The Book of Dead Birds

by Gayle Brandeis

  The dead, fishy scent from the stand overwhelmed Hye-yang. She wondered if maybe she really had drowned in the ocean, if her body was undulating somewhere underwater, tangled in kelp, gulls swooping down to scoop chunks of her skin into their beaks. Maybe she was a ghost; maybe she had been one even before she left Cheju-do the first time. Maybe the man on the beach with the shiny suit had only wanted to show her the way to the afterlife, show her where she needed to go.

  Fighting nausea, Hye-yang stood slowly and hung up the phone. She hesitated for a moment before she pulled a pink business card, the one Sun had given her, out of the folds of her jacket. Her fingers felt cold, waterlogged, heavy with the dock man’s flesh, as she lifted the receiver again.

  I wake before the sun rises. My headache seems better, just the faint ghost of a throb. I turn on the air conditioner, bow to the cool rush of air, and begin to practice some of my hyungs before it gets too hot. The trailer is too small for all my favorite kicks, all my thrusts of arm and heel, but there is enough space for a small repertoire. The first couple of times I practiced tae kwon do in the trailer, I worried I might rock it right off its platform, but now I feel slightly more steady, slightly more rooted this high in the air.

  I bow once again to the AC, then sit on the bed and listen to my heart pound. I tell myself it’s because of my vigorous blocking moves and not the fact that I’m going to see Darryl soon. I’m surprised by how excited I am to get back to work, dismal as the work itself may be.

  I decide to walk to the bird hospital. It’s not too hot this early in the day, and I can always get a ride later if I don’t want to walk home. I grab some extra bags and rubber gloves before I leave, in case I find a bird or two along the way.

  A diffuse light teases the sky as I climb down the ladder. The pigeons are already awake in the rusted-out, half-drowned trailers on the other side of the berm. They fly in and out of the windows with rushing gurgles of throat, sharp ruffles of wing. I wish them well as I step down to the rung where they disappear from view.

  My feet register the place where the asphalt turns to barnacle. The Aloha and its parking lot stand silhouetted, still dark in the distance, as I crunch across the beach. More pale light leaks into the air. I see Jeniece’s burial mound a couple of yards away. It has been destroyed. The pelican has been dragged away by wild dogs, maybe a coyote. A few bones are scattered about—curve of skull, tip of wing, bits of skin and feather clinging to strewn white shards. The desert plants Jeniece had so carefully arranged are flung all over the barnacles. The site looks like the aftermath of a wild party, or an amateur paleontology dig.

  I nudge a bird rib with my shoe. When I was ten, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I thought my future was in dirt, in bones. My class had just finished a unit on dinosaurs, and I was filled with awe. As I had my after-school snack, I told my mother there had been two classes of dinosaurs in the world—bird-hipped dinosaurs and lizard-hipped ones. I told her that birds probably came from the bird-hipped dinosaurs long after they died away.

  She grabbed my arms. “What will come after all the birds die?” she asked, her eyes fierce. “You tell me. What will come then?”

  A piece of my little walnut-shaped cake caught in my throat.

  “Omma,” I coughed. I pulled myself away from her grasp, stumbled to the sink, and tilted my head under the faucet. As I looked up at the water, I imagined that’s what birds would turn into next—a clear ribbony rush, stippled with light. If something as big as a dinosaur could turn into something as small as a bird, wouldn’t that be the next logical step—from scale to feather to pure liquid shimmer? I turned to try to explain this to my mother, but she had already left the room.

  I rest my toe in part of the pelican’s hip bone. I put my hands on my own hips, feel their contours, the ridges of bone that swell beneath my khaki pants. I have lizard hips, dinosaur hips—so much broader, more earthbound, than my mother’s slight bird-hipped frame. I squat down, slip on my rubber gloves, and begin to scoop the bones into a plastic bag. Better for Jeniece to see things flattened down to normal than find her work in such grisly disarray. I smooth out the sand and barnacles with my covered palms.

  A small hunk of bird flesh and feathers tumbles away toward the shore; I follow it. The garbage bag feels so light—it’s amazing how little the bones weigh. A whole dead pelican in these same bags feels like a stone.

  I pick up the piece of bird as the sun lifts over the hills. The air instantly feels about twenty degrees hotter. The sea begins to sparkle like root beer. I wipe away the sweat that pops onto my forehead and notice a shell on the ground up ahead. I haven’t seen any like it here before—a pale pink disk among the barnacles. I put the bird remains in the bag and reach for it. It squishes between my gloved fingers, resists when I try to pick it up. I jump back. Some of the surrounding barnacles fall away. The shell is attached to skin. The shell itself is skin—a nipple, I realize with a bolt of nausea. A breast. I stumble backward over the bumpy ground, kicking loose more barnacles. A collarbone. A bruised throat. An open mouth, filled with small white shells.

  I drop the garbage bag and run to the Aloha Room. I bang on the door, but Frieda and Ray aren’t in. I race to the bird hospital. Inside the chain-link enclosure, the temperature rises. Everything seems to spin.

  “Ava, hi!”

  I can hear Abby, but I can’t see her.

  “Are you ready to be back yet? It looks like you still have a headache…”

  I bend over. “A woman.” I gasp for air.

  “I’m sorry?” Abby asks.

  “I thought she was a shell…”

  “Do you have a fever?” Abby touches my forehead with her gloved hand. “I think she’s delirious,” I hear her say to someone else.

  “Ava, are you okay?” It’s Darryl, his voice full of concern.

  “I saw a woman.” My breath begins to steady. My eyes begin to focus again. Darryl’s generous lips, Abby’s freckles zoom into sharp relief. “A dead woman on the beach.”

  “What?” Abby asks, alarmed.

  “She was in the barnacles. I thought she was a shell.”

  “Oh my god,” says Darryl. “Ava, are you okay?”

  I nod my head, sit down on the dirt floor.

  “I’m calling the police,” says Abby. “Which beach was it—Bombay?”

  I nod again.

  “Let me get you some water.” Darryl lightly touches my hair.

  I dip my head between my knees. My pulse pounds loud in my ears. I flash again on the woman on the beach, the woman with no pulse, no breath. I think of the woman’s open mouth; my own tongue fills with chalky barnacle grit.

  “Here you go.” Darryl holds a water bottle out to me. I sit up and take a long, grateful swallow.

  “The police are on their way,” Abby says. “Did it look like heat stroke or something?”

  I shake my head. “She was naked. Someone tried to bury her…” The room begins to spin again.

  “Annyong hasnimnikka?” is on the tape when I call home a few hours later—Kane’s voice, from the recording I had given my mother after he died.

  “No, Omma, no, I’m not exactly at peace,” I say into the yeasty-smelling receiver. “I found a body today. A dead woman. Murdered.” I close my eyes. I’m sure I can feel every corpuscle that scuttles through my veins. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Omma. I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore. Maybe I should come home…” The machine cuts me off.

  A while later, I try again.

  “Tell them you know the language of birds,” my mother’s voice, her real voice, crackles on the answering machine tape—a command, not a suggestion. My heart flip-flops at the sound of it. I wait for more, but there is just the sizzle of static, then the beep.

  “Omma,” I say into the phone. “If I knew the language of birds, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place. Are you there? Why won’t you talk with me? Omma? Hello?”

  The machine beeps, cutting me off again. I press redial
and listen to my mother’s voice one more time, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

  It is only later, as I’m trying to sleep, that I remember the folktale my mother used to tell me, the one about the two brothers who knew the language of birds.

  One day these brothers were walking down the street when a crow let out a plaintive caw. From this, they knew a man was being stabbed a couple of blocks away. They ran to the scene of the crime to see if they could help and found the man splayed in a pool of blood. One brother put his head to the man’s chest to try to detect a heartbeat; the other put his hand over the man’s nose and mouth to see if he could feel any breath. The police arrived, and seeing the brothers kneeling over the body, their hands covered with blood, they immediately charged them with murder.

  At their trial, the brothers tried to explain what had happened. They told the judge about the crow, his message; they told about their attempt to help. “So you know the language of birds,” the judge sneered. “Tell me, then, what the crane perched in the persimmon tree outside is carrying on about!”

  The brothers looked at the bird through the window and listened intently. They turned to face each other, unsure of how to proceed. One brother flushed and cleared his throat.

  “Your Honor,” he stammered, “the bird says, ‘Please return my eggs to me, the ones you have hidden inside your sleeve.’”

  The brothers grasped each other’s hands. They knew they could be sent to their deaths, saying such a thing to a judge. The guards rushed toward them, but the judge held up his palm. He rolled back the long sleeve of his chogori; three eggs balanced there inside the crook of his elbow. The crane beat its wings wildly. A shower of persimmons fell from the tree. The judge let the brothers go.

  My mother must think I will be accused of this murder. The police did question me a long time, much longer than necessary, it seemed, but they let me go with nothing more ominous than a snide thank-you, a slightly leering “we’ll be in touch.” They had asked all sorts of personal questions—questions about my sexual preference, my sexual history (when I said “none to speak of,” they just laughed in my face). They asked if I was a U.S. citizen, they asked if I was born in this country; they asked my reasons for being in the area; they wanted to know everything I’ve done here, everyone I’ve talked to. They asked me why I had touched the victim—specifically why I had touched her nipple, why I had gloves on my hands. They asked if I had touched her genitals. They asked if I had touched her neck, if I had kissed her. They asked if I liked it rough. They asked questions until I was shaking so hard, I thought my skull would vibrate right through my scalp. I doubt it would have helped much had I told them I know the language of birds.

  1968, KUNSAN

  Hye-yang looked through the window as the bus to Kunsan cut through acre upon acre of rice paddies. Rows of slender green plants spread out in all directions, as far as she could see. The shoots, hip-high, were tinged a brassy blonde, almost pinkish, in the sunset; the bus exhaust parted some of them, revealing their dark-green roots, the damp scalp of earth underneath. Hye-yang watched white ducks walk between the rows, dipping their beaks into narrow furrows of water, tilting their heads back to swallow.

  A few olive military vehicles passed the bus. Hye-yang leaned off her seat and watched the fortified camp town come into view through the windshield. The bus pulled up to the gate and stopped. Hye-yang made her way to the front, hesitated near the driver for a moment, then stepped out into the dusty air. The stone wall that surrounded the town cast a broad shadow across her face.

  She started to walk through the gates, when a U.S. Air Force guard put his hand flat on her breastbone to stop her.

  “Excuse me, Miss? Your registration card?”

  Hye-yang stared at him.

  “You can’t come in without your card.” He left his hand there.

  Hye-yang looked back at the bus. She had the urge to jump back on, to go back to Suwon, but it began to pull away, spewing a cloud of exhaust in her direction.

  “All the girls need their cards,” the guard said, slowly this time.

  “Card?” Hye-yang pulled the pink card out from her jacket and showed it to him. “I come sing here,” she said.

  “Oh, a new girl.” He looked her up and down with a sly smile that reminded her of the dock man, then let his hand trail down the front of her shirt before he pointed her through the gates.

  Hye-yang felt disoriented as she entered the camp town. The dusty road, lined with shops and clubs, was busy, but not in the same way the Folk Village had been. Even the weekend crowds there had felt polite, friendly. This was a frantic busy. A dark, noisy, careless busy. American men, some in uniform, some not, barreled up to her, one after another, speaking too fast for her to understand, putting their hands on her body as she rushed by. Small children, some strangely pale, others strangely dark, played unsupervised, barely clothed, in the street. Neon lights began to sputter on over the clubs, spelling out words she could barely understand—SHANGRI-LALA, SEXXY GIRL, PASTIES PLACE. She finally spotted the hissing sign that carried the name she recognized from the business card—WILD TING. Under the yellow letters, an orange neon woman jerkily shook her hips from side to side, a pink tail sprouting from her bikini bottoms. The light that formed her face was burnt out, the tubes dark, dirty looking.

  Hye-yang pushed her way inside the dim, smoky club. The air was filled with the sweet stench of rotten fruit. A woman’s shrill, false laughter rang out over the flat din of voices, the tinny jukebox music. Glancing over the heads of dark-skinned military men and the women who leaned toward them, Hye-yang caught a glimpse of Sun, standing on top of the bar. As she pushed through the crowd toward her friend, she felt a rush of relief, of happiness, wash over her.

  “Sun!” she yelled. “Sun!” She remembered seeing Sun at the Folk Village for the first time, Sun the bride, with pink cheeks and flowers in her hair. She remembered the way Sun’s face broke into joy when she saw Hye-yang in the crowd. Hye-yang edged her way closer to the bar. She called Sun’s name again, but her friend didn’t look her way. She looked like she couldn’t see anything, like she was looking at something far beyond the walls of the club. Her hair was frizzed out, a big puffball around her head.

  “Sun!” she yelled, frantically this time. She began to wonder if she was indeed a ghost, if her edges had already started to disappear.

  As Hye-yang pushed her way through to the bar stools, she realized with a shock that Sun was wearing nothing but a T-shirt, not even panties. She watched, stunned, as Sun squatted down and lifted a coin from the sticky wood veneer of the bar with her vagina. Sun wiggled around, then dropped the coin into the waiting mouth of a GI who stared at her from a red bar stool, running a hand up her bare leg. Hye-yang turned her head. She had never seen Sun’s naked body before, had never seen any woman’s naked body before, not even her own, not between the legs. When she and Sun shared a room at the Folk Village, they always changed behind screens, never showing each other anything. Hye-yang wondered if her own body looked so purplish down there, so wrinkled and tired.

  “Sun,” Hye-yang said again. The name sounded like a sob.

  Sun looked down.

  “Hye-yang,” she said dreamily. She bent down so her crotch was right in Hye-yang’s face. A strong smell wafted out, like cuttlefish. Hye-yang suppressed a gag. Sun reached out and touched Hye-yang’s face. The man who had taken the coin in his mouth put his hand on Hye-yang’s hip.

  Hye-yang pulled away and pushed back through the crowded bar, back out into the dusty air. She collapsed against the side of the building and tried to take a deep breath.

  “Are you okay?” A man with dark skin crouched down beside her.

  She looked up. “My friend,” she started, not sure what to say in English.

  “You work with your friend?” He licked his upper lip and smiled.

  “At Folk Village,” she said, glad to have someone to talk to, someone with kind eyes.

  He nodded
.

  “In Suwon,” she said.

  “Your friend’s named Sue?”

  “Sun. In Suwon.”

  “Soon, hell yeah—in Sue, on Sue, anytime sounds good to me. How much?”

  “I know her since little girl.”

  “Just like sisters. Damn! What’s the damage?”

  Sun sidled up next to Hye-yang. “Fifty, for both,” she said, then put her arms around Hye-yang and kissed her. Hye-yang felt Sun’s thick tongue in her mouth and jumped back. She was glad to see Sun had put on a skirt, even though it barely covered her hips.

  “That sounds more than reasonable. Fuck Village. Damn!” He tapped the wallet in the back of his pants, then put one arm around Hye-yang, one around Sun. Hye-yang resisted as he tried to pull her away from the wall.

  “Come on, baby,” he said, his lips against her ear.

  “Come on, Hye-yang,” Sun said, then glanced back nervously at the front door of the bar. “I be with you.”

  Hye-yang didn’t budge.

  A familiar-looking man with a thin mustache and a shiny suit burst out of Wild Ting.

  “Sun! Where are you going?” he yelled.

  “My friend is here,” she said. “My friend come to visit me!”

  “You are still on my clock.” He glared at her. “You make sure you bring me my cut.”

  Sun flipped her middle finger at him, then tugged at Hye-yang. Hye-yang couldn’t move. She wanted to tell Sun about the man at the dock, but it was like the man’s hand was still clamped over her mouth, shoving her voice somewhere deep inside, somewhere she couldn’t access. She wanted to tell Sun about her phone call with her mother; she almost wanted to believe her mother’s story.

  I am floating in the ocean, she thought as the man stormed toward them. I had a diving accident and now I’m a ghost. I’m covered with kelp. Birds are tearing me apart. He’s here to show me where to go.