. Sarah smiles down at her, her short black hair making her teeth look whiter and bigger.
“I guess your mom takes pretty good care of you.”
“She’s not my mom.”
Nana tosses the wad of tissue onto the grass.
Coriander goes down the stairs backwards, on her knees. When she reaches the bottom, she turns around and toddles through the hall.
She stops at the wide, square doorway between the hall and the living room.
Nana and that Sarah are on the sofa. The coffee table in front of them holds two melting drinks on magazines.
Nana is in her bikini. Sarah is in a long dress, but the hem is above her knees.
Nana has Sarah’s bare feet up on her shoulders, digging her fingers into the curling soles.
Sarah is lying on her back on cushions propped against the side of the sofa, hands twitching like she wants to stop what Nana is doing.
“It doesn’t tickle so much when you press in so hard.”
“People don’t realize how sensitive feet can be.”
“That feels really good. Right there.”
“Right here? Right here below your toes?”
“Yeah.”
Nana works in silence for a moment, biceps flexing. “People should have their feet massaged more often.”
“Oh. I like that, between the toes, like that.” Sarah shifts her legs, resting her feet more comfortably on Nana’s shoulders. “This is so relaxing.” She brings her hands up to her ears, letting her eyes droop. Takes a deep breath. “No one ever took such care with me before. I don’t deserve it.” Sarah’s mouth starts trembling. She sniffs moistly, starts crying, her face red.
“Baby, what are you doing here?”
“She doesn’t have anything left to do.”
Nana swings Sarah’s twisting feet away from her neck, onto the coffee table.
“Go outside and play, sweetheart.”
“What’s Nana doing?”
“Aunt Sarah has a lot of pain, and Nana’s trying to help her.”
“Hi, Coriander.”
Coriander sits on the flagstone terrace behind the house with her legs out in front of her, shoes pointing up, hands braced behind her to stay in a sitting position. A black ant pokes around on the slab her right fingers are spread across, but she doesn’t see it.
She rolls her head back, snarling one side of her lips down and making a clucking sound with her tongue, looking up at the sky. She stares directly at the sun, squinting almost immediately, sliding her stare around the rim, eyes watering, head hurting.
Fluttering rush in front of her. She rolls her head forward, looking for a moment like a woman.
Two pigeons hobbling around on the flagstones, pecking at wood chips.
Coriander shows them her pebble encrusted palms.
“No food. Sorry.”
They fan back a few sidesteps at the sound of her voice.
“Your name is Nana, and your name is Corider.”
Out of the ragged line of trees at the rear of the property a large bird flaps with ungainly determination towards the terrace. It has trouble lowering itself, sticking things out to try to right itself as it touches down. Once it’s on the patio, it tucks its wings in close to its body immediately, making it look like an immense, flat beetle. It starts sliding forward towards Coriander.
The two pigeons cringe backwards up into the air, turning their wings around and flying away, feathers puffed out.
“You found out where I live!”
The bird advances low on the ground until it’s within petting distance. Coriander strokes its rough, brittle back, crooning every third or fourth note of a lullaby.
She tilts her head to one side, feeling the coarseness of the bird’s back against her fingers.
“I don’t have any food for you.”
The bird crawls forward until it’s at the taut hem of the skirt stretched across her chubby legs. Coriander reaches forward to pet further down its back, smiling with her mouth open.
It tilts the front of its body up, climbing onto the hammock formed by her skirt.
This close, half in her lap, she can see its flat, wide back isn’t just one dark color. There are speckles of emerald and sapphire along one side, and a jigsaw splotch of pale topaz on the other side, at the rear. She raises a vertical finger, and meticulously outlines the splotch, feeling the slight welt of its border.
“Coriander!”
“She’s out here.”
“Ugh, what’s that?”
“It’s her bird.”
Nana takes a puff on her cigarette, walks over, then backs up a step in her bare feet.
“That doesn’t look like a bird, baby. It looks like a huge horseshoe crab or something.” She folds her arms, lifting one pink heel off the terrace. “Don’t let it crawl on you like that.”
Sarah reaches down and hauls Coriander by her armpits out from under the bird. The front of the bird lowers very slowly onto the flagstones.
Nana, looking at the plucked loops of thread on the front of Coriander’s dress. She turns to Sarah. “Baby, you shouldn’t handle something like that. It might have some kind of skin disease.”
“Cancer.”
Nana reaches out and down, slaps Coriander across the face.
Coriander’s face snaps back to where it was before, now half white and half red. She lowers her eyes. After a moment, she bursts into tears.
“Jackie.”
“Fuck, I don’t know why I did that. Honey, get up off the ground. Nana’s sorry.” She undoes the bun in her hair, shaking her head to let the long hair fall out of its descending swirl.
“We’re going to the store, want to come? We have to buy lemons. You can ride up front with Sarah and me.”
Coriander sits on a bar stool at the counter dividing the kitchen from the breakfast nook, swinging her head to follow the two women bustling back and forth.
Nana lowers a Flintstones glass filled with ice and Coca-Cola onto the counter in front of Coriander.
When the toast pops up, Sarah’s shoulders jump.
“Easy, kid.”
Sarah bows her head, cheeks blushing. “I hope this is a good idea.”
Nana puts a painted fingernail o
n the rim of Coriander’s drink, lowers the glass curve away from her sucking lips. “How does Aunt Sarah look, baby?”
Coriander sighs, rubbing her elbow on the granite. She gives a quick glance at Sarah, who’s standing with her arms out from her sides, smiling kindly. She’s wearing a short, sleeveless dress with a buttoned-up collar.
“Very pretty, I guess.”
Nana thrusts her shoulders back, breathing in to deepen the cleavage of her low cut top. “How about Nana? Am I beautiful?”
“She thinks you’re very beautiful, Nana.”
Sarah puts a white plate down in front of Coriander, removing from the plate two of the three toast slices. Spreads mayonnaise on the remaining one. With her index finger she brushes the wispy blonde hair out of Coriander’s bored-looking eyes. Coriander shakes her face until the hair falls back, then turns her head away, studying the calendar on the wall.
“Coriander, Nana tells me you’ve never had one of these before.” Her voice is soft. “I hope you like it. When you’re a big girl and a boy takes you to a restaurant for lunch, this might be what you’ll eat. So this way you can try one now to see if you like it.”
Coriander keeps watching the calendar. Out of the corners of her eyes she can see Sarah carefully unfold a lettuce leaf out across the toast slice, the edges of it making little curly lines in the mayonnaise. When Sarah lifts her fingers away, the leaf relaxes, rising up slightly.
“You don’t talk a whole lot, do you Coriander?”
Coriander deliberates a moment, still looking off, then shakes her head.
“I didn’t talk much either when I was a little girl.” She lays two rolled slices of turkey on top of the lettuce, which lowers it again. The rounded blade of her knife swirls more mayonnaise over the pale meat. “A lot of times, I just liked watching people, learning about them. You too?”
Coriander stays quiet for a moment, then clears her throat. “Sometimes.” She makes her face look more stubborn.
Sarah goes to stroke Coriander’s hair, but hesitates. Instead, she picks up the bacon. “Sometimes I think you’ve got five feet of problems on a four foot shelf, sweetheart.” She arranges the bacon on top of the mayonnaise turkey in neat, crinkly rows. She picks up the last piece of bacon and stands it upright on the others, making it bend in half and address Coriander. “Hi, Coriander.”
Coriander slips her head down onto her little bicep, looking exasperated, but her eyes are a little less red. “Bacon can’t talk.”
Sarah holds the second piece of toast, covering one side of it with mayonnaise, then places it slathered side down on top of the sandwich, glancing quietly to see if she still has Coriander’s attention. “I’ll bet you think this sandwich is through now, don’t you?”
Coriander gets a sophisticated look on her face. “Maybe you’re gonna cut it in half.”
Sarah smiles, then picks up the knife. She tilts it into the mayonnaise jar again. Coriander watches despite herself.
Sarah spreads a layer of mayonnaise across the top of the sandwich.
Coriander sits bolt upright. “That’s silly!”
“No it isn’t.”
Coriander rears back on the stool, sternly watching as Sarah drapes a few glossy slices of ham across the mayonnaise-topped sandwich. Her eyes switch warily from Sarah’s face back to the sandwich, where three rounds of sliced tomatoes have been added. She shifts uneasily atop her stool.
“You made a big mess and you have to clean it up.”
Sarah says nothing. She works in profile, putting more mayonnaise on top of the tomato slices. Coriander juts her lower lip out, then flexes it up over her upper lip, kissing it against the cleft below her nose, eyes narrowing uncertainly.
Sarah places the third toast slice on top. She turns full-faced towards Coriander, winking.
“Now that’s a sandwich, isn’t it?
Coriander grabs both hands around her Flintstones glass and slants it to her mouth, breathing through her nose, looking sideways at Sarah, then at the sandwich. An ice cube bangs against her teeth, making her blink.
Sarah pushes four toothpicks down through the stack. Each toothpick has a different colored plastic strip curlicued at its blunt end. Red, blue, yellow, green.
To cut the high sandwich she uses a knife with a very, very long serrated blade. Instead of cutting it in half she cuts it in four, corner to corner, each quarter held together by one of the toothpicks.
In turn she picks up each fat, multi-layered triangle, holding it firmly in her fingers while she pokes the sharp end of the toothpick out through the bottom slice of toast, then places each of the four parcels on their sides on the plate.
With a moment’s hesitation, raising her head, sad-eyed, reaches out and strokes the little girl’s hair. Coriander lifts her eyebrows, smiles shyly.
Nana stands at the other end of the counter, resting her elbow in her left hand, smoking a cigarette. “There you go, baby. Now you have a club sandwich. One more step towards becoming a woman. Thanks, Sarah.”
“Can I share it with my bird?”
“No. I told you I don’t want you playing with that thing. It smells, and it’s making you smell from handling it so much.”
“I don’t smell.”
“You sure do. I told you that two weeks ago, and you keep deliberately disobeying me each and every day.”
“Would you like some milk to go with your sandwich, Coriander?”
Sarah’s head twitches. Nana hurriedly stubs out her cigarette.
The doorbell ding-dongs again.
By the time Coriander has carefully toddled down the dark hall, trailing one pudgy hand along the white wall to keep her balance on the carpet, the men’s voices are booming in the foyer.
“Who’s this?”
Nana turns her head away from the two big men in their suits, lowering her eyes at Coriander, whose hand whirls in the air as it leaves the wall. Nana’s hair is stretched up away from her face. She looks very pretty and small. Sarah is standing behind Nana, bringing her hand up to her close-cropped hair to pat it, smiling nervously.
“Baby, go back and finish your sandwich.”
One of the big men strides over, standing in front of Coriander, blocking her. He squats down to Coriander’s eye level. His big, pale blue stare rolls around, inspecting Coriander up close. He smells sweet and harsh and salty. Coriander turns her face away, making a fat fist.
“You didn’t tell me you had a kid. Jeez, look how small her face is.” He puts his hairy hand up in front of her. Coriander makes a lemon-eating expression, looking sideways at the short white lines across his wrist. “Her face isn’t any bigger than my palm!”
The other man comes over from behind the first one, half-squatting at his back. “She’s a little young for you, Jilly.”
“It’s not my kid. She’s my granddaughter. It’s a long story.”
“We don’t have time for long stories, Jackie. The ice is melting.”
“Baby, Mrs. Roediger will be coming along any minute.” Nana clicks her little purse open and peers inside. “Finish your sandwich and watch TV until she gets here, OK?”
“We could wait a minute.”
“Sarah’s an old Nervous Nellie because this is her first date in a long time.”
Sarah, trying not to look irritated, glances at Coriander and shrugs.
Coriander raises her shoulders up, lowers them back down.
Coriander lies in bed on her back. The room is dark, but her eyes are still open. Her legs, under the covers, only go a third of the way down the length of the mattress.
Rapid scratching at the window.
She purses her lips, struggling to throw the covers off her chest. Her ten toes switch back and forth until the tiny balls swing down against the rug beside her bed. She falls over once on her way to the window, her shoulder speeding a duck up and down on its wheels across the wooden floor.
Climbing on her hands and knees up the cardbo
ard packing boxes containing all that’s left of her mother, to the window. Once she gets the latch unhooked, her bird’s bulk pushes the French window open wide enough for it to ooze through, feathers and tubular sloughs of scaly skin floating in the air.
The bird crawls onto Coriander, pushing her down onto her back on the top cardboard box.
And is just as quickly knocked off her pajamas. She watches, amazed, as a book slides down the wall on its spine, pages vibrating like a pair of horse’s lips. Raises her head to look for her bird. Lying at a tilt in a shadowy corner far away.
Mrs. Roediger stands in the doorway, light behind her. She picks up another heavy book and sends it shuffling through the air at the bird.
“You’re hurting him!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Mrs. Roediger bangs her foot down on the floor at the bird, terrified look on her face. “How did it get in here? Did it bite you?”
Coriander swings a bare foot over the edge of the box she’s on, crying. “You’re jealous!”
With a spread of wings far wider than would ever be expected from a creature its size, the bird scrabbles up the boxes to the open window and wriggles through backwards, the long, luxurious wings twitching through after it like antennae.
A solitary pigeon pecks around the border of the flagstone patio. After every few dips of its head, it nonchalantly points its profile at the bag of bread in Coriander’s lap.
“Shoo away.”
The untended grass at the edge of the patio starts waving in one spot.
Coriander hoists her bag high for her bird to see.
The pigeon, startled by Coriander’s sudden movement, fans its wings.
Darkness moves to the edge of the patio, rising out of the green grass, uncoiling five legs across the nearest slab.
The pigeon swivels its head around on its humped shoulders until it has its profile to the uncoiled legs. Its feathers puff, making it look bigger, then it keels over sideways on the slab, one leg sticking up.
Coriander’s bird starts to glide happily across the terrace.
The bird stops. Starts to vibrate, a whistling whimper coming out of it.