Flyaway (6 page)

I let myself imagine, just for a minute, that Mom could really go to that place and come back okay. But then I think about who she is. She lives in rundown places and drives beat-up cars partly because she has to, but mostly to show people she doesn't give a crap. She can't keep a job because she hates being bored, and she gets into trouble because she can't stand anyone telling her how to live. "Honey pie," she always tells me, "we're free spirits. You and me, we live by our own rules." That's what I love about her.

"Stevie ?" Aunt Mindy says. "Will you help me ?"

I look her right in the eyes and make my voice tight, sharp, and cold.

"No."

I stumble into the guest room and slide under the covers. All I want to do is go to sleep, but my mind is on overdrive. When I finally do doze off, I have these bizarre dreams: Rick making out with Mom in the back seat of his Maserati. Aunt Mindy crushing Tweety Bird's head with the heel of her shoe. I even start to have the one about Mom wrapping me in the blanket. She leans over and kisses me, and then she whispers in my ear, "I'll take care of you." I jolt awake and remember what happened at Drake's. And I don't feel taken care of at all.

 

I spend all day Sunday avoiding Aunt Mindy. Tonya calls me on my new cell and says I should come over, but I tell her I'm busy. When she asks me what the deal was yesterday, I tell her Mom and Drake started making out, and I wasn't about to talk to Mom with that jerk around. I couldn't tell her what I really saw. No one in the world, not even Tonya, would understand.

But when Monday morning comes, I decide I can't stand to spend another day hanging out in the guest room. As soon as I'm sure Aunt Mindy's gone, I jump out of bed, throw on some clothes, and, ignoring her stupid list of chores, race out to the bus stop. The old neighborhood is calling me.

It's one of those mornings that cons you into thinking it's already summer, where the Olympic Mountains look like gray and white cutouts against a perfect blue sky. If there's one thing I love about Seattle, it's the mountains. The two ranges line up on either side like they're guarding the city, the Cascades to the east and the Olympics in the west. But my favorite is Mt. Rainier, which towers in the south like a bouncer at the front door, daring anyone to get by.

I sit on the nearly empty bus and close my eyes, pretending I'm up there, hanging out by some alpine lake. But the haven't-had-a-shower-in-two-weeks stink from the old man two rows behind me kind of spoils the illusion.

The bus barrels down 85 th, past the street that winds behind the cemetery. The street where I found Tweety Bird. Once again I picture her, so lost and helpless, and I decide seeing her again, making sure she's okay, would be worth the risk of running into Alan. As soon as I spot the little coffee shop up ahead, I ring the buzzer. The driver lets me off on 30th Northwest, and I head north, searching for anything that looks like a bird hospital. It's an ordinary neighborhood with houses and driveways and kids playing in front yards—not the kind of place you'd expect to find a clinic.

Then I see the sign. It's on a wooden post in front of a boxy gray house that looks like all the others on the street.
On the Wing
it says, and in smaller letters just below,
Bird Rehabilitation Center.
Before I can change my mind, I march to the front door and ring the bell.

A gray-haired woman in black pants and a pink cotton blouse answers. A pair of glasses hangs on a chain around her neck. She looks like somebody's grandma, and I find myself wishing I hadn't worn my black midriff top with the two white buttons right over my nipples.

"Can I help you, dear?" she asks.

I cross my arms over my chest. "I found this baby bird..."

She cranes her neck to look behind me. "Do you have it with you?"

"No, I mean I found it the other day. By the cemetery. This guy Alan talked me into letting him bring it here."

"Oh, are you the one who found that wonderful little robin?" She opens the screen door wide. "Well, come in, come in. I'm Valerie, by the way. You'll be happy to know the robin's doing just fine."

She leads me through an ordinary-looking living room and kitchen to a room at the back of the house with at least twenty cages and laundry baskets stacked against the walls. The air is filled with squawks, chirps, and the rustle of wings. I look around for Alan, but there's no sign of him.

"Alan works here, right?"

"Yes. He lives here too, but he took my car out for supplies. He should be back in a little while, if you want to wait."

Alan lives here? I wrinkle my nose, and not only because the room smells kind of like a pet store. "That's okay."

She leads me to a row of incubators against the back wall. "There it is, contented as can be."

I peer inside the incubator. It's Tweety Bird all right, huddled in that little berry-basket nest. Aside from having a few more feathers, she looks pretty much the same as when I found her.

"Would you like to try feeding it ?"

I remember learning that mother robins eat worms and puke them into their babies' mouths. "Uh, no, thanks."

But she holds out a pair of latex gloves. "Put these on. You'll do fine." Then she hands me a syringe filled with some gross brown stuff.

"I thought robins ate worms."

"We'll get to those. But this formula is as close as we can get to what the mother bird regurgitates for her young."

I stare at the syringe. Artificial bird puke. Nice.

She slides open the door of the incubator, and Tweety Bird starts chirping like crazy. She opens her beak so wide I can see straight into her bright yellow throat.

"It's okay, honey pie," I coo at the little bird. "I've got your food right here."

Valerie puts a finger to her lips. "We don't talk to them while we feed them. And you'll want to avoid eye contact."

That makes no sense to me. I mean, if you're going to go to all the trouble of taking care of a bird, why can't you make friends with it ? But since I'm standing with a goop-filled syringe in my hand and Tweety Bird is opening her beak wide enough to swallow it whole, I decide I should probably feed now and ask questions later.

"What the bird's doing is called 'gaping,' and it means it's ready for food. So you're going to take the syringe..." She holds my wrist and guides my hand toward Tweety Bird's open beak. "...And stick it in as far as you can. No, farther than that."

I pull my hand back. "But she'll choke!"

"She ? There's as much chance this bird is a male—we wouldn't be able to tell until a year from now, when its feathers change color. If it's a female, those spots will disappear, and its breast will turn a pale red-orange." She takes hold of my wrist again. She has bony old-lady fingers. "It won't choke if you get that syringe way down in there, past its glottis—which is that little opening."

This time I manage to get the syringe in far enough. I close my eyes and squirt about half the contents down Tweety Bird's throat.

"See ? That wasn't so bad. Look, it's ready for more."

I open my eyes and there's Tweety Bird, chirping and gaping again. It takes a few more syringe-fulls before she—I just know she's a girl—finally settles down. When I think I'm done, Valerie hands me a pair of tweezers and a dish full of wiggling worms.

"Let's see if it'll eat a couple of these. Pick them up by the tail if you can—that way they're easier for the bird to swallow."

I seriously can't believe I'm doing this, but I poke around in the dish with the tweezers until I manage to grab one ofthe worms by the tail. Then I drop it into Tweety Bird's waiting beak. "Oh, gross," I say.

"You're a natural," Valerie says. "Would you like to feed a few more ? I could use the help."

Part of me wants to get away before Alan shows up, but for some reason it's hard to leave. In the next half hour I feed a baby crow, two more robins, a sparrow, and a finch. With each feeding I'm less nervous about sticking in the syringe, more confident about picking up worms and berries with the tweezers.

I try to picture Alan feeding a baby bird. "Alan does this too?"

Valerie smiles. "Oh, yes. He's wonderful with the birds. And they're wonderful for him."

I'm about to ask what she means when I see a cage covered with a black cloth.

"What's in there?"

"A jay that a woman brought in early this morning. The poor thing's stunned."

"What happened to it ?"

"Flew into a window, probably. It happens a lot. The bird's sailing along, thinking it's free and clear, and then ...
boom!
It slams into a wall of glass."

Once when I was a kid, back in Montana, we were driving along the road and a bird flew right into Mom's windshield. It made a sickening
whump,
and I begged her to stop the car so I could see if it was still alive. It lay there by the side of the road, and it wasn't until I got closer that I could see it was still breathing.

"It's gone," Mom had said, waving her hand. "Leave it."

I look up at Valerie. "Can you do anything for it?"

"It probably has a concussion, so all I can do is keep it quiet for a couple of hours, so the blood has a chance to drain away from its brain. But there's no guarantee that it will live. When one of God's creatures is hurting, it's our duty to do our best to help it heal, but ultimately it's in His hands."

I've never been big on the God stuff, but her words press against a sore place inside me. I should have at least moved that bird off the road, but I knew Mom wouldn't let me touch it. I always hated the thought that I left it lying there when maybe, just maybe, it had a chance to fly again.

I'm about to ask her more about the bird when Alan bursts into the room with a plastic grocery bag in each hand.

"Sorry it took me so long," he says. "I had to stop for gas." Then he catches sight of me, and his mouth twists into its usual smirk. "Well, well. Look who's here."

"Yes," says Valerie, "I've been having a delightful time with your friend. Goodness, I never got your name, dear."

"Stevie."

"What an unusual name. Is that short for something?"

I glance at Alan, who's pretending to unpack the grocery bags. But I can tell he's waiting for me to say something stupid. "My mom named me after her favorite singer, Stevie Nicks."

"Oh, yes, I remember her. Fleetwood Mac, right? She sang that one song, something about 'tell me sweet little lies.'"

I look at her in surprise. I'd figured her for more of the Easy Listening type. "Yeah. My mom loves to dance to that one."

Alan starts doing a lame imitation of a stripper, gyrating his hips and undoing the top buttons of his army jacket. "I'll bet she does."

"Shut up! She's not a stripper, she's a dancer."

"Yeah, right."

"Alan!" For the first time Valerie's voice is sharp. "Please go clean the aviaries."

He shoots me a dirty look, then takes his time leaving the room.

Valerie watches him go. Then she shakes her head and turns back to me. "Don't mind Alan. He didn't mean anything by it." She puts her hand on my arm. "You love your mother, don't you?"

I pull away. "Why wouldn't I ?"

She gives me a long look and then says, "How would you like to come back and help me with the birds a couple of times a week? Maybe Mondays and Wednesdays? I can't pay you, but—"

"Yes," I say before she can finish.

On the bus ride home, my mind keeps drifting back to that bird that hit our windshield in Montana, and I keep hearing Valerie's words: "When one of God's creatures is hurting, it's our duty to help it heal."

 

Aunt Mindy's in her bedroom. I knock on the door. "I think we need to help my mom," I say.

She sits me down on the couch, and I tell her what I saw at Drake's. Not everything, but enough to make her say, "What's his name, Stevie?"

"His name's Drake," I tell her. "Drake Uttley."

Aunt Mindy promised we'd talk about Mom the next morning, but she forgot that Mrs. Watkins had set up a home interview with a social worker from CPS. The lady shows up early and asks a bunch of questions. She wants to know how long Mom's been working at the club, how often she left me alone, stuff like that. Of course Aunt Mindy didn't tell me she was coming, so I didn't have time to think up any good answers. I figure things can't get much worse than they already are, so I mostly tell the truth. She gives me her card "in case anything comes up." Whatever that's supposed to mean. Then Aunt Mindy takes off for work before I can ask her if she's planning to track Mom down at Drake's today.

On top of that, it's Tuesday, the day of my first tutoring session with Rick. I decide to celebrate (ha, ha) by dressing up a little, so I wiggle into a retro black cocktail dress and slip on a pair of gold strappy sandals I found at the bottom of the Goodwill discount barrel. I check myself out in the mirror. Mom would be proud.

I'm due to meet Rick in the library conference room at one. By twelve-thirty I'm standing at the door to the room, feeling so antsy I'd chain smoke if I could stand the taste of cigarettes.

He shows up at 1:03 with an armload of books and breezes past me. "Hey, Stevie. Nice threads." He plops the books on one of the round tables and pulls out an orange plastic chair. "You ready to get to work?"

I take a seat beside him. While he's shuffling through his notes, I scoot a little closer so I can smell his cologne and study his diamond stud.

"Let's start with math," he says.

Wouldn't you know he'd pick my absolute worst subject ?

"I got this book from your school counselor. Do you remember where you were when you started having trouble ?"

He flips through the pages. Algorithms. Equations.
N
equals
X
plus 3. I don't remember any of it. I must look as sick as I feel, because he says, "We'll just start at the beginning, then."

He opens to page one and jots the first problem on a piece of lined paper, then slides it over to me. I take the pencil he gives me and stare at the problem as hard as I can, but nothing happens. It's like everything I ever learned about math has flown out of my brain. I stare and stare and chew on the end of the pencil.