6. Blue
And yet in those early years it seemed that a child (unlicked pup though she might be) could find life and strength, if not in the warmth and softness of her mother’s arms then in the color of light passing through green grass; in the pulse in the abdomen of a grasshopper or the feel of an inchworm on the skin of a finger; in the metallic taste of water burbling from a garden hose or in the feel of an approaching thunderstorm, the sound of the wind crashing through the trees and the enormous booming of thunder; in the wild electrical smell of the air after the storm.
And in the wild electrical hilarity of play. Children were everywhere in those days, moving through the neighborhood in pairs and in packs, climbing over fences, running over grass, ringing doorbells, going in, coming out, diverging by day into smaller groups and then converging at dusk, when the humid air grew blue and luminous, for wild games of chasing and tackling and tumbling on the damp grass. We hid behind the junipers and yews that flanked our houses, breathing in the smell of damp pebbly dirt and reptilian green foliage, squishing between our fingers the bright red poisonous berries; we foraged in the yards, tasting the electric life in sourgrass and mulberries; we built dams out of twigs and pebbles in the gutters after rainstorms, and watched the water pooling up clear and brown and then releasing itself into rivulets of light. Hidden in the cool dark basement on hot summer days we wriggled out of our clothes and peered at each others’ bottoms, alert as young prey animals for the sound of approaching grownups, savoring the delicious tingling of bare skin; the touch of chilly fingers; the mysterious anus, rosy and pulsating like a sea anemone in a tidal pool; the hilarity that rose up from inside and erupted in wild shrieks of laughter.
I was four when I learned to read. If I close my eyes and try to remember how it happened, I hear the vacuum cleaner droning in the other room, its dull whine waxing and waning, swelling and receding like waves on sand, thudding sporadically against chair legs and walls. I feel a slight ache in my arched back and neck and the scratch of wool carpet on my bare belly. Pages brush my fingertips like soft dry skin. Flowers bloom on them, yellow and pink. Clouds drift across blue skies. A beautiful gray kitten is lost. Are you my mother? she asks a duck. Are you my mother? she asks a cow.
No, the answer always comes.
No.
The day I turned five I was shocked to discover that I would not be taken immediately to school. My clear understanding was that one went to school when one was five, and so when the day of my birthday arrived, I presented myself to my mother in full readiness for my first day of kindergarten.
My mother stared at me blankly. (The blank stare, in fact, was one of our most characteristic interactions; on the rare occasions when she stopped what she was doing and fully focused her attention on me, it was most often with this uncomprehending look on her face, like a dog with its ear cocked to one side after it hears a strange sound.)
“But… you don’t start school until the fall.”
She must have forgotten. “You go to school when you’re five,” I corrected her.
“Well… not exactly. ”
I could see she was trying to be nice about it. With her characteristic decency, she tried to let me down slowly, never shoehorning me into Reality with mockery or scorn, but easing me into it as painlessly as she could, the way you try to squeeze a fresh head of lettuce into the refrigerator crisper without crushing it. It was February, and by the time I was able to comprehend that I would not go to school until the following September, the clear and coherent worldview I had held only moments before lay crumpled like day-old birthday balloons on the linoleum floor.
I already knew how to read, but apparently I was not old enough for kindergarten.
This, as it turned out, was my first side-swipe collision with the eyeless machinery of that vast institution that churns like a gigantic combine over the glorious fields of children, taking them in its massive jaws or casting them heedlessly aside. My small life gave a faint ping as it bounced off an impenetrable wall.
But all was not lost. It turned out that I was to receive, for my fifth birthday, a parakeet. The begged-for puppy or kitten was not forthcoming, but while my brother was at school my mother took me out to the Hot Shoppe for grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate milkshakes and then to the pet store, long and narrow and dimly lit like a cocktail lounge or a bowling alley. Its walls were lined with golden cages and glowing aquaria, filled with the sounds of burbling water and trilling and shrieking birds. A thrill rippled through my body like a gust of wind across open water. Small silky rodents burrowed in pungent cedar chips, revealing piles of appalling tiny pink naked babies. Bright yellow canaries and seagreen parrots thrust their heads into little bins of licorice-smelling seed. Luminous rainbow-colored fish swam elegantly past pink ceramic castles and pirate ships adorned with skulls. Tiny turtles basked on tiny plastic islands beneath tiny plastic palm trees. My small heart filled with lust. Like a miniature Noah before the flood, I wanted two of each kind, male and female I wanted them, I wanted them to mate and give birth and fill my world with wriggling life.
I look back now and see the exchange between my mother and me as though from above. Desires are expressed; limits are placed. Sea-deep longings are channeled, contained.
In the end I chose a sky-blue bird and named him Patrick.
I remember the feel of Patrick’s scaly little toes and claws on my finger, stepping to one side and then the other, the teetering of his weight, the sudden startling flutter of his wings. I remember watching his silken sky-blue breast rise and fall, feeling the warmth of him, soft feathers riffling over a trembling heartbeat, glittering black eyes like glass beads. His piercing shrieks rang in my ears. He sat on my shoulder and nibbled my earlobes, then rappelled with his beak and scaly toes up through my hair to the top of my head.
Then––suddenly–– he would take flight. My heart raced as he darted wildly around the room, banging into things, flustered, confused, unhinged. I remember the thrill of his sudden aliveness in the room, the dread of his little body thudding into walls and sharp objects.
Finally he would alight somewhere, trembling. My mother taught me how to offer a finger for him to step on with his scaly toes; how to bring him gently, safely, back to his cage. How to hold my finger steady so he could step in through the little door. How to be careful not to pinch my fingers as I snapped it shut.
I half-remember the day Dougie McElmore came over with his mother and wanted to hold my bird. No, he was told. But Dougie was the kind of little kid who put his head down and pushed through his mother’s plaintive reprimands like an offensive guard pushes through a weak defensive line; plus he had a sneaky side. What happened? There was iced tea in the back yard. The kitchen door was left ajar. A chair was dragged across the floor. The gray cloud descended. I remember Dougie’s mother holding her cigarette between slender fingers with long, curved, polished nails. I remember my little bird lying oddly on his side on the floor of the cage. The sky-blue breast heaved a few times convulsively; and was still.
I can still feel the warmth of his newly dead body. The warm weight of it, like a baby sleeping. My mother brings a shoebox and a scrap of soft flannel. Little weedy yellow flowers, bits of green grass and purple clover are strewn about a sky-blue corpse.
We buried him in the back yard with the army men. Over time I became the proprietress of a small bird cemetery, and Patrick became the first in a collection of half-remembered dead birds: damp ragged nestlings found limp in the grass, a perfect gray-brown sparrow stiff-legged on hot asphalt, a bright blood-red cardinal in the leaf litter under the weeping cherry tree, a single ragged claw-mark in his breast. One by one I bedded them down in the cool dirt, walled them around with sticks and pebbles, adorned them with flowers and fragments of sky-blue robin’s-egg-shell.
But I never forgot the thrill of this creature, this pet, alive, confined.
And thus began a long career of loving things in cages.