The Book of Dead Birds

by Gayle Brandeis

  The woman snorted.

  “Are they selling those hanboks?” Hye-yang looked at the colorful costumes, the large sleeves trailing to the ground.

  “They’re selling what’s in those hanboks, daughter,” the woman said matter-of-factly before she closed her eyes again.

  Hye-yang stared for a second at the white whiskers sprouting on the woman’s upper lip before she looked back out the window, shocked.

  Traffic began to move again. Hye-yang tried to see the faces of the women as the bus drove down the street, but their features smeared together in the pink glare of the endless storefronts.

  Hye-yang’s lids still pulsed with colored light when she closed her eyes. The business card the man had given her at the beach flashed into her mind. It had left a pink stain on her breast, like a bright little window to her heart. She wasn’t able to wash it off for days. Hye-yang opened her eyes again and grimaced as her seat-mate made a few more wet smacking sounds. As the bus picked up speed, she turned her head and watched the pink haze recede into the background, garish as the sunset.

  When I wake up a few hours later, my hand is still a bit numb. I flex and blow on my fingers to limber them up before I get out of bed and join my mother in the kitchen.

  She is standing over a pot of Hae-jang-guk, “morning-after” soup. Her eyes are red and puffy. I figure it’s from lack of sleep until I realize she is crying.

  “Omma, are you okay?” I lightly touch her shoulder. “Did something happen to Yukam?” I feel overwhelmingly guilty, even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong.

  My mother shakes her head. She spoons out a bowl of soup for herself and walks across the kitchen with it steaming in her hands.

  “Omma?” I follow after her, but she goes into her room and closes the door.

  I stand in front of the door for a moment before I return to the kitchen. I ladle up my own bowl of soup and bring it to the low coffee table in the dining area. The Union-Tribune is folded on my mother’s cushion; I pick it up and shake it open. Two holes are cut out of the front section—one a small square, the other a long rectangle with a thin arm jutting out on top.

  No longer hungry, I dump my bowl of soup into the sink. Three robins’ eggs sit on a dishcloth by the basin, ready to have their insides blown out. I carefully move them, then the soup pot, into the refrigerator so that they won’t spoil.

  In the evening, my mother finally comes out. Her eyes are practically swollen shut, her skin blotchy.

  “Omma, what can I do?” I ask from the kitchen. My head feels fuzzy, my hands sore. All day, I’ve been trying not to listen to the sobs coming from my mother’s room. All day, I’ve been keeping myself busy, napping, practicing my tae kwon do hyungs, drumming a bit to keep my hand from cramping up. I set the pot of soup back on the stove to reheat it.

  “No soup.” Her voice is raspy. She grabs her purse and keys and heads for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To drive.”

  “Do you want me to come with you? It’s getting dark.”

  My mother shakes her head. She slips on a nylon windbreaker even though the air is still warm.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods, not looking at me.

  “Chosim haseyo,” I tell her. “Be careful.” Kane used to say it whenever he saw her leave the apartment.

  She pauses for a moment.

  “Don’t go near Yukam,” she warns before she closes the door behind her.

  I stir the soup, but I’m no longer hungry. I put the foil back over the pot and turn off the burner.

  If I want to see the new entries in her scrapbook, I’m going to have to be quick about it. Who knows how long she’ll be gone?

  The brassy doorknob to her room looks like it will give me an electric shock, but it feels cool against my hand, flimsy, almost too easy to turn. I open the door a crack. The bedroom is dark and smells of seaweed. I push the door a bit further and stick my head inside. Yukam’s wing brushes my cheek as he flies out.

  “No, Yukam!” I yell. “No no no! Come back!”

  The bird flies in circles around the apartment, lighting briefly upon the curtains, the coffee table, the back of the sofa. He flies into the kitchen and bombs droppings onto the foil that covers the soup pot. I chase after him, looking up, arms outstretched. I trip over the cushions on the floor, hit my shins on the coffee table, bang my ribs into the kitchen counter. Yukam lands on a windowsill.

  “No!” I yell when I see the window is open. I dive toward him.

  Just as the bird is about to escape, I clap both hands over his small body. When I lift him to my chest, it feels like I’m holding my own wildly fluttering heart.

  The sound of footsteps approaches the front door, then the jangle of keys. I race to my mother’s room, throw Yukam inside, and shut the door. When my mother enters the apartment, I lean against the wall, attempting to look casual. I’m panting like crazy.

  “I forget something.” My mother looks at me suspiciously.

  I nod, trying to catch my breath.

  “What you have going on?” she asks.

  “Nothing, Omma,” I tell her. “I just thought I’d get some exercise. I was jogging in place…” I pantomime running.

  She squints at me, then walks to the kitchen. I sag back against the wall, hoping she won’t notice the droppings on the soup pot.

  “You have my eggs?” Her voice rises.

  “The robins’ eggs?” I walk over to her. “I put them in the fridge to keep them fresh.”

  She lunges for the refrigerator. She pulls out the dish towel that cradles the three tiny blue eggs. Carefully, she puts each one on her tongue and closes her mouth.

  “Omma, what are you doing?”

  She glares at me, her mouth full.

  “The air is so warm,” I tell her. “I thought you’d want me to keep them fresh for you. I know you don’t like blowing rotten eggs.”

  My mother opens her mouth. The three blue shells wobble precariously inside. She lifts them from her tongue and puts them into another dish towel, then tucks the small bundle under her shirt.

  “I find the eggs on the ground,” she says. “The nest fall down. I try to hatch, but you freeze to death!”

  “Oh, Omma.” My knees buckle. I sit down on the floor. “I thought you wanted to turn them into a necklace or something.”

  “I want to turn them into birds!” she yells.

  I put my face in my hands.

  The door slams behind my mother as she leaves the apartment again.

  I sit on the floor a few minutes, my palms mashed against my eye sockets, a bright blizzard sparking behind my lids. When I open my eyes and stand up, the fierce speckles are still there, swarming the whole kitchen, dissolving everything for a moment into atoms, or dust. I wad up the soiled tinfoil from the soup pot, throw it away, and dump the rest of the soup down the sink. The broth scent wafts from the drain like bad breath.

  I walk back to my mother’s room, open the door without hesitation, and slip into the darkness, closing it behind me before Yukam can fly out.

  The bird swoops past, stirring up the scent from my mother’s half-eaten bowl of soup as I click on the light. I kneel down and pull the Book of Dead Birds out from under the bare mattress. I flip through the thick pages, turning my head so that I won’t have to read about my murderous past. When my finger finds a page still a bit squishy with glue, I let myself look. Two articles, their shapes corresponding to the holes in the morning paper, cover the yellowed paper. The glue shines dully through the newsprint.

  The first headline blares, “GI Not Charged in Death of Korean Prostitute.” A woman was killed in the U.S. camptown of Osan, it says. A soda bottle had been jammed so far up her vagina, it perforated her uterus. The handle of an umbrella had torn open her rectum. Her neck had been broken, her face badly bruised. The U.S. Army chose to not press any charges against the GI responsible for the crime. Even though the people of Osan vehemently protested the i
naction, the article suggests nothing further will be done.

  No wonder my mother was so upset.

  I set the book on the bed and stretch my arms out, shake them to shake the story out of my limbs. One of my hands flops against my mother’s soup bowl. It wobbles precariously on the dresser, sends a fat wave of broth over the edge. I steady the bowl, then quickly grab some of my mother’s crumpled tissues to mop up the spill. They wither and dissolve in the cold salty puddle. I use the edge of my shirt to clean up the rest, then pick up the bowl to wipe underneath it. A black-and-white photograph sits there, the edges and bottom lightly stained with soup. I carefully lift the picture and set it on the leg of my pants. The paper is a bit soggy, but the image itself is clear.

  Two women stare up from my thigh. Their arms are looped around each other’s waists, their smiles broad. An egret stands on one foot behind them, off to the left. Another bird’s wing blurs over their heads. One woman, who I don’t recognize, wears a traditional Korean wedding ensemble. The other is dressed in an old-fashioned-looking hanbok, a large archery bow tilted against her hip. I recognize the bow, but I barely recognize my mother. I’ve never seen a photograph of her smiling before. I’ve never seen her smile before, period—not like this. Usually she keeps her lips closed, straight, her upper lip puffed out a bit, as if stuffed with dental cotton. The smile in this picture is large and unguarded. It takes my breath away. I run a finger lightly over my mother’s sodden face before I move the photo to the back of the scrapbook. Hopefully it will press dry.

  A greenish square remains on my pants where the photo sat, matching the stain that spreads across the bottom of my shirt. I pull the seaweed-flecked cloth away from my body and begin to close the scrapbook, eager to change into some dry clothes, but then I remember I haven’t read the other article yet. I twist the bottom of my shirt into a knot and spread the book back open.

  “Poison Link Suspected in Bird Deaths,” reads the next headline. The dateline is the Salton Sea, an inland lake eighty miles north of San Diego, in the middle of the desert. Over three thousand birds have died there in the last two weeks, 597 of them endangered California brown pelicans. I glance at the small map at the bottom of the article. The body of water is shaped like a lopsided chang’go.

  The birds have been dying of botulism, the article reports. Officials believe the outbreak may stem from fish killed by pesticide misuse, since endosulfan had been illegally sprayed on private agricultural land south of the sea and had recently leached into the wildlife refuge. Thousands of fish showed up dead in the runoff ditches that drain into the sea; many sank to the bottom but were churned up by a fast, fierce thunderstorm, then cooked rancid in the returning desert sun. Contaminated maggots washed out from the rotting fish and were gobbled by pelicans, who started to show signs of sickness shortly after the storm. The surviving birds, the article states, are now being treated by volunteers.

  Yukam lands on my lap. I close my hands around him and carry him to his cage.

  “No more flying the coop for you, buster.” I click the wire door shut.

  “The surviving birds are now being treated by volunteers,” I read again. I close the scrapbook, lift up a corner of my mother’s mattress, and slide it back underneath.

  Ava, daughter, give me book for birthday,

  BIRDS OF AMERICA by John James Audubon.

  Little flags stick out of book. “These are birds

  that died,” she tell me, “birds that are extinct

  any more. Please note I do not kill any of them.”

  She run out of room, eat no cake.

  I open book to flag at ivory-billed woodpecker:

  When wounded and brought to the ground, the Ivory-bill immediately makes for the nearest tree, and ascends it with great rapidity and perseverance, until it reaches the top branches, when it squats and hides, generally with great effect. Whilst ascending, it moves spirally round the tree, utters its loud pait, pait, pait, at almost every hop, but becomes silent the moment it reaches a place where it conceives itself secure. They sometimes cling to the bark with their claws so firmly, as to remain cramped to the spot for several hours after death. When taken by the hand, which is rather a hazardous undertaking, they strike with great violence, and inflict very severe wounds with their bill as well as claws, which are extremely sharp and strong. On such occasions, this bird utters a mournful and very piteous cry.

  3/13/86

  The sound of the drill wakes me in the middle of the night. All I can see when I walk into the living room are my mother’s hands, carving in the dim pool of her gooseneck lamp. When I see a robin’s egg under the drill, my heart drops. I flick on the ceiling light. My mother flinches.

  Without looking up from her work, she points her arm back toward the kitchen counter. A shoebox sits there, a desk lamp bent over it. I walk closer and peer inside. Nestled in a mishmash of cotton balls and scarves lies another robin’s egg.

  “It’s still alive?” I reach a finger hesitantly toward the tiny speckled shell.

  My mother turns off the drill and pulls the top of her surgical mask down to her chin.

  “Don’t touch,” she says sharply. “Two die already.”

  She lets the mask snap back up. The drill whines back to life.

  I can’t contain a smile. A living egg!

  “Omma?” I walk over to her. “Omma? I want to talk to you about something.”

  She continues to work as if she can’t hear me.

  “I think I’m going to go to the Salton Sea,” I tell her. “I want to help those pelicans, Omma, the ones that are sick. I think I can help them.”

  My mother’s drill jerks to the side. The blue eggshell shatters. A few yolky fragments spray my soup-stained shirt.

  “See what you made me to do,” she scolds, but when she looks up at me, her eyes are filled with something other than anger.

  I have this dream quite often. A large egg sits in the middle of the living room, shining like water. It shudders, then hops, then fills with a wild tapping, like the roll of a snare drum. A sharp elbow, a familiar-looking elbow, pierces the shell from the inside. It is so slick with blood and yolk, I can’t tell whether it is my mother’s or my own. It flaps around, then stills. I wonder if it will find the strength to break all the way through.

  The morning sun is surprisingly hot; the air conditioner in my Sonata staves off only some of it as I run errands, picking up things I’ll need for the trip—toothpaste, deodorant, tampons, blank tapes, adapter cable, a fresh bag of candied ginger. Sweat drizzles down the back of my neck. I know the desert heat will be even more intense; I feel parched at the thought of it, my mouth dry as the sheets of seaweed my mother keeps on top of the refrigerator. I park in front of Luk’s Market so I can get something to drink before I head home.

  The window on the door of the market is broken, covered by a black garbage bag and duct tape, but an OPEN sign is looped over the doorknob. I push the door lightly.

  “Hello?” I step into the dim store. No one answers. The only sound comes from the coolers humming in the back. I work my way toward them. A blast of cold air hits my skin as I slide a glass door open. I close my eyes to feel it better and reach in blindly for the bottle of raspberry sparkling water I know is right in front of my face.

  “What you doing here?”

  I am startled by Mr. Luk’s voice. The bottle slips out of my hand and shatters against the floor. Cool water bubbles up between the straps of my sandals.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Luk.” I bend over to pick up the pieces. I’ve been to this market dozens of times, but he is never happy to see me.

  “You break, you buy,” he says.

  A small woman I haven’t seen before comes running through a door near the coolers. One of her eyebrows is missing, replaced by a long puckered scar. She stands behind her husband and stares at me like she thinks she knows who I am.

  “That girl Korean,” I hear her tell him.

  “What?” Mr. Luk barks back at her.
“Are you a crazy woman? She no Korean girl.”

  “She is from Helen!” the woman says. She looks straight at me. “You are from Helen?”

  “Yes!” I tell her. “Helen—that’s my mother—Helen Sing Lo…”

  The woman whispers frantically to her husband.

  “This store is closed!” he says sharply.

  “There’s an open sign on the door. I was thirsty…”

  “You pay for the drink!”

  “Of course.” I rummage through my wallet. I pull out a five-dollar bill, thrust it at him, and walk out of the store.

  The woman comes running after me with change.

  “Keep it.” I open the car door.

  “Your mother Helen old friend of mine.” The woman pushes the bills and coins into my palm. “I sorry for my husband. Bad things happen here sometime. He just scared; just scared man.”

  I slide into the car, lean my head back. “I’m sorry…” I close the door.

  The woman taps on the window. I roll it down.

  “Have you eaten rice yet?” the woman asks.

  I shake my head.

  “I work with your mother when you was little girl,” the woman says in a low voice, and digs into her deep apron pocket.

  “Is there any problem?” The husband’s voice is wound tight as he steps through the door of the market.

  “No, no problem here!” the woman calls out. Her eyebrow scar twitches a bit.

  “Tell your mother to see me,” she whispers. She throws a handful of miniature Crunch bars onto my lap before she runs back to the market. Her husband ushers her brusquely back inside and rips the open sign from the door before he slams it shut.

  I unwrap a Crunch bar, let my teeth pass through the deep brown chocolate, the pale crisped rice inside. Such an easy balance between these two flavors; such an uneasy balance in my own life—chocolate and rice battling it out, creating something different, something neither flavor can really claim. When I’m around other Korean people, even my mother—maybe especially my mother—I feel so black. When I’m around other black people, I feel so Korean. When I’m around anyone else, I just feel Other. The only time I really feel at home in my skin is when I’m slamming against the skin of my drum, but even then I know I’m doing it all wrong.