Sunday Scaries: “Bird Mama”

On the second week of her administrative leave, in that hour of morning after Greg left for work, when Aleena, too, should be fighting highway traffic but was instead grounded at home feeling strange and unlike herself, a series of knocks sounded at the door. 

Ordinarily, she would have answered it. Dealt with the matter. She could send a salesman packing three words into his pitch while wearing a smile that left him unaware that his ass had been handed to him. Aleena was normally on top of things. In her current state, however, she could only bring herself to slide her eyes toward the door, tack her nails against her ceramic coffee mug, and wait.

How long would it take them to give up? She was unmistakably home. Greg had left the garage door open with her car inside it, and he’d cracked the front windows before he left. “Fresh air,” he’d said, by which he meant that the house was moldering, and she along with it. Would they eventually try the knob? Come on in? Having taken a step back from the world, she found herself curious if it might descend into barbarism without her usual plate spinning and pin juggling, if marauders might burst through the door and help themselves to what they found inside. 

Disappointingly, no; there was that single series of knocks and nothing more. 

“Anticlimactic,” she said out loud. In time, she swung her legs away from the kitchen island and rose to look through the peephole. There was no one on her porch or in her yard or on the small section of sidewalk she could spy by pushing her face against the glass and peering to either side. 

Possibly, something had been delivered. She was on a break from the Internet, but Greg might have ordered something and not mentioned it.

Rather than exposing herself by opening the door, she crouched in the foyer and flipped open the mail slot with the backs of her fingers. Something was there. A distinct cardboard corner. She stared out for some time, appreciating the world from this vantage, seeing but not being seen, then she rose and went upstairs, leaving the door closed and the package on the porch, untouched.

She crawled under the bedcovers, tried to nap, failed, masturbated, showered. It was lunchtime before she dragged herself back to the door. After a period of standing with her hand on the knob, she pulled it open to find that this was not a delivery after all, at least not the kind made by mail carriers or Amazon contractors. The box was recycled, unsealed, with its upper flaps folded in. The corner of a checkered kitchen towel was visible inside its open top. Curious, she stepped out.

A bird. Someone had burdened her with a captured baby bird. A mammoth thing, too, the size of a human infant. White and downy, with a blocky cartoon head.

Her phone was on the charger, turned off, as it had been for the duration of her leave. Accepting that there was no way around it, she went inside and powered it on. 

Arcade pings of unread notifications. Missed calls and texts and social media alerts. Hate mail, probably. She swiped them away.

What the hell?? It looks huge, Greg texted in response to the photo she sent him. 

 It’s huge, she confirmed.

Why???

Why is it huge, or why would someone do this?

Both. Either.

IDFK

They agreed she shouldn’t touch it, that it couldn’t come into their home. (Mites, bacteria, avian disease, poisoned saliva like they dimly recalled hearing about in birds’ reptilian cousins).

Leaving it on the porch wouldn’t do either. They hadn’t worked this hard, moved to Imperial Way, to the best neighborhood in Carvel, only to be branded as critter people. Also, a bird of that size was surely rare, maybe even valuable. Left where it was, it would bake in the sun or fall prey to neighborhood cats or those long formations of ants, which would endlessly come until they’d absconded with it, piece by bite-sized piece.

After considering her options, she grabbed her long rubber kitchen gloves. She would drag it into the garage where it would be safe and contained until someone could be found to take possession of it. 

Staring down at the creature with her phone in her hand and her gloves slung out of her back pocket, she made a short, bolstering growl and then lit her phone screen and Googled the number for the local zoo.

After navigating through the automated receptionist and three disinterested humans, she connected with someone of authority, a woman who was willing to hear her out. Initially, she took Aleena for a dimwit. “Ma’am, we don’t come out to rescue baby birds. Your local vet can give you instructions on humanely euthanizing—”

“I’m not calling you about a sparrow or a finch,” Aleena cut in. “It’s the size of a full-grown cat.”

The speaker crackled with her skeptical sigh. “And you’re sure it’s a hatchling? How are you determining that it isn’t full grown?”

“It’s a ball of fluff.”

“Can you please describe it to me?”

“Closed eyes. The lids are purple and bulbous. Its beak looks… thick, if that makes sense? Long and solid and rounded at the end. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” This wasn’t strictly true; the creature recalled the pen and ink renditions of the dodo bird from her childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland. “Just tell me your cell number; I’ll send a photo.”

She fired off the same one she’d texted to Greg.

The response came within minutes: What’s your address?

With a much-needed swell of spirit, she tucked the phone into her pocket and pulled on her long gloves. Pinching the box at two of its corners, she struggled to lift it. The bird was even heavier than its size suggested. A feathery cannonball. It took an effort of crouching and working her fingers under its bottom, but eventually she staggered to her feet with the box cradled in her arms. The bird shifted, opened its beak and screamed. The sound was high-pitched and ugly, a violent shriek that pierced the quiet, suburban silence. The box smelled faintly of piss and rot. She was conscious of how close the bird was to her face. 

Inside the garage, she coaxed it down, taking care to slide her fingers out of the way before the final, short drop onto the concrete floor. Again, the bird rose up and cried, a softer sound this time, like it was expressing a longing ache for her. Standing over it, working out a cramp in her back, she asked, “Who brought you here, anyway? Some asshole? I’d like to give them a piece of my mind.” It perked up at the sound of her voice, cocking its head to better hear her. She snorted, smiled. “I’m not your mama,” she told it as she stepped around the box in the direction of the interior garage door. The bird squalled for her, hopping and rocking its body, causing the box to slide recklessly across the concrete, but Aleena wouldn’t be baited.

She managed to pass by her car without looking at its dented bumper, but she couldn’t resist peeking at it while she stood at the wall panel, waiting for the overhead door to close. The damage was a memento from her last day of work, that numb drive she’d taken after being placed on leave. Perfectly sober but impaired by the accusation that she had violated her university’s code of ethics, she allowed the car to drift, hitting the metal railing before she even knew what happened. She was normally such a careful driver that it felt unfair that those dents and scratches hadn’t shown her pity by healing themselves. Souvenirs of her worst day. Reminders that there were worse days still to come. Termination. Professional blacklisting.

The garage door closed, the bright afternoon sun replaced by the dim glow of the overhead bulb, hiding the bumper in shadows. She entered the house and closed the interior door behind her. The bird screamed and screamed.

Against her better judgement, she slid her phone out of her pocket and lit the screen, scanning past messages of support from her colleagues and emails from students who hadn’t put together that she wouldn’t be answering classroom questions from administrative Siberia. She deleted them one by one, along with ads and scams and promotional emails by the dozen. She skipped the email she was looking for, waiting to open it until her inbox was clean and clear. Then she stared at the name Dr. Raina Gates in bold type for a long time before holding her breath and tapping it open.

It was terse, professional. The committee had completed its investigation. They would like to schedule her hearing for Friday, if that was convenient for Aleena. The message was sent on Monday. It was Wednesday now. She darkened the screen without responding, laying the phone face down on the kitchen counter. It was all so maddening. Yes, she had messed up. Obviously so. But the problem wasn’t Aleena; it was social media. You were expected to be candid, weren’t you? Posting often to promote engagement? Photos of your meals and your outfits and your take on every issue under the sun? These days, a person’s entire life is expected to be visible and committee-approved through comments and those addictive little hearts. So, when a controversial figure dies, of course you’re going to weigh in with your thoughts. You post it without even thinking. And when the backlash comes, it feels like betrayal. 

She clenched her jaw, staring at her phone as if she were waiting for it to do something more to compel her. In a single, fluid motion, she snatched up her phone, replied to Dr. Gates that she would be there, then she opened her fingers and let it drop back onto the countertop. 

One deep breath, followed by another. She was a capable woman, a responsible person; she would be fine. Look at how she’d handled the bird, how she’d faced that email.

The oven clock showed one o’clock; a responsible person would eat.

In the freezer, she found a filet of salmon and tossed it into the dirty pan Greg left on the stovetop. Setting the burner to high, she watched as the frost melted and pooled and sizzled. The tiny leftover eggs from Greg’s breakfast danced in the heat. When the time felt right, she pinched the filet with her thumb and index finger and tried to flip it. It resisted, held in place. She inched her fingers down and applied more force, managing to tear the fish and burn herself in the process. She pulled her hand back, smacking the pan’s handle with her wrist and causing it to fling off the stovetop and clatter onto the kitchen tiles. The fish slapped against the lower side of the island before sliding to the floor. The commotion caused the bird to shriek wildly. It wasn’t until the pain subsided that it occurred to her how close to the interior door it sounded. All she needed was for it to escape its box and swallow a sharp screw or get into the antifreeze before the zoo woman arrived to take over its care.

She stepped over the mess she’d made, moving toward the interior door, where she stopped and listened. It seemed just on the other side. Cautiously, she cracked the door open and slid her uninjured hand along the wall for the light. Holding the other low to prevent the bird from getting into the house, she pushed the door open farther. Later, she would recall noticing her car’s bumper, as straight and clean as if it were new off the factory floor, before her fingers were grabbed and she was pulled forward, off her feet. She landed heavily on the concrete floor, hitting her head and blacking out before she even had the cogent thought that the bird had attacked her.

***

She awoke calm and rested. Her head didn’t hurt, and neither did her fingers. It was the fingers that she noticed first, her thumb rubbing the unburned pads of them even before she was fully  conscious. She opened her eyes and blinked the garage ceiling into focus, wondering at the strangeness of seeing it this way. In time, she raised her hand to her face and pressed her fingertips to her closed lips. They weren’t warm, didn’t sting. Studying them, she saw no blisters, no red skin. She slid that hand behind her head, cradling her skull when she finally sat up. No dizziness or pain.

Had the bird…? Where was the bird? 

In the house, of course. She didn’t bother to look around her; the open interior door was enough for her to know for sure. 

On her feet and peering through the open doorway, she saw a pile of downy feathers in the entryway to the kitchen and a trail of them leading into the house. She held her breath and followed it.

She found the bird nibbling the last of the salmon off the kitchen tiles. It seemed larger than she recalled. How could she have ever thought that flimsy box would contain it? Having shed so many of its downy feathers, its coloring was now a noticeable aquamarine. The pan, when she looked, was righted on the stovetop. There were no splatters of oil on the floor. Her mess had been cleaned. The same as her fingers and her bumper. “Are you my savior, bird?” she asked.

It tilted its head at the sound of her voice, closed-eyed, listening, then it hopped once in her direction and toddled until falling onto its side, its legs unsteady, still a baby despite its size. 

“Oops,” Aleena said, and she smiled even as she realized that its body had obscured her phone, lying on the kitchen tiles. Its screen was cracked in a pattern that suggested it had been pecked or stomped on by talons. “What did you do?”

The bird struggled, pulled itself to its feet, then raised its face to the ceiling and set about crying out for her, a violent squalling. Aleena crouched, hesitated, then ran one hand down the feathers of its back, pulling her phone toward her with the other. White feathers rose in a cloud, then fluttered lazily to the floor. The bird quieted, arching in appreciation of her touch. When she removed her hand to explore the damage to her phone, it snapped its head in her direction, insulted by her denial of attention. It flapped its wings wildly, causing another explosion of white feathers, then it leapt into her lap, knocking her onto her ass.

“My goodness!” she said, frightened but charmed. It ignored her, curling and fitting itself into the concavity of her belly. Gripping her T-shirt with its talons, it wadded the fabric into its grip as it nuzzled deeper, getting comfortable. She ignored the occasional pinch against her skin as she relaxed against the cabinets, settling in with her phone.

It lit when she hit the button, so it wasn’t totaled. The time showed nearly three o’clock; she had lain in the garage for nearly two hours. There were three missed calls from the zoo woman and twice that many texts. She had come and gone, and Aleena hadn’t heard her. Tapping a text notification, hoping to catch the woman before she was too far away, she sliced her thumb on the broken screen and let out a cursed shriek. The bird roused, sniffed the air, found the scent of her blood and latched onto her hand. Frantically, she tried to pull away, but the bird held on, sucking her like a famished baby at a nipple. The sounds were vulgar and frightening. Under its closed lids, she saw its eyes roll back with delight. Too shocked to continue resisting, she stilled, and the feeling in her hand moved from pain to pressure to nothing more than the roughness of the bird’s tongue as it whipped across her skin. 

In time, it released her. Her injury was healed. “Thank you,” she said, but it had already curled itself back into sleep. Stuck there under the weight of it, Aleena leaned her head against the cabinets and closed her eyes too. 

***

“Aleena! Jesus Christ!” Greg, standing over her, his wide eyes locked on the bird in her lap.

“Hey, babe,” she smiled, coming to, “what time is it?” She raised her arms in a stretch. Then, without even realizing the intimacy of the gesture, rested her arms around the bird.

“The kitchen? You brought that thing into our kitchen? Why are you on the floor?”

So many questions. She hid her smile when she saw how upset it made him. “It’s fine, Greg,” she assured him. “This isn’t the dirty sort of bird.”

“How could you possibly know that?” He sounded exasperated. 

“It’s mythological, I think.” She held up her unburnt, uncut fingers to prove it. “See?”

He stared at her. Responsible, fatherly. “Are you okay, Aleena? Did you hit your head or something?”

“Yes, but that’s fixed too.” She scratched the bird’s neck. “It undid all my mistakes.”

He was at a distance from her—afraid of the bird, probably—but now he came closer, crouching at her level. When he spoke, his tone was soft. “Babe, is this about work? Should I be concerned?”

Her mental health, he meant. Greg feared she’d cracked up. She wasn’t bothered about correcting him. Work hadn’t occurred to her, those mistakes. Excitedly, she said, “Get on your phone. See what people are saying about me.”

“Aleena…”

“Do it. It will be fine now.” She nodded to encourage him, suddenly certain this would be the case.

He hesitated. There was pity in his expression. Finally, he rose to his feet and fished his phone from his pocket. After accessing his social media, she watched as he typed in her name and scrolled, a quick, perturbed search. “Nothing new,” he said and began to return the phone to his pocket. 

“Look closer. It will be fixed now.”

“Babe…”

“See for yourself!”

He stood, staring at his screen, his thumb scrolling through history, traveling backward in time. Aleena studied his face, watching as his expression shifted from annoyance to frustration to confusion. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “What the hell?”

Aleena hugged the bird more tightly before extending one hand to Greg. With his help, she rose to her feet, cradling the creature against her body. It raised its cartoon head, sniffed at Greg, squawked, then buried its beak in the crook of her arm. “It’s magic. This bird is magic.”

“You’re bleeding,” he told her.

She looked at her stomach, which his eyes indicated. In response, the bird dug its talons deeper into her, causing her to moan. The pain subsided as quickly as it had come. The blood blooms on her T-shirt deepened, grew. 

“Jesus Christ,” Greg said. He looked disgusted, but only because he didn’t understand.

“It’s fine, babe.” She got close, took him by the shoulders to reassure him, and smiled into his face. “It loves me!” 

He lowered his eyes to the floor, unable to look at her. She peered down too, only then realizing that she had let go of the bird completely, that it had latched onto her so tightly that it held in place like a new part of her.

***

Aleena awoke to a rapping at her door. It was noon, hours after Greg left for work. She’d slept on the couch, not wanting to bring the bird into the bedroom to provoke his protests. It remained perched on her belly, clinging to her, swaddled in the bathroom towel she had wrapped around it in a makeshift nest.

“Aleena?” called a voice from her porch. Female. The zoo woman, probably, wanting to take her bird from her. She waited, holding her breath, keeping her eyes on the sleeping bird, praying that her quickened pulse wouldn’t cause it to squawk and give them away. 

When the knocking finally ceased, she unwound the bloodstained blanket, causing an explosion of white feathers to fall around them like celebratory confetti. Rising to pee, she saw that only a hint of its legs was now visible, its talons secured deep within her, a bowling ball fixed to her abdomen—or something bigger, maybe, given how much it grew in the night. 

Opening and closing its talons, it tickled a part of her she’d not felt before. Her T-shirt was a tattered, bloody mess, so she ripped what remained of it until the fabric fell away and dropped to the floor, then she proceeded to the bathroom in only her shorts. 

A peaceful day followed—food and companionship and a little wine—until Greg arrived home, making a nuisance of himself with his inane pleas to allow him to drive her to a hospital.

***

On Friday morning, the morning of her hearing with Dr. Gates, he called out of work. All morning, he skulked around the house, on his phone, secretive. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at her. After everything—her scandal and her weeks of near catatonia that followed—now she disgusted him? It was childish, and he could go right ahead whispering about her for all she cared.

She was finishing her morning coffee when he hurried past her and stepped out onto the porch. In her lap, the bird tilted its head to listen, and Aleena did the same. “Babe,” he called to her, “I called someone who can see about our problem.” He returned to the foyer, leading a woman and a man, both dressed in khaki shirts and shorts. If not her zoo woman, then another just like her.

Without a word, Aleena rose from the kitchen island and shouldered past the group of them.

“Where are you going?” Greg asked. He grabbed hold of her arm. Not roughly, but the threat was implicit. She whipped around, the bird squawking and snapping, causing her guts to jostle, a feeling of seasickness. He stepped back and so did the zoo people. They were staring wide-eyed at the bird, the way it was nestled into Aleena’s body, as if they had never seen anything like this before. Experts indeed. 

It made her feel powerful, knowing more than them. “Don’t touch me,” she said calmly like all this to-do was beneath her. Her shoulders were back, a woman in control. “I’m going upstairs to get ready for my hearing.” To the zoo people, she added, “I will thank you both to leave.” 

“Babe, you have…” Greg lowered his trembling hand to indicate her stomach. “You need help, hon.” 

Yes, there it was: the hysterical woman; a man intimidated by his powerful wife. 

“You need to see a doctor, ma’am,” the zoo woman told her. Heresy. Shame on her. She looked alarmed when Aleena approached her, pulling her head back and angling her body away. Greg and the other man gave them a wide berth. 

“Nobody asked you,” she said. “Nobody wants you here.”

“You… you called me,” the zoo woman whimpered. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days.” She seemed on the verge of tears. 

“Well,” Aleena said, “I was mistaken.”

With that, she turned away and was halfway up the stairs when she heard the woman whisper to Greg, “You need to call the police. She’s not well. She’s a danger to herself.”

At this suggestion, the bird lunged, nearly causing Aleena to lose her balance and tumble to their feet. Catching herself on the railing, she looked them over from her perch, their blank, frightened faces. 

The bird raised its head to regard her, waiting until she glanced back at it, and only then did it finally open its eyes—giant and amber and piercingly beautiful. For a moment, she was transfixed by its stare, then she closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay,” she told it, fighting back tears, “okay.” 

She gasped when she felt the bird’s feet wrap around her spine and bear down, tightly gripping her. A shiver ran through her body when it unfurled its wings. Then they were airborne, off the steps and over the railing, inertia pulling back Aleena’s head and feet, a feeling like she might crack in half, swooping down to the landing. Three intermingled screams. The bird, once again, correcting her mistakes.

***

It didn’t care for the heat of the shower. It groused and nipped at her arms and thighs, but there was no help for it. Aleena was filthy, and she needed to be presentable; her job was on the line. Finally, it relented, protecting itself by burrowing so deep into her that it appeared comically like her feathered pot belly in the mirror when she was drying herself. She petted herself and felt the bird shudder with appreciation, as high up as her chest and as low down as her thighs.   

Once dressed in slacks and a white button-up, she adored her new silhouette. Like a rotund banker from history. It changed her gate, gave her the belly-first posture of a person in charge.

She left through the garage, not wanting to soil her shoes by walking through the mess at the front door, then she got into her car with its smooth and perfect bumper. 

In their last meeting, Dr. Gates showed Aleena her phone, scrolling through all the hateful comments and demands for her termination. Now, though, her offending post had been wiped away, along with all that hate. The board would have no evidence of wrongdoing to justify her termination. They might still try to fire her. These were dangerous times for universities, what with everyone on edge about imprudent speech. Maybe they would fire to protect themselves regardless of their inability to prove their charge. 

Maybe, but that would be a mistake.