Birds - by Anne Casey-Hardy
ISLAND | ISSUE 160
Image: Plover Chicks, Lydie Paton
We stop going to school. Only a week until summer holidays, nothing much happening and anyway, I always do what Birdie says.
She wants to spend more time in the dunes. The plovers are nesting and it’s our job to protect them. We can’t get close, we don’t want to scare them, but we share Dad’s old binoculars and watch them sitting, same bird for days before they swap and the other goes off to find food.
Birdie says they mate for life. Not like our mother.
Dumb birds, building nests on the ground. When the holidays start, the beach will swarm with people and their dogs, scrabbling all over the dunes and wrecking the nesting sites.
Last year a dog came haunching up on a nest. He knew the swooping plovers were only bluffing and he moved in like a skanky fox, crunching up the newly hatched and pissing on the nest for fun. By the time we got there, nothing but scattered twigs and a single tiny feather.
Why can’t the plovers be fierce like eagles with cruel talons and sharp beaks to peck out the eyes of predators? But they aren’t fierce, they have built their nests in the dunes since the time before people and they can only do what they’ve always done.
Birdie says the creatures who can’t change are the ones who die out. If we can’t evolve, we die out.
When we were making our names, I wanted to be Falcon, but Birdie said it wasn’t right. We looked in the old bird book and I picked Peregrine, but it was too long. I’m Perrie now.
*
I love the slow time with nothing happening, just Birdie and me in the dunes and the plovers with their fragile nests. I love the light that brightens, crystal clear up close while a squall line blurs on the far-away side. We play a waiting game, watching shadows roll as the rain comes in or blows away, until we run home wet or dry.
“I love the light that brightens, crystal clear up close while a squall line blurs on the far-away side. We play a waiting game, watching shadows roll as the rain comes in or blows away, until we run home wet or dry.”
We are keeping an eye on two of the nests. The others must save themselves with swooping, bluffing and faking tricks. One nest has three eggs and the other has two. The plovers sit in the open like fools but one of them is always on the job.
This is the dangerous time. All the creeping sliding things come for the newly hatched and no amount of screeching can stop them. Last week, a fox came to our house to kill the rooster and steal a chicken. He is prowling, prowling, hiding in the night and waiting for his chance.
We make a pile of ragged stones and practise ways of throwing. Birdie has a slingshot and her strike rate is deadly.
*
We have a list of jobs. Mum can’t be expected to do all the work with no help from lazy girls. On and on she goes and then I hear her vomiting in the bathroom.
‘She’s sick of herself,’ hoots Birdie.
Cleaning is prep for the boyfriend. No surprises there. He comes every Sunday to lord over a dinner made especially for him. We are told to wash our hair and be polite. We pay him back with muteness at the table until we can go to our room. We close the door and leave them to it.
When Fish is coming, Birdie gets stressy and orders me to dust the collections. Sometimes the eggs go in little boxes lined with straw, organised by bird. Other times they make a pattern or a story on a tray. The top shells go in a tight spiral like the Nautilus drawings, and the doughboy scallops have different rules every week.
I don’t mind. I like the arrangements, but it makes Birdie angry if I do it wrong.
‘When I grow up,’ I say, ‘I might have my own museum. But I don’t know if anyone else will be allowed to see it.’
Birdie makes thin lips. ‘Except you,’ I add.
‘I might be an artist and draw the collections,’ she says. ‘But first we have to strike back.’
*
We were born in this house built of bluestone and so was Mum. Grandad was born here and his father before him all the way back to the early days. Our mother came first and then the boy, the beloved son. He fell from the cliffs, that was the story. The kelp wrapped round and held him down and he washed up later, nibbled and chewed, without eyes.
“Our mother came first and then the boy, the beloved son. He fell from the cliffs, that was the story. The kelp wrapped round and held him down and he washed up later, nibbled and chewed, without eyes.”
Birdie was born while Grandad and Ma were alive. They told her about the boy who drowned and the shipwrecks, many of them, broken on the jagged reef. Sometimes fog, sometimes lost, sometimes the hand of God.
In the dreamy night, we hear them slowly creak and break, pressed between wave and cliff.
*
Birdie peels potatoes while I sit on the doorstep, bag of peas on my lap and bowl between my knees for the shelled ones.
I like this spot with our chickens pecking around, making a dust bowl out of the yard. I throw the shells one at a time and the chickens can’t guess where the next one will land. They strut and squawk, beating each other down when a pea-shell flies. They flap and peck with sharp beaks.
Mum and Birdie are fighting in the kitchen.
‘You’re not wearing that!’ Mum’s voice. ‘Go and put on something else, right now.’
I can’t hear Birdie’s reply, only the soft rumble of her voice, the special voice she uses for Mum.
‘You have clothes that fit you,’ Mum says. ‘I’m so tired of you girls.’
Birdie starts to grumble.
‘It’s simple – if you want to wear shorts, you need a long shirt. If you want the t-shirt, you need a long skirt or pants.’
Birdie is wearing the Tweety-Bird t-shirt. Mum tried to throw it out, but we brought it back in. It’s a raggedy childish t-shirt, true, but that’s why we like it. Mum shouldn’t throw out our stuff. It isn’t right.
I split the shells by cracking them half-way down. I open the pod and scrape down slowly so peas spill into the bowl with a rattling sound. I stir the cool fresh peas with my finger. I drift in the slow time – choosing a pod, the split, then spill, throw the shell to the chickens to make a ruckus, stir the peas to bring the calm.
Mum comes out. ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ She pats my hair, feeling for knots. ‘My little daydreamer,’ she says.
Birdie has to pluck the chicken that Mum chased around and killed with an axe. Birdie rips out feathers by the handful, spoiling the skin so the roast will look scabby.
Mum says, ‘Don’t do it like that!’
Birdie says, ‘You do it then. If you don’t like the way I do it.’
Every week, same old same old.
I throw another shell.
*
Fish brings his mate Sully. Their shadows give me a fright and the peas in the bowl half-spill.
‘Aww, never mind,’ says Fish. ‘Give ’em a wash, they’ll be good as new.’ He ruffles my head and crosses behind me to the kitchen, beer bottles under his arm. Sully follows.
I leave the spilled peas for the chickens. I put the bowl on the sink and find Birdie in our room. I say, ‘Now he comes in the back way. Sully too.’
‘Now he comes in any way he likes,’ Birdie says. ‘Making himself right at home.’
There isn’t room for another person. This is our house, it makes me angry. I don’t want to share Mum. I don’t want Fish’s big shadow over me all the time.
“There isn’t room for another person. This is our house, it makes me angry. I don’t want to share Mum. I don’t want Fish’s big shadow over me all the time.”
‘Grow up,’ says Birdie.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everything is going to change, and nothing will be the same.’
I climb over Birdie into the space between her and the wall. I make myself smaller and smaller until I am a weebill and when I open my mouth, the only sound is a tinny little pip.
*
Mum calls, ‘Wash your hands, please girls. Dinner’s nearly ready.’
We come to the smooth old table and sit in our places, Mum at one end and Fish at the other, this time Sully beside me.
Birdie signals, No talking.
Mum rabbits on about the weather, her sewing project, dead rooster and stolen chicken. Fish shovels food, as usual, nodding away. His face is red, and he looks too hot. He’s wearing a big winter jumper like the waterproof ones from the boat. On his head, a knitted beanie, same as Grandad in the photo. He’s dressed up as something and I don’t trust him.
Birdie makes secret eyes at Sully and he smiles.
I signal, What?
She signals, Eat nothing.
I stir my vegetables, mash everything with the back of my fork and make lots of cutlery noise. Mum looks at me with a question mark, and I give her a big smile. Her eyes soften and I love her again.
Birdie messes up her chicken, shredding and shredding. She stabs a piece of pumpkin and waves it in the air.
‘Not hungry?’ says Fish. ‘For this nice food, made with love?’
Mum puts her fork down. She wants to know.
Birdie throws down the pumpkin and spears a pea. She waves the pea at Mum and Mum looks almost frightened.
‘You girls,’ says Fish, shaking his head.
Birdie, ‘Don’t call us girls.’
‘What are you then?’
‘I’m a bird of prey,’ I say. ‘I’m a peregrine falcon with sharp eyes and terrible claws.’
‘Not you too,’ says Mum.
I feel bad then.
Mum tells us to go to our room, but we don’t. We leave through the back door and duck down under the kitchen window to listen to Mum and Fish whispering.
Fish is saying, ‘Don’t cry, love, don’t cry. It will be alright.’
Mum’s voice, ‘I don’t want another baby. I can’t look after one. I can’t do it.’
Baby?
I look at Birdie, Did you know? She bares her teeth. We are quiet as mice, ears pricked for the voices.
Fish again, too loud, too much voice, ‘But I’ll be here to help you. It’s my baby too, you know.’
Weebill, I mouth to Birdie. We can look after a weebill – Birdie, me and Mum with a tiny weebill.
But not Fish, he doesn’t belong.
‘The girls,’ Mum says, ‘the girls.’
Fish’s voice, ‘They’ll be grown soon. That older one, she’ll be off and away before you know it.’
Mum says, ‘I don’t want another baby, I want my girls.’
Birdie and I hold hands. We hold each other, under the kitchen window, down in the dust of the yard. We want our mum.
I make the sign to go, to run away. Birdie shakes her head, puts her hand behind her ear – Listen!
Fish, ‘We’ll make a new family. I’ll work hard, I promise. You can rely on me.’
Mum voice, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
We leave then, down to the beach but it’s too dark to reach our nest in the dunes. Birdie rolls in the sand, getting sandy hair and sand all over. I wade in all the way, my dress a floating bell before it sinks. I find the salty cool and dip my head under. We roll and float until we are soft.
Night-time now, the moon is up.
Let’s go.
Nothing to say. The sky is black as ink and the moon behind us a silvery coin. The stars, the stars.
Through the door, Mum still at the table, head on her folded arms. She looks up with red eyes and sadness flows back and forth between us. ‘You are home,’ she says, and then she smiles because it’s silly to say what we all know.
Birdie and I come either side of her and we all put arms around. We sway together and that’s when I think It will be alright, Fish’s words but true all the same.
‘You girls need a bath.’
‘We’re not girls,’ says Birdie.
‘Whatever you are, in the bath.’
Birdie, ‘You in the bath, Mum, a big hot bath up to your neck with lots of bubbles.’
‘We’ll go after you,’ I say.
‘My darling girls.’
We’re not girls.
*
After our bath, everything is peaceful.
Birdie opens the window to let in the moon and we fall asleep with the sound of the tide in our ears.
I think I’m dreaming when I see Birdie climb out the window. That’s why I say nothing. That’s why I sleep on, safe in my bed, in our little house where we live together, in our world.
*
Birdie stays out the whole night and I am worried about her. At breakfast, when Mum asks where she is, I cover for her – ‘She got up early to check on the plovers.’
Mum says, ‘Better not be late for school. I don’t want another letter from that old witch.’
Dressed for school, I wait for Birdie. My stomach hurts. I’m worried. I feel sick.
But Birdie returns, her own scruffy self, her beautiful mess. Mum stands with hands on her hips and Birdie says, as I knew she would, ‘I’ve been to check on the plovers, of course.’
Mum wants to brush her hair, ‘I’ll do a French braid for you.’ She is worried about Birdie too.
Something is different, something has changed.
I give Birdie her lunch bag and we leave together. We see the other kids at the bus stop. They call us retards and we call them spastics. As soon as the bus is gone, we go the back way around to the beach. We walk in the shallows, swinging our shoes.
Birdie sings in her lovely voice, the song she remembers from Ma called Will ye go Lassie go.
I say, ‘Will we really go to the wild mountain time?’
Birdie laughs, ‘It’s thyme, it’s a herb.’
‘Are you happy?’ I ask. I want these happy days to last forever, for me and Birdie to always be young and free.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says.
‘Where were you? I was worried.’
She doesn’t answer but when we reach our nest, she tells me everything. ‘I paid a visit to Sully,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t believe it – he told me sometimes young girls need to have sex to let off steam, and I said, They do, sometimes they do. He’s in so much trouble now. He has no idea. No. Idea.’
*
Soon Birdie and I will live in the cliffs with our weebill. Ships will be safe because we’ll fly them in, albatross style. We will dive in the deep and soar in the sky.
We have filled the sea with tears for the plovers, their brown speckled eggs and boneless chicks. Snakes and foxes, people and dogs, lizards as large as beasts. All around can kick you aside, push you out and gobble you up, if you don’t evolve.
For these last days and this last season, we watch over the plovers and wish them blessings. We have learned to evolve.
Soon, we will strike. ▼
This story appeared in Island 160 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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