Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

Black, with gold swirls. Like a midnight sky with shooting stars.

  Loop over loop, she tries it. She remembers Albert’s slicked-back hair, the scent of his pomade. Funny, she never asked who he was spiffing up for. His laughter, so disarming, was good enough for her.

  She’s almost got it right, she wants Kuldeep to see her with swirling gold, a starry night. Slip, up near the collar and through the knot — she tugs and the loop unravels, slipping through her fingers to the floor.

  Damn. She stoops to pick up the coil but a skinny neck, covered in the softest down, pokes through the adjacent bars. The beak plucks at the fabric and begins to swallow the end.

  “Esmeralda!” Egg exclaims. She grabs the loop and pulls in this tug of war with an ostrich gullet.

  “Let. It. Go!” Egg yanks hard and the wet end splats against her forehead. She holds up starry night, a slippery, slimy mess and sniffs.

  She wrinkles her nose. There is no way that she can wear that to school.

  Damn. Damn. Damn. Egg glares at Esmeralda and huffs, “At least you didn’t swallow it.”

  Esmeralda twirls, as if she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about.

  The chick has grown so quickly, the quirky head, as big as Egg’s fist, bobs on the fuzzy neck. Esmeralda was only eight inches when she was hatched, barely one-and-a-half pounds but she has grown two feet since then. Even so she is stillthe smallest one. Esmeralda’s head pops up, like a prairie dog from its hole. Her head jerks left, then right. Egg thinks of a submarine’s periscope and she giggles. Esmeralda is almost as tall as Egg’s shoulder.

  Almost. Esmeralda fluffs her wings but Egg knows that if she wet down her feathers, Esmeralda would be as thin as a stick. There is a scratch on Esmeralda’s left foot, just on top of her big toe. Egg feels a ripple of fear rush up her spine. Old Yeller dies. So does the Yearling. Egg has seen it all on The Wonderful World of Disney. Lemmings that rush the cliff and the awful fate of those stuck in the Tar Pits. Even Wilbur almost becomes Christmas dinner. All but for Charlotte.

  Egg furrows her brow, trying to remember Charlotte’s words. “Some Pig,” the spider had written. But was Wilbur really some extraordinary pig or was he really just lucky? The real hero, the one in the shadows, the one who toils and triumphs, is Charlotte the spider. Egg consoles herself that at least Charlotte, with her pluck and intelligence, at least she shines when the truth is revealed, when Charlotte and Wilbur go to Las Vegas.

  Kathy had been especially pleased after reading Charlotte’s Web to Egg. They even celebrated with Jiffy Pop.

  Egg strokes the down on Esmeralda’s head, the fine hairs that ridge her brows. She feels the pulse of life through her fingertips, that strange soft-hard feeling of bone beneath the skin. A shot of fear runs through her. What if she can’t protect Kuldeep? What if she is not strong enough? Egg thinks of her father in the ostrich barn as he rakes the outside pen. Shhh shhhh shhhh, the stroke of the tines against the grass. Her chest feels heavy as she wonders. What if she fails? What would that mean?

  Esmeralda bunts her head against Egg’s hand. She looks down into the ostrich chick’s brown eyes. Egg thinks that eyes are miracles. Do ostriches have souls? Will ostriches go to Heaven? Papa says animals have instincts, that there is no choice in the matter. Human beings have choices but didn’t Eve sin for us all?

  Egg strokes Esmeralda’s head. There must be a Heaven for ostriches; there must be some kind of point to it all. She knows that fair is fair but the Bible is not always fair. It troubles Egg, like the glimpse of a rat’s tail darting by the feed, or the rustling in the walls as the shadows draw long into the winter’s night.

  But Esmeralda, Egg thinks, Esmeralda. She has a name now. She can be saved.

  …

  On Saturday she decides. On Saturday she has a mission.

  Chinook wind basks the day in warm breezes as an arch of low-lying clouds hover near the horizon. The brilliant sun shines overhead. Chinook wind takes the winter away, peels back the frost, as if to say winter take a holiday, your time will come but not today.

  Egg likes to rhyme.

  She rides her banana-seat bike out to where the flat plains drop, her tires click click click as the hockey cards snap against her spokes. Faster and faster, she thinks she is flying as she rolls down the slope of the drop. She tries to ride hands-free but the ground is too bumpy. Here, under the thousand shades of blue, that’s where she feels everything is so small and so big at the same time. She pedals out to the lone erratic on the plain, a massive stone swept down by ancient glaciers in the last ice age. The abandoned rock sits on the edge of Jansson’s field. She lifts herself up on the lip of the rock, the texture rough beneath her hands. She is climbing Everest, grunting as she shimmies up the central fissure, her hands grabbing the top as she pulls herself up and over.

  “Wooh woooh wooooooh!”

  From the top of the erratic, she can see the railway trestle in the distance, and to her left, the hoodoos with their top-caps, where the Badlands begin.

  She slaps her hands together, knocking off the dirt. Her finger traces the vein in the speckled granite. Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic. Even the rocks have a story.

  She takes out Evel Knievel from the inside of her jacket. She can see her shadow as the sun scurries out from the cover of the clouds. As she pulls out the magnifying glass from her back pocket, she lays Evel on the flat rock. There, on the ancient erratic, she burns out Evel Knievel’s eyes, focusing the beam of light. A wisp of smoke rises from the blackening plastic. There is always a sacrifice. Wages of Sin is Death. Someone always pays but it is not going to be her.

  “Better safe than sorry,” she says. For Esmeralda, for Kuldeep. Burn out the evil in her. Let the melting eyes absolve her. Egg, the not-good-enough as Albert, Egg, the useless one at home. Now that she is Popular, let it be enough. Egg prays. Let all the bad be over.

  …

  Egg bikes home, along the top of the ridge. Her hands are off the handle bars, her arms stretched wide. She doesn’t see the rut on the ground. Her front wheel twists, and she keels forward, over the bars. Landing hard, she slides down the exposed sandy slope into a trough. She digs her heels in and stops at the very edge of the hole.

  Whew, she thinks. That was close.

  She stares at the hole. It is like a gap in the world itself, a darkness bordered by four roughly hewn wooden planks. The planks are unusually thick, thicker than the abandoned railway ties that occasionally line the trail. Gouges mark the wood, a blackened strip that a flame must have branded. Her fingers trace the score, the run of the grain as she cautiously peers into the hole.

  Dark and deep.

  She rocks back.

  She looks behind her and finds a rock the size of her head. With two hands she holds it, then heaves it over the edge. Crash, plunk, thud, off the walls, against wood and stone. There seems to be no end to the descent.

  A well, Egg thinks. A hole big enough to stuff all the ugly in the world.

  As she looks over the edge of the pit, the walls of dirt and wooden beams weave, they tilt and slant, she feels a sudden vertigo.

  She scrambles away on her hands and feet, away from that lulling deep. She dashes up the slope to her bike and grasps the coolness of the handle bars.

  She cannot stop shaking.

  She pulls up her bike and runs, jumps on her banana seat away from the well. She rides, pedalling furiously until she reaches the path.

  At the rise in the trail, she puts her foot down, braking into a skid as the back wheel slides to a halt. She looks back.

  All she can see is the flat field.

  She blinks, the sweat stinging her eyes.

  Her glance falls to a small protruding curve that lies in the dirt, half-buried near her foot. She digs at the curve, her fingers curl around the smooth surface and pull it from the dirt. It is a bone, a claw. It is the size of her hand. She looks to the field. A gift from the well, she thinks.

  Later, as Kathy tucks her in, Egg dangles the ti
p of the claw bone off the tip of her finger. Egg thinks, sabretooth. Egg thinks, mammoth. The sheer enormity of the beast makes her wonder. Her stomach hurts so much that she squishes Nekoneko under her armpit.

  Kathy frowns. “Shouldn’t be playing with bones you dug up. Get lockjaw or something. I’m not even going to ask where you got that cut.”

  Egg touches her forehead but she doesn’t feel the ache. She looks to the door. “Where’s Mama?”

  Kathy hesitates. “She’s not feeling so good.” She glances at the figure under the bedside lamp, the girl in the red coat and she frowns. “Did you eat anything?”

  Egg leans over and points to her plate on the floor. A crust of bread with some flecks of hard corned beef.

  “Are you eating under the bed again?” asks Kathy.

  “I’m in hiding,” Egg says.

  Kathy glances at the cat puppet in Egg’s armpit, squeezed like bagpipes. “Aren’t you a little old for Nekoneko?”

  “No, look.” Egg opens the bottom of Neko. Inside, there is a chocolate bar. “For food,” Egg explains, “for when they take us away.”

  “That’ll never happen,” Kathy says, with irritation. But she shifts. “It was wartime.”

  “They always say it’s wartime.”

  Kathy pulls up the blanket with a snap, tight around Egg.

  “Tell me about the dog,” Egg says.

  “What?”

  “The spaceship you like. Spudnick.”

  “Sputnik.”

  “The one with the dog.”

  “Laika. She went up with Sputnik and she was the first living thing in space.”

  “Like an explorer.”

  “Yes.”

  “She got a medal and everything. She was a hero.”

  “Yea —”

  “And then she had a parade when she got back. And the Russians made her into a cosmonaut.”

  “Good night, Egg.”

  Egg snuggles down but her eyes are open. She thinks of her bone from the field. “Kathy, do you think it’s a human bone?”

  Kathy snorts. “Not unless we grew claws in the last century.”

  “Maybe it’s like Buffalo Jump, in the olden days, when they killed a lot of Indians.”

  “I’m turning off the light.” Kathy stands and walks to the door.

  Egg rises on her elbows. “If Jesus was a Jew, why did He let all those people die?”

  Kathy is ready to slam the door but she catches herself. “I don’t know. And they didn’t all die. The Indians, I mean.” The door clicks shut and then she is gone.

  Egg thinks about the day. The well. She didn’t tell Kathy about the well. She tries to think about looking over the edge into the unknown. She can’t explain what she felt there. Maybe there is no word for it.

  She tries to imagine herself falling. Would it be like Major Tom, a hundred thousand miles away? Major Tom floats in his tin can, across the universe. She thinks of the earth spinning in orbit, the sun in the galaxy of a billion stars. She would like to float, to fly.

  She taps her feet together. “Cumulus nimbus,” she whispers, because she likes the words.

  …

  There are perks to being Popular. Martin Fisken has not bothered her in days. He has taken up tormenting Jimmy Simpson in the playground. Egg has discovered that she actually does like sitting in the lunchroom, watching all the students as they mill about their tables. It is almost a week since her Show and Tell but Kuldeep has been away for most of it. Egg has taken extra notes so Kuldeep doesn’t fall behind. She has drawn giraffes in the margins.

  Kuldeep is in class today.

  But today is gym class. Egg hates gym class.

  An accordion wall splits the boys from the girls. In the girls’ gym section, Mrs. MacCloskey is all barking commands and arms akimbo. She lines up her class two-by-two. Mrs. MacCloskey, who looks like a Scottish terrier, is all about drills and formations. She tells the class that they will be building character and co-operation. Egg hates two-by-two, the scramble for a partner, the flash of panic of not being picked. Two-by-two and time crawls, rejection after rejection, two-by-two and Glenda looks at you like you have the cooties, or that you really smell. But today is different. Today Egg is Popular. Janice James takes Egg’s hand. It is just like the loaves and fishes. Egg doesn’t have time to contemplate this miracle, as Janice tugs her from the line. Is seems so easy, a mere step out of the pariah zone.

  Egg looks back and sees Kuldeep in the line, standing by herself. The others shuffle away from her, as if fearful of contagion. Egg sees Kuldeep’s tears and grips Janice’s hand. She wants to explain to Kuldeep that she needs to be Popular for the both of them but the look in Kuldeep’s eyes does not waver. Egg knows that something is wrong, she feels it in the pit of her stomach, eating away at her but she can’t let go of Janice’s hand. She can’t let go of Popular.

  A small voice whispers in her ear: what’s the use of having Kuldeep for a friend when she can’t even speak English anyways?

  The next day Kuldeep is not in class and her desk is pushed into the corner.

  Egg feels a twist in her stomach as she raises her hand.

  Mrs. Syms’s eyebrows rise. “Yes?”

  “Where is Kuldeep?”

  Mrs. Syms’s eyes narrow. She looks to the empty space where Kuldeep used to sit and her lips tighten into an adder’s grin. “Oh, that girl. It turns out that Bittercreek is not the most suitable place for her family. Well, not all of us can have that pioneer spirit. Now let’s turn to page thirty-four in Call Us Canadians, shall we?”

  At recess Egg runs to the bushes by the jungle gym and squats behind the tangle of branches. If no one sees you, then you disappear. Egg closes her eyes. She tucks her knees up to her chest and twists her shoelaces with her fingers.

  Kuldeep is gone and Egg has betrayed her. It isn’t Albert at all. There is something in Egg that brings out the ugly, even if she is Popular.

  There is a scream from the jungle gym.

  Egg’s eyes snap open at the sound. Little Jimmy Simpson struggles, on tiptoe, as Martin Fisken wraps his fingers around Jimmy’s throat. Jimmy’s eyes bulge, like the boy in the swimming safety film that everyone watches at the summer pool. A roar fills Egg’s ears. She blinks and she is suddenly in front of Martin’s face, her fists windmilling. Martin looks surprised. He lets go of Jimmy, who crumples at his feet. Jimmy scoots away sideways, like a crab, without a backwards glance.

  Martin grins.

  That’s it. Egg wants to knock the freckles out of Martin Fisken’s face, even if he is so much taller. She raises her fist and draws it back, like the pitcher’s throw, a curveball in the last inning, three down, and the bases loaded. All her frustration is packed in that windup, all her confusion, all the hurt for Kuldeep. Take out all the bad and throw it into Martin Fisken’s fox face. Her knuckles curl, her whole body hurls forward. That’s when Vice Principal Geary’s hand comes down out of the blue and grabs her wrist and it is off to the Principal’s office for her.

  …

  That night, Egg sprawls in front of the television with her notebook in front of her. The television is off. No more television, not for a week. That’s her punishment for being sent to the Principal’s office even if it is Not Her Fault. Kathy was sympathetic, turning Egg’s Not Her Fault into a Next Time Don’t Get Caught. It’s not fair, Egg complained, Martin pushes and Martin shoves but he never gets sent to the Principal’s office.

  My point exactly, Kathy said.

  Mama said, God sees everything and He knows what happened. But still no television for a week.

  Egg stares wistfully at the blank television screen. She writes in her notebook:

  If God knows everything, why doesn’t He do anything about the bad?

  If He can’t do anything, what’s the point about being God?

  The Dictionary says God is the Supreme Being, who is the creator and ruler of the universe.

  But what does that mean?

  “Egg?”


  Egg looks up from her notebook. She squeezes her eyes to focus her vision. Kathy looks at her, concerned.

  “What?” Egg asks.

  “Your nose is sticking to that page.” Kathy purses her lips. “Can you see all right?”

  Egg wants to disappear.

  After much peering and poking, Mama and Kathy drive Egg up to Calgary for an eye doctor’s appointment, that strange contraption of revolving glass discs and a slice of light that flashes across the eyes. The grown-ups talk above her, all drones and clucks and heavy sighs, then Egg is hauled off to an eyeglass store (not eyes that are made out of glass) as chunks of glass and twisted wire are placed upon her nose. Mama and Kathy bicker and pout but Egg puts up with it all.

  Because Egg has figured it all out.

  This is logic. She’s read about it in the Young Reader’s Guide to Science, something the ancient Greeks used to do, like Doctor Spock in Star Trek. Doctor Spock is an alien from his home planet of Vulcan but he looks kind of Japanese too. Logic makes sense in the world. It’s simple, really. Egg, sitting in the squeaky vinyl chair in the eyeglass shop, finally puts two and two together.

  Divine Retribution. Her glasses are a form of Divine Punishment. Coming so soon after Kuldeep’s departure, it is clearly a sign from above. Because things have a reason. So Reverend Samuels preaches. Every equal and opposite thing, even Newton says.

  Egg blinks. The clarity of it blinds her but it is only the reflection of a mirror thrust in front of her face.

  “Do you like this, sweetpea?” her mother inquires.

  Egg nods at everything. She will have the patience of saints and angels. Things have a purpose, things have a place. She will bear the weight of the world, the burden of the ages, all because of God’s great plan. For there must be a plan, there must be a God, there must be a final reckoning when the curtain goes up and the people kneel down and all the voices come together and cry, this is how I have suffered, this is how I have kept the faith, like in all the Sunday afternoon television programs but without all the velvet. The running of mascara like the blood of Jesus from his crown of thorns. There must be a God, a truth and atonement, the burning bush and the sacrificial lamb, there must be a place and a purpose, for if there isn’t, then there is nothing. A nothing so terrible that Egg can only creep back from the edge.