Prairie Ostrich (10 page)

Yes, she can change. She can be the strong one.

…

That night, Egg climbs into the barn loft and pulls her notebook from beneath the safety of her shirt. Egg thinks about the scientific method from her
Young Reader's Guide to Science
. The scientific method always begins with a question. Stories are like that, they are a big “what if?” Stories and science make sense of the world. That is why the story of Galileo makes more sense to her than the science of Galileo. The story makes him alive. Like Claudia Kincaid running away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the
Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
. But Anne Frank is different. She is real. Anne Frank tells you how the world is so you know that you're not the only one who is lonely or misunderstood. She tells you hang in there because the railway train will come to the rescue. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Egg writes down:

Kuldeep.

Did she come from a war?

Can she talk at all?

What does she like?

How can I make her smile?

Egg puts down her pencil and rubs her head. She knows what she needs. She needs to be Popular. If she were Popular, she wouldn't have to worry about Martin. If she were Popular, she would be able to help Kuldeep. If she were Popular, Mama and Papa would not miss Albert so much and they would not be so sad.

Below her, the ostriches scratch and flare as they kick at the grill and hiss at the bars. The ostriches, with their black plume and white edge feathers. They come all the way from Africa, southern “blacks” her father calls them. She knows about the Indian reservations; Vice Principal Geary said they have their own schools called Residentials. Egg wonders why there aren't any Indians in Bittercreek now. She has read about apart-hate, even though Kathy has tried to hide
The Globe and Mail
from her. Kathy picks up her stack of newspapers every week from Gustafsson's store. She says that Current Events are not kid's stuff, yet Kathy has read the
Globe
for as long as Egg can remember. Egg knows that Kathy tries to shield her from the world but the world is all around her.

Egg knows that the world has categories, an order, an agenda. For everything there is a time and there is a place, in Heaven and on Earth, a plan for the weak and the mighty, from the greatest, most brightest star to the smallest, most tiniest atom. The world holds the big blue whale and the bumblebee bat. That means somewhere, in the middle, there must be a place for her.

…

Egg cradles the bundle on her lap as the school bus rolls over the ruts and rises of the gravel road. She is extra careful today, extra small. It is the end-of-the-week Show and Tell and she wants so much for Kuldeep to like her surprise.

As she walks to her desk she gives Kuldeep a big smile and it doesn't matter that Martin almost trips her. First is spelling and then mathematics. Egg squirms in her seat. This day is taking forever but the bundle is safe under her desk. Last week Mrs. Syms had said no more toys after Mary Margaret McDougall brought in her Baby Alive, Newborn Baby Tenderlove, and a Wake Up Thumbelina. Barry Greenwood shattered his Klackers, cutting his chin on the very first try, and was sent to the nurse's office. At the jungle gym, Martin and Chuckie snapped little Jimmy Simpson's Stretch Armstrong in two in a tug of war at recess, so it was a disaster all around. But this week Egg knows that her Show and Tell is different. Her Show and Tell is Science.

In the last period, Mrs. Syms calls out Egg's name and Egg takes the long walk to the front of the class with a bundle in her arms. As she turns to face her classmates, her stomach jumps up in her throat. There is a spasm in her belly and she feels like she has to pee. Mrs. Syms stifles a yawn as she straightens her desk, her ruler in hand, poised and ready for any infraction. Egg takes a deep breath and uncovers the newspaper wrapping.

The egg is almost as large as Egg's head, a cream-coloured orb that dwarfs her hand. At the base, a small segment has cracked away to a jagged edge. Here, the thickness of the shell can be seen. Monstrously huge and vaguely reptilian, she holds it before her. The class, in spite of itself, leans forward and Mrs. Syms actually puts down her ruler.

Egg begins by telling her classmates that ostriches have a claw and a kick that could break the jaw of a lion. Ostriches vomit in their water trough and the smell would make your nose hairs fall out.

“Ewwww,” the class shrieks.

Ostriches can run up to forty miles an hour and their knees bend the opposite way. They are over eight feet tall and have two different kinds of eyelids. Egg's voice shakes only a little as she tells the class that the ostrich egg is the biggest in all the world — almost five pounds, like twenty-four chicken eggs. Ostriches can live for up to seventy years and they eat stones to grind up the food in their stomachs. Sometimes they stargaze, their necks bent backwards. They twirl but no one knows why.

At the end Egg leans forward and caps it all off with, “When they're chicks, they have to eat poop!” as her classmates explode into giggles.

She gives everyone a piece of the white tendril fluffs but to Kuldeep she hands a whole back tail plume. “For you,” Egg chirps. Kuldeep seems not to have understood a word but her eyes sparkle. There is the smallest nod. And then a miracle: a smile.

…

Egg jumps off the last steps of the school bus, her arms out, an airplane. She's Popular, she's Popular! The world has changed in some small way. Even the sky looks different; the clouds tumble, and have flyaway wisps — like feathers, Egg thinks, like wings. The wind tousles her hair, the air is brisk against her cheeks. She stands straight. Why, she has even grown taller, she can feel it!

She runs down the line of the pens, her arms stretched out.

“Wooh woooh wooooooh” she cries.

She stops in her tracks. She wants something special for Monday and she knows just the thing.

Her father rakes the outside pens. Egg knows that he will take at least ten minutes by the grill. She sneaks into the barn through the gate, past the barred enclosures, to Albert's boxes. She knows where the suitcase is, the one with the golden tie. His lucky one. The one he used to wear to town.

Black, with gold swirls. Like a midnight sky with shooting stars.

Loop over loop, she tries it. She remembers Albert's slicked-back hair, the scent of his pomade. Funny, she never asked who he was spiffing up for. His laughter, so disarming, was good enough for her.

She's almost got it right, she wants Kuldeep to see her with swirling gold, a starry night. Slip, up near the collar and through the knot — she tugs and the loop unravels, slipping through her fingers to the floor.

Damn. She stoops to pick up the coil but a skinny neck, covered in the softest down, pokes through the adjacent bars. The beak plucks at the fabric and begins to swallow the end.

“Esmeralda!” Egg exclaims. She grabs the loop and pulls in this tug of war with an ostrich gullet.

“Let. It. Go!” Egg yanks hard and the wet end splats against her forehead. She holds up starry night, a slippery, slimy mess and sniffs.

She wrinkles her nose. There is no way that she can wear that to school.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Egg glares at Esmeralda and huffs, “At least you didn't swallow it.”

Esmeralda twirls, as if she doesn't know what all the fuss is about.

The chick has grown so quickly, the quirky head, as big as Egg's fist, bobs on the fuzzy neck. Esmeralda was only eight inches when she was hatched, barely one-and-a-half pounds but she has grown two feet since then. Even so she is stillthe smallest one. Esmeralda's head pops up, like a prairie dog from its hole. Her head jerks left, then right. Egg thinks of a submarine's periscope and she giggles. Esmeralda is almost as tall as Egg's shoulder.

Almost. Esmeralda fluffs her wings but Egg knows that if she wet down her feathers, Esmeralda would be as thin as a stick. There is a scratch on Esmeralda's left foot, just on top of her big toe. Egg feels a ripple of fear rush up her spine. Old Yeller dies. So does the Yearling. Egg has seen it all on
The Wonderful World of Disney
. Lemmings that rush the cliff and the awful fate of those stuck in the Tar Pits. Even Wilbur almost becomes Christmas dinner. All but for Charlotte.

Egg furrows her brow, trying to remember Charlotte's words. “Some Pig,” the spider had written. But was Wilbur really some extraordinary pig or was he really just lucky? The real hero, the one in the shadows, the one who toils and triumphs, is Charlotte the spider. Egg consoles herself that at least Charlotte, with her pluck and intelligence, at least she shines when the truth is revealed, when Charlotte and Wilbur go to Las Vegas.

Kathy had been especially pleased after reading
Charlotte's Web
to Egg. They even celebrated with Jiffy Pop.

Egg strokes the down on Esmeralda's head, the fine hairs that ridge her brows. She feels the pulse of life through her fingertips, that strange soft-hard feeling of bone beneath the skin. A shot of fear runs through her. What if she can't protect Kuldeep? What if she is not strong enough? Egg thinks of her father in the ostrich barn as he rakes the outside pen.
Shhh shhhh shhhh
, the stroke of the tines against the grass. Her chest feels heavy as she wonders. What if she fails? What would that mean?

Esmeralda bunts her head against Egg's hand. She looks down into the ostrich chick's brown eyes. Egg thinks that eyes are miracles. Do ostriches have souls? Will ostriches go to Heaven? Papa says animals have instincts, that there is no choice in the matter. Human beings have choices but didn't Eve sin for us all?

Egg strokes Esmeralda's head. There must be a Heaven for ostriches; there must be some kind of point to it all. She knows that fair is fair but the Bible is not always fair. It troubles Egg, like the glimpse of a rat's tail darting by the feed, or the rustling in the walls as the shadows draw long into the winter's night.

But Esmeralda, Egg thinks, Esmeralda. She has a name now. She can be saved.

…

On Saturday she decides. On Saturday she has a mission.

Chinook wind basks the day in warm breezes as an arch of low-lying clouds hover near the horizon. The brilliant sun shines overhead. Chinook wind takes the winter away, peels back the frost, as if to say winter take a holiday, your time will come but not today.

Egg likes to rhyme.

She rides her banana-seat bike out to where the flat plains drop, her tires
click click click
as the hockey cards snap against her spokes. Faster and faster, she thinks she is flying as she rolls down the slope of the drop. She tries to ride hands-free but the ground is too bumpy. Here, under the thousand shades of blue, that's where she feels everything is so small and so big at the same time. She pedals out to the lone erratic on the plain, a massive stone swept down by ancient glaciers in the last ice age. The abandoned rock sits on the edge of Jansson's field. She lifts herself up on the lip of the rock, the texture rough beneath her hands. She is climbing Everest, grunting as she shimmies up the central fissure, her hands grabbing the top as she pulls herself up and over.

“Wooh woooh wooooooh!”

From the top of the erratic, she can see the railway trestle in the distance, and to her left, the hoodoos with their top-caps, where the Badlands begin.

She slaps her hands together, knocking off the dirt. Her finger traces the vein in the speckled granite. Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic. Even the rocks have a story.

She takes out Evel Knievel from the inside of her jacket. She can see her shadow as the sun scurries out from the cover of the clouds. As she pulls out the magnifying glass from her back pocket, she lays Evel on the flat rock. There, on the ancient erratic, she burns out Evel Knievel's eyes, focusing the beam of light. A wisp of smoke rises from the blackening plastic. There is always a sacrifice. Wages of Sin is Death. Someone always pays but it is not going to be her.

“Better safe than sorry,” she says. For Esmeralda, for Kuldeep. Burn out the evil in her. Let the melting eyes absolve her. Egg, the not-good-enough as Albert, Egg, the useless one at home. Now that she is Popular, let it be enough. Egg prays. Let all the bad be over.

…

Egg bikes home, along the top of the ridge. Her hands are off the handle bars, her arms stretched wide. She doesn't see the rut on the ground. Her front wheel twists, and she keels forward, over the bars. Landing hard, she slides down the exposed sandy slope into a trough. She digs her heels in and stops at the very edge of the hole.

Whew, she thinks. That was close.

She stares at the hole. It is like a gap in the world itself, a darkness bordered by four roughly hewn wooden planks. The planks are unusually thick, thicker than the abandoned railway ties that occasionally line the trail. Gouges mark the wood, a blackened strip that a flame must have branded. Her fingers trace the score, the run of the grain as she cautiously peers into the hole.

Dark and deep.

She rocks back.

She looks behind her and finds a rock the size of her head. With two hands she holds it, then heaves it over the edge. Crash, plunk, thud, off the walls, against wood and stone. There seems to be no end to the descent.

A well, Egg thinks. A hole big enough to stuff all the ugly in the world.

As she looks over the edge of the pit, the walls of dirt and wooden beams weave, they tilt and slant, she feels a sudden vertigo.

She scrambles away on her hands and feet, away from that lulling deep. She dashes up the slope to her bike and grasps the coolness of the handle bars.

She cannot stop shaking.

She pulls up her bike and runs, jumps on her banana seat away from the well. She rides, pedalling furiously until she reaches the path.

At the rise in the trail, she puts her foot down, braking into a skid as the back wheel slides to a halt. She looks back.

All she can see is the flat field.