The Hummingbird's Cage (2 page)

Jim
has started probation—ninety days for disorderly conduct, unsupervised. Before that, ten days in lockup that were supposed to make an impression. That was the idea, at least. But old habits—they do die hard.

He's working second shift now, which is not to his liking. Or mine. It throws us together during the day, when Laurel is at school and there's nothing to distract him. He tells me if the eggs are too runny, the bacon too dry, the coffee too bitter. He watches while I wash the breakfast dishes to make sure they're properly cleaned and towel dried. Sometimes he criticizes the pace, but if I'm slow it's because I'm deliberate. Two years ago a wet plate slipped from my hands and broke on the floor. He called me butterfingers and twisted my pinkie till it snapped. It was a clean break, he said, and would heal on its own. It did, but the knuckle is misshapen and won't bend anymore.

I clean the house exactly the same way every day. I time myself when I vacuum each rug. I clean the dishes in the same order, with glasses and utensils first and heavy pans last. I count every sweep of the sponge mop. I spray polish on the same corners of the kitchen table, in the same order, before I fold a cloth four times and buff the wood to a streakless, lemony shine. It doesn't mean he won't find some fault—the rules are fickle—but it lessens the likelihood.

Around two p.m., after he showers and pulls on his freshly laundered uniform, slings his Sam Browne belt around his shoulder and holsters his Glock 22, I brace as he kisses me good-bye on the cheek. When the door shuts behind him and his Expedition backs out of the drive, my muscles finally begin to unknot. Sometimes they twitch as they do. Sometimes I cry.

It wasn't always like this. In the beginning I was content to be a homemaker, even if I felt like a throwback. And Jim seemed pleased with my efforts, if not always my results. I learned quickly he was a traditionalist—each gender in its place. At the time I thought it was quaint, not fusty. I called him a Neanderthal once, and he laughed. I would never call him that now. Not to his face.

He had his moods, and with experience I could sense them cooking up. First came the distracted look; then he'd pull into himself. His muscles would grow rigid, like rubber bands stretched too tight, his fists clenching and unclenching like claws. I'd rub his shoulders, his neck, his back, and he'd be grateful. He'd pull through to the other side.

But over time the black moods stretched longer and longer, the respites shorter and shorter. Something was rotting him from the inside out, like an infection. The man I'd married seemed to be corroding right in front of me.

I learned not to touch him unless he initiated it. If I so much as brushed against him, even by accident, he'd hiss and pull away as if my flesh burned.

*   *   *

I met Jim West ten years ago on a grassy field one October morning just as the sun crested the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque and shot a bolt of light onto his dark mahogany hair, rimming it with silver. He was tall and powerfully built, with sweeping dark brows, a Roman nose, cheeks ruddy from the cold and the barest stubble. I thought he was beautiful. It was the first day of the annual Balloon Fiesta, and Jim was tugging hard on a half acre of multicolored nylon, laying it out flat on the frosty ground. He was volunteering on a hot-air balloon crew preparing for the Mass Ascension. All around were a hundred other crews, a hundred other bright balloons in various stages of lift, sucking in air, staggering up and up like some great amorphous herd struggling to its feet.

Jim planted himself in the throat of the balloon envelope, spread eagle, arms wide like Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, holding it open so a massive fan could blow air inside. The balloon streaming behind him was bucking as it inhaled, and Jim trembled and frowned with the cold and the effort. His dark eyes swept the crowd—many of us students from the university—and when they lit on me, they stopped. His frown lifted. He shot me the lopsided grin I hadn't yet learned to hate, and shouted something I couldn't make out over the noise of the fans and the gas burners springing to life, belching jets of fire all around us.

I shook my head. “What?”

Jim shouted something else unintelligible. I shook my head once more and pointed to my ears. I shrugged in an exaggerated
Oh, well
, and Jim nodded. Then he mouthed slowly and distinctly,
Don't . . . go . . . away
.

I turned to my friend Terri, who leaned into me with a giggle. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “He's gorgeous.”

“Oh, my God,” I groaned back.

A thrill shot from my curling toes to my blushing face, and suddenly I knew how the balloons felt—galvanized by oxygen and fire, bucking skyward despite themselves. It was a mystery to me why such a man would single me out—pretty enough, I guess, but hardly the type to stop a guy in his tracks. Of the two of us, it was Terri, the saucy, leggy blonde with the air of confidence, the guys would go for.

For a half hour or so, Jim toiled away, helping tie down the parachute vent, spotting the man at the propane burner as it spat flames inside the envelope, heating the air till ever so slowly the balloon swelled and ascended, pulling hard at the wicker basket still roped to the earth.

When the basket was unloosed and it lifted off at last, all eyes followed it as it climbed the atmosphere. Or so I thought. I glanced over at Jim and his eyes were fastened on me, strangely solemn. He strode over. “Let's go,” he said, and held out his hand.

Gorgeous or not, he was a stranger. In an instant, the voice of my mother—jaded by divorce and decades of bad choices—flooded my head. Warnings about the wickedness of men . . . how they love you and leave you bitter and broken. But daughters seldom use their own mothers as object lessons, do they? This man who took my breath away was holding out his hand to me. Without a word, I took it.

I believed in love at first sight then.

I believed in fate.

Yesterday,
Laurel asked about Tinkerbell again. Jim was there, and looked over at me curiously. I turned toward the stove to hide my face. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering. I pulled in a ragged breath and said as lightly as I could:

“Tinkerbell ran away, sweetie. You know that.”

Tinkerbell was a little mixed-breed dog that showed up at our door last Valentine's Day—rheumy eyed, scrawny, riddled with fleas. Laurel went ahead and gave her a name before I had a chance to warn her we could never keep a sick stray. Jim would sooner shoot it, put it out of its misery, but I didn't tell
her that, either. I had picked up the phone to call county animal control when I watched Laurel pull the dog onto her lap and stroke its head. “Don't worry, Tinkerbell,” she said softly. “We'll love you now.”

If the dog didn't understand the words, it understood the kindness behind them. It sank its head into the crook of Laurel's arm and didn't just sigh—it moaned.

I put the phone down.

We hid Tinkerbell in the woodshed and fed her till she looked less raggedy. Filled out, rested, bathed and brushed, she was a beautiful dog, with a caramel coat and a white ruff, a tail like a fox, her soft almond eyes lined with dark, trailing streaks like Cleopatra. When she was healthy enough, we presented her to Jim. I suggested she'd make a fine gift for Laurel's upcoming birthday, less than a month away.

Jim was in a good mood that day. He paused and studied Tinkerbell, who stood quietly, almost expectantly, as if she knew what was at stake. Laurel stood at my side, just as still, just as expectant, pressing her face hard against my hand.

The risk here, it occurred to me, was in appearing to want something too much. This gives denial irresistible power.

So I shrugged. “We can always give her away, if you want.”

Jim's lips twitched, his eyes narrowed, and my heart sank. Manipulation didn't work with him.

“You want her, Laurel?” he asked at last, breaking out that awful grin. “Well, okay, then. Happy birthday, baby.”

Laurel wriggled with pleasure and beamed up at me. She went to Jim and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.”

I was confused, but only for a moment.

Then I understood.

Jim had one more thing now—one more thing that
mattered—to snatch away from me anytime he chose, quick as a heartbeat.

Two weeks before Christmas, just before Jim was jailed to serve ten days for disorderly conduct, he did.

Laurel sits on the porch sometimes, waiting for Tinkerbell to come home again. Sometimes she calls her name over and over.

“Do you think she misses us?” she asked yesterday.

Jim ruffled her hair playfully. “I bet she'd rather be here with you, baby, than where she is right now.”

Every Valentine's Day, Jim gives me a heart-shaped box of fine chocolates that, if I ate them, would turn to ash on my tongue. When he touches me, my blood runs so cold I marvel it doesn't freeze to ice in my veins.

Snow
fell last night, dusting the junipers in the yard, the pickets on the fence, the thorny bougainvillea bushes under the front windows, the woodshed's red tin roof. Jim was working his shift, so I bundled Laurel in her parka and mud boots and we danced in the field next to the house, twirling till we were tipsy, catching snowflakes on our tongues, our hair, our cheeks. The sky was black as a peppercorn.

This morning, Jim noticed I took longer at the dishes than I should have, from staring out the kitchen window at the red sandstone mesas still layered with unbroken snow, like icing on red velvet cake.

By noon the sun came out and melted it all away.

This
evening after I put Laurel to bed, I opened the small storage space under the stairs and removed the boxes of Christmas decorations and summer clothing, the beautiful linen shade from the antique lamp that Jim had smashed against a wall, files of legal paperwork for our mortgage and vehicle loan, tax documents. Where the boxes had been stacked, I took a screwdriver and pried up a loose floor plank. In the cubby space beneath is an old tea tin where I keep my Life Before Jim.

Jim doesn't like to be reminded that I had a Life Before. Or, rather, he doesn't like me to remember a time when I had behaviors and ideas uncensored by him. A time when I wrote poetry, and even published a few poems in small regional literary magazines. When I had friends, family. A part-time job writing at the university's public information office. Ambitions. Expectations. Thoughts.

He thinks he's hacked it all away—good wood lopped off a living tree—and he has.

All but one.

My German grandmother, my Oma, who lost her father to the Nazi purge of intellectuals, used to recite a line from an old protest song:

Die Gedanken sind frei.

Thoughts are free.

No man can know them,
the song goes.
No hunter can shoot them. The darkest dungeon is futile, for my thoughts tear all gates and walls asunder
.

In my tea tin I keep my first-place certificate from a high school poetry contest, the clinic receipt from the baby I lost nine years ago, a letter my mother wrote before she passed from cancer, and a note scrawled on a slip of paper:
Run, girl, run
.

It's not much of an insurrection, I know. But it's my only evidence of a Life Before, and I cling to it.

By the time Jim moved me to Wheeler, I had already banished Terri from my life. Just after I met Jim, as he began insinuating himself into every waking hour—the classes I took, the books I read, the people I hung with—Terri's enthusiasm for him waned.

“Girl, are you sure about him?” she'd ask.

I was troubled that she doubted his intentions. Or my judgment.

“Why wouldn't I be?” I asked.

“Jo, he's calling you all day. He wants to know where you are, who you're with. He's
tracking
you.”

But I'd never had a serious boyfriend before Jim. My role models for romance were Byron, the Brownings, Yeats and a manic-depressive mother who cycled through the wrong
men all her life. What I saw in Jim was passion and commitment. He took me on picnics in the Sandias. We rode the tram to the peak, and he proposed on the observation deck. We spent our first weekend together in a bed-and-breakfast in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe, watching the sunrise from our bedroom window. I felt caught up in a whirlwind, breathless, but happy to let it have its way with me.

Still, when he urged me to drop a study group for semester finals so we could spend even more time together, I balked. It was our first argument. There wouldn't be many more. He told me he cared for me, wanted to be with me, thought I felt the same. Disappointment infused every syllable.

I felt cornered. I blurted, “Terri thinks we spend too much time together already.”

Jim's face went blank. For several seconds he didn't speak. Then, “She said that?”

I didn't answer.

“Well,” Jim said quietly, “I didn't want to tell you this, but there's more to Terri than you realize. Remember when we met? Terri called me a few days later. She said she thought we should get together sometime. I told her I was interested in you, and that was the end of it.”

He was studying me as he spoke.

“I chalked it up to a misunderstanding on her part. She's never called since. I didn't want you to think less of her.”

My heart began to thud against my rib cage. Blood pulsed in my ears. Terri, the sleek golden girl who excelled at everything she ever tried her hand at, who could have any man she wanted—did she want mine? Was she looking out for me, or just sowing seeds of doubt to clear a path for herself?

“I thought you trusted me. Trusted
us
.” Jim shook his head sadly. “I don't want to break up with you over this.”

There must be a moment when every animal caught in a leg trap runs through the minutes, the seconds, before the coil springs. Before the swing and snap of hard metal on bone. The reversible moment—the one it would take back if only it could.

Winter break was coming up, and Terri was heading home to Boston. We had been best friends since the first day of college, but suddenly she seemed like a stranger to me. By the time she returned, Jim and I were engaged and I had dropped out of school. I wouldn't take her calls anymore or return her messages. After a while, the calls stopped.

Just before the wedding, I returned home to my apartment to find a message on a slip of paper wedged in the doorjamb:

Run, girl, run.

But the reversible moment was gone.