BIRDIE (PART 3)
"Morning Sun" by Rich Lo | Greatsketch, all rights reserved.
The next six days, Amos really got to sprucing the place up. He stole a nice flannel blanket from the basement cold room, a storage crate that used to hold milk, a little lamp that mostly worked, if you could get past the flickers, and two ramekins — one for food, and one for water. All of these would furnish Birdie’s room, which Amos organized on a patch of floor in his bedroom closet. Birdie was always quiet throughout the day, and Amos checked on her at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each night, he crept over to his closet and brought Birdie into bed to help comfort him from the monsters underneath it, waiting outside of the door, hanging upside-down from the ceiling and slithering through the window when he turned around. Birdie would sometimes wake up and waddle herself around the soft blanket, never getting too far; she was used to walking along hay. Amos knew Birdie was simply happy to be in a warm house, in a cozy bed, loved and held by a little boy who appreciated her. It was just her seventh night in the bed, and Amos imagined what she might be thinking if she could talk to him: “How fortunate am I. I have floated above the mucky sludge of that barn. I was chosen!” It wasn’t exactly what she was thinking. But it was pretty close.
A wild animal still has a certain need to explore, of course. It is natural to want to frolic and meander around in the grass, see and feel new sensations under your feet — even if it is that same grass, just in a different place. You learn things about yourself when you experience a new environment. There’s a certain confidence that comes along with knowing, I can be somewhere I’ve never been, and I can handle it. If I get lost, I can find my way home. Birdie grew, and her plans did, too. She would peck at the door, wishing she could really talk to Amos, tell him she needed a minute to stretch her legs. They weren’t meant to rest this much. But he kept her inside that closet until it was time to go to bed. Birdie was well fed, sure. Really well fed. It’s just that she hadn’t ever felt the hardwood under her feet. She didn’t really know what the inside of Amos’ coop looked like. She could only do what Amos thought was safe to do, and what was safe was always the same as what made him look best to his father. Birdie was fat, she was beautiful, and she was loved more than she ever could’ve imagined. So why did she have this gnawing instinct that she ought to explore? Maybe she’d be able to find her way back into her closet day-home if she got out and saw something new. Maybe she didn’t need to ask Amos for every little thing.
But why should she be so obsessed with the idea of exploring if she has been provided for so completely? I’m his! Birdie thought to herself, shaming her mind for its greed. What am I thinking? —such ungrateful thoughts a bored chick will use to occupy their mind. She was chosen to live in this big house. She eats more than her mother as only a chick. She sleeps in this boy’s clean bed. He only wants to keep her warm, he’s occupied singularly with keeping her safe. How unappreciative she is to want any more, when she has been stuffed so full of feed. Birdie’s self-debate was interrupted by a sight that caught her eye. A soft patch of chick down had fallen off onto the ground beside her. As she looked over to her right wing, a sharp, black feather jutted out in its place. Slowly, Birdie began to shed the baby feathers that kept her easy to pick up. She wasn’t as soft to the touch as she used to be. Wasn’t even cute, perhaps. She still looked great! For a hen.
Over the next week, she turned her growing curiosity over to this closet she sat stuck in. She’d raise her sharpened head up in the air as far as her neck would stretch and watched how the door lock turned with the rotation of the knob. When the knob was released, it would let the metal piece go and click into place. This is why when Birdie pecked at it, it didn’t swing open. She felt rotten inside for entertaining the thought that maybe she could keep the metal knob from clicking shut. That way, she could peck at the door and push her wing up against it until the door swung open, and she could stomp around the top floor of the house until she heard Amos coming back in from his day’s chores. Amos didn’t need to know that Birdie wanted to run around. He would be happy that his Birdie was waiting when he needed her. She would be free to smell the fresh air, like she did when she lived outside. She could be free and safe, in her cage and with Amos at night. So she thought of something positively genius. Yes, it was a clever plan—she would pack just a little hay each morning underneath the door frame, so that one day, that metal piece between the doors couldn’t fully latch.
Day by day, Birdie packed in just a little bit more to her yellow straw pile. Her beak had seemed to grow stronger each day she awoke to the darkness of the closed closet door. On Friday, right when Amos ran out to collect that morning’s breakfast, she used her newfound strength to form a dense hay pile that pushed against her side of the wooden frame. The door still clicked shut the next morning. She used the busyness of the weekend to get ahead of schedule, packing more and more hay fragments in that small slit between the floor and the door. Pick up just a beakful from the floor, carry it over to the space where the door meets the wall, tip her chin to get the hay piece right in, pack it down with her beak again. Repeat and repeat again, don’t be stomping too loud now, if someone wrenches the door open too many times it’ll all fall down. Birdie was a wise warrior. A monk with feathers picking each grain of rice up carefully between chopsticks, no matter how many times they’re splayed across the floor again. Determined, fierce, but patient. A wild animal, domesticated just enough to be clever. By Monday, Birdie had grown frustrated, packing incessantly at the door while Amos was being punished for something or other again. She heard his father’s heavy voice yell his name like it was a curse, using the loudness of Amos’ misery to wedge her strong beak through the space where the doors meet and try to wrench it open by force. To no avail, of course. The pain shot up the length of her beak. Sharp, like pulling back a thick hangnail, the pain spreading horizontally outwards the further up she tugged. Birdie’s beak screamed against her downy fuzz, the heat of hairline-fractured enamel pressing up against the softest part of her babyface. The time Birdie spent waiting for the throb of her beak to subside allowed her mind to generate the most colorful of daydreams. She crafted this fantasy in smells and sensations of wind; how the scent of the grass would brush up against her beak as the fresh air from the lake nearby would roll under her feathers and make her feel like the wild animal she knew she was. She knew, somewhere deep in her body her brain couldn’t quite get to, that an animus lay dormant. She wanted to poke this wild feminine that had been asleep inside of her and her ancestors for generations, she wanted to shake it awake and ask that chick, “Do you remember when girls like us used to run free?”
It must have been around lunchtime. Birdie smelled roasting flavors she had never tasted before. She had to get closer. She had to run around and see what it’s like outside during the day, again. This morning was it. The metal prong that held the door closed only clicked partway. Birdie had been packing hay for 10 days by the time she was strong enough to heave the door open. She stepped out slowly, one foot over the line at a time, and was filled with a feeling she didn’t recognize. The free and wild hen ran around the carpet that lay dusty on the floor, jumping to and from the cold of the golden oak against her bare feet. She plucked around the laundry bin that brought her away from home. She smelled Amos’ shirt and nuzzled her head into it, before springing up and checking underneath every surface she could for dropped seeds. Freedom, freedom, she was freer than any animal had ever been! Birdie was dancing around a pile of freshly dried undershirts when she heard that click she so fearfully dreaded. The door to Amos’ bedroom swung open behind her. You would think Mother Hayes was practicing black magic, the way she could make someone’s entire body freeze in place, automatically, thoughtlessly, with one tiny indication of her presence. Birdie couldn’t turn around. She just stood, all of her muscles engaging instinctually at once. Shocked. Frozen. As good as dead.
End of Part 3
