Carlos

I scanned my surroundings through my binoculars. Not many birds out today. A soft footstep sounded in the lawn, and I pointed my binoculars at the source of the noise. Sophie waved. I could tell she was smiling, even though my view of her face was too close and blurry. I lowered my binoculars.

“Lemme see,” she said, grasping the binoculars and sitting down beside me.

“Not much to look at. I pointed to the tree where the sparrows had reared their family. “The sparrows moved out.”

Her gaze shifted to a telephone wire upon which a pigeon was sitting, flicking its tail and cooing obnoxiously. “Nope. Just a pigeon.”

“Detestable creature.” The front door opened, and my mother stepped down to the lawn and came over to us. She was carrying several sheets of paper.

“Don’t blame the pigeon,” she said gently. “Mind if I join you?”

Sophie and I looked at each other, shrugged, and were silent as she sat down next to us. “I’m glad you are here, too, Sophie. I thought I would explain…”

“What’s wrong?” I interrupted suddenly. What was happening? Was my mother sick? That’s what it is, probably. She’s sick. She’s got Bubonic Plague. She’s allergic to peanuts–maybe she has an oxygen allergy. If she has an oxygen allergy she couldn’t breathe–no, no, maybe she just has a cold–“What’s wrong?” I asked again.

“Nothing’s wrong,” my mother answered calmly. Sophie’s eyes showed concern, but her mouth was puckered with hidden merriment at my panic. Sophie asked her to please continue. “It’s just that–my mother–no, I’m starting at the wrong end. I’ll just show you.” She turned over the pieces of paper she had been holding. They were three pictures of birds. Lovely, hand-drawn pictures on yellowed paper, colored in softly and carefully, looking alive.

“Wow!” Sophie exclaimed. “Where did you get these?”

“I drew them,” answered my mother, without pride. “When I was a little girl I loved birds. Loved, loved, loved them, and I would draw them all the time, study them, look at them from my yard. I entered my best picture of a red-tailed hawk for an art contest when I was twenty-two and won a few dollars. I went to the store with my money in my little change purse, feeling very important. I bought cow’s tongue and went home to my apartment–I was living on my own and working two jobs back then–and cooked the tongue and made rice and beans and had my dinner. Then the phone rang and it was the editor of a super famous birding magazine, saying that he had been to the contest and seen my picture and wanted me to draw for his magazine–such a wonderful job it was! I was so happy and accepted and worked for him for six months. You can understand, it was the tongue that reminded me. I hadn’t eaten it since that day.”

“Wow!” said Sophie again. I was beginning to wonder if ‘wow’ was her favorite word. “That’s just like something that would happen out of a book!”

“But,” I interrupted, “you don’t draw for the magazine now…”

“Yes, that’s the sad part.” My mother shifted on the grass, scratched a mosquito bite on her ankle. “These mosquitoes. Curses on them. Well, I told my mother when I saw her next about my job, and she wasn’t happy. Said that drawing birds wasn’t real work, that she had wanted me to do more than sit at home with colored pencils and watercolors, making pictures, blah blah, whatever. General disapproval, you know. And I kept drawing for the magazine for a few more months but I knew my mother wasn’t happy. So one day I called up the editor and told him that I was going to quit, that I had my reasons, and no, I wouldn’t be returning. He was mad, you know, because the pictures had made the magazine more attractive and he was printing more copies than ever. Up until that point, my pictures were everywhere–by the gas station, the grocery store, bookstores, people’s mailboxes. And then it wasn’t. That was it.”

“What did you do?” asked Sophie. I was quiet. I was busy stewing in the anger building on my thoughts.

“My mother was a receptionist before she retired and I became a receptionist. Went to college, got married, had a kid.”

I needed to ask. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, nobody likes to think about it, you know. It remains unspoken and everybody pretends it didn’t happen. They stay away from the subject and I stay away from the birds. That was it,” she repeated.

“Aren’t you ever going to come back to the birds?” Sophie inquired.

“Maybe.” My mother grabbed my binoculars and flopped back on the the lawn. She pointed the binoculars up. “Maybe I’ll come back to gazing at the summer skies.”