The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  “Tinkerbell ran away, sweetie. You know that.”

  Tinkerbell was a little mixed-breed dog that showed up at our door last Valentine’s Day—rheumy eyed, scrawny, riddled with fleas. Laurel went ahead and gave her a name before I had a chance to warn her we could never keep a sick stray. Jim would sooner shoot it, put it out of its misery, but I didn’t tell her that, either. I had picked up the phone to call county animal control when I watched Laurel pull the dog onto her lap and stroke its head. “Don’t worry, Tinkerbell,” she said softly. “We’ll love you now.”

  If the dog didn’t understand the words, it understood the kindness behind them. It sank its head into the crook of Laurel’s arm and didn’t just sigh—it moaned.

  I put the phone down.

  We hid Tinkerbell in the woodshed and fed her till she looked less raggedy. Filled out, rested, bathed and brushed, she was a beautiful dog, with a caramel coat and a white ruff, a tail like a fox, her soft almond eyes lined with dark, trailing streaks like Cleopatra. When she was healthy enough, we presented her to Jim. I suggested she’d make a fine gift for Laurel’s upcoming birthday, less than a month away.

  Jim was in a good mood that day. He paused and studied Tinkerbell, who stood quietly, almost expectantly, as if she knew what was at stake. Laurel stood at my side, just as still, just as expectant, pressing her face hard against my hand.

  The risk here, it occurred to me, was in appearing to want something too much. This gives denial irresistible power.

  So I shrugged. “We can always give her away, if you want.”

  Jim’s lips twitched, his eyes narrowed, and my heart sank. Manipulation didn’t work with him.

  “You want her, Laurel?” he asked at last, breaking out that awful grin. “Well, okay, then. Happy birthday, baby.”

  Laurel wriggled with pleasure and beamed up at me. She went to Jim and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  I was confused, but only for a moment.

  Then I understood.

  Jim had one more thing now—one more thing that mattered—to snatch away from me anytime he chose, quick as a heartbeat.

  Two weeks before Christmas, just before Jim was jailed to serve ten days for disorderly conduct, he did.

  Laurel sits on the porch sometimes, waiting for Tinkerbell to come home again. Sometimes she calls her name over and over.

  “Do you think she misses us?” she asked yesterday.

  Jim ruffled her hair playfully. “I bet she’d rather be here with you, baby, than where she is right now.”

  Every Valentine’s Day, Jim gives me a heart-shaped box of fine chocolates that, if I ate them, would turn to ash on my tongue. When he touches me, my blood runs so cold I marvel it doesn’t freeze to ice in my veins.

  February 29

  Snow fell last night, dusting the junipers in the yard, the pickets on the fence, the thorny bougainvillea bushes under the front windows, the woodshed’s red tin roof. Jim was working his shift, so I bundled Laurel in her parka and mud boots and we danced in the field next to the house, twirling till we were tipsy, catching snowflakes on our tongues, our hair, our cheeks. The sky was black as a peppercorn.

  This morning, Jim noticed I took longer at the dishes than I should have, from staring out the kitchen window at the red sandstone mesas still layered with unbroken snow, like icing on red velvet cake.

  By noon the sun came out and melted it all away.

  March 2

  This evening after I put Laurel to bed, I opened the small storage space under the stairs and removed the boxes of Christmas decorations and summer clothing, the beautiful linen shade from the antique lamp that Jim had smashed against a wall, files of legal paperwork for our mortgage and vehicle loan, tax documents. Where the boxes had been stacked, I took a screwdriver and pried up a loose floor plank. In the cubby space beneath is an old tea tin where I keep my Life Before Jim.

  Jim doesn’t like to be reminded that I had a Life Before. Or, rather, he doesn’t like me to remember a time when I had behaviors and ideas uncensored by him. A time when I wrote poetry, and even published a few poems in small regional literary magazines. When I had friends, family. A part-time job writing at the university’s public information office. Ambitions. Expectations. Thoughts.

  He thinks he’s hacked it all away—good wood lopped off a living tree—and he has.

  All but one.

  My German grandmother, my Oma, who lost her father to the Nazi purge of intellectuals, used to recite a line from an old protest song:

  Die Gedanken sind frei.

  Thoughts are free.

  No man can know them, the song goes. No hunter can shoot them. The darkest dungeon is futile, for my thoughts tear all gates and walls asunder.

  In my tea tin I keep my first-place certificate from a high school poetry contest, the clinic receipt from the baby I lost nine years ago, a letter my mother wrote before she passed from cancer, and a note scrawled on a slip of paper: Run, girl, run.

  It’s not much of an insurrection, I know. But it’s my only evidence of a Life Before, and I cling to it.

  By the time Jim moved me to Wheeler, I had already banished Terri from my life. Just after I met Jim, as he began insinuating himself into every waking hour—the classes I took, the books I read, the people I hung with—Terri’s enthusiasm for him waned.

  “Girl, are you sure about him?” she’d ask.

  I was troubled that she doubted his intentions. Or my judgment.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.

  “Jo, he’s calling you all day. He wants to know where you are, who you’re with. He’s tracking you.”

  But I’d never had a serious boyfriend before Jim. My role models for romance were Byron, the Brownings, Yeats and a manic-depressive mother who cycled through the wrong men all her life. What I saw in Jim was passion and commitment. He took me on picnics in the Sandias. We rode the tram to the peak, and he proposed on the observation deck. We spent our first weekend together in a bed-and-breakfast in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe, watching the sunrise from our bedroom window. I felt caught up in a whirlwind, breathless, but happy to let it have its way with me.

  Still, when he urged me to drop a study group for semester finals so we could spend even more time together, I balked. It was our first argument. There wouldn’t be many more. He told me he cared for me, wanted to be with me, thought I felt the same. Disappointment infused every syllable.

  I felt cornered. I blurted, “Terri thinks we spend too much time together already.”

  Jim’s face went blank. For several seconds he didn’t speak. Then, “She said that?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Well,” Jim said quietly, “I didn’t want to tell you this, but there’s more to Terri than you realize. Remember when we met? Terri called me a few days later. She said she thought we should get together sometime. I told her I was interested in you, and that was the end of it.”

  He was studying me as he spoke.

  “I chalked it up to a misunderstanding on her part. She’s never called since. I didn’t want you to think less of her.”

  My heart began to thud against my rib cage. Blood pulsed in my ears. Terri, the sleek golden girl who excelled at everything she ever tried her hand at, who could have any man she wanted—did she want mine? Was she looking out for me, or just sowing seeds of doubt to clear a path for herself?

  “I thought you trusted me. Trusted us.” Jim shook his head sadly. “I don’t want to break up with you over this.”

  There must be a moment when every animal caught in a leg trap runs through the minutes, the seconds, before the coil springs. Before the swing and snap of hard metal on bone. The reversible moment—the one it would take back if only it could.

  Winter break was coming up, and Terri was heading home to Boston. We had been best friends since t
he first day of college, but suddenly she seemed like a stranger to me. By the time she returned, Jim and I were engaged and I had dropped out of school. I wouldn’t take her calls anymore or return her messages. After a while, the calls stopped.

  Just before the wedding, I returned home to my apartment to find a message on a slip of paper wedged in the doorjamb:

  Run, girl, run.

  But the reversible moment was gone.

  March 6

  We live just outside Wheeler, a city of twenty thousand bordering the Navajo reservation. The town is roughly equal parts Caucasian, Hispanic and Indian—not just Navajo, but Zuni and Hopi, too. It’s been described as a down-and-dirty sort of place. Billboards crowd the two interstates that run into town and out again. Signs are always advertising half-off sales on Indian jewelry—mostly questionable grades of turquoise and silver crafted into belts, earrings and squash blossom necklaces, but also smatterings of other things, like tiger’s eye cabochons set in thick rings and looping strands of red branch coral. The town is notorious for its saturation of bars, liquor stores and plasma donation centers. Unless you live there, or need gas or a night’s sleep, or you’re in the market for souvenirs of Indian Country, it’s more of a drive-through than a destination.

  The McGill County sheriff’s office is headquartered in Wheeler, but its jurisdiction actually lies outside the city limits—about five thousand square miles of high desert. The rugged sandstone mesas that make up the northern horizon begin about twenty miles east, and they are something to behold, rising up out of the earth in a sloping, unbroken line, bloodred and striated.

  In any given year, the county might see two murders and a half dozen rapes. I know, because Jim likes to tell me, studying my face as he recounts the details, which are far more lurid than what makes it into a deputy’s report. A dozen arsons, two dozen stolen cars. Four hundred people will drive drunk. Thirty will go missing, and some will never be seen again. Three hundred will be assaulted—at least, those are the ones that make their way into a report. These usually consist of brawls between men who’ve had a few too many, or jealous fights over a girl, or squabbles between neighbors. Less often, young men will jump a stranger for his wallet or whatever contents of his car they can easily pawn. And some are what are commonly known as domestic disputes.

  If you wonder why I never became a statistic with the sheriff’s office, it wasn’t for lack of trying, and not just on Jim’s part. If you’ve never been in my shoes, you likely could never understand. Ten years ago, I couldn’t have. The closest metaphor I know is the one about the boiling frog: Put a frog in a pot of boiling water, and he will jump out at once. But put him in a pot of cold water and turn up the heat by degrees, and he’ll cook to death before he realizes it.

  After the slap comes the fist. After the black eye, the split lip. The punch that caused me to miscarry was a bad one. After that, came the fear: That I did not know this man. That I didn’t know myself. That he could seriously hurt me. That he might even kill me. That there was no one to turn to, so thoroughly had he separated me from familiar people and places. He had moved me into his world where he was an authority, an officer of the law, and I was the outsider, an unknown quantity.

  Then there was the shame. That somehow I had caused this. That somehow I deserved this. That this was, as he so often told me, my fault. If only I were smarter or prettier, took better care of the house, were more cheerful. If only I had salted the beans right, or hadn’t left the toothpaste tube facedown instead of faceup.

  In point of fact, when I finally felt the water start to boil, I did try to get help. But Jim was ready. It happened the first time he cracked one of my ribs, and I dialed 911. He didn’t stop me. This was an object lesson, only I didn’t know it. The deputy who knocked on the door was a longtime fishing buddy who still had one of Jim’s favorite trout spinners in his own tackle box at home. By the time the deputy left the house, he and Jim had plans that Sunday for Clearwater Lake.

  Jim waved the man out of the driveway, came inside and closed the door. I was leaning against the china cabinet, holding my side. Laurel was a toddler then, and wailing in her crib. It hurt so bad to bend that I couldn’t pick her up. Jim came at me so fast I thought he intended to ram right through me. I shuffled back against the wall. He braced one broad hand against the doorjamb, and with the other shoved hard against the china cabinet. It toppled over and crashed to the floor, shattering our wedding set to bits, scattering eggshell porcelain shards from one end of the room to the other.

  Jim was red with rage, snorting like a bull. “You stupid bitch,” he said, panting hard. “Clean this up.”

  He stepped toward me again, this time more slowly. His hand came up and I winced in anticipation, but he only cupped my cheek in his palm, stroking my skin. When he spoke again, the pitch of his voice was changed utterly—low and gentle, like a caress.

  “And if you ever call them again, I swear to Christ I will cut your fucking fingers off before they even get here.”

  * * *

  After that, you feel the heat, but not the burn. After that, you get on your knees and pick up the pieces, grateful you can still do that much. And after that, you lean over your daughter’s crib no matter how much it hurts and pick her up and hold her so tight you think you’ll smother both of you.

  March 10

  Laurel turned seven yesterday, and it was a good day. Jim was off and had picked up presents—a dress with ruffles and matching shoes, a DVD of Sleeping Beauty and a stuffed rabbit with a pink bow around its neck holding a heart-shaped pillow that read, Daddy’s Girl. He’d suggested a coconut cake, even though Laurel’s favorite is chocolate. I made chocolate, but covered it with coconut icing.

  Laurel doesn’t like ruffles, either, or matching sets of clothing. Left to herself, she’ll pair pink stripes with purple polka dots and top it with a yellow sunhat freckled with red daisies. It will look like she’s pulled on whatever has risen to the top of the laundry basket, but in fact she will spend a half hour in careful consideration of this piece with that before making her final decision. Jim jokes that she must be color-blind. He calls it “clownwear,” and if he’s home to see it, he makes her change. But I let her mix and match as she pleases, because she says she is a rainbow and doesn’t want any color to feel left out.

  March 13

  Jim’s probation has ended. Three months of good behavior, ten days served, an official reprimand and a misdemeanor conviction that a career man can overcome with enough time and a little effort. That was the sheriff’s encouraging speech when he met with Jim and me this morning to, as he says, close the book on an unfortunate incident.

  As far as he knew, we had merely argued. And I, being foolish, had taken the stairs too fast and slipped. And if it was anything more serious than this, well, he was a big believer in the healing power of time.

  “I’ve known you two for—how long? I never met a nicer couple,” he said. “You’re young; you can get beyond this. You’ve got a daughter—Laura? Think of her. Go home. Get your family back. Forget it ever happened.” He wagged his finger at Jim and laughed. “But don’t ever let it happen again, Corporal.”

  Jim grinned. “No, sir. It won’t.”

  As jail time goes, Jim had it easy. He was kept in a separate cell to protect him from other prisoners, some of whom he might have arrested. His buddies brought him men’s magazines to pass the time, and burgers and burritos instead of jailhouse food. They shot the breeze with him and played cards to ease the boredom, the cell door open for their visits. It might as well have been an extended sleepover. Jim joked with them, lost good-naturedly at poker, winked when they delivered the magazines.

  When he was finally released . . .

  No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. I can’t tell it yet.

  What I can say is that it wasn’t my fault Jim went to jail—it was the doctor in the clinic across the Arizona state line that Jim took me to in
case it was something serious. Wheeler is only a few miles from the border.

  I can’t remember what set him off this time—some trouble at work, most likely, that carried over. And it was mid-November, and Jim never does well during the holidays. But this time I was vomiting blood, and feverish. I was afraid I was bleeding inside, and convinced him to take me to a doctor. I swore I wouldn’t say anything.

  To all appearances, Jim was the concerned and loving husband, holding me up as he walked me through the doors of the clinic. He was near tears as he explained he’d come home to find me half conscious at the base of the stairs, our little daughter frantic, trying to rouse her mother. The nurses seemed as concerned for his welfare as for mine.

  But the clinic doctor was young, fresh off a hospital residency in Phoenix and clearly not stupid. He could tell a bad beating from a fall. He called the local police department, which referred it back to McGill County for investigation as suspected domestic assault.

  The doctor had me admitted to the small regional hospital, where I stayed for two days. During that time, he visited me to check on my progress, and to press for details.

  I could tell he meant well. He asked what happened to my bent pinkie. How I came by the scar that bisects my left eyebrow. The scalding burn on my back. He said he would send someone from the local domestic violence center to speak with me, if I wished.

  I didn’t wish anything of the sort. He was young and earnest. To men like him, illness and injury are the enemy, and they are soldiers in some noble cause. I felt like he was flaying me alive.