Baby Birds

The sky was a blue so light that George laughed to himself, thinking about God accidentally mixing in too much white paint and hoping no one would notice. It was one of those mornings that came once every year just to tell you that Spring had arrived. George sat with Hattie outside, both of them slumped over on the last step of the tiny, wooden staircase like lazy, sunbathing dogs. Hattie thought about the sun and how the warmth of that morning or maybe just that time of every morning was hard to describe; It was hot and sticky, but it didn’t weigh you down. The early sun was friendlier than the one they were used to coming home to in the mid-afternoon.

Hattie and George were at each other’s necks more often than not, but early mornings waiting for Ma to finish with breakfast were something they agreed to share. It was too hot in every corner of the house when Ma turned on the stove for them not to go outside into a less claustrophobic heat. Each morning started with the same routine: 1.) Fill a bucket with water. 2.) Grab a rag. 3.) Go out into the yard, recline, and drape the soggy cloth across their faces. The rags and their languid body language made the healthy children look feverish.

Ma was taking longer that morning than she had all week, but there was never even the thought of asking her what the holdup was. Once Hattie was grumpy and groaned about Ma being the “slowest cook in all of Charleston” and George now joked with his friends that Ma almost rung Hattie with the dishrags. Besides this, they knew that their mother was tired. All week Mr. Billy had kept Ma after the diner had closed, claiming that the drawers were short and demanding that she recount them. As it turns out, Mr. Billy can’t tell a nickel from a quarter, but Ma had to oblige.

George was still grasping for any remnant of sleep, but Hattie was wide awake. She slid her feet through the grass, her toes like the teeth of a comb. She remembered the foot massage she had promised her Ma yesterday when feeling generous and groaned.

“What?” asks George.

“I have to massage Ma’s feet,” Hattie said in a hush. After all, the screen door wasn't much of a barrier when it came to sound. “That’s why you do things for people when they want it and don’t make any promises for later,” George said wisely and definitely with a hint of condescension. Hattie rolled her eyes and began pulling out grass with her toes. “What’d the grass do to you?” George nagged. Hattie blew raspberries as Ma knocked on the rickety door snapping both their heads backward.

“Stop being nasty and come inside. Food’s ready.”

***

The wait made the smell of food into aromatherapy. Hattie was the first to help herself and sat down while impatiently glaring at the others. She wasn’t always this excessively moody, but keep in mind that mornings were already not her best time and right now she thought she was the hungriest she’d ever been. George ignored her attitude because he knew that attitudes like that wouldn’t fly.

“Hmm, since you seeming real grateful this morning, I want to hear your best grace,” Ma said and Hattie fixed her eyes downward at her full plate.

They were all finally sitting with sweat dripping down their faces at the table Ma Mable had left them when she had passed. Ma looked to Hattie, who coincidently was sweating the least, and she cleared her throat to pray. Hattie bowed her head and traced the carvings on the table as she spoke, “Uh—thank you God and Jesus for this food we are about to eat. And for Ma who spent her time making this for us. Thank you for the ham, Jesus,” Ma shook her head with eyes closed shut, but Hattie continued. “Thank you for this beautiful Saturday and all other Saturdays. I hope that Pa is happy with you. I know he is because he was getting so tired here...Thank you for the springtime and the sun today. Thank you – um, for everything else as well. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

"Amen."

Both children scarfed down their food, but Ma had lost her appetite while cooking. Ma thought about scolding them, but then tried and failed to count the hours back in her head since the last time they’d eaten. By the time seven minutes had passed, George and Hattie were taking their dishes to the sink for a wash. They ran new, soapy water for Ma to set the pots and pans in and scrubbed, rinsed, and dried their own. The two, chipper and cured of hunger, began walking out the door.

“Wait a minute. Go get your plates and hold ‘em up for me.” Still giggling from the little bit of roughhousing they’d done on the way to the door, the kids skipped over to the cabinet and retrieved their sparkling plates for Ma to inspect. After a few seconds of contemplation, Ma said, “Good enough,” and they hastily made their way for the door.

Ma went into her bedroom and stretched her body across the bed that had seemed to double in size in the last month. “I’m so tired, Joe. Look out for me,” she said under her breath. Her eyes began to fall closed and stay, but the sound of her children outside tempted her to keep awake. She edged closer to sleep as she forgot about the things she cared about.

***

The shrieks of children woke her up, happy ones she assumed. It was still light, and it must be mid-afternoon by now. Ma heard the clunker of one pair of small feet coming through the front door and headed towards hers.

“Ma, Ma, there’s- Hattie found a bird and it was on the ground. Something’s wrong with it...Something’s really wrong,” George cried, and Ma hugged him in her arms, still half asleep.

“Oh no, baby. Where’s your sister?”

“She’s staying with it until I bring you back to help.”

“Okay, well, let’s get going,” Ma said as she held George’s face in her palms and wiped away his tears with her thumbs. George hopped off her lap and lead her outside and to the side of the house where Hattie was bent over underneath a tall tree. “Hattie, George told me there was a bird that was in trouble?”

“Ma, I think it’s real bad, but you’ll probably know what to do. It looks sick,” Hattie said still hunkered over and unmoved. Ma could finally see past Hattie’s body and there it was: a very still, baby bird.

“Oh, honey, you should move away from that,” Ma said as she touched the girl’s shoulder and gently pulled her back.

“Why, Ma? It’s just a baby. It won’t hurt me.”

“Baby, just listen to me.”

“Look, it’s...” Hattie said as she bent over to pick up the bird.

“You can’t do that!”

“Why not?” George said as both the children’s eyes began to well up.

“It’s...dead.” The kids knew this word from one other instance. Before, the word had just meant that a person had gone, but now they knew that it meant something more, something still. “I know it’s sad, but this happens with baby birds. To survive, baby birds have to learn to fly and there’s only one way to go about that...So, the mama bird pushes them out of the nest when she thinks they’re ready, but some baby birds won’t ever be ready,” Ma explained, and silence settled in.

“Why would a mama do that?” asked George.

“There’s no other way.”

“...Okay,” George seemed to accept this and that made Hattie angry. Hattie didn’t care about the mama bird’s reason. What was left for the baby bird?

“Ma, Pa was sick and now he’s gone. "Dead," you said. Is Pa...like this?” Hattie blurted.

“... Pa was sick and tired. He fell asleep and didn’t wake up. “Death” is what happened to Pa, but it wasn’t like this.” The children continued to cry, and Ma finally started. “Could y’all do something for me? Go wash up and pick some peaches, if you can find some. I know that the tree doesn’t have much at the moment, but if you find some you can have it as a treat. If you find a third, bring it back to me.” Ma grazed her knuckles across their foreheads, petting them like anxious puppies, and they stood up and did as they were told.

***

Staring at the first and only peach to be plucked was similar to viewing a cloudless sunset; reds, oranges, and stretchmarks of the colors in-between. Glancing down at the other peach, one that had been picked at by animals, was like looking down from a high perch where someone had just leaped to nothing; peeled back reds, fleshy oranges, and something from within. Hattie hands the plucked peach to George who sits on the swirls of the tree’s trunk. George tosses up the perfect fruit into the air and catches it in his green tote that was freshly washed, but dingy from age. George likes to make a game of this and once tried to show Hattie, but she is always too focused on other things. Hattie examines the fruit, bending down into the mud they created with a mix of the last rain and the bottoms of their boots. Pushing stout, dirty-fingernailed fingers into the yellow body and searching until the tip of her pointer finger finds the sweet spot beneath the middle of the pit. Hattie slides her thumb underneath the woody sphere to meet her finger and closes her fist around the pit and as she holds it in her hand it was not fully hers, yet.

George watches with something less than wonder, but with too much effort to say that he was uninterested. George wants to know what she was thinking, but Hattie gets too easily overwhelmed by thoughts alongside her own. Hattie sits there confused as she feels stuck to the flesh of the peach kneeling in the soupy ground. George interrupts the two of them and huffs, “Stop squishing around in that. It’s getting dark soon and Ma will be wanting us at the house.” Hattie looks to him, not in the sense where she sees him, but her eyes meet his and her mouth opens. She looks back down and finally gains the strength to rip the pit from its home as her eyes fill to their brims.

George tends to be rough with his words and he knows this, but recently it had been the only way to catch her attention. “Hattie, I’m not going to wait for you and get in trouble,” George shouts, “If you’re going to ignore me then I’m going to start eating this peach.” Hattie could hear him, but he wasn’t important right now. Tears began to fall without her blinking, without her permission. George doesn’t see this, because he is busy making his way to the second half of the peach. The tears keep falling and Hattie finally notices them, she topples over onto her palms landing on twigs and dissected grass. It is as if she ripped out her own heart when she stole the peach’s center.

George becomes scared, but Hattie is always feeling some way or another about something. “Hattie?” At this moment, something angry possesses her and she lifts and throws her fists in and out of the ground. Hattie doesn’t know how to explain these feelings to George and doesn’t care to try. George took the explanation that baby birds just fall out of the nest to die for no reason at all as a fact of life when their Ma had told them. Hattie knows that pain is shared and flurries from birds to peaches to people and she knows that she can feel its vibrations. Hattie looks up with her mouth pulled tight this time and sees that the perfect peach is nothing but a pit now.

“Go ahead and have it then,” Hattie says grimly and takes off in a sprint back home. George sits stiller than he had known possible before and begins to cry just as he had when Ma told him about baby birds.