The Book of Dead Birds

by Gayle Brandeis

  “What happened?” asked Sun, concerned, as Hye-yang devoured the nuts like a starved animal.

  Hye-yang told Sun about her family’s absence. When Sun asked about Hye-yang’s limp, Hye-yang told her she hurt her hip sliding down a hill. She didn’t mention the ride with the dock worker, but he loomed large in Hye-yang’s mind, dirty in her hand. She looked nervously around the area, but couldn’t identify him among the uniformed men by the ferry.

  “You should have come to my house,” said Sun.

  “I didn’t want to disturb your grandmother’s celebration,” Hye-yang told her. “It was time for your family to be together.”

  “You are family.” Sun put her arm around Hye-yang. “You are always welcome at my home—you should have known that. I wish you had come. If I had only known, I would have pulled you with me by the hair.”

  They stood together in silence for a moment.

  “This will cheer you up.” Sun suddenly smiled. “I met a man yesterday. A man from Kunsan.”

  Sun showed Hye-yang a tattered, familiar-looking pink business card. Hye-yang’s breath caught in her throat.

  “‘Wild Ting Nightclub Establishment,’” Sun read slowly. They had both picked up some English in Suwon. The village managers wanted U.S. Air Force business and offered cursory English lessons to all employees. Hye-yang squinted at the words. English did not come as readily to her as it did to Sun. The looped letters made her dizzy. The skin on her chest began to burn.

  “He told me I could be a famous dancer,” said Sun. “He said many entertainment scouts from Hollywood, California, come to these clubs. The pay is good, too—more than three times what we make in Suwon.”

  “No.” Hye-yang shook her head emphatically as they boarded the ferry. She thought of the man, his slick mustache, his tobacco breath, the way he slid the pink card into her clothes, her small bag of abalone crashing to the ground. “No, the Folk Village is a good place to work. The best place.”

  “They have shiny costumes there, and colored lights…” Sun pushed her way through the crowd to get them a seat at the front of the boat.

  “I’m staying in Suwon,” Hye-yang said. “You should, too. Everything we need is there.”

  “Suit yourself.” Sun’s hair fluttered back in the breeze as the boat began to move. “But I’m going. We live in the past in Suwon, Hye-yang. I want a future for myself. Think about it. Record players! Fancy makeup! Hair spray! Maybe even a paper star on our door! Some rich American movie man may fall in love with me, take me to Hollywood, California, yes?”

  Hye-yang closed her eyes. The salt air entered her pores, sour as the scent of the man’s semen. She felt herself swim in a million directions inside, like a sea full of fish.

  John James Audubon: The Passenger Pigeon (extinct now)

  Everything proved to me that the number of birds resorting to this part of the forest must be immense beyond conception. As the period of their arrival approached, their foes anxiously prepared to receive them. Some were furnished with iron-pots containing sulphur, other with torches of pine-knots, many with poles, and the rest with guns. The sun was lost to our view, yet not a Pigeon had arrived. Every thing was ready, and all eyes were gazing on the clear sky, which appeared in glimpses amidst the tall trees. Suddenly there burst forth a general cry of “Here they come!” The noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea, passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. The birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a magnificent, as well as wonderful and almost terrifying sight presented itself. The Pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses were formed on the branches all round. Here and there the perches gave way under the weight with a crash, and, falling to the ground, destroyed hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons who were nearest to me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I was made aware of the firing only by seeing the shooters reloading.

  No one dared venture within the line of devastation. The hogs had been penned up in due time, the picking up of the dead and wounded being left for the next morning’s employment. The Pigeons were constantly coming, and it was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in the number of those that arrived. The uproar continued the whole night; and as I was anxious to know to what distance the sound reached, I sent off a man, accustomed to perambulate the forest, who, returning, two hours afterwards, informed me he had heard it distinctly, when three miles distant from the spot. Towards the approach of day, the noise in some measure subsided: long before objects were distinguishable, the Pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that in which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all that were able to fly had disappeared. The howlings of the wolves now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, raccoons, opossums and pole-cats were seen sneaking off, whilst eagles and hawks of different species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, came to supplant them, and enjoy their share of the spoil.

  It was then that the authors of this devastation began their entry amongst the dead, the dying, and the mangled. The Pigeons were picked up and piled in heaps, until each had as many as he could possibly dispose of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.

  From the couch, I watch the wind whip across the water. It’s already eleven. I must have dozed off again. I’ve had a headache off and on for a couple of days; Darryl told me to take a day or two off to relax. I admit—it feels nice not to have a bag full of birds in my hand, nice to have such free, empty palms, such light biceps. My headache has already dwindled considerably. A day off is probably just what I needed.

  On my way to the Aloha Room for some breakfast, I see a girl—seven, maybe eight years old—building a sand castle on the barnacle-strewn shore. Thick, straight bangs shadow her Coke-bottle glasses, her tea-colored face. She wears a brightly colored, ill-fitting bathing suit with a ridiculous little flounce of skirt in the back. Her legs splay out at strange angles, the skin withered looking, unused. A couple of battered metal canes with arm braces lie on the ground beside her, one on top of the other, like an X.

  I realize I haven’t seen any children since I arrived at the Salton Sea. It seems strange—wrong, somehow—to see a child here, in this desolate landscape.

  The girl continues to pat the mound in front of her. As I get closer, I see it is spiraled with little bits of different plants—drooping marigold, a strip of dyeweed, some ghost flower petals, desert velvet. Her brow is wrinkled in concentration. A putty-colored hearing aid sits in her ear.

  The girl looks up, startled. Her glasses make her eyes look extra big, slightly lopsided themselves, the frames askew on her small nose.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I tell her. “That’s quite a castle.”

  “It’s a burial mound,” she says, her voice high in her soft palate.

  I look more closely at the heap of sand and barnacles and shreds of plant. Something sharp pokes out—the end of a beak. On the other side, the corner of a wing juts through, the feathers dusted with sand. A few other feathers push to the surface around the pile.

  “I think maybe this is how the Cahuilla buried people, but maybe I made it up,” says the girl.

  “You shouldn’t be touching these birds.” A shiver runs through me. “They have all sorts of awful germs.”

  “I know.” The girl rolls her eyes. “I’ll wash my hands as soon as I’m done.”

  “Is your mother around?” Who would leave their child alone with dead birds? In a bathing suit when the water is contaminated?

  “She’s in the Aloha,” she says. “She said she’d come get me in a little bit.”

  I suddenly remember being left alone on the beac
h when I was a girl, a bag of lobsters squirming around by my feet, the claws nudging my skin.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I ask her.

  “I’m fine.” She pats down another plant.

  “Don’t touch any more birds, please.” My headache comes back, a strong pinch between my eyebrows.

  She crosses her heart with one slightly shaky finger and goes back to her work.

  After I walk into the dark restaurant, I go straight to the bathroom and wash my hands for a long time. I splash some water on my face before I go to the counter.

  “There’s a little girl playing outside with a dead bird,” I tell Frieda. I can see her through the window, putting something on top of the mound.

  “Oh, that’s Jeniece,” Frieda says. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her through the glass as best I can. I didn’t notice she had a dead bird, though. Damn.”

  “You know her?”

  “Of course I know her, you goofball.” She hits me on top of the head with a laminated menu. “She’s my daughter!”

  “Oh.” I fiddle with the napkin dispenser, trying not to flush. “I didn’t know you had kids, Frieda.”

  “Just the one,” she says. “My mom usually watches her when I’m at work, but she had a doctor’s appointment today. I didn’t want her bringing Jeniece to the clinic—Jeniece spends enough time there as it is, and there’s all those germs…” She looks out the window at her daughter playing with a botulism-infected pelican.

  “I better go.” She wipes her hands on the apron and rushes outside.

  I watch her run to Jeniece. I watch her put her hands on her hips and yell. I watch her turn and walk back to the restaurant. I watch Jeniece stand up and follow after her mother, her metal canes clunking against the barnacles, kicking up dust, her legs dragging behind her as she struggles to catch up.

  As soon as they get inside, Frieda points to the bathroom and the girl shuffles off to wash her hands.

  “Hi, Ray,” Jeniece mumbles as she passes the counter.

  “Hey, darlin’.” Ray lifts a spatula like a peace sign.

  “She was playing with a dead bird!” says Frieda, exasperated.

  “She’s just a kid, Frieda.” Ray goes back to his frying.

  Frieda sighs and sits down in the booth across from me. “Ray’s so patient,” she says. “We got together when Jeniece was three, and from the start, it was like she was his kid more than mine. I mean, of course she’s my daughter, of course I love her and everything, but she was just so sick when she was a baby, I didn’t want…”

  “Babe.” Ray gestures to Jeniece, who is coming out of the bathroom.

  “Hey, kiddo.” Frieda raises her voice a notch so that Jeniece can hear her. “Did you wash your hands long enough? The whole ABC song?”

  Jeniece shuffles over to a stool at the counter. “‘Next time won’t you sing with me.’” She rolls her eyes.

  On my way home, I stop in front of Jeniece’s burial mound. I know I should dig the bird out, bring it back to the hospital, but I can’t bear the thought of destroying the girl’s intricate decorative work. It almost reminds me of one of my mother’s carved eggs, so painstakingly rendered. I replace a bit of desert velvet that has fallen out of place and start to walk back to the trailer.

  Wind sweeps across the sea as I walk down Bombay Beach. Dead fish shuttle to the shore by the bucketful. I hold my breath and remember how, when I was around Jeniece’s age, my mother and I often went to Casa Cove so that she could skin-dive for lobster.

  My mother wore an Esther Williams–style suit, cut low on the hip, bandeau-halter-style on top. I thought she looked like a movie goddess as she came out of the sea, her hair dripping wet over her face, a laundry bag of lobsters hanging by her side. I would hand her a towel; she briskly rubbed it over herself before the lobsters could claw their way out of the bag. She held the towel out, and I draped it back over my shoulder. She walked to the car; I trailed wordlessly behind.

  One day, an old surfer—grizzled beard, big tan belly—came up to us as we climbed the sandy slope to the parking lot.

  “You skin-dive?” he asked my mother offhandedly, gesturing to the lobster bag at her thighs.

  “Forty dollar,” she said, her voice suddenly hard, businesslike.

  The man looked at her quizzically.

  “You make a date later, one hundred dollar,” she told him.

  “Whoa, lady, I’m not asking you for a date,” he said, “I just saw you diving without a tank, and—”

  “You dive my skin, one hundred dollar,” she repeated.

  The man shook his head and walked toward the water. My mother didn’t talk at all the whole way home. I leaned my head against the window and drummed on the loose door of the glove cabinet, my thumps punctuated by castanet clicks from the lobster bag.

  The next time we went to the beach, we ran into the same guy. He said something to my mother about reconsidering her offer. After she caught her lobsters and a tangle of deep-green kelp, she told me to keep playing. She had somewhere to go.

  I watched her climb up the hill in her wet swimsuit flecked with sand. I watched her flick a stray piece of seaweed from her shoulder and yank the suit higher up her hip before she disappeared into a Winnebago parked by a date palm. I saw the man’s hairy face flash briefly in the doorway before the door clicked shut. The top of his RV was covered with seagulls.

  When my mother came back, she was wearing a blue terry cloth robe I had never seen before. Her swimsuit dangled limp from her wrist, like a purse. Her breath had a weird fruity smell, and she wavered a little bit when she walked. When we drove home, the robe slipped aside and one of her breasts drooped out. Her nipple was the same color as my knee. It was the first time I saw myself reflected in her body.

  That night, I try to call my mother again.

  On the answering machine this time, the parrot voice says “Chal chinaesumnida.” “I am fine.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Omma,” I say into the phone, “but are you there? Hello? Are you ever going to pick up when I call?”

  I wait, but no one answers. I hang up the phone and flop onto the nubby couch. Maybe my mother doesn’t want to talk to me until I’ve saved at least one bird. Maybe she doesn’t know what to say. Maybe she just wants to keep the house silent. Maybe she’s too depressed to talk to anyone.

  Jeniece flashes into my mind but I will her back out. I grab my chang’go and slap out a few rhythms. My pulse surges thick in my ears, my headache thick in my brow; I set the drum back down and close my eyes. No thought, no thought, no thought, no thought. I follow the slowing beat of my heart, the rise and fall of my own breath, until the waves finally swell and drag me under.

  1968, SUWON

  The flowered suitcase in Sun’s hand repeatedly banged into Hye-yang’s knee as they walked together to the bus station. Hye-yang struggled to keep up with her friend, who walked with quick, eager steps. Sun had just given her notice at the Folk Village. She couldn’t stop talking about the outfits she knew would be waiting for her in Kunsan, dresses full of spangles and sequins designed to catch the light. Clothes that sparkle like stars. Clothes that turn girls into stars.

  Hye-yang’s skull felt stuffed with dirty rags. She couldn’t pull together enough clear, clean words to answer her friend. She couldn’t move out of the way to avoid the drumbeat smack of the suitcase.

  Sun spun around and gave Hye-yang a quick kiss on the lips.

  “You’re sure you won’t come with me?” she asked. She wore sunglasses, a scarf poofed over her hair. Hye-yang turned so that Sun wouldn’t see the tears that stung her eyes. When she looked back, Sun had already boarded the bus. She blew a big, stagy kiss from the closing door as the driver pulled away from the curb. Hye-yang watched Sun make her way toward the seats in back, watched her flutter a garish pink handkerchief through an open window until the bus disappeared from view.

  Without Sun around, Hye-yang fell into a depression. Her hip hadn’t healed completely,
and she wasn’t able to assume the correct archery stance. She could still feel the dock man’s body, its squishy heft, in her hand. Her palm felt dirty—she clenched and opened her fist over and over, but she couldn’t shake the man off. Her arrows missed the rice straw target, one wayward fling after another.

  During the farmer’s dance troupe performances, Hye-yang sang so quietly, no one could hear her voice over the drums. In the middle of the pansori, she burst into such violent tears that she couldn’t continue the song. When she wasn’t working, she wouldn’t leave her room. Within a month, she was asked to leave the Folk Village.

  Hye-yang packed and vacated the room she used to share with Sun, rolling up the sleeping mat that still held some of their twisted-together hair. She walked across the village for the last time and set down her bow and bag of clothes by a pay phone near the cuttlefish stand where she used to work. Trembling, she dialed the number she had copied down at her family’s house. Her mother answered after one ring.

  “Omma?” Hye-yang asked, her hands, her voice shaking.

  “Who is this?” The voice was sharp, clipped.

  “It’s Hye-yang, Omma. I’m calling you from Suwon.”

  Hye-yang could hear her mother hold her breath.

  “It’s your daughter, Omma. It’s me, your daughter, Hye-yang.” Hye-yang bit her lip.

  “My daughter drowned in a diving accident,” Hye-yang’s mother said before she hung up the phone.

  Hye-yang slid to the dirt, cradling the receiver until it pulled from her grasp like an arrow from her bow. The phone swung against a pole, then shot back precariously close to her head. It swayed around for a while before it dangled limp, squawking in Hye-yang’s ear.