Pablo and Birdy

by Alison McGhee

  Did she actually fly, though? Maria would say, and he would have to say, No.

  There was a nudge at his shoulder. Birdy had fluttered up to stand next to him. Pablo put his arm around her, just in case she got any ideas, and they pressed their heads against the screen and looked down. The block was dark and quiet as it always was in the night.

  Not entirely, though. Something was moving, down there in the darkness. Was it the little dog out again, lured by the memory of elephant ears?

  No. Not the dog. Too small to be the dog. Pablo squinted and waited for his eyes to come into focus. Something was moving down there, in the middle of the street. Not just one something but several. The Committee! They were awake and gathered in the middle of the empty street, as if they were having a meeting. Next to him, Birdy shifted from foot to foot and half raised her wings.

  They all looked up, right then, as if they had heard the faint click of her talons on the windowsill. Their small bird faces were illuminated in the moonlight. They froze at the sight of Pablo in the window next to Birdy. But it was too late. He had seen them.

  “Committee!” Pablo called. “What are you doing down there?”

  Silence. Even from four flights up, Pablo could see how Peaches and Sugar Baby and Mr. Chuckles turned to one another, as if they’d been caught and were trying to come up with some kind of answer. Not so with Rhody.

  Cock-a-doodle-doooooooo.

  None of the others made a sound. But there they were, gathered in the street. The little dog the other night, now the Committee. And Birdy, risking her life out there on the cable. What was happening? Pablo again pictured Darren Mandible as he had been the other day, all excited about the possibility of winds of change. About fortune lost and fortune gained.

  Cock-a-doodle-dooooooooooo.

  Far below, Rhody was at it again.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE DOG SLEPT fitfully. It was pitch black in the alley, with only a few stars visible above the buildings that rose up on either side of him. He was curled up next to the Dumpster. Hours had gone by since the dishwasher had emptied that night’s garbage into the Dumpster and closed the lid, but the delicious food smells still emanated from it.

  The smells infiltrated the dog’s dreams. So had the smells from the small bowls of food the tattoo lady and the elephant-ear man set out for him, until a pudgy village dog had gone and gobbled them both up when the boy holding its leash had been distracted. Now the little dog was back to square one. In his dreams, which were always about food, he was back in the house he’d escaped from, and the man was cooking himself something to eat.

  A steak. Potatoes. Cornbread. Butter.

  The dog stood in the far corner of the kitchen, not moving. He made no sound. He was waiting. There was a chance that the man would, when he was finished eating, put his plate on the floor. If he did, that was the signal to inch forward, in silence, and eat from the man’s plate. If the man didn’t put the plate on the floor, though, that was the signal that the dog would get no food that night.

  The only way the plate would be put on the floor was if the dog was perfectly quiet. Soundless. Unmoving.

  The man’s fork scraped on the plate. His knife sawed through the meat. He brought the fork to his mouth and lowered it. Up with the fork, down. Up. Down.

  Only the dog’s eyes moved. He held himself perfectly still.

  The man finished his dinner. He got up and put the plate in the sink without a word to the dog.

  No food that night.

  In the dog’s sleep, his hind legs twitched and his front legs moved in unison. The plate in the sink smelled of food. Food, food, food. Then the distant crowing of a rooster pierced his dream.

  Cock-a-doodle-doooooo.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE NEXT NIGHT Pablo sat at the kitchen table painting more tiny parrots. It was hard to keep up with them, they sold so fast. Especially the ones of Peaches, who looked quite a bit more noble, majestic even, in Pablo’s paintings than she did in real life. Plus, no one could hear her squawking.

  Emmanuel was making black beans and rice and fried plantains, which he called the national dish of Cuba. Emmanuel loved Cuban food, and he had raised Pablo to love it too. Which he did, even though, if given the choice, Pablo would still choose cheese quesadillas.

  Birdy was restless, hopping from the table to the floor, fluttering up to the living room window and back down again. Pablo was restless too, but only on the inside. He concentrated on guiding the minuscule paintbrush up and down the faint outline of Peaches that he had penciled onto the smooth interior of the shell. His eyes kept going to Birdy. Now she was up on the windowsill again, her wings lifted ever so slightly, so that her blue-green under-feathers gleamed iridescent in the lamplight.

  “Emmanuel?”

  “Hmm?”

  Pablo wanted to talk to him about Birdy—it was on the tip of his tongue to bring it up—but what would he tell him? That he’d found her on the cable in the middle of the night? That sometimes—often, these days—she whispered in her sleep? And maybe even said actual words? Loud words, if in fact she was the one who had spoken in the man’s voice the other night. Emmanuel was bent over the cutting board, his knife moving swiftly on the plantains. Rice and black beans, each in covered pots, simmered on the back burners. The smell began to fill the room. Pablo’s mouth watered, and he concentrated on painting the curve of Peaches’s considerable wingspan.

  Now was not the time to talk to Emmanuel about Birdy. It would just make everything more complicated than it already was.

  “You have a question, mi Pablito?”

  “Yeah. Is it okay if I put on some music?”

  Emmanuel looked up and smiled. “Sure, as long as it’s you know who.”

  Which meant the Buena Vista Social Club. Emmanuel’s favorite music. He said it reminded him of Old Cuba, which was where his family had come from when he was a little boy.

  “We’re a nation of immigrants,” he had told Pablo many times. “Isla especially. Almost everyone who lives in this country came from somewhere else. Like my family from Cuba, and Lula’s from Haiti. Pierre too. He came from Saskatchewan, Canada, even though he tries to pretend it was France instead.”

  This conversation usually happened around the time of Pablo’s non-birthday. Pablo was pretty sure that Emmanuel was trying to make him feel better, because he, too, had come from somewhere else. It didn’t make him feel better, though. Emmanuel’s parents had passed away, but Emmanuel knew who they were and where his whole family had come from. He knew his own story. Whereas Pablo didn’t.

  It’s not the same, he wanted to say whenever Emmanuel brought it up, but he had always kept quiet. But tonight he had questions that wouldn’t go away.

  “Emmanuel, why did your family leave Cuba?” he asked.

  “For the same reason that most people leave their home, Pablito,” Emmanuel said. “To make a new life somewhere.”

  “But why?” Pablo persisted. “Why would anyone want to leave their home?”

  Emmanuel stirred the beans. Around and around and around went the spoon. It took him a long time to answer.

  “It’s not always a question of want, my boy. Countries can be like families. Sometimes they argue with other countries, or the people in one country argue with each other. Things turn bad. Life can feel impossible, whether because there’s no way to make a living or there’s war or, for whatever reason, you don’t feel free. Things changed in Cuba a long time ago—the government changed—and my parents were afraid.”

  He was still stirring the beans, but he looked up at Pablo and sighed. “Life was hard for them there, and it was hard for them here, too,” he said. “Hard for a long time. It is not easy to leave your country, your language, everything you know.”

  “Emmanuel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think that’s what happened to me?”

  Awful though it was to contemplate, the idea of his original family trying to escape with him wa
s better than the thought that he had been a horrible baby sent out to sea in a swimming pool. But Emmanuel lifted his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t know, Pablo. I wish, for your sake, that I did.”

  Emmanuel looked sad just then, so sad that Pablo felt bad for asking his questions. After all, he had a family, didn’t he? He had Emmanuel, and he had Birdy. He had his friends, Oswaldo especially, and he had Lula and Pierre, who were like family. Just think of the poor little thieving dog, who from the scrawny, matted look of him had no one at all.

  “I wonder where the perrito sleeps at night,” said Emmanuel, as if he could read Pablo’s mind. He dropped the plantains into the hot frying pan, laced his fingers together behind his head, stretched, and yawned. “I wish I knew if it’s him who eats the food we leave out for him. I hope so. Poor little pup.”

  “I don’t want him to be hungry,” said Pablo.

  “He’d probably like some black beans and rice about now,” said Emmanuel. “I know I would.”

  Pablo lifted the needle on the arm of the old record player and placed it down on the Buena Vista Social Club record that was always in place. Emmanuel turned the burner to low and held out his arms to Birdy, who looked away.

  “Dance with me, Birdita?”

  She acted as though she hadn’t heard him.

  “Fine,” said Emmanuel. “Ignore me. You wouldn’t be the first lady to refuse a dance with Emmanuel.”

  “Liar,” said Pablo, and Emmanuel smiled. All the ladies, and some of the men, wanted to dance with Emmanuel. It had been that way as long as Pablo could remember. But Emmanuel always said he was happy just the way he was, with Pablo and Birdy and lots of T-shirts to design and a store to run.

  “If you could dance with anyone in the world, who would you dance with, Emmanuel?”

  “Oh, mi Pablito, good question.”

  “Lula? Maria? Elmira Toledo?”

  “My mother,” Emmanuel said. “That’s who I’d dance with. I wish you’d known her, Pablo. Oh, what a dancer she was.”

  He circled slowly around the kitchen, his arms around an imaginary partner.

  “So, my boy,” he said mid-twirl. “There’s something else I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. It has to do with your birthday.”

  “It’s not even my real birthday.”

  Pablo looked up from his painting in surprise. Had he actually said that? No! He hadn’t! He hadn’t said anything. Emmanuel had stopped dancing and looked as surprised as Pablo felt.

  “Pablito?” Emmanuel said, but Pablo shook his head. They both turned and looked at Birdy, who was standing on the windowsill with lifted wings. She strained her head forward and opened her beak. Pablo heard his own voice again, even though that couldn’t be, because his mouth was shut tight.

  “It’s not even my real birthday,” said Birdy again, in Pablo’s voice. “Right?”

  Emmanuel turned from Birdy to Pablo and back again. Confusion spread across his face.

  “Pablo?” he said. “I could’ve sworn that—”

  “It was me,” said Pablo, lying instantly. “I’ve been practicing ventriloquism. I’m doing good, aren’t I?”

  His voice sounded false even to his own ears. He hated to lie. But he just kept sitting there at the table, guiding the tiny brush around the penciled lines of Peaches’s profile, not saying anything else, not meeting Emmanuel’s eyes, and after a while Emmanuel sat down at the table.

  “Pablito,” he said, “look at me.”

  Pablo kept his eyes on the shell. Peaches was almost finished. One more stroke of black, to outline her eye—Pablo always emphasized the parrots’ eyes in his painted shells—and then he could paint African gray on the rim of the shell and set her aside.

  “Pablito.”

  No. If Pablo looked up at Emmanuel now, he would start to cry. And if he cried, then who knew what might come out? His non-birthday, the fact that he didn’t have any photos of people who looked like him, the sad thought that his original parents had lived in fear and left their country. And Birdy, too. The awful words she had spoken in her sleep the other night. The fact that he had found her out on the cable, heading toward the grotesque. No, there were too many troubling things swirling around in his brain, and he wasn’t ready to talk about any of them. He kept his eyes on his work instead.

  “Something is on your mind, mi Pablito,” Emmanuel said. “On mine, too.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  After a while Emmanuel got up and came around behind Pablo and put his hands on Pablo’s shoulders.

  “When you’re ready, then.”

  He leaned down and kissed the top of Pablo’s head, and then he went back to the stove.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ON THE TELEVISION screen at Pierre’s the next day, Darren Mandible was so excited at what he termed “the high probability” of the winds of change that he could not stop smiling. He was wearing what Lula referred to as his disco pants, because they were white and stretchy. This was a good thing, because when Darren was excited about the weather, he almost danced around the weather map. His pointer swept from side to side on the map, and every sentence ended with an exclamation mark.

  “Exciting new wind developments just offshore of the picturesque island town of Isla!”

  Darren placed a wind magnet right over Isla on his weather map—smack—then turned back to the camera and did a little hop.

  “For the first time since I can recall, weather hounds, the Isla winds are beginning to blow not onshore, but away! AWAY! Which can portend only one thing!”

  He stabbed the pointer toward the camera and nodded furiously. His ponytail flapped back and forth.

  “Winds of change! Fortune lost, fortune gained!”

  “I have yet to see a fortune of any kind,” said Lula, “let alone lose one.”

  “And here is my colleague Elmira Toledo with the latest! Elmira?”

  Elmira was dressed in a sky-blue trench coat today, her purple glasses dangling from her non-microphone fingers.

  “Darren,” said Elmira. “Exciting developments to be sure. Who among us isn’t interested in the existence of the Seafarer?”

  “A few of us,” said Lula.

  “More than a few of us,” said Pierre.

  The camera cut from Elmira to a white laboratory, where a large cage was set up in the corner. Scientific-looking people, lots of them, stood next to the cage holding clipboards. They were unsmiling. The camera cut back to Elmira, who was also unsmiling. Then again, Elmira was always unsmiling.

  “Proactive preparation on the part of our panel of experts from the avian scientific community has resulted in a new laboratory,” she said, “created with the express purpose of studying the Seafaring Parrot, once a specimen is available for research.”

  The experts themselves, interviewed in turn, were divided on the existence of the Seafaring Parrot, given that the legend had held sway over the public mind for a long time. That fact alone raised suspicions in the minds of some of the scientists.

  “Certainly, sound lasts longer than we perceive it,” said one. “But we humans hear it only as it happens, just like the rest of the animal world. Why would one bird out of the thousands of bird species in the world be able to hear all sound, at any time? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Others agreed. Science was about making sense, they said, and scientific principle held that the most obvious explanation was usually the correct explanation.

  “Which leads us to human nature,” said another. “Human beings are creatures of longing. They want to believe that the voices of their loved ones are still there, still available to them. Whether it’s true or not is a different matter entirely.”

  Most of the experts believed that the legend of the Seafaring Parrot was just that: legend. There was simply no scientific basis to back up that legend, they claimed. But Elmira Toledo’s response was equally simple.

  “That is only because none have been captured,” she said. “Until we have a S
eafarer in captivity and are able to study it, these questions will remain. That is why it is essential to find one and confine it in an enclosed space where we can study it.”

  The camera panned around the bright white laboratory. The cage was empty, save for a water bottle and a feeder attached to the side, a wooden perch, and what looked to be a bank of microphones arrayed along the top and sides. Electronic screens with wiggling colored bars were arrayed on the other side of the lab.

  Pierre and Lula and Emmanuel and Pablo and Maria frowned.

  “Wouldn’t life in a cage kill a Seafaring Parrot?” said Pierre.

  “According to legend, yes,” said Maria. “Supposedly they die in captivity.”

  “Imagine if we had a Seafarer in custody,” Elmira said, as if she could hear them. “Imagine if this mythical bird can in fact call forth the voices of the past. Imagine the questions of the past that could be laid to rest. Imagine the history that could be set straight.”

  Elmira tilted her head and leaned into the camera.

  “What are the voices that you, viewers, would call forth if you could?” she said. “Think about it. Hallowed voices from the past, brought to historical life again, through the singular abilities of the Seafaring Parrot.”

  “She stole that question from my public art project!” said Lula. “Plagiarism! Copyright infringement! Question thief!”

  “She’s really putting her all into it this year,” Pierre said. “Ratings must be down.”

  “Makes my blood boil,” said Lula. “But it’s still a good question. Whose voice would you bring back, if you could?”

  “Someone important, of course,” said Pierre. “Someone essential to the course of human history. Someone, let’s see, someone . . .”

  “Oh, be honest,” said Lula. “Tell the truth. Don’t be like all the tourists who just write down famous people.”

  “My grandfather, then. I would give almost anything to hear my grandfather’s voice just one more time. He used to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me every year.” Pierre’s eyes looked bright.