Little Bird

Chapter One

“Gabe!” I shout.

“Sorry,” he says, half-heartedly, out of breath. He comes back, picks Rosie up by the sleeve of her coat, sets her feet back on the ground, and runs back to the tree, climbing the makeshift ladder to meet Penny in the tree house. Rosie brushes her jeans off and sighs exaggeratedly.

“I’m just not fast enough!” she exclaims to the sky.

“You can come help me if you want,” I suggest, as I climb the few steps to the porch.

“No thanks,” she says, and runs to the oak tree, climbing onto the tire swing.

I walk up to the front door, successfully open the screen door, and attempt to turn the doorknob with my elbow. When it doesn’t work, I transfer the bags in my right hand to my left, and let myself inside.

It’s dark.

My eyes take some adjusting. I squint and stumble to the kitchen counter where I set the bags down. I walk over to the window and open the curtains. The light from the sun hiding behind the clouds filters in through the hand-print smudged glass and illuminates the room. The gentle, dim rays land on the scuffed wooden floor, the throw rug ridden with fluff from shedding socks and blankets, the dusty television set, the window ledge with brown growing in the corners, and the pale face of my mother.

Her eyes are closed, her thin lips parted slightly, showing her teeth a bit. She has long eyelashes, high cheekbones, and her thin blonde hair is falling out of its long braid, landing in wisps around her face like Rosie’s does.  She is made of all bones, a wool sweater hanging off her frame as if it was on a hanger, her knees pointy under the grey blanket she has across her lap. She is sitting on Dad’s old chair, the one with the leg rest mechanism that should fold out, but broke. She looks as if she was pretty once, and happy. But now her eyes are heavy, her skin is thin, her chest is droopy, her heart is broken, and her mind is scattered. I wish I could have known her when she was younger, because right now she’s just a ghost- a small soul buried deep in its own sadness.

Rosie and Gabe both look like her: blonde hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, small for their age (although Gabe would never admit it). Penny and I, on the other hand, look more like our father, with his dark hair, brown eyes, and tall stature. People used to categorize us like that: you are like your father, and you are like your mother. I used to wear that title with pride- Daddy’s Girl. That was before, though. Before I saw my Daddy drink, before he disappeared. He’s been gone for nearly a year, now.

When I last saw him, I was used to him disappearing. He had been coming and going for years, each time leaving for longer than the last, and returning like a lazy slug, swamped with alcohol and maybe a bit high, with pockets full of money to barely last us until his next return. I remember it clearly: he had been home for two nights after being gone for four months. He spent the majority of the time home on his bed, sleeping or moaning. Mom moved from her spot on the chair and went to be with him, not touching him, just sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at him, waiting. Waiting for love or hope or waiting, maybe, for the past to return and make everything right again. The kids, instead of playing outside for most of the day, would stand by the door to his room, leaning on the door frame, watching him. Gabe was the only one who came in, standing by the side of his bed, glaring at the lump under the covers that was our father. Rosie and Penny stayed standing by the door, their fingers in their mouths or rubbing the edge of the doorframe nervously.

As the days passed he got stronger, and by the end of the second day, he broke away from his cocoon of wool and cotton and moved into the family room. He plunked down in his chair, where Mom usually sits. Mom sprouted up from the edge of the bed, rushed to the kitchen, and put the coffee on. She started making something, soup maybe, and when the coffee was finished, she poured some in an old mug with a picture of a moose on the front, and brought it to him. She handed it to him; he sipped it, then set it down. She rubbed her fingers through his hair.

“I’m leaving after dinner,” he said.

Mom seemed to sink into herself, and she sat down gingerly on the edge of the sofa as if making large movements would break her.

I looked up from where I was wiping down the kitchen counter. “What do you mean you’re leaving after dinner?” I exclaimed, throwing down the rag and walking towards him. Mom put a hand out and touched my arm but I shook her off. She looked down at her lap.

Dad looked up at me, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t speak to me in that tone, girl!” he said.

“I’ll speak to you in whatever tone I like!” I shouted. “You have no right to tell me what to do! You may have been involved in the process of making me, but you’re hardly a father.”

He lowered his eye brows, his forehead crinkling. He stood from his place on the chair, towering over me. I backed up a half step, staring him in the eyes. I'd never had the guts to stand up to him before. “You’d best shut your mouth, girl, and learn some morals,” he said.

I glanced down at Mom. The pain in her eyes, her face, her breath- her silence and her stillness leaking into the air. I looked back up at that man I called Father. “Maybe,” I hissed, “I would have learned morals if my father had been around to teach them to me.”

He shook his head, slowly, and picked up an open hardcover copy of Jane Eyre from the coffee table. He slammed it closed and made to chuck it in the direction of my face, but purposely sent it flying off to the side. I flinched and stepped back another half step. It crashed into the side-table by the window, sending the bowl of keys and lost-and-found beads, buttons and hairclips spilling to the floor.

“All you need, girl, is a good whipping,” he hissed, “but just know that you should shut your face and stop being so ignorant. You know nothing.”

Then he turned and stormed out of the house, grabbing his bag and jacket, and leaving us frozen- me watching the place he used to be standing, Gabe frozen beside the coffee table, Rosie and Penny clinging to each other by the door, Mom with her face in her hands, and whatever she started to cook burning in a pot on the stove.

I stormed out onto the front porch just in time to see him rolling backwards down the driveway in his beat-up pickup truck. “Fuck you!” I screamed, then pounded my fist against the post holding up the overhang. I swore a few more times, banging the rhythm of my anger into the post, then collapsed on the front steps, my head in my hands.

We haven’t seen him since. The only difference is that we’re running dangerously low on money. But we can manage.

I begin to unpack the groceries, stacking the cans on shelves and putting the vegetables and milk in the fridge. The groceries don’t nearly fill the cupboards or the refrigerator, but they’ll have to do. Our kitchen is small, some of the cupboards don’t have doors, and the ones that do are scratched. The fridge is one of those old, yellow ones, ridden with magnets holding Crayola masterpieces on display.

I fill a pot with water and pull some deer meat out of the fridge. I glance out the window at Gabe pulling Penny and Rosie in a wagon attached to his bike with a skipping rope. Mom starts humming a quiet, broken tune. I sigh and start chopping the meat for dinner.