Delicate Edible Birds

by Lauren Groff

  My mother flushed again and stood to carry the mugs back to the kitchen. “Not yet,” she tossed over her shoulder, as if it meant nothing to her at all.

  I looked at Pot, who was frowning solemnly on her perch on the living room couch. She looked beyond me at a bird that landed on the tree outside, and cried, “A Song Sparrow! Hip, hip, hip hurrah boys, spring is here! That’s what they say,” she said, beaming. “The Song Sparrows. They say, Hip, hip, hip hurrah boys, spring is here!” She was tapping her feet in her excitement, blinking so rapidly and nervously that she reminded me of my mother.

  “Pot,” I said. “Have you taken your medication today?”

  “Whoops,” she said, grinning.

  “Pot,” I said. “How long has it been since you took your medication?”

  She shrugged. “A week? Maybe a week. I stopped. I don’t believe anymore in medicating children,” she said.

  I shuddered because I heard in her words the distinct voice of an adult, someone who never saw Pot as she had been in her awful years. A teacher, perhaps, or some judgmental village crone. I went to the kitchen, slamming the door behind me. “Mom,” I said. “Pot’s not taking her medication. And by the way, don’t you think she’s too young to understand all this Lucky Chow Fun crap? She’s only ten. She’s just a baby. I don’t think she can handle it.”

  My mother stopped washing the mug she was holding and let the hot water run. The steam circled up around her, catching in her frizzy gray hair, spangling it when she turned around. “Lollie,” she said. “I’ll make sure she takes the Ritalin from now on. But nobody in town is going to be able to escape what happened. Not even the kids. It’s better that we tell her the truth before someone else tells her something much worse.”

  “What’s worse?” I said. “And I don’t think people are made to take truths straight-on, Mom. It’s too hard. You need something to soften them. A metaphor or a story or something. You know.”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t.” She turned off the water with a smack of her hand. “Why don’t you teach me, since you seem to know everything.”

  “Well,” I said, but at the moment when we most need these things, they don’t always come to us. I couldn’t remember a word. I opened my mouth and it hung open there, useless. I closed it. I shrugged.

  My mother nodded. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned away.

  YEARS LATER, I WOULD HAVE HAD the presence of mind to offer the tale “Fitcher’s Bird,” from the Brothers Grimm, to offer up an allegorical explanation. I would have told my mother how a wizard dressed as a beggar would magically lure little girls into his basket. He’d cart them to his mansion, give them an egg and key, and tell them not to go into the room that the key opened. Then he’d leave, and the little girls would explore the magnificent house, finally falling prey to curiosity and opening the door of the forbidden chamber.

  There, they’d find a huge basin filled with the bloody, dismembered remains of other girls. They’d be so surprised, they’d drop the egg in the vat, and wouldn’t be able to wipe the stain away. When the wizard would come home to find the stained egg, he would dismember the girls and toss their remains into the vat.

  Eventually, he did this to the two eldest girls from one family, and came back for the third daughter. This girl, though, was uncommonly clever. She hid the egg in a safe place and brazenly went into the room, only to find her dismembered sisters in the bloody vat. But instead of panicking, she pulled their severed limbs out and pieced them back together again, and when the parts were reassembled, the girls miraculously came back to life.

  The clever girl hid her sisters in a room to await the wizard, and when he returned and saw she hadn’t bloodied the egg, he decided to marry her. She agreed, but said first that she would send him home with a basketful of gold for her parents. She hid her two sisters in the basket, which he carted home, now a servant of his clever bride. In his absence, the little girl dressed a human skull in flowers and jewels and put it in the attic window. Then she rolled herself in honey and feathers to transform herself into a strange feathered creature, and ran out into the bright day.

  On her way home, she encountered the wizard, who thought she was a wonderful bird and said, “Oh, Fitcher’s feathered bird, where from, where from?”

  To which she responded, “From feathered Fitze Fitcher’s house I’ve come.”

  “And the young bride there, how does she fare?” he asked, imagining his marriage night, and the soft young body of his wife.

  And she, smiling softly under her down and honey, said, “She’s swept the house all the way through, and from the attic window, she’s staring down at you.”

  When the wizard arrived home to find the skull in the window, he waved at it, thinking it was his bride. When he went inside, the brothers and father of the little stolen girls locked the door, set a fire, and burned the terrible murderer up.

  IN THE GRIMMS’ STORY, of course, the community at last cleansed itself by fire, and in the aftermath came out righteous and whole. This did not happen to Templeton.

  We were under siege. The media trucks were parked all along Main Street. Our town, though small, was famous for the baseball museum and for its beauty, an all-American village. Right-wing pundits on television and in the mega-corporation-owned newspapers held up our town as a symbol for the internal moral rot of America, a symbol of the trickle-down immorality stemming from our Democrat president, who went around screwing everything that moved. People from Cherry Valley and Herkimer roared into town, pretending that they were natives, and the whole country saw us as drawling mulleted hicks in whole-body Carhartt, and hated us more. The handsome newscasters shivered in their fur-lined parkas, sat at our diner, and tried to eavesdrop, but were really only eavesdropping on other newscasters.

  Our shell-shocked mayor appeared on television. He was the town know-it-all, a bearded hobbit of a man who gave bombastic walking tours to the tourists and wore shorts all year because of a skin condition. He had to pause to wipe his mouth with a handkerchief, choking up throughout his speech. At the end, he said, “Templeton will survive, as we have survived many other disasters in our illustrious history. Be brave, Templeton, and we will see each other through.” But there was no applause at the end, as there were no Templetonians in the audience, composed as it was of disaster-gawkers and newscasters.

  Our Ambassador appeared on CNN and 20/20 to defend our town. “We are not perfect,” he said in his quivery old man’s voice. “But we are a good town, full of good people.” His cloudy eyes filled with fervor. It was very affecting.

  We stayed inside. We went to the grocery store, if we needed to, to school, and a few of us went to the gym. Our team practiced in virtual silence, the only sound the water sucking in the gutters, the splash of our muscled limbs. In school, the teachers came to classes with red-rimmed eyes, traces of internal anguish happening in the homes of people we never imagined had private lives. The drama kids pretended to weep at lunch on a recurrent basis. There was a hush over the town, as if each of us were muted, swaddled in invisible quilts, so separate from one another as to not be able to touch, if we wanted to. Girls began walking in groups everywhere, as if for protection. The Templeton men did not dare to look at the Templeton women, furious as we were, righteous. And in this separation, in our own sorrow, we forgot about the girls, the Lucky Chow Fun girls, and when, after some time, we thought of them, they were the enemies. They were the ones who had brought this shame to our town.

  TWO TERRIBLE WEEKS PASSED. My mother stopped talking about The Garbageman, tout court. He stopped calling. She stopped visiting him with plates of food. She grew drawn and pale, and spent a lot of time in her flannel nightgown, watching Casablanca. She picked a new fight with the principal and came home spitting. The Winter Dance was canceled: I spent that evening dating a pizza and an apple crumble, watching Fred and Ginger glide across the floor, pure grace. Pot acquired two new taxidermied birds, one finch, one scarlet macaw, its head
cocked intelligently, even in death.

  One day, I came home, skirting Main Street and its hordes of news cameras. I went to the mailbox and found six envelopes from colleges all over the country, all addressed to me.

  I went inside. I sat at the table with a cup of tea, the six letters splayed before me. One by one, I opened them. And what would have been a personal tragedy before the Lucky Chow Fun was now a slight relief. Of the six colleges, all of which had recruited me for swimming, though I had indifferent grades and mediocre SATs, I had only gotten into one.

  Rather: I had gotten into one. One, glorious, one.

  I tossed out the bad five, and waited for Pot. My tea cooled and I made more, and it cooled again. I peered out the curtains for my little sister, but she didn’t come. I made cookies, chocolate chip, her favorite. I had half an hour before swim practice and she still wasn’t home when my mother came in, with her energetic stompings and mutterings. “My God, Lollie,” she said, “you’ll never guess what that ass-muncher of a princip—”

  “Mom?” I interrupted. “Do you know where Potty is?”

  “Isn’t she here?” she said, massaging her neck, peeping in from the mudroom. “She was supposed to come straight home from school to go to the grocery store with me.”

  “Nope,” I said. “And it’s getting dark.”

  She came into the kitchen then, scowling. “Do you have any idea where she could be?” she said. We looked at each other, and her hand floated up to her hair.

  I stood, nervous. “Oh, God,” I said.

  “Calm down,” she said, though she was flustered herself. “Think, Lollie. Does she have any friends?”

  “Pot?” I said. I looked at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  “Let’s think, let’s think,” I said. I paced to the window, then back. “Mom. Let’s think. Where does Potsy get her birds? The stuffed ones. Do you know?”

  My mother looked at me, then slowly lifted her hands to her cheeks. “You know,” she said, “I never actually wondered. I guess I assumed your dad was sending them. Or she was buying them with her allowance. Or something. I never wondered.”

  “You haven’t given us allowance in six months,” I said. “So where are they from?”

  “Is she stealing them?” said my mother. “Maybe from the Biological Field Station?”

  “Pot?” I thought of this, wondering if Pot could have the gall to waltz into some place, open up the display cabinets, hide the birds under her shirt, and waltz on home. “I don’t think so. It’s not like her,” I said, at last.

  “Well,” said my mother, her voice breaking. “Who’d have a collection like that?”

  And my mother and I looked at one another. There was a long, shivery beat, a car driving by outside, its headlights washing over my mother’s face, then beyond. And then we both ran out coatless into the snow, we ran into the blue twilight as hard as we could up the block, forgetting about our cars in our hurry, we ran past the grand old hospital, over the Susquehanna, we ran fleet and breathless to the Ambassador’s house, and then we burst inside.

  The house was extraordinarily hot, the chandelier in the hallway tinkling, and the ugly miniature schnauzer barking and nipping at us. Our shoes slid on the marble floor as we sped into the living room. Bookcases, Persian rugs, leather armchairs—no Pot. We flew through the door, into the library—no Pot. We ran though the hall and stopped short in the dining room.

  There, my little sister was dressed in a feather boa and rhinestone starlet glasses, in her undershirt, crouching on an expensive cherrywood chair and looking at a book of birds that was at least as big as she was. She looked up at us, unsurprised, when we came in.

  “Hey,” she said. “Mom, Lollie, come here, look at this. This is a first edition Audubon. The Ambassador said I could have it when I’m eighteen.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” my mother said, snapping from her surprise and charging over to her. She ripped the glasses from Pot’s face and pushed her arms into her little cardigan. Pot looked up at her, her face open and wondering.

  That’s when the Ambassador appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh, dear. I told Miss Petra here she should have been home hours ago. But you know her and birds,” and he gave a tinkly little laugh.

  “You,” I said, charging at him. “What in the fuck are you doing with my sister? Why is she in her undershirt?”

  “Pot,” my mother was saying at the same time. “Has he touched you? Has he hurt you? Has he done anything to you?”

  The Ambassador blinked, his milky eyes canny. “Oh, my,” he said mildly. “Oh, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. Pot told me you knew she visited with me.”

  “We did not,” I said. “Are you hurting her?”

  Pot gave a little bark of surprise. “Oh, God,” she said. “No. Jeez, you guys. I mean, like. I don’t think he even. You know. Girls,” she trailed off.

  We looked at her.

  She sighed. “No girls. He doesn’t like them,” she said.

  My mother and I looked at the Ambassador, who flushed, ducked his head. “Well,” he said. “Well, Petra. Oh, my. But yes, you are right. And no, I have never touched Petra. She comes here after school, and I give her one object of her choice every week. I have no heirs, you know,” he said. “I have so many beautiful things. Petra is an original. She is a pleasure to talk to. She will one day be something great, I warrant.”

  “He lets me wear a boa,” said Pot. “He lets me be a movie star. He knew Grace Kelly. And it’s always hot in here so I have to take off my sweater. It’s always one hundred degrees exactly. I die if I don’t take off my sweater.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I am anemic,” the Ambassador said delicately. “I cannot bear cold.” He looked at our shoes, dripping slush on his fine floors. He said, “Could I make some tea for you before you three ladies return home?”

  My mother and I stared at the Ambassador for a very long moment. And then, in shame, we gathered ourselves up. We apologized, we clutched our little Pot tightly to us. And he, ever the statesman, pretended we hadn’t offended him. “These times,” he sighed, escorting us to the door, where the wind had blown a great heap of powder onto the priceless rug. “In these dark days, there is so much distrust in this town. I understand absolutely. You never know quite what to think about people you believe you trust.” Then he shivered, and Pot reached up and squeezed his hand. In the glance between the two there was such adoration that, on the long walk through the dark, I stole small looks at Pot to try to see what exactly he had seen in her, the budding wonder there. The one she would become, to our great wonder.

  IT TOOK A LOT OF TIME. Templeton could not heal quickly. There was still much scandal, many divorces, many people leaving town to start over. The dentist I had been to all my life. The school custodian, the principal, the football coach. My postman, the town librarian, my best friend’s brother, the owner of the boatyard, the manager of the Purple Pickle, the CFO of the baseball museum—all divorced or shamed. Brad Huxley sent to military school. The Garbageman moved to Manhattan, though his trucks still rumble by every Thursday morning. And there were many more.

  But the newscasters trickled away when a professional football player killed his wife and charged the country with a new angst. The tourists returned as if nothing had happened, and there were motorboats again on the lake, my tearful graduation, the death-by-chocolate binge the night before I drove off to school. The Chens were shipped back to China, and probably set free, and the girls were taken to San Francisco, where most of them decided to make a new life. To heal. I read of their trial in the Freeman’s Journal, from the safety of my dorm room my freshman year. In the end, time smoothed it all away.

  But for those of us who return periodically, there is always a little frisson of darkness that falls over us when we see the candy shop where the Lucky Chow Fun once had been.

  ONLY NOW, MANY YEARS LATER, can I imagine what the real tragedy had
been. It was not the near-death of my town, though that was where all my sympathy was at the time. I mourned the community that almost buckled under the scandal, for the men in the town, for our women. How we were split. As was my training, I forgot about the poor Lucky Chow Fun girls. Only now, years later, do I dream of them.

  ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE SEVEN GIRLS. They were girls like any other girls, no cleverer, no more or less wealthy than others in their town. They were pretty as young girls are always pretty, blooming, rose-cheeked, lily-skinned. The factory they worked in was gray, the machines they worked on were gray, the nighttime streets they walked back to their crowded apartments, all gray. But they dreamed in colors, in blues and greens and golds.

  One dark night, the girls’ parents closed the doors. Conferred. When they came out, the girls were told: we are sending you to America. There should have been joy in this, but the parents’ smiles were also taut with fear.

  How much? the girls asked, trembling.

  Enough, the parents responded, meaning: Enough money, enough of your questions.

  And the seven girls were taken to the docks. They crawled into boxes and were sealed inside with water and candy and pills. There, with the bones of their knees pressed to the bones of their ribs, hearing the roar of the tanker, they saw nothing in the darkness but more darkness.

  They arrived, weak and trembling. They were unpacked. They were taken to the house where they were trained to be quiet, absent, to press themselves to the mattresses and not say a word. In that house, they slowly became ghosts.

  The seven ghosts were put then into a van, driven to a cold town on a lake, where nobody knew who they were, nobody cared if they were living or dead, where they cooked silently, cleaned silently, lay on the mattresses, and did not say a word. Men went into their rooms, men left their rooms, other men came in.

  One ghost stopped eating and she died. In the middle of the night, the ghosts were forced to row her to the middle of the black lake. They tied her limbs to grease buckets filled with stones and they dropped her in. She sank under the water and seemed to blink up at them as she went. They rowed back. Wordless, as always.