Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  I kept an urban coop in the backyard stocked with silkie bantams. An ornamental breed, they produced tiny eggs and paraded around the coop like Solid Gold dancers, their legs ensconced in black feathered pantaloons, heads topped with Afro-shaped tufts. The hens were gentle and broody, good mothers who’d go so far as to raise eggs that weren’t their own.

  Zydo and I fed the silkies each morning. We walked out to their fenced-in coop, crouching down inches away from the gate. The ladies sprinted from their henhouse down the wooden ramp, lunging at the ground in fevered hunger.

  The first time I saw a chicken run to food, I was inspired. A full-on sprint, stride like a split. That’s how you get what you want, I thought. Go all out or give up.

  The morning was cool. I could see the barbed wire atop the tall prison fence a block away. I stretched from side to side, trying to warm up my body. These days I woke feeling stiff, mechanical. Old.

  As my hens clucked and the lone rooster postured, I imagined a baby’s lips tugging at my breast. Hot breath on my skin, innocent eyes.

  I’m sorry I eat your children before they hatch, I said to the hens.

  One of the perks, I told Sam later that morning, is that you can take home produce every day.

  I was going for the hard sell.

  Tiny Hanson sat on the sidewalk with her feet spread out in front of her. The cuffs of her snowsuit pinched her swollen ankles. There was gum on the bottom of her scuffed leather pumps. Tiny took one off and rubbed her heel. She trailed Sam with suspicious eyes.

  I don’t know if I like kale, Sam said.

  You learn to love it, I said.

  The truth was, every year I reached a point where I couldn’t look at another leaf of kale, another fanned-out collard the size of my face. Hot sauce, garlic, and brown sugar be damned—by the end of the summer I only had eyes for ice cream.

  Last September, while pounds of kale and chard wilted in the back of my sweltering truck, I sucked down a milkshake at the Dairy Barn and let Zydo lick the cup when I was done. I lay down on a picnic table and looked up at the sky, one hand on Zydo’s belly.

  Waste not, want not, I had lied to myself.

  The sound of children laughing, the sight of their ice-creamed faces had made my body cramp with need. I wanted to lay my hands on their sun-kissed cheeks, comb their soft hair with my fingers.

  While Sam weeded, Tiny approached me, shoved her bad breath and broken teeth in my face.

  What, she said. I’m not enough help? You don’t love me no more?

  I love you just fine, I said, stepping back. Sam’s just here to learn.

  Ain’t no love gon’ fix me now anyway, Tiny said, scratching her neck.

  Let me see that, I said, peering at the scaly rash underneath her chin.

  I’ll bring calamine lotion Monday, I said. Don’t scratch. You might spread it.

  I cupped the back of Tiny’s head.

  You’re going to be okay, I said.

  Sam came up to us. She had dirt on her forehead and a million questions behind her eyes.

  How do we feed everyone? Sam asked. You can’t eat an uncooked potato.

  Tiny sauntered off, muttering: And who’s the prized whore now?

  We don’t have to worry about potatoes until June, I said. But there’s a stack of black stockpots in the shed. If I’m not around, just start a fire in the pit, put the grate down, and boil the potatoes.

  The boys and girls will bring their own ketchup packets, duck sauce, salt. Smashed peas aren’t bad for flavor.

  A fire? Sam said.

  The tomatoes are what you have to worry about in the summer—they go fast, I said. The customers won’t riot, but they get grabby. No one but Tiny really likes turnips—you can leave those in a grocery bag for her.

  I don’t think I can do this, Sam said. I thought I was just volunteering to water plants.

  Just stay on until Monday, I said. Please. Mac and I are out on the boat this weekend. Managing the garden’s not as hard as it sounds—just different.

  Sam rubbed the back of her neck and raised her eyebrows.

  I need this weekend, I pleaded.

  She fiddled with the Velcro on the outside of her glove.

  Maybe you could be a surrogate mother, I thought, looking at Sam’s unlined face and strong legs.

  I think I’d be better off doing advocacy work, Sam said.

  When the sun is setting and you’ve got ten or so customers sitting on the sidewalk, quiet as can be with their mouths full, you’ll see, I said. They’ll drift away, and you’ll find yourself alone in the garden, kale to your knees, feeling good. I always sit for a moment in the center, eating strawberries, and watch the sun disappear.

  I don’t want to be here alone, Sam said.

  Tiny will help you, I said. Tiny always helps.

  Sam was quiet.

  I’ll pay you under the table, I said. Whatever it takes.

  I went home to pack for the boat trip. I groped for my travel toothbrush in a drawer full of ovulation indicators, my digital basal thermometer, and an ovulation chart. I was my own science fair project.

  Zydo was on his back in our bed, rooting through the pillows, dirt from his nails marking the sheets. I didn’t care. I’d let him do anything. Lick my cereal bowl, chase the chickens. I would atone forever.

  I thumbed through old clothes, clothes I thought I should give to Tiny. Frayed sweatshirts, grass-stained shorts.

  Mac and I had promised each other we’d stay out of the customers’ personal lives, but I had made exceptions. Recently, I’d purchased bedroom slippers for Tiny so she could rest her feet at night. I slipped anti-inflammatories and Tums to Saint Charles to soothe his stomach.

  Without realizing it, I had let Mac’s Urban Garden become more mine than his. These days, I might not know myself without it. My therapist said I had a garden full of orphans.

  It’s too much, I’d told her, and yet not enough.

  I spied my negative pregnancy test in the trash can.

  Piss on it, I said.

  Driving to Beaufort, Mac pointed out his family farm, the old farmhouse now a hay barn for someone’s heifers.

  There are pieces of me everywhere down east, he said. An uncle here, a cousin there. Most with no teeth to speak of.

  All the reason to make more pieces, I said. Better pieces.

  Sam called as Mac and I were settling in on the boat. Mac whisked two bags of groceries into the galley. I figured he was disappearing on purpose. He was more concerned with future projects—a weekly farmer’s market in the poor area of town, an environmentally friendly fishmonger on Blount.

  Jesus Christ, Sam said, panting into the phone. Saint Charles took a disproportionate share of collards. Phil Collins with a Mustache is selling our zucchini flowers for a profit at the farmer’s market on Blount Street.

  That’s okay, I said. I wish Phil had asked, but we don’t use the flowers.

  Not Grandmaster Flash bit into an onion like an apple, Sam said. Tiny tied prayer flags into the pea fencing.

  Not all bad, I said.

  But that’s not the worst, Sam said. This morning Our Neil Diamond pulled his penis out and danced around the cantaloupe patch, screaming, “Impotent melons! Impotent melons!”

  What’s important, I said, is that you keep the shears and the hoe close to you, and cultivate a sense of authority.

  I quit, she said.

  The day we retrieved Zydo from Animal Control, he was limp with exhaustion and had just come off intravenous fluids. He thumped his tail once or twice upon seeing us.

  I did not say it, but I blamed Mac, whom I could hardly speak to after seeing Zydo’s weak body. Mac was too easygoing. He did not play worst-case scenario. Next time I would listen to my gut.

  I held Zydo in the backseat of the car as we drove down the pine-lined highway toward Raleigh. I spooned his tired back, rubbed his ears. I massaged the muscles weary from the Big Swim. My fingers ached from planting, but I did not stop stroking Zy
do. My heart was subterraneous, a root crop, damp, hiding from the sun in shame.

  It could be simple, I thought to myself. I could tell Mac how much I want a baby. I could tell him that I think we can do more, that I need his enthusiasm.

  I went to find him. Zydo trailed me.

  Mac sat next to the motor with his feet in the water. He was smoking a cigar and looked satisfied with life.

  Sam quit, I said. And I want a baby. I’m willing to do anything. Things that cost money.

  Looking pensive, Mac nodded and blew smoke toward the clouds. He wasn’t the type of man to respond quickly; he liked to have processing time. He lay back on the deck, hands behind his head. It had taken me years to find comfort in his silence.

  I peeled off my T-shirt and jumped into the ocean. Zydo followed.

  I closed my eyes and felt the water rush over my head. If Mac left me, I could take up agility training with Zydo. We could walk the halls of hospitals. We could corral errant geese at airports. We could find a sperm donor.

  But what if it was me who didn’t work? What if I was rusted inside, imperfect, past my prime? Cursed?

  Zydo and I paddled around near the boat. I let him swim to me, felt his claws on my arms and chest. I didn’t mind the welts, not now. I inhaled the smell of his wet fur. In a moment, we would both be tired enough for land.

  Stay with me, I said to him, and I will make it up to you. Again and again.

  Treading water, I turned to look at the fading sun. There was something appealing about an uninterrupted horizon.

  I imagined Zydo swimming out into the open water. Sometimes you didn’t know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for the best.

  I pictured Sam leaving the garden, knocking off her boots before driving away in her expensive car. Tiny would sleep there, watch out for things until I was back. She’d shoo Phil away from the early cucumbers, keep Saint Charles from eating too many strawberries. I never asked, but I knew she’d do it anyway.

  Tiny with her tired feet and cavernous mouth. Tiny with her varicose veins and dirty snowsuit. Tiny discarded by her family. Tiny with her whispered threats and kind actions.

  Mac helped Zydo and me back onto the boat. I kissed his forehead and went to shower. As I stood underneath the sliver of water, I panicked. I needed to know that Zydo was safe. I ran out onto the boat deck, towel halfheartedly tucked between my breasts. Zydo and Mac were napping on the bow, a bottle of beer in Mac’s hand.

  Trust me, Mac said, both eyes closed, fingers tangled in Zydo’s ears. Just trust me.

  He opened his eyes and removed my towel with one hand, led me to the cabin with the other.

  After making love, Mac peeled himself off of me and offered me the towel.

  I shook my head.

  Zydo put one paw on the side of the bed.

  Do you ever get tired of begging? I asked Zydo, though I was happy to have what he wanted.

  Mac left the room to pour us drinks.

  No rocks for me, I said.

  Ice on the boat was made from frozen seawater. To me, it filled bourbon with the taste of crustaceans, shells, salt, soft-bodied mollusks—the building blocks of living things.

  Raise your hips, I’d read, let gravity help the sperm make its way to your eggs. I gripped my hip bones and thrust my pelvis into the air.

  Just days before, Tiny had lifted up her shirt and showed me her sagging breasts, the jagged white stretch marks surrounding her areolas.

  My babies done sucked me dry and moved on, she’d said.

  The boat rocked with Mac’s shifting weight. Zydo paced the hallway, keeping one eye on me and one eye on Mac. Though my chances were ugly and greatly diminished, I put my legs up on the wall to hold them all inside.

  The Right Company

  The month after I found out my husband, Nate, slept with a woman who rode dressage, I rented a run-down cottage on Abbet’s Cove with sloping pine floors and a large front porch that caught the sound-side breeze. The Realtor dropped a marble and it rolled from the front door to the back. I’d always wanted to live in an old house, but Nate had preferred new construction. Perfect, I said to the Realtor. I’ll take it.

  I attached an oil painting of the Virgin Mother to my headboard with a Chip Clip. She was street-vendor beautiful and reminded me of Donna Reed, draped in a blue bedsheet, lipstick and rouge faultlessly applied. That night I almost slept, the faint smell of Fritos above my pillow.

  Dear Mary, I prayed, let me be celibate and rational. Let me, for once, forget about men and be happy.

  Lights off, I lay in bed, no one but Mary listening, remembering all the men I’d slept with, the boys I’d wanted who hadn’t wanted me back, and how it had ruined parts of my life. The love letters I’d left in a locker for the star pitcher in high school—he hadn’t read them. The beers I’d bought for the guitarist six years my junior—he’d blushed. The husband I’d loved—he’d strayed. Maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough. Better not to try at all, I figured. Better to cut out the complexity and admit that I never really believed in marriage, the power of a vow between flawed people.

  Mother Mary, I said. How can I find peace after this year? Have faith, she said.

  You always say that, I said. Everyone does.

  Two cats were already living in the house when I moved in. I let them stay. I let them sleep in the bed.

  When I couldn’t sleep—I’ve had insomnia for years—I walked through my new neighborhood and gazed into other people’s living room windows. Televisions lit rooms like squad cars. I saw the backs of people’s heads, arms around shoulders, the moments when a family has relaxed into itself, into the couch, faces unwatched and watching.

  Sometimes I sat outside and watched the silhouette of my new neighbor on his ham radio, his tin-sided shed lit up at night. From the porch swing I could hear the anarchist funk band practicing in the abandoned barbershop, the metallic sound of the doughnut shop stacking trays in trucks for the morning delivery.

  I was a runaway from a husband who had cheated but felt bad about it—bad enough to want me back. I just wasn’t brave enough to go. I was onto something about myself. Even if my heart was broken, maybe this was my chance to live the way I wanted to live, and where. Sure I’d be lonely. Sure I’d crave companionship. But the idea of real freedom was seductive.

  Within two months, I’d made one new friend in town—Al Hastings. Al was a food writer who frequented the mom-and-pop restaurants of Eastern North Carolina. He talked about vanishing Americana, red-eyed gravy, the genericized Southern vernacular. He was fat and harmless, and we shared a love of comfort food. Five mornings a week at eight o’clock, Al and I ate breakfast at Ella’s, a brick diner a few blocks from the harbor. He only had eyes for food, but he was company. I didn’t have to sleep with him to earn a conversation over breakfast. Though we spent a lot of time together, we never held hands, or even hugged for that matter. I’d only seen him look at Mae’s plates with lust, never my décolletage or tanned legs. I didn’t want to sleep with him, but I wanted him to want me all the same.

  My husband once said attraction is accidental, that bodies decide on each other. Al and I seemed to have bodies that ignored each other, bodies more focused on what hip, cheap meal lay ahead.

  In Abbet’s Cove, I found comfort in routine—in scratch biscuits and Sanka, in the company of a man who loved to lick grease from his fingers. Sometimes Al ordered things I couldn’t watch him eat, like brains and eggs. When he placed his order, his accent was thick, like he was trying to get in good with the waitress.

  One morning, five months into our breakfast routine, I slid into the booth next to him just as the waitress was handing him a menu. He smiled at me and did not waste time placing his order.

  Fried chicken and hotcakes, he said. Thank you, ma’am.

  Try and write a review without the words tender and crispy, I said. Can you do it?

  Ella’s had six booths and a lunch counter.
Al liked to watch the fishermen, fresh off the morning’s boats, order biscuits and gravy. The booth stuck to the undersides of our thighs. The linoleum floor peeled underneath the chair legs. An air-conditioning unit hummed and dripped in the corner window. There was a display of Lance snack foods next to the counter that no one ever touched, though the honey-bun package said bakery fresh! Ella was long dead, her skillet bronzed and mounted on the wall. The short-order chefs, former marines from the nearby base, were large and sweaty and peered through the window behind the counter. The menu was listed on a ribbed plastic board that hung next to Ella’s skillet. Underneath were stacks of newspapers and a gum and cigarette machine.

  I liked eating at Ella’s because it was sacred to a few loyal customers but otherwise seemed forgotten. It was a quiet place, a time warp that reminded me of growing up in the South, going out to lunch with my father after his golf game, or eating with my mother during a shopping trip. At Ella’s I didn’t feel like anyone’s wife; I felt like my old self.

  Did you know they have three types of ham here? Al asked. Country, city, and Virginia country. I’ve never counted before, he said.

  Each morning went like this. Margie, the waitress, fussed over Al’s hair, smoked as she topped off his mug. After ordering, we’d watch Mussolini, the small Italian man who owned the market across the street, open up his shop. Mussolini stocked sauce, cheese, wine, and pasta. He arrived each morning with his large white dog, who rode in the front seat of his van.

  For weeks I’d been feeling sorry for Mussolini. He looked like a tragic character, balding and stooped, and his shop didn’t seem to do a lot of business. He lived nearby and kept his dog outside his house at night, chained to an oak tree. I’d seen the dog on my insomnia-fueled walks.

  Look at him, I said. A sad man. Weighed down by his name.

  Do you want cheese grits, Cajun grits, or plain? Al asked.

  I’m feeling downright humble, I said. Plain with butter, please, sir.

  Al’s book Eating the Americana Way was under contract, and we were planning a party at Ella’s to celebrate. It was a good distraction for me. I needed something to take my mind off of my husband. Last year I’d found a note I did not write in Nate’s pocket: Imagine what I can do with my entire body.