Sila wrote down: Find exotic bird vet. Flamingos are real klutzes.
Gio sounded alarmed. “Exotic bird vet? I didn’t know about that. I guess I should have done more flamingo research.”
Mateo spoke. “Did you do any flamingo research?”
Gio didn’t answer.
Mateo kept looking at him.
“Before I go to bed I read about different places in Africa and Asia where there are elephants,” Gio told him.
Mateo persisted. “You’re reading books or articles?”
Sila thought Gio looked caught. He said, “Mostly I look at pictures online. And a few days ago I saw a beautiful photo of an elephant in water surrounded by flamingos. So I looked to see if I could buy a few.”
Pip Rozaire smiled at Sila and Mateo. “And he found me. In Las Vegas. It was fate.”
The crates weren’t heavy since the largest flamingo only weighed eight pounds. They all helped get the birds out of the van and onto the ground next to the farmhouse porch.
Mr. Rozaire was in charge. “I’m going to open the doors. They’re shy at first. And they’ve been cooped up for twenty hours. So expect ’em to be dullards.”
He removed the locks on the crates and opened the doors.
Not a single flamingo moved. They stayed as still as their plastic lawn ornament counterparts. Then one bird lifted its long, pink neck, and a pair of eyes on a head with a boomerang-shaped, black-tipped beak appeared in the open door of the crate.
Eventually all eight flamingos had their necks extended and their heads out. And then it was like a pool table when the cue ball hits the triangle. The birds exploded out of the plastic crates. The flamingos were eager to be free of the cramped cages and in open space, but they also seemed confused and very rattled at what they found. This was an open space the likes of which they had never seen.
Mr. Rozaire went to the van and came back with a pair of shears. He handed them to Gio, who in turn passed them straight to Sila. She gave them to Mateo. He seemed interested in the sharp tool. Pip went on to explain, “Those are feather clippers. Flamingos fly, so you’re going to have to keep the wing feathers cut. Really a two-person job. You’ll need a big blanket to make the catch. And be prepared for a lot of running. When you’ve got the bird under your control one person holds it down wrapped in the blanket. Then the other person pulls out a wing and does the snip-snip. Think of it like cutting toenails. It has to be done.”
Sila found her voice. “How often?”
Pip Rozaire was facing her now. “I’m going to say once a month. This group is close to needing a whack.”
Mateo looked from the clippers he was holding to the birds, and tried to pass the tool back to Gio.
Pip continued, “If you don’t want to do the clippy-clip, you’ve got the choice of the full pinion.”
Mateo’s eyes flashed with something Sila read as dismay. “What’s a pinion?” he asked. Sila had no idea either.
“Son, that’s a fancy word for cutting off a chunk of a bird’s wing.”
Sila felt her hand, which was holding her notepad, go weak as he continued. “They can’t fly after the pinion. Obviously don’t try doing that yourself. Get the exotic vet involved. It’s an operation—surgery is what I’m saying. I didn’t pinion. But that’s how most zoos handle flamingos. Least that’s what I been told. It was too pricey for me to consider.”
Gio had been quiet, but not anymore. “We’re not cutting off half their wings!”
Sila looked over at Mateo. They were both relieved.
“Up to you. They’re your birds now.”
Mr. Rozaire pulled a wad of rolled-up papers from out of his back pocket and gave them to Gio.
“Here you go. Instructions on care and feeding. Also, there’s a release. You need to sign that. I’m turning them over to you. No returns. No liability.”
Sila realized the man’s face was wet with perspiration. And it wasn’t hot out. He looked right at her and said, “Here’s some advice: Don’t renovate a motel if your marriage isn’t strong. Also, think twice about calling any place in Las Vegas ‘The Other Flamingo.’”
Sila nodded and asked the only question at this point that she cared about. “Do the birds have names?”
It was a cloudy day, but Pip Rozaire squinted up into the sky as if he was looking into bright light. He finally said, “The biggest one is Pink Floyd. But they don’t come when you call ’em, so you can give ’em any name you want.”
Once Gio had signed the paper he wanted, the man climbed back in his van and started the engine, not even going to the bathroom or taking the cup of coffee Gio offered. “You said you’ve got a pond. They’re filter-feeders. You can read up on that. It means they scoop water and sift through it for food.”
He then put the vehicle in reverse and almost ran over a flamingo. He honked the horn of the truck, which sent the birds off in eight different directions. The flamingos were faster on their feet than they looked. And he was right, they were klutzes.
Right away the birds found something of great interest. It wasn’t the water Gio had put out. Or the pile of fresh fruit, or the blankets and cushions. It was Veda’s poop. The birds ran to the mound behind the barn and began pecking wildly at the waste material.
Gio shouted, “Are they eating it?”
“I’m not sure,” said Sila. “But Mr. Gio, I bet the first person to called someone a ‘birdbrain’ had spent time with flamingos.”
33.
It took more than two hours to get the eight flamingos down to the pond. It was like herding cats. Or like herding flamingos. In the end, Gio drove the golf cart slowly down the dirt road while Sila and Mateo held ropes with bags of Veda poo tied to the ends.
Sila saw Veda watch as a parade of flamingos approached. Her expression seemed to say, “Well, this is interesting.” When the flamingos got to the pond they went right to it. Whenever the elephant moved in the direction of the birds, they scattered.
Sila whispered, “It hardly feels like the basis for a friendship.”
Eventually Veda got out of the water. The beginning of some kind of bond formed when she dropped one of her turds onto the muddy shore. The flamingos rushed to check it out. Sila figured they would soon make the connection between the smelly material and the maker of such gifts.
Mateo noted, “Well, maybe they’ll come to appreciate what they each have to offer.”
For the flamingos, it would probably always be the fresh turds. But Sila liked to believe that for Veda, it might be the grace of a living creature with legs so thin and a neck so long. Anyone, she thought, could see that the construction of a flamingo was a marvel.
Sila, Mateo, and Gio sat in the golf cart and watched as the birds began taking apart elephant droppings, working to build what looked like large traffic cones. The flamingos toiled away independently, but all the while checking one another’s progress. The birds had a method to their madness. It wasn’t long before each flamingo had a version of a dung nest positioned on the pond’s shoreline. When they perched on their nests the tops smashed and the structures resembled small volcanoes. It was a sight to see for all involved.
The birds were busy creatures. After making the nests, they went back into the water, as Pip Rozaire had said, and began an activity that Sila later discovered would always take up the bulk of their day. The flamingos scooped water into their beaks, which were reversed from a regular bird beak, and then sifted through the liquid for food, most of which was too small to even see. They spit out the rest.
After watching how they operated, Sila told Gio, “I guess they’re spitting all the time, only it just looks like they have drippy beaks.”
Mateo was reading the papers Mr. Rozaire had left behind. “They’re eating algae.”
This seemed to make Gio happy. “There’s plenty of that out there.”
“It say
s here that their rate of filtration is twenty times a minute.”
Mateo handed the paperwork to Sila, who read out loud, “A group of flamingos is called a pat.”
Two of the flamingos appeared to be skimming the top of the water. Mateo, sounding fascinated, said, “I think they’re eating mosquitoes.”
Gio seemed thrilled. “Have at it.”
Veda shook her head from side to side, and Sila proclaimed, “She likes them!”
“Or maybe she doesn’t like mosquitoes,” said Mateo.
Sila rode her bike home that afternoon with Mateo filled with a new understanding of flamingos. They were pedaling slowly on the side of the road when she observed, “Once you know about something, you see it differently. I’ll never look at the pink plastic flamingos people stick on their lawns the same way again.”
Mateo nodded in agreement, adding, “That’s why it’s a good idea to read the ingredients on packaging.”
Sila was confused. “What do you mean?”
“There’s always something inside that you’re not seeing.”
She wasn’t sure she understood completely. Later she found herself wondering if maybe he was talking about himself.
That night Sila’s voice was filled with enthusiasm as she told her father about her day. This was something that had been mostly missing since Oya had left, and only the elephant and Gio brought it back. Sila explained, “It looks like the flamingos are just standing around, but they’re good swimmers. They glide into the deep part of the pond with their pink heads skimming the top of the water.”
“I can’t wait to meet these birds,” Alp said.
“I wish Mom could see.”
Sila regretted her words as soon as she said them. Of course she wished that. And so did her dad. But now the empty chair across from Sila looked even emptier. Alp got up from the table to clear the plates. They no longer used the dishwasher. Neither of them knew why. Instead they rinsed the same two plates, two forks, and two knives every day, and put them on the rack to dry. Oya used the dishwasher. Did three people make that much more of a mess than two? It made no sense. But so many things in their lives now didn’t.
The next day proved that Pip Rozaire was right: The flamingos could fly. The eight birds were down to only five by the time the kids arrived on the property. One flew south to a Courtyard Marriott, where guests were thrilled to wake up and find a flamingo in the swimming pool. Sila read about it in the local paper. A cemetery four miles east had a big, broken fountain with lily pads and all kinds of green slime that attracted two of the escapees. Gio told Sila he’d gotten word of the graveyard birds but hadn’t gone to retrieve them because the groundskeeper reported that the first mourners to arrive found the flamingos comforting in their time of grief. But the five who didn’t fly away seemed to really like Gio’s place. A lot. Maybe they understood there wasn’t anywhere better for them within striking distance.
That morning Gio had gotten on the phone with the local gravel company and ordered truckloads of fine sand, which by midday was dumped around Veda’s pond. The flamingos weren’t rocket scientists, but they could see that the new powdery stuff was better than Veda’s poop, so they started building with the sand.
Gio’s next call had been to the local nursery. He bought water lilies, marsh marigolds, pickerel rush, sedges, and cattails, and hired the nursery workers to plant them. Sila and Mateo helped.
Minnow eggs were ordered, along with crayfish. Gio told Sila and Mateo that he’d read that in order to stay pink, the birds needed to have crustaceans in their diet. As it turned out, there were fairy shrimp already living in the pond. Sila and Mateo discovered this that evening when they put drops of the water on a slide to view under Mateo’s microscope. This close-up work was Mateo’s favorite thing to do once he was home from a day at Gio’s. He and Sila filled a bottle with pond water and he carried it home in his backpack. Suddenly Sila felt like a scientist.
Sila’s favorite time of every day at Gio’s was with Veda. She had come to see that there was a lot to understand about elephant behavior. Veda used her trunk to put mud on her back, which was to protect her skin. It was sunscreen in the form of mud-screen. The elephant also used tools, often taking a branch in her trunk and holding it like a flyswatter to slap at insects.
But today Sila learned one of the most remarkable things Veda could do: imitate the sound of the brakes on the golf cart. At first they’d all thought they were hearing things. But then Sila realized that Veda had made the same mechanical brake sound as the cart when they stopped at the crest of the hill.
“She’s a parrot,” Gio said.
Sila answered, “No, she’s smarter than that. She’s an elephant, and they are the most amazing creatures in the world.”
Down at the pond, Sila stood next to Veda watching as two flamingos pushed sand and mud around on the shore. She whispered softly to the elephant, “Flamingos have strong ideas about nests.” Veda leaned forward, touching the girl with her trunk. Sila kissed her leathery skin and whispered, “The birds are pretty, but you are everything.”
34.
It was while sitting in the golf cart at the pond two weeks after the flamingos arrived that Gio asked, “Sila? You’re so quiet. Is everything okay?”
She shrugged.
“Come on. Tell me.”
“Today’s my mom’s birthday.”
Gio understood immediately. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“I’ll talk to her tonight before I go to bed. It’s ten hours later there. It will be morning for her. But still her birthday here.”
“She will love that.”
Sila mumbled, “I wonder when Veda was born. And where.”
“The man said she was young when he got her. Not even two years old.”
Sila’s voice was back to being not much more than a whisper. “Where do you think her mother and father are now?”
“I don’t know, Sila.”
But the idea of Veda’s family suddenly animated Sila. “What about in the papers the circus guy left? Is there anything there that explains?”
Gio offered, “You could take a look at that notebook Chester gave me.”
Later when Mateo was working with Klay and Carlos, Gio suggested going to get the black notebook that Chester had left. Every day Sila was in the farmhouse to use the bathroom or get something from the refrigerator, but she never went into the living room or lingered inside for any length of time. Today was different. Gio directed her to a bookcase.
Sila was eager to take a look, but her eyes fell on three shelves of identical binders. Gio noticed. “Those were put together by my wife. She made one for every year she taught school.”
Sila scanned the spines on the shelf and saw the year when she’d had Mrs. Gardino as her second-grade teacher. Then she heard Gio add, “Go ahead. Take a look if you want.”
Sila wasn’t sure why she felt butterflies in her stomach when she pulled the binder with her year from the shelf. She took a seat on the couch and turned to the first page, where she saw the official picture of her whole class. She had her own copy of this photograph, but it felt different looking at it here. So much had changed. Mrs. Gardino was gone. Sila’s mom had been overseas for months and months. Sila looked at her own smiling image and realized she had a tooth missing back then. Sila seemed so little in the picture. But also so happy.
Her eyes landed next on Mateo. He was in the back row all the way over on the left side. He had on a bow tie. Sila wondered what he’d been thinking about that day.
She turned the page and saw a typed list with the names of all the kids and their parents next to email addresses and lots of phone numbers. After this there was a school calendar, a picture of the class in Halloween costumes, and then a printed program for the holiday assembly. There were three pages of Valentines, and the largest one was from Mateo. He had filled an entire pag
e with stick-on hearts.
What followed were photos from a field trip to a fish hatchery in March and an event in April called “Touch a Truck,” which was put on by the city recreation center. Sila was surprised to see the menu from the cafeteria for a single week in May. Why had Mrs. Gardino kept that? The food didn’t look very interesting. Was that the point?
The final pages were drawings that students had made throughout the year. One of Mateo’s drawings of Waffles was in the book. He was a puppy in the picture, and she wasn’t sure it was the same dog until she saw Good dog Waffles written in small print at the bottom of the piece of paper.
Sila was sad to see Mrs. Gardino hadn’t saved any of her work. She felt doubly bad because there were three pictures done by Paloma Casaroli. Sila took a long look at the three drawings and had to admit that Paloma was a really good artist.
Finally Sila turned to the last page of the binder. A poem had been glued to the paper. She stared at the words and read:
MY TEACHER
Is redee every mornning even if I am not.
My Teacher
Shows me how to thingk hard and lurn a lot.
My Teacher
Fills my hart with love
More than she will ever no.
My Teacher
Is named Lillian Gardino
And I will miss her next yere
But also for ever.
Sila Tekin age 7 (Sorry I kood not find a word that is good with for ever)
Under the poem in Lillian Gardino’s lovely handwriting Sila saw the words: “The sweetest little girl in the world.”
“You can keep that binder,” Gio told her.
Sila was holding it tightly to her chest. Her fingers gripped the edges hard. She hadn’t shown Gio the poem, and she didn’t know if he realized it was inside.
The Elephant in the Room Page 12