During lunch in the cafeteria, I sit at the end of the farthest table from the door. I don’t look up. I don’t want to make eye contact with anyone. And at lunch recess, I hide behind the farthest tree on the playground.
After school, I hide, too, sinking down against the fence next to a planter where pink rosebushes grow.
A red car drives up to the curb. Jenny starts to get in, but before she closes the door, she looks toward the main entrance to the school and yells out, “Hey, Charlie, you need to tell your new friend to say she’s sorry for trying to hurt me and my friends with her owl.”
“The day you decide to live someplace far away is the day she’ll apologize to you,” I hear Cheryllynn say. “When are you moving?”
A faraway place would be Greenland. Jenny seems like she’d be okay living on land that’s mostly covered with ice. She’d have to learn to hunt for food, but she’d probably be a good hunter. She’s definitely a good liar.
Jenny waves her hand like she’s shooing Cheryllynn away and gets into her mom’s car, but doesn’t close the door.
I hear her mom. “I thought I told you to stay away from Charlie.”
“I am,” Jenny says.
“Well, I don’t want you talking to him, either.”
As her mom drives away, Jenny looks back and her eyes stay on Cheryllynn. It’s not a mean stare. It’s the kind of stare people have when they’re daydreaming, or when they’re remembering something, a memory of a place or of a person. Jenny said they used to be friends. Now they’re not. It’s not hard to figure out why.
But, when it comes to Jenny, the only thing I need to worry about is how to get my book back.
Cheryllynn leaves, too, the hood of her raincoat over her head. She kicks the ground as she walks. If I had Bird Girl in my possession, I’d kick the ground with her, and together our legs would have the power of a cassowary’s kick, all the power we needed to keep people like Jenny away from us.
I don’t believe kids are mean just to be mean. Most kids that are have a reason. Whether Jenny’s reason is a good or bad one I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t like her. If Eleanor did ever stuff me, Jenny would probably think it was funny that I became just like Teresa.
Teresa! I forgot to pick her up. I run into the office and expect her to be sitting on the counter, but she’s not there.
“December?” Mrs. Vaca says. “Your owl’s in here.”
Teresa’s sitting on Mrs. Vaca’s desk, and I pick her up, wanting to get back outside as fast as I can.
“Make sure you don’t bring the owl back, December, okay?”
I stop inside the doorway, but don’t turn around.
“Those claws could hurt someone,” she says.
“Talons,” I say. “They’re talons. And I won’t bring her anymore.”
I wrap my arms around Teresa. My heart beats like a hummingbird’s against her feathers.
I walk outside, and keep holding her as tight as I can.
11
Eleanor pulls up to the curb. I open the door, and she turns down the music. “How was your day?”
“I don’t want to come back here.” And I don’t want to get used to Eleanor picking me up from school, or get used to her smelling like a mix of lavender and soil, or get used to her regular voice that really sounds like she wants to know how my day was.
“Why not?”
“Why are people so mean to each other?”
“Lots of reasons, I guess.” Eleanor rests her hands on the steering wheel. “What happened today?”
I’m not going to tell her. I can’t. What am I supposed to say, There’s this girl. She threatened to share my story, a story that tells the world I’m really a bird? Eleanor would start making plans to stuff me.
I need to know more about Eleanor’s “hobby.” I ask, “What are you going to do with Henrietta if she can’t learn to fly?” I think I know the answer. “Are you going to stuff her?”
“No, December.” Eleanor looks at me like she can see through to my feathers. “I’d never do that.”
I’m not so sure I believe her.
The radio is turned off the rest of the way home. No singing. No music. When we get to the house, Eleanor says, “Come with me.”
I follow her across the backyard, to the shed where I found Teresa. Eleanor turns on the light. The birds are dusty, making their feathers look faded. Behind me on the shelf is the red-tailed hawk.
Eleanor’s voice is a soft shade of blue. “Over the years, I’ve found them in fields, or along the road. This might sound strange, but when I stuff them, I feel like I’m bringing them back to life in a way.”
“You don’t kill them just to stuff them, then?”
“No.” Eleanor shakes her head. “Never.”
“Here,” she says, “I want to show you something else.”
She sits down at a table. There are lots of lights, tools I don’t know the names of, and a dead animal without eyes.
“Come a little closer and I’ll show you what I’m doing.” Eleanor slides on a pair of glasses. “You know what taxidermy is?”
“Stuffing dead animals.” I lean over to get a closer look. A once-living thing with holes where its eyes should be is creepy. It would make a great scary movie, a bunch of about-to-be-stuffed animals coming alive, making the taxidermist so insane, she has no choice but to run away from her house. The stuffed animals end up catching the taxidermist anyway, and make her one of them.
Eleanor nods. “That’s right. Do you know what kind of animal this is?”
“A weasel?” I guess.
“Close. A ferret. A neighbor’s pet. Ferrets are known to be very smart animals. They can adapt quickly to anything life throws at them.” Eleanor looks at me over her glasses and leans her shoulder close to mine, her voice a darker shade of blue. “I would imagine you can relate to that.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Maybe. But it doesn’t matter how well it adapts now; it’s dead.” I pet the top of the ferret’s head with my finger.
Dead things don’t bother me. Moving as much as I have, I’ve gotten used to things always changing. I’ve gotten used to things being there one day and being gone the next.
“He died from old age.” Eleanor doesn’t look up from the stiff animal. “His name was Frankie, and he was very much loved.”
I touch Frankie’s fur. “How can you grow a garden and stuff dead animals at the same time?” I ask. “That’s a …” I can’t think of the word.
“Contradiction?” Eleanor laughs, but not like she’s making fun of me. “Well, I do this to make a little money on the side. Believe it or not, it pays for some groceries here and there. It’s an art form, you know?” Eleanor picks up a bowl. “I mix up plaster to make a mold first. Then make a copy of the animal. It gives the animal a second life. In a symbolic way.”
I understand what Eleanor means about “a second life.” So far, I’ve found five orphaned dolls. I’ve come across them on the side of the road, in an almond orchard, and one hanging from a cyclone fence surrounding someone’s front yard. Three have a missing arm or leg, one has a missing eye, and one doesn’t have any hair. I keep them because someday I’m going to give them back what they’ve lost, even if I am a bird.
“Have you ever stuffed a macaw?” I ask.
“No. Macaws are beautiful birds, though.”
“A stuffed one would make a good decoration, right?”
Eleanor places a small pair of scissors down on her work table. “Well, because they’re beautiful, I suppose they would make a good decoration.”
“But I wouldn’t want to see a stuffed one, because they are that beautiful. Did you know they live thirty to thirty-five years in the wild, but they can live eighty to a hundred years in captivity, if they’re taken care of? Even though they live longer, I don’t think something as beautiful as a macaw should spend its life in a cage. If it was me, I’d rather spend my life, even though it would be shorter, living where I was born to live.”
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“That’s a good point.” Eleanor smiles.
Her fingernails have dirt under them, and she squints her eyes like she’s been looking at the sun all her life. Her smile is a good one. I have to remember not to get lost in it, though, or get lost in her being nice to me.
“I’m going to make dinner now,” Eleanor says. Since I’ve been here, Eleanor’s talked a lot about food. I thought she was trying to fatten me up, but maybe she just doesn’t know what else to say. Or she’s read that foster children are obsessed with where their next meal is coming from and she wants me not to have to worry.
Outside the shed, Eleanor stops. “Look.” She points to three robins, perched on one of the bird feeders. “We’ll see a lot of birds now. They’ll be preparing for the coming of winter.”
Even though Eleanor’s told me about how she gets the birds she stuffs, I’m still going to be careful. I haven’t lived with her long enough to hear all the calls of her bird whisper. Besides, even if I did know all her tones and cadences, my destiny is not with her. It’s in the sky.
Walking behind Eleanor, I wave my arm in the air and scare away the three birds. “Migratory birds have to prepare more,” I say. “Birds that were once just seed eaters will start eating worms and grubs. They need to store energy for the long flight ahead of them.”
“If I were a bird, I don’t think I’d be a migratory bird.” Eleanor surveys the yard and stares up at the sky, waiting for the three birds to return. “I like to stay close to home.”
“I’d definitely be a migratory bird.”
“It would be more adventurous.” Eleanor opens the door.
I pick up my backpack. “Is it okay if I go out again?”
“Stay close to the house, okay?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t get lost. I have good navigational skills. Like migratory birds.”
Eleanor points to the sky. This time there’s a red-tailed hawk circling high above the field. “Did you know the red-tailed hawk’s scientific name is Buteo jamaicensis? Buteo is Latin and means hawk. Jamaicensis is named for Jamaica, the country, and from the Latin ensis, which means belonging to a place.”
“I won’t be out there for long. I promise.” I don’t wait for her to say anything, and walk between the birdbaths, past the garden, and open the gate.
I’m not sure what “belonging to a place” means, and I’m not sure “belonging to a place” is the best thing. What Eleanor is talking about is having roots, a place to grow, but sometimes roots are pulled out. They get replaced with scars that cut deep, and either nothing can grow or what does grow is twisted and mixed up.
12
Out in the field, I look up through the branches of my flight tree. The best tier for Teresa would be the top one. It would give her the best view.
I start climbing, wind blowing through my T-shirt, blowing against my scar. The position of the branches makes it easy to move tier to tier, reaching up with my hands and pulling the rest of my body over the next branch.
I stop three tiers from the top and take off my backpack. The wind blows stronger up here and carries Eleanor’s song from the kitchen, past the tree, and into the sky, where other birds will hear it. Hopefully, they will be too busy preparing for colder weather, and her song won’t matter to them, like it can’t matter to me.
I take Teresa out of my backpack and stand her up on the branch, leaning her against the trunk. She’s at the mercy of gravity, just like me, and tumbles back into my arm.
I need something to secure her to the tree. I take off my socks and tie them together at the ends, tugging to make sure the knot is strong and tight. It’s not the most liberating sight to see a stuffed owl tied to a tree trunk, but at least she’s in her element, and that means something. Better than being in Eleanor’s dusty taxidermy shed or sitting in a closet anyway.
I reach for Bird Girl, then remember it’s gone. “They took my story,” I whisper to Teresa. “I used to have wings, you know?”
Across the field, leaves fall from cottonwood trees, each one yellow and iridescent against the dimming light so that they look like miniature lanterns scattering over the ground.
I lie on the branch and find an open space to drop my backpack. I’m about fifteen feet from the ground.
I will fly.
This time I don’t count. I don’t take deep breaths. I don’t wait to feel the scar on my back tingle. I just jump, focusing on keeping my body as streamlined as possible and positioning my arms and hands to maximize the catching of wind currents.
I hit the dirt. There is blood on my lip; I can taste it. I roll over on my back. The sky is light blue and yellow. I wonder a lot about where my mom could be. Does she think about me as much as I think about her? Does she sing “Happy Birthday” to me every December twenty-first? Does she wonder what I look like now? Would she be able to recognize me? Does she even have a place she lives, or has she turned into a migratory bird, too?
I’ve never called any foster place a “home.” I’ve always called them “houses.” A “home” is a place you feel you’re supposed to be, where there are pictures on the wall of you when you were a baby, or on your first day of school.
I brush dirt off my pants and press the end of my T-shirt against my lip to wipe away any blood before walking into the house.
On the dinner table, Eleanor’s set out a plate and a bag of sunflower seeds for me. She carries a bowl of soup across the kitchen and sets it down fast, spilling a little on the table. “Did you fall?”
I reach up and feel leaves that are caught in my hair. “Guess I did.”
“There’s dirt there, too.” She points to my head, squinting her eyes to get a better look. “What happened?”
“I tripped. Over a root sticking out of the ground,” I lie.
“You need to be careful when you’re out there.”
“I will.” This isn’t a lie. I do have to be more careful so I don’t give away my secret.
She leans closer to me. “Doesn’t look like you’ll need any ice. Maybe a Band-Aid. I’ll go get you one.”
Eleanor keeps a first-aid kit in one of the drawers in the kitchen. She starts to unwrap a Band-Aid.
“I can do it,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
“Okay.” Eleanor gives me the Band-Aid, and I feel for where the scratch is.
Eleanor can’t help watching. She must approve, because she picks up her spoon and starts eating her soup.
I crack a sunflower seed. “Can we go see Henrietta tomorrow?” I want to make sure I have enough time to get her to fly before my own wings unfold.
Eleanor smiles. “Absolutely.”
“Last time we were there, I didn’t see any other animals but Henrietta. You do help other types of animals, right?”
“We help any injured animal people bring to us, but mostly opossums, raccoons, and birds. Ninety percent of the animals that come to us we’re able to set free.” Eleanor spreads butter on some bread and dips it into the soup.
“What do you do with the other ten percent?”
“I’ve visited your school before.” Eleanor doesn’t answer my question. “I remember taking some hawks and other animals to share with the students. That’s when I had Casey. I was able to train her to fly over the students, then fly back to me.”
Maybe that’s what Eleanor’s planning to do, train me so even if I fly away, I’ll always come back to her.
“She was a Cooper’s hawk. I found her myself. She was caught in a barbed wire fence.” Eleanor lifts her bowl, drinking the rest of her soup. “She knew I’d helped her, so she decided I was okay. Wild animals have a trust instinct, too. I provided her with food and a safe place to live. She could’ve flown away, but she kept coming back, and that was fine with me. I loved taking care of her.”
“Why don’t you still have her?” The question slips from my mouth before I can think about it.
“One day I took her outside, set her to flight, and she didn’t come back. I guess she felt she was stro
ng enough to be on her own. I believe she chose to leave, which was a good thing. She was a wild animal. Wild animals belong in the wild unless they have a wound that won’t heal, an injury that makes it dangerous for them in their natural habitat. Most of the animals we get at the rehabilitation center are able to be reintroduced back into the wild. There’s only a few we have to keep or find a new home for.”
I crack a seed, trying not to make eye contact with Eleanor. All her talk of injured wild animals is making my muscles twitch.
“Have you ever brought home one of the animals that couldn’t go back into the wild?”
Eleanor picks up her bowl and sets it on the counter by the sink. “Not home, but some do stay at the refuge. Sometimes, even when they’re healthy enough to set free, there’s a chance the animal won’t make it in its natural habitat.”
Eleanor is talking about me, that I might not be strong enough to make it out in the world by myself.
“This conversation is getting too serious.” Eleanor wipes the counter with a dish towel. “Henrietta already trusts you enough to take food from you, so I think it’ll be fine to start training tomorrow.”
I don’t know if any living thing has ever trusted me. People usually don’t. I definitely know most of the time I don’t trust people. I’m still suspicious of Eleanor, even though she’s cleared up the whole taxidermy thing. Because if she really is the Bird Whisperer, she’ll instinctually know what songs to sing to keep me in the nest. She’ll know what migratory path I’ll follow when it’s time to find warmer weather. And she’ll also know that whatever she does to make her home more comfortable won’t do any good.
13
Behind the wildlife refuge is a field. At the edge closest to the building, there’s a wooden perch.
“Okay,” Eleanor says, “set her up there. What we’re starting to do today is called ‘creance training.’ It’s a form of exercise to build Henrietta’s flight muscles.”
Henrietta is perched on my hand. I thought I’d feel a little of her talons piercing through my skin, but the leather glove I wear is thick. She has anklets with long leather strips attached to them. The leather strips make a V shape and connect to a long string, which is connected to a longer rope that extends about thirty feet across to another perch.
Extraordinary Birds Page 6
