Extraordinary Birds

by Sandy Stark-McGinnis

  “Let’s try about halfway first.” Eleanor is standing next to the far perch. “Don’t worry if she flies to the ground. There’s enough slack on the rope to give her the freedom to do that. If she does fly to the ground, go over and extend your glove. Hopefully, she’ll hop back up and you’ll be able to set her on the perch again.”

  I raise my arm so Henrietta can step onto the perch, and a bell attached to the glove rings a little. She doesn’t want to go the first time. The second time, she steps onto the perch, but then flies to the ground, hopping around, tripping over the rope. She seems confused.

  This isn’t going to work.

  But I follow Eleanor’s directions and bend down and offer Henrietta my glove.

  I swoop her up again. “I’m here for you,” I tell her.

  She clings to my glove with her talons and doesn’t move. “I know you’re scared, Henrietta, but if you want to fly again, we’re going to have to build your muscles. It’s like homework. I don’t like doing homework, but all my teachers have said it’s exercise for the brain. What you’re doing is exercise. You want to get stronger, so you can go back to the wild where you belong.”

  Henrietta shifts her head side to side, like she’s really thinking about what I just told her. This time, when I raise my arm to the perch, she steps up, steady, puffing out her chest a little.

  Inside a pouch Eleanor gave me is a bag of raw meat. I walk to the halfway point between Henrietta and Eleanor, hold out my glove, and set a piece of the meat on top of it.

  Henrietta doesn’t move, but when I wave my glove up and down to ring the bell, telling her, “Fly!” she pushes off from the perch. She swoops low, then flies up and lands on my glove. She tears at the meat.

  “Good job, Henrietta. That was amazing.” Really, the amazing part is being able to see a bird like Henrietta fly so close to me.

  “That was great, December,” Eleanor says. “This time, take a few steps back and have Henrietta fly a little farther.”

  I don’t know how long we’re out here. I’ve lost track of time, but we don’t stop until Henrietta has flown the whole distance, perch to perch, a couple of times. When we go back inside the refuge, I give Henrietta one last piece of meat, then place her in her cage. “If you keep flying like that, you’ll be outta here in no time.”

  I stroke the top of her head with the tip of my finger and close the cage. I imagine Henrietta, a silhouette in the sky, circling for food, or perched on an electrical wire, watching the ground for a mouse, free to do what she was born to do.

  Every living thing should have the freedom to be who or what they are.

  As we’re driving home, I ask Eleanor, “What’ll happen to Henrietta if she isn’t able to fly the way she needs to in order to survive on her own?”

  “She’ll stay at the refuge,” she says.

  So if I can’t get Henrietta to fly, she’ll live the rest of her life in a cage. No bird, not even a flightless one, should have to spend its life trapped.

  There was a story I heard from Wes. It was from a newspaper article. Thousands of blackbirds were found dead during the Fourth of July. People were setting off fireworks, and the sound and sparks scared the birds. They flew into telephone poles, cars, houses, and one another.

  Those blackbirds were trapped by the sound of the fireworks, and they fell from the sky.

  Tonight in my room, after Eleanor says good night to me, I think about Henrietta and how I need to practice so my flight muscles will get stronger, too. And I think of Teresa. She’s keeping watch from the flight tree, her great horned owl family flying by to find out if the rumor that she’s been brought back to life is true.

  I peek down the hall to Eleanor’s bedroom. The light is on. I’m patient, though, and wait till it turns off. Then I crawl to the living room, to my escape window.

  It’s cold. I don’t feel it against my skin, but I see it in the moon and stars, bright and clear, looking like they’ve been carved and placed into the night sky.

  I zigzag in and out of moonlight and look over my shoulder to Eleanor’s house. Through the back fence, a porch light shines yellow, a slice of a miniature harvest moon, warm like the down comforter Eleanor gave me for my bed.

  Tonight each branch on my flight tree can be seen in detail, and just like the moon and stars, they look like they’ve been placed with purpose.

  The whole time I’m climbing, goose bumps form on my skin. The farther I climb the more I feel a cold wind blowing, just strong enough to make the leaves, still holding to branches, shudder. They move up and down, side to side, one falling, drifting down. That’s not the way I’ve ever fallen. My falls have been hard, resulting in one sprained wrist and three sprained ankles. I’m not trying to hurt myself on purpose. I’m not. But it happens.

  I’m trying to give my wings a chance. Getting hurt has nothing to do with it. I’d endure fifty thousand sprained ankles if it led to my wings unfolding again.

  A teardrop falls on my arm, and I wipe my nose on my shirt. It’s the cold making my eyes water. It’s the cold making my nose run.

  I climb to the branch where Teresa’s perched. I stand up and shuffle my feet to the part where it’s like a diving board, where I can feel it’s flexible. I swear Teresa whispers, “Be careful.”

  “One, two, three,” I whisper back. “Feathers will pop through each goose bump.” Real feathers, made from the protein keratin, the same substance that makes human hair.

  I feel cartilage and bone tingle under my scars, but I think of the Latin name for red-tailed hawks, Buteo jamaicensis, and how Eleanor said ensis means belonging to a place.

  As I stare down through branches tonight, the ground looks far away. My hands are sweaty. I let go with one and wipe the moisture off on my pants. My foot slips, and I hear my heartbeat, vibrating in the night, a thump against the cold. My heartbeat won’t slow down. Either my wings are getting ready to burst from my skin or this is what being afraid feels like. I let go with my other hand, wipe it on my pants, and balance myself like birds naturally do, like I can naturally do.

  Three is the magic number.

  One. Eleanor must have other songs she sings. If I stay around, I’ll get to hear them.

  Two. There’s Henrietta. She needs me now.

  Three. I wonder how many dead birds’ feathers it took to fill my comforter? It does keep me warm, but the warmth isn’t worth the birds’ sacrifice.

  I will fly.

  But I hesitate. The feel of falling will be nothing new. I’m used to it. The part I never get used to is hitting the ground. I never know if I’m going to land just right, without a scratch, or whether there will be a break.

  Between the beats of my heart, a twig snaps on the ground, the sound coming from the direction of Eleanor’s house.

  “December?” I almost don’t recognize Eleanor’s voice. It’s not her Bird Whisperer voice, it’s more a mom-like sound, the tone of being afraid for a son or a daughter. Adrian sometimes has this tone when he talks to me, and I’ve heard it at school, too, when parents are picking up their kids.

  Eleanor is wearing binoculars around her neck. She looks through them. It doesn’t take long for her to find me. I hope she doesn’t spot Teresa.

  “There you are.” She waves, letting the binoculars rest against her eyes. “The nights are getting cold. How long are you planning to stay up there?”

  “You’re not stopping me.” My hands are holding tight to branches. I let go a little and feel my body lean forward. The skin over my scar is warm and getting warmer, the muscles, ligaments, bones beginning to twist into place.

  “Stopping you from what?” Eleanor’s feet tap against fallen leaves, each step a raindrop falling. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. If you need food, I can bring it to you.”

  If her voice wasn’t serious, I’d think she was teasing me. “I can find food myself. And you don’t have to take care of me.”

  “I want to take care of you. And Henrietta needs you. You were
great together. If Henrietta keeps up what she did today, she’ll be flying on her own in no time.”

  Eleanor stands to the side of the tree. “Oh, December, come down, please.” Her Bird Whisperer voice is back. I wonder if the singsong rhythm is instinctual. Or maybe it’s the voice she uses when she doesn’t know what else to do. “Come down, December.”

  “If I don’t, are you going to call the fire department?”

  She doesn’t answer. I hear Eleanor breathing, and something scraping against tree bark. She’s climbing the tree.

  “Just stay where you are.” Eleanor is breathing hard. “Did you know there are birds that don’t fly?”

  I list three of them: “The emu, the emperor penguin, and the kiwi.”

  “Of course you would know that.” Eleanor isn’t even at the first tier and slips to the ground. She lands on her feet. “I can’t do this,” I hear her say. “December …”

  “Kiwis are powerful little birds. They have strong legs so they can fight predators.”

  Eleanor looks up through the branches without using the binoculars. “Yes, they’re birds that don’t fly but are still amazing creatures. And, in my opinion, they’re the smarter of birds because they stay on the ground.”

  “They can’t fly,” I say, “because that’s how they evolved.”

  “True.” Eleanor steps away from the tree, and this time uses the binoculars to look at me.

  “Why’d you stop climbing?” I don’t mean it to, but the question comes out angrier than it should. No one has ever climbed up after me.

  “Well, to be honest, I’m afraid of heights,” Eleanor says.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Just like it’s not a matter of choice whether the kiwi flies, it’s not my choice to be afraid of heights. I just am.”

  “You might be able to teach yourself how not to be,” I say.

  “Maybe.” Eleanor lets go of the binoculars and rests her hands on her hips. “Have you ever heard of social weaver birds?” She’s changing the subject. I guess she doesn’t like to talk about what she’s afraid of, either.

  “I know they live in a colony, like one big family.” I move down one tier. “They all share the same nest.”

  “Yes, their nests are believed to be the largest in the world. Some can get up to twenty feet wide and ten feet tall. Amazing. Most of the birds spend their lives maintaining the nests. Supposedly they do their job very well. Some nests have been known to last for almost a hundred years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But a home is not always the best thing to have. Not all homes are happy, or safe.”

  “That’s true.” Even though Eleanor is on the ground, I still smell the lavender soap she uses. “But my home is safe. And I want you to stay for as long as …”

  Eleanor stops talking. I wait for her to finish the sentence. As long as … I want. As long as … she’ll have me. The truth is I can’t leave now. I have to get my book back from Jenny. And I have to finish training Henrietta.

  “… I promise to be good to you,” she says instead, “but you have to promise me something. If you want to come out to this tree—it’s a beautiful tree—please ask. You can’t leave and not let me know where you’re going. At night, or during the day. I’m responsible for you. I take that responsibility seriously, whether you believe me or not. While you’re here, I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but you have to do your part. It’s not a one-way street.”

  I lean forward a little. I squeeze the branch and catch myself, but for the first time since I started climbing trees, the feeling of falling scares me more than a little.

  On the ground, where moonlight shines, Eleanor reaches up toward me. “December, please be careful.”

  I steady myself on the branch. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I’m okay.”

  But Eleanor’s arms don’t move. “I know I won’t be able to stop you from climbing, but I want to know where you are, December. I want to know that you are okay. You might not think that’s a big deal, to know where someone is, but it is to me.”

  I don’t say, “I won’t do it again,” because I’m not sure I won’t. I could lie, but not to Eleanor. I can at least give her that.

  “Do you understand?” she asks.

  I kind of believe Eleanor when she says, I want to know that you are okay. But I have to be careful.

  I do understand what she’s saying, but it’s not going to stop me from trying to find my wings.

  “You know what my favorite bird is?” Eleanor drops her arms.

  There are ten thousand species of birds in the world, and even though I’ve never tried, I probably could come close to naming them all. “Well, from what I know about you, I’d say your favorite bird is the night parrot.”

  “Why the night parrot?”

  “You seem like you want to hide from the world. You live way out in the country. Your house is hidden, too, with ivy growing all over it.”

  “Well, I do like living out here, but not because I’m trying to hide from the world.” Eleanor steps out of the moonlight, so now she’s just a voice I hear from the ground. “No, swallows are my favorite. They’re everyday birds. I love seeing them fly out from under bridges, or swoop close to the river’s surface to get a drink of water. I like how they’re not territorial, but they’ll fiercely defend their nests if needed.”

  It’s quiet. I wait for Eleanor to keep telling me about swallows, or to ask what my favorite bird is, but there’s no sound. Grabbing branches, I move down one tier. I can’t see Eleanor from here, either.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Yes, I’m here. I’m ready to go back inside. What about you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’d like you to come down. By the way, I make really good pancakes for breakfast.” Eleanor holds the binoculars against her eyes again. “And I have plenty of butter and syrup.”

  Pancakes with lots of butter and syrup would be a nice way to store energy for my journey ahead.

  14

  On Monday, I stand on the edge of the playground, looking for Cheryllynn to make sure I go in the opposite direction. There’s a strip of fog floating over the grass; the kids out in the field run in and out of the heavy moisture, turning into ghosts.

  I find a tree with leaves that look like giants’ hands and lean against the trunk, holding my backpack against my chest this time.

  I need to figure out how I’m going to get Bird Girl back. I could just walk right up to Jenny, grab her purse, and run. I could pick a fight with her. I’m pretty sure I could wrestle her to the ground and pin her nose to the dirt until she gave me back my story.

  There’s only one problem with these plans: I’d be the one to get in trouble. I’d be the one accused of stealing, or bullying, even though it was Jenny’s fault. Jenny who stole from me.

  Through the fog comes a song. Across the playground, Cheryllynn is singing a jump rope rhyme: “Cinderella, dressed in blue, who’s gonna go to the ball with you? A, B, C …”

  It doesn’t take long for Jenny and her friends to find Cheryllynn. They gather around her and start doing what they seem to do best, act like vultures.

  “Where’d your mom get that raincoat anyway? Did she find it on the street?” The girls’ voices are what I think guinea fowls sound like, annoying and screechy.

  I don’t know why they’re always teasing Cheryllynn about her raincoat. It’s pink. It’s bright. It’s shiny. Everything they seem to like. They’re just jealous.

  “It’s not even raining.” Jenny’s pink sequin purse is hanging from her shoulder, but she might’ve taken Bird Girl and hidden it somewhere else.

  As far as I can tell, the object of Jenny’s game is to see if she and her friends can peck at Cheryllynn until she disappears. I’m going to call the girls “the Vultures.”

  Cheryllynn keeps jumping rope, humming another rhyme.

  Vultures have a keen sense of smell. That’s how they
find carrion—dead and decaying meat of animals. And that’s how the Vultures see Cheryllynn. The way they see me. They like to peck and tear.

  They form a circle around her. “Why’d you pick that name anyway? Tell us, you really did get that raincoat from the lost and found, right?”

  “Aren’t you going to answer our questions?” The Vultures try to move in front of each other, like scavenger birds hissing for a better spot to feed.

  “No.” Cheryllynn stops jumping. “Because Jenny could tell you where I got it.”

  Jenny steps forward, closer, joining Cheryllynn inside the circle. “I saw her take it out of the lost and found.”

  “Try again,” Cheryllynn says. “You were with your mom when you saw me buying this coat and the boots to match. You seemed like you were almost going to wave hi to me. You know, we used to say hi to each other all the time. But then your mom saw me, too, and told you to ‘come on.’ ”

  “We used to say hi to each other before you forgot that you’re really a boy.”

  “No, we used to say hi before your mom and dad said they didn’t want you hanging around with me anymore.”

  “Wrong. That’s not what happened. You decided you didn’t want to be friends anymore. You made your choice.”

  “You can tell whatever story you want.” Cheryllynn stares right at Jenny. “I know the truth.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter really. My mom and dad are right. I shouldn’t hang out with you.”

  Cheryllynn kicks the grass with the tip of her boot, turns around, whisks her hood off, and pulls a hair tie from her hair. The strands of her hair are frizzy, standing up in all directions, like tree branches spreading toward the sky. “You know what matters? I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be.”

  Jenny steps back into her space of the circle that surrounds Cheryllynn. “I didn’t see you at a store buying that coat. I saw you take it from the lost and found. That’s the truth.”

  “That’s a lie,” Cheryllynn says.