Calliope: Voice of the Writers
The Great Novel Race 2008:
Tumbleweeds
by Erin Trauth
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Chapter 5: The Fledgling
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West and I spent the rest of the day walking along Chutney’s Creek, cawing back at the sad baby bird until the boiling tangerine sun began to dip deep down below the stretching trees. All afternoon long, I listened to West’s little bird stories; Did you know that mourning doves usually only lay two eggs? You’ll never believe this, but the Bar-tailed Godwit can fly non-stop for 6,300 miles! Red-footed boobies lay blue eggs – isn’t that neat? We walked what seemed like a hundred miles, just circling the woods and looking up at every little tree branch for the nest as she shared her bird knowledge with me. She talked and talked and talked, like she had been stuck in a cave for a million years with a book of bird facts and nothing else, and now here she was, just ready to unload it all on me. At sunset, after no luck of finding the dove, West said something about someone or something called Maybelline and having to eat supper, which left me wondering why she needed to put on makeup just for suppertime, but then again, this girl was just not right, from what I could tell so far. She’d find me again soon, she said. She flashed me her teeth and skipped away in the direction of the little white house, humming some disco-sounding song as she trotted off.
That night, I could still hear the baby mourning dove’s constant, deep, sorrowful cry bellowing out to the crescent moon through my bedroom window as I tried to fall asleep. I wondered where she could be, and just what she might be crying so unhappily for.
***
The next morning, to my surprise, I found myself wanting West to keep her promise. I wanted her to come find me like she had said she would. Something about her both perplexed and excited me, and now I wanted to know more. Maybe it was the summer heat frying my brain, or maybe I just kind of liked her, but it seemed that West had blown right into town, beautiful and bizarre, all rolled into one, and maybe she was just what I needed.
Mama left early for her hair-fixing job that morning; Jasper, the dimwit air-conditioning repair man-slash-boyfriend was gone, too. Johnny and Austin went off fishing, leaving me with nothing to do but wait…wait for West, I supposed. The mourning dove had stopped crying, or at least I couldn’t hear her anymore, and I wondered as I finished up eating my buttered grits alone at the kitchen table: Had West went off and found her? Was the bird still alive? Had she even been real? After all, we had looked where the noise was coming from a million times, and still hadn’t found the bird. Maybe the sun was finally getting to me, permeating my brain like Mama said it would if I spent too much time outside in the summertime. Maybe West herself hadn’t even been real. Then I would know I had finally gone insane. Crazy girl hunts bird with imaginary girl named after direction, the headlines would read.
I spent the day on the porch doing crossword puzzles, sweating and bored, sulking at my God-rotten luck that we lived a trillion miles away from anyone else my age, and that even if someone lived close, they probably wouldn’t like me anyhow. I almost wanted summer to just go ahead and end, so I could get back to doing something, anything. West had seemed to like me, I thought, the first girl in a long time that didn’t already know about my Mama, who wouldn’t make fun of me just ‘cause I was her daughter. West didn’t know anything about me, and I liked it that way. Plus, she really seemed so strange, but maybe in a good way. Either way, I realized that she was all I had to get me through these last few weeks. When she didn’t come by all day to find me, I wanted to scream. I wanted to go right out to the creek, cup my hands into a microphone, and just yell for her. Find me, I wanted to shriek. Teach me about the birds, I wanted to shout. If I did that, though, somebody out there would hear me, and next thing I knew, I’d be a crazy bird girl, too. So I didn’t.
Mama got home around seven, in one of her better moods, meaning she walked right past me on the porch, strawberry hair flying behind her, didn’t say a word, and went straight for the kitchen. I heard the clinking of glass, the crunch of celery sticks; the strong mix of tomato juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce wafted from the kitchen to the rest of the house. She was thirsty again. For a moment, there on the porch, I closed my eyes and imagined myself as the baby mourning dove way out in the woods. I saw myself crying, screaming out into sky from my flimsy nest. I cannot yet fly, so here I am, stuck way up high with jagged twigs and pine needles poking me every which way. Thick, cream-colored down surrounds me, almost suffocates me as I squirm; the very thing meant to comfort me has made me ill, aggravated. But I cannot move, because the nest is weak; I can see through the holes to the ground, the dark, frightening ground miles and miles beneath me. My fluffy gray arms are not ready to carry me from here; my backbone is not yet strong. I am not quite a fledgling, ready to try my wings; I am still in so much need. My mother, a great big gray bird with a tan chest and bustling feathers, was not supposed to leave me. But she is gone; she has been gone a long time. And I don’t know how to get her back, how to fly to her, call out to her, how to bring her back to me. So I keep screaming. I keep weeping to the heavens until I am found.
***
At the beginning of supper that night, right after Mama shakily set a pot of spaghetti down for us, West's pretty face suddenly appeared against the screen to our open front door. It had been quiet; me, Johnny, Austin, Mama, and Jasper, sitting silent and ready to dig in to our noodles and meatballs, just the buzz of crickets and the bellow of the bullfrogs yapping in the creek behind us. Then there she was, a soft plunk sound against the screen, a delicate face all smushed up like a little pug dog's would be, her nose sticking up and her forehead wrinkled down over her eyes. I could see through the screen that she was wearing a neon green overall dress over a tie-dyed yellow and pink tank top, with bare feet again, and her wild golden hair was twisted into a lots of tiny braids, all tied up at the ends with rainbow-colored plastic rubber bands. She looked like a walking neon rainbow straw. She had a boy with her, a little younger than her and at least 40 pounds heavier. He stood silently behind her in a pair of damp, baggy blue swimming trunks and nothing else, his tan, round tummy hanging over the top of the elastic.
"Carolina's Mama! Can Carolina come out with us?” West called through the screen, looking straight at my mother, who was sipping from her glass and reaching for a fork at the same time.
Mama looked at West, only a little bit startled, then looked at my plate. "When she's done eatin’. And just who are you?”
“West,” she said, smiling, just a matter-of-factly as she had to me the day before. “And this is North,” she said, pointing at the boy behind her. He stuck his right thumb in his mouth, the corners of his mouth rising into a barely recognizable smile.
“Oh,” Mama said. “That’s nice. Ya’ll just sit on the porch ‘til she’s done. ” She swigged down the last few gulps of her Bloody Mary, head tilted back far in an attempt to suck down every last drop. She got up to make another, bumping into the kitchen counter as she walked.
I gobbled a few bites down, listening to Mama continue to slurp at her drink and her spaghetti, Jasper making ugly, grunting noises as he ate, Johnny and Austin fussing as they “secretly” kicked each other under the table, and West yapping to North non-stop about something on the porch. All of them making their different noises at the same time gave me a strange feeling, like I had caught a bunch of crickets and put them in a Coke bottle, as Johnny and Austin and I did sometimes when we were bored in the summertime. All the words and sounds jumbled together, bouncing off one another, stewing and churning together, sounding just like the crickets thumping violently off the sides of the plastic as they tried to escape, just ready to explode out and hop far away. When I was done, I flew out the door without saying goodbye, bursting right out like one of the heated crickets. West had come to find me, just as she had promised, just as I had wished for all day, possibly all summer, maybe – just maybe – my whole life.
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