The Book of Dead Birds

by Gayle Brandeis

  I shouldn’t be thinking about this right now. Omma, please forgive me if I’m not going to think about this right now.

  Darryl kisses my lips, then parts the fabric at my breastbone and kisses there, too. My muscles loosen, turn warm and fluid as the night at the rave. I begin to feel far from dead, far, far from my mother. Wherever Darryl’s mouth touches, my skin unfurls like wings.

  My mother has filled up all the pages of her Book of Dead Birds. She keeps the book prominently displayed on the coffee table so that I’ll see it as soon as I wake up on the couch each morning. She doesn’t want me to forget all the evidence stacked against me.

  I buy her a new scrapbook, one with a bright-green cover. I tell her she can use it for bird-watching, for recording all the birds, the live birds, she notices around the sea. I pick up some binoculars, a guidebook, for her at the visitor’s center. People travel from all over the world to watch birds here when there’s no die-off in effect; if she decides to do this, she should have no problems filling up the pages.

  Anchee has been busy with her own books, keeping records of her snack sales. She stole boxes and boxes of candy from her husband’s store before she left. She convinced Frieda to let her set up a little candy display by the cash register. She is at the Aloha now, arguing over Frieda’s percentage.

  I don’t know yet what I’ll do with my notebook about my mother’s life, don’t know if I’ll ever show it to her. I still have so many questions.

  My mother finishes blowing an egg. A final teardrop of albumen hangs from the shell; she sweeps it off with a rag.

  “Omma,” I say. “You’ve never told me what happened next.”

  “What happen next when?” She wipes her lips with the back of her hand, sets the eggshell down.

  “What happened after I was born. After you left the hospital.”

  “Oh, that.” She turns away, picks the eggshell back up, looks at it as if it is the most interesting object on earth.

  “Omma, you don’t have to tell me. I mean, of course I want to know, but if you don’t want to…”

  “It okay.” She puts the eggshell back down.

  I reach for the drum, but she doesn’t start to sing. She starts to talk. She has never told me her story in her regular speaking voice before—it has always been the pansori, the drum, the wild fluctuations of the song. Now her voice is level, calm. I fold my hands in my lap to keep them quiet.

  “He beat me up,” she says. “After the hospital, he beat me up. I still bleeding from you being born and he stick his thing in me. He bite me, he hit me. He do all kinds mean thing to me.”

  “Oh, Omma,” I say. “What did you do?”

  “I run away,” she tells me. “I take you and I run away. The army place so big. I not know where to go. He try and look for me. I see him run around, look for me. I run into plane.”

  “You crashed into a plane?” I’m confused.

  “I go inside. A plane open. I go inside. He run past it, not see us there.”

  “What happened then?” How could I have not known about this?

  “The plane go up in the air.”

  “With us in it?”

  She nods.

  “Didn’t they know we were in there?”

  “We in the bottom. In like a little bubble. The place where they shoot guns out.”

  So that was the first time I flew. I guess my maiden launch wasn’t from a seesaw after all. “How long were we in the air?” I ask.

  “Not long, but it go up and down a few time,” she tells me. “It take off, go around over water, come back, come down. I think we gonna get out and then it go up in the air again. It go up and down, three time, maybe four. Up and down, up and down. I not know what gonna happen.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “I scare they gonna find us. You scream like crazy. I think your ear hurt. My ear pop and pop. I thought they try and scare us, go up and down like that, try and make us sick.”

  “Maybe it was a test for a new pilot, or something.”

  “Who know? But I see San Diego from air. I see all kinds thing from air. Is good to see so many thing, open your mind. I see some sign, know there is place we can go.”

  “Did he ever find you after that?”

  She shakes her head. “I one time see him, when you was ’bout five year old. I see him walk down street with yellow-hair woman and yellow-hair baby, but I not say anything.”

  “Omma.” I touch one of her hands. Her skin is so dry. “I wish your life had been easier. I’m so sorry you’ve had such a hard time. I’m sorry if I’ve made it harder for you…”

  She stands up, brushes herself off, and goes to get her drill. Through the open bedroom door, I can see Yukam and the baby robin stir as she walks by.

  Anchee comes through the door. The way she and my mother look at each other makes me catch my breath. I wonder if they are lovers, if they are helping each other find their own pleasure, the way Darryl has been helping me. I kind of hope so, although I doubt it. I have a feeling my mother wouldn’t care if no one ever touched her again. She and Anchee are probably just glad to have found a home together, to have escaped. Either way, this trailer doesn’t feel like mine anymore.

  Before I give myself a chance to chicken out, I call the Foley people to find out if the job is still available. The one they originally called me for has been filled, but my timing is good—another temporary position just opened up. I tell them I’ll take it. It’s just for a few months, and I can definitely use the money. I’m sure my mother will appreciate it, too—it will be a while before she has enough eggs to hit the craft fair circuit again, and Anchee’s candy money, while helpful, is not going to amount to a whole lot. Plus, I enjoy Foley work—crushing potato chip bags into a microphone to simulate feet walking across gravel, waving my hand around in a bucket of water in time with the character’s movements in the tub, coming up with new ways to create everyday sounds.

  Darryl promises he’ll come visit me in L.A., and I’ll try to spend some weekends back here if I don’t have too much work. Where I’ll stay when I visit, where I’ll stay when the job’s over, I’m not sure. We’ll see how it goes. The job should be done just as the Date Festival opens in Indio. Darryl and I have plans to meet there. I can already feel us going over the top of the Ferris wheel, our feet dangling in thin air, the bench lightly swaying back and forth, dizzy as the rush of flight. I think about the walnut-stuffed dates that will be waiting for us when we reach the ground, and I feel even dizzier.

  As I pull my clothes from the kitchen cabinets, a small piece of paper flutters out from between some socks. It’s the poem, the kisaeng poem my mother tucked into my drum before I left San Diego. The last two lines haunt me:

  Stay just as far away as you can;

  time will keep or lead you back.

  I never thought there would be anything to keep me here, never thought it would be so hard to leave this place. I feel like I need to do something, something special, to mark my time here, to bring some sort of closure to the rescue effort.

  When I was at SDSU, a portion of the AIDS quilt came to campus. People signed up to read names of AIDS victims over a microphone that projected out onto the quad. Each person read for five minutes. I sat in the grass, too shy to get up and read. I let the names wash over me like ghosts, felt waves of sadness at each syllable, each name that meant more than itself, that encompassed a whole person, a whole history, a past of favorite foods, deepest fears, a past of music and pain and love, each name meaning so much more than the words suggested. There were so many names, and I tried to honor each one I heard, let it travel through me, leave its mark.

  It all suddenly makes sense. For the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever, everything finally seems to make sense. I start working on my tapes in earnest.

  The Aloha is dim; the only light comes from the inflatable hula girl, a soft glow in her belly. The self-defense class is assembled; everyone is here—Emily and Frieda, the brid
ge ladies, Lonnie, Rayanne with her pink poodle hair piled high. Everyone is wearing a traditional white Do-Bok. We stand in a circle, ready.

  The door opens. A man walks in, wearing a self-defense suit, padding everywhere, a huge puffy helmet. We charge at him. He tosses Emily across the room, throws the bridge ladies over the counter all in one swoop. Rayanne pummels him with her dainty fists. He picks her up and hurls her through the window. Lonnie kicks him with the side of her stocky leg; he grabs her calf and pile-drives her headfirst into the floor. Frieda and I stand together, ready. He reaches for us. I know the world is about to go black, but the door opens again and the room is flooded with light. My mother stands in the doorway, holding her bow and arrow. She lets an arrow fly. Frieda and I jump back. The arrow pierces the chest of the man’s self-defense suit. Blood gushes from it like a geyser. She must’ve hit him in the heart. He crashes to the ground.

  When we’re sure it’s safe, we remove the man’s helmet. It’s not a man at all, it turns out, but a bird, a huge bird. An albatross, its head turned to the side, its beak open. “It not bother you anymore,” my mother says. A chain falls from my neck. I float up to the ceiling, suddenly weightless. Free.

  I stand at the end of the pier at North Beach, where I first saw all the dying pelicans. Darryl and Frieda and Ray and Jeniece and Emily and Anchee and my mother all cluster around me. We each hold a sheet of paper, different lines highlighted on each one. My drum is strapped around my neck. My hands are ready. I give my mother the signal and she turns on the tape player. The tape I have put together, the one full of birdsong and bird silence, whirs into the air.

  I hold the piece of paper out in front of me, the list of bird die-off victims Fish and Wildlife has compiled. I begin to read, out loud, with all my voice, with all the feeling I can muster. “Snowy egret, two hundred seventy-one, cattle egret, fifty-five, unidentified egrets, two hundred eighty-seven, green heron, five, black-crowned night heron, one hundred sixty-nine.” I punctuate each bird name, all the bird names to come, with a drumbeat.

  Darryl’s voice buckles around the names, “White-faced ibis, seven, fulvous whistling duck, one, brant, one, green-winged teal, fifty-three, mallard, five.”

  I fiddle around on the drum until Frieda begins: “Northern pintail, twenty-seven, gadwall, seven, canvasback, two, redhead duck, twelve, lesser scaup, five.”

  Ray takes over: “Common merganser, two, red-breasted merganser, five, ruddy duck, twenty-seven, unidentified ducks, thirty-seven, osprey, two.”

  Jeniece is next: “Sora rail, one, American coot, one hundred and four, black-bellied plover, four, semipalmated plover—did I say that right?—eight, killdeer, one.”

  Emily clears her throat, tosses her hair, and says in her best Miss Tomato voice, “Black-necked stilt, one hundred twenty-five, American avocet, one hundred and seven, greater yellowlegs, one, lesser yellowlegs, six, willet, thirty-one.”

  “Why’d you give me yellowlegs, Ava?” she asks. “Are you saying something about my legs? Are you saying something about my gimpy leg?”

  “No one’s saying anything about your legs, Emily,” Frieda says.

  “No offense or anything, Jeniece,” Emily says.

  Jeniece rolls her eyes.

  I turn to my mother. “Go ahead, Omma.”

  She stumbles over the words but stays remarkably calm: “Spotted sandpiper, one, whimbrel, ten, long-billed curlew, six, marbled godwit, eleven, ruddy turnstone, one.”

  When it’s Anchee’s turn, she shakes her head. “You do it,” she tells me. “I not know how to say these name.”

  I let the words rise from the page: “Western sandpiper, one hundred ninety, dowitcher, seventy-three, sanderling, four, Wilson’s phalarope, two, unidentified phalarope, nine.”

  Darryl touches my elbow, then reads, “Unidentified shorebird, sixty, Bonaparte’s gull, twenty-three, ring-billed gull, six hundred fourteen, California gull, twenty-five, yellow-footed gull, three.”

  “Herring gull, eighty-six,” Frieda continues, “unidentified gull, twenty-seven, gull-billed tern, one, Caspian tern, thirty-two, Forster’s tern, eight.”

  Ray takes over. “Unidentified tern, eighteen, black skimmer, eighteen, American crow, one, belted kingfisher, one.”

  I tap a faster rhythm onto my drum.

  We all read together: “Brown pelicans, eleven hundred twenty-nine, white pelicans, eight thousand five hundred thirty-eight.”

  I lift my hands off the drum, let the resulting silence fill the air. The tape is still whirring, offering a smattering of coos, the whoosh of the airboat. We take a collective breath, then send the names of the two women who were murdered echoing over the hills.

  I am glad I can picture most of the birds we named. A few months ago, all I could identify was a crow, a sparrow, hummingbird, blue jay—common birds any child can name. Now I feel the dignity of all 14,131 lost birds, the dignity of the two lost women, pass through me like the breeze behind a hawk’s tail feathers. I feel my own heartbeat trail after them.

  I take a long look at the water, the water that stretches out before us, blue for once, not affected by any algae tides. I suddenly love each wrinkle, each shimmer of it. I love the mountains that rise up on each side, the Chocolate, the Santa Rosa, the Orocopia, the Superstition Hills. I love the pale-green birdshit that plasters the barnacles by my feet, the birds that circle overhead, out of danger for now. I love the people who surround me, these broken, beautiful people…

  “You should have seen this place in its heyday,” says Frieda. “All the movie stars came here—Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, all the biggies. The water was so full of people, you could barely move sometimes. There were always parties on the beach, water-skiing competitions, boat races, fishing derbies, you name it. It was spectacular. We thought it would last forever.”

  “We’re going to try to save it,” Darryl tells her. “It may come back.”

  “It would be a miracle,” says Ray.

  “That would be so cool if the stars came here again,” says Emily. “Can’t you see it, Frieda? Tom Cruise walking into the Aloha?” She tosses her hair as if he’s going to show up any moment.

  Darryl squeezes my hand.

  “Maybe I skin-dive here,” my mother says.

  “Gross!” yells Emily.

  “If the water get cleaner,” my mother tells her. “No more fish floating around.”

  “Good luck,” Ray says under his breath.

  “You skin-dive?” Frieda asks.

  My mother nods. “Women in my family dive. That what they do.”

  Frieda turns to me. “Do you skin-dive, Ava?”

  I shake my head, surprised by the pang I feel.

  I’m not the only one to end the tradition. I’ve read that women divers are becoming a dying breed on Cheju-do, that fish farms are setting up shop, sending their wastewater into the diving areas. The water is becoming so polluted there that the rocks change color. Now the normally abundant sea urchins yield less than a teaspoon of bright-orange meat each. Abalone are getting harder and harder to find. People are concerned about it, I’ve read. Maybe things will change if enough voices are raised.

  “Did you hear?” Frieda pulls me aside. “They have some guy in custody. I’m supposed to take Emily in to ID him. She says she doesn’t remember anything, but maybe if she sees him…”

  I look over at Emily rolling around some barnacles with the toe of her sandal. She looks a lot shorter, more vulnerable, almost childlike, without high heels on.

  “You’ll have to keep me posted.”

  Frieda gives me a hug. “We’re gonna miss you, Miss Ava Sing Lo.”

  I breathe in the scent of bacon from her hair. My mother is watching us, watching Frieda crush me to her body in a way she herself has never done. She blinks a few times before she turns her head; Jeniece is there, ready to catch her attention. I hear her ask my mother if she’d teach her how to swim.

  When I emerge from Frieda’s embrace, Darryl is waiting.

&n
bsp; “This was perfect,” he says.

  I reach for his hand. The warmth of his skin travels all the way up my arm.

  “It was the right thing to do,” I tell him, and it was. The exact right thing. I lean my forehead into Darryl’s and close my eyes. The desire to create this memorial, this new sensation of desire, a sensation I’m just learning to heed, was sharp as my palm against my drum. Insistent as the drum of my heart. Keen as the pull that first brought me to this parking lot, reeling me in like gravity, telling me that after all my circling, it’s time to create my own human world.

  Acknowledgments

  I could fill a whole book of live birds with my gratitude.

  Thanks to the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for supporting me and the novel in its very early stages.

  Thanks to my mentors and workshop leaders at Antioch who challenged and encouraged me as this novel was finding its form—Karen Bender, Leonard Chang, Jill Ciment, Tara Ison, Jim Krusoe, Darrell Spencer, and the magical Alma Luz Villanueva, with worshipful bowing to Diane Lefer who guided me through a radical revisioning of the book. All of my friends at Antioch were equally important to the process—thanks to each and every one of you, with special gratitude to Laraine Herring, Peggy Hong, and Sefi Ransome-Kuti; your collective talent and support amaze and sustain me. Eloise Klein Healy was such sublime mother hen for the program; I was so fortunate to have been under her wing.

  Thanks to the family I was lucky enough to be born into—my parents, Arlene and Buzz Brandeis, for being my steadfast champions, my sister Elizabeth Brandeis for being my partner in crime, plus Jon and Magdalene Brandeis, Sue Ball, Craig Morrison, Mollie Morrison-Brandeis, Mimi Perretz, the Perretz-Gonzales’, and all the rest of the famn damily for rooting me to this earth. Thanks to the family I was lucky enough to marry into—Patricia O’Donnell, Dick McGunigle, Sharon McGunigle, Heather McGunigle, Maggie McGunigle, Tim Ormsby, Eula Palmer, Jack Cotter, Diane and Paul Reardon, and all the rest of my Makheteyneste. I’m so blessed to be part of your clan.