Bird by Noy Holland Page A

you. Not Faith, not Hope, not Charity. Bird. There’s not a bird I don’t like, not exactly. I like ospreys. I like tiny owls living in holes. I like that cranes find their way by the stars while half their brain is sleeping. Mates for life. The condors that live in the Andes—those monsters mate for life, too. Geese do. Plenty of birds. It’s common. They log thousands of miles, wing to wingtip. They grieve. It takes a heart of rock not to believe it. What I’ve read, I believe is true: you kill a condor and its mate, done in by grief, will plunge to its death from the sky. We don’t believe it because we don’t want to. We want to kill them ourselves with bolas. Lash them to the backs of bulls. We want to climb the trees they are sleeping in and club them on their brainy heads. Call it science. Sport. Gaucho pastime. Darwin’s helpers with geology hammers. When condors sleep, they sleep hard. We call that stupid.
    â€œCranefly, I could have called you. I could have called you Bean. You think it matters? I called you Bird. I like birds. Birds know too fucking much, it’s spooky. Your Hoppy, no doubt, was dumb. Rabbits are dumb. They die of fright. They scream. Bunny, I could have called you, but I didn’t. I didn’t. People should be named for themselves. You never gave me a name for anything. You call my name like everyone else. Why is that, Bird? You don’t think of me? I’m Mickey like everyone else? I think you’re careless, is what. You’re not thinking. You’re making a mark you can’t see.
    â€œBird? If I named you for a bird I’d name you Sparrow. Maybe Wren. I thought of Phoebe, a phoebe is faithful, it comes back and goes away. Polyandrous, polyamorous, the loosely colonial—I like them all. I like chickadees, little home-body birds who stick around and sing all winter long. Chickadee. A bird named for its song. I like whippoorwills, sitting alone in the dark coming down. They go quiet. Then they sing the song they were named for in the dewfall and dimming woods. Whip-poor-will . We have to think more. We’re making tracks, Bird, everybody is. There are marks where anyone has been.
    â€œBut, Bird? That baby of ours was nothing. We named her to be taken, to be nothing. She was tatters, Bird. A bloody dumpling. Think. Little Caroline, little Caroline. She was nothing. I never even wanted her. I only wanted you.”
    I wanted you, Bird wrote to her mother.
    I’ d be you.
    I would wear your dresses and carry you around and in this you would be a mother again and a baby and I wouldn’t be a dead baby’s mother and not a girl with a dying mother, over and over again. I’d be nothing at all. I’d be you.
    They were going to have to move and keep moving or else they were going down. They’d go to Albuquerque. Hitch there. Itwas still an idea, hitching. They would appear on the old lady’s stoop in the sun and say, It’s us, hello.
    Bird bought a Styrofoam cooler for beer and twelve tall boys of Pabst. She double-bagged their clothes, brought extra bags to use as slickers—for sleet, if it came, for snow.
    Her jaw was swelling; it was yellowing and blue.
    They made green together, yellow and blue. Blue and red made purple.
    And what did yellow and Bird make?
    And what did Mickey and blue?
    â€œAnd Mickey and Bird?” Mickey asked.
    And Bird said, “A bloody stew.”
    He stuffed her hat down on her head.
    â€œI didn’t mean that,” he said. “Sorry.” He kissed her. “That was dumb.”
    â€œBunnies are dumb,” Bird said.
    She dropped a bag at her feet and stuck her thumb out. All their clothes were lumped up in Glad bags, glisteny, thick, sturdy things slouched on the snowy berm.
    â€œI’ll call you Man Afraid,” Bird said. “Sleeps A Lot. Sound good?”
    She could talk still so she was talking. Pretty soon, she would quit.
    What they had come