Birdy (23 page)

I’m beginning to know what I’m doing. I’m at the edge of where you have things happen to you or you make them happen. The dream is mine and it’s as real as anything but it’s mostly a matter of what I want. Usually I don’t know what I want, so it’s hard to control the dream. Also, things that happen outside the dream come
into the dream on their own. I can’t make anything happen in the dream without something like it happening in the daytime world. I still don’t understand but I’m not frightened.

After that, I get so I can talk to the other birds in the breeding cages. I’ve never talked to them from the big aviary flight cage before, or looked at them from there, so I have to wish it on purpose for it to happen. I know the birds, I know where they are and I’ve talked to them before. I put these things together to make it happen.

I talk to Alfonso first and then to Birdie. It’s good talking to her. I know her so well but we’ve never been able to speak to each other. She’s very excited about her new babies and she’s glad I’m in the dream. She doesn’t call it ‘in the dream’, she says ‘with us’. I talk to almost all the other birds. By looking through the binoculars I know what each cage looks like from the inside and which bird is in which cage. I know who I’m talking to without seeing them. I don’t feel so alone.

Another way I’m not like a bird is I look at things with both eyes, straight on. I can’t get myself to see the way a bird does. In every way, when I don’t look down at myself, I feel like me, Birdy, the boy.

In the morning, before I leave for school, I go out to put in new egg food and generally check around. I look at the note on the floor and it’s still there, but just one message. The egg food is untouched. All day long in school, I think about it. I dream the things I know. That’s why I’m Birdie; I know Birdie best. I wonder if I’m a female. Birdie’s a female but I was in the male cage. I’d like to find out which I am. I don’t want to make myself one or the other, I only want to know.

I’ll try singing in my dream tonight; that should settle it for me. In Plane Geometry that afternoon, I get into an argument with Mr Shull, the teacher, about parallel lines. I say they have to meet. I’m beginning to think everything comes together somewhere.

In the dream, I sing. I can never remember singing as a boy, but singing as a bird is completely different from anything I’ve ever known. It isn’t what I expected at all. I sound like a roller canary singing, but the words I’m hearing are in English and sound almost like poetry. I’m hearing myself simultaneously as bird and as boy speaking words. I’m singing the thoughts I’ve had about flying combined with the feeling I’m having as a bird.

One of the first songs I sing sounds like this: There is nothing of fright when one flies free. There’s only the taste of air and touching nowhere. I see the earth below and it’s down the way the sky is up when you look from the ground. Everything is out or away and the play of gravity is like sand.

Now, I know I’m not Birdie completely. I can hear Birdie from the breeding cage. She wants me to sing more but the singing is still hard for me. Alfonso starts singing to Birdie. I can understand his whole song for the first time. He sings this: Come fly with me; dry thistles sliding through a crystal sky, you and I. Below, mountains hump and clouds hover while cows slumber seven stomachs deep in clover. We glide together in twisting currents of air, caring for nothing. We are each other and we take wing to find fertile fields and silent beaches.

I listen and know Alfonso couldn’t sing that song. A bird can know nothing about cows’ stomachs. I’ve just learned about them in biology class. Alfonso has never flown over mountains or clouds; these are my ideas. Alfonso is singing and I’m hearing his song with my mind, in my dream. Can Alfonso really talk, or is it all just me? I can’t believe that. Alfonso’s taught me things about flying I could not know myself. I can’t put this together in my dream. During this night, I know I’m dreaming all during the dream.

There’s one thing I’m sure of. Singing is like flying. When I sing, I close my eyes and see myself flying through and over trees. I’m sure that’s why canaries sing. They were put in cages because they sang and now they sing because they’re in cages.

Canaries have been in cages for over four hundred years. A canary generation, the time from birth till breeding, is less than a year. A human generation is about twenty years. Therefore, birds have been in cages for a time that for humans would be eight thousand years. In fact, canaries and humans have been in cages the same number of generations.

I begin to wonder what men do that’s the same as canary singing. It’s probably thinking. We built this cage, civilization, because we could think and now we have to think because we’re caught in our cage. I’m sure there’s a real world still there if I can only get out of the cage. But, would my canaries sing as much if they could live in the open and fly freely? I don’t know. I hope some day to find out.

The breeding cages are going at a great rate. I already have birds out of the nest. Soon, I’m going to have some ready to put in the flight cages. I don’t know whether to put them in the cage where I am in my dream or in the other one. I’m still trying to decide this when I start dreaming of Perta.

When I say dreaming, I don’t mean I’m dreaming of Perta the way I’m dreaming the rest of the dream. I’m dreaming of Perta in my dream. I’m sleeping in my dream on one foot as a bird and I’m dreaming of Perta.

Perta is smaller than most female canaries. She has a light green head blushing back to a lighter yellow-green on her breast, then darker green on her back. Her wings vary from layer to layer of her feathers. This gives a variegated surface like a blue check pigeon, only in shades of green. She has white bars on the outside of her wings because her last two flight feathers on each wing are white. Her shape is roundish and she flies with small movements, fast flapping but great grace and speed. She has markings over her eyes almost like eyebrows. Her beak and legs aren’t as dark as Alfonso, nor as light pink as Birdie.

In my dream, I’m sleeping on the top perch of the aviary and dreaming. I’m lonely and tired; I’m sleepy and sleeping in my own dream. I know this much. It’s several nights before I realize I’m dream-dreaming Perta.

In the dream-dream, I’m alone in the flight cage and look down to see someone at the food dish. I know immediately it’s a female. She either doesn’t know I’m up on the top perch or she’s ignoring me. I stay still, watching her, enjoying her movements. I watch her closely the way I watch the birds with my binoculars as a boy.

Her flying is not exceptional in terms of power or thrust but she’s very light in the air. I feel she loves flying and flies for pleasure. I watch her practice different landings and banking maneuvers. She integrates the movement of her tail, the tilting of her wings and the shifting of her body as if she’s dancing in the air. I’m falling in love with her in the dream the way I fell in love with Birdie, but it’s so much more real.

In my dream, I sing to her the songs I know and some I didn’t know I knew. When I wake in my bed, I can’t remember the songs I’ve sung. It’s too far inside. As a boy, I decide to put some water in the flight cage so Perta can bathe. I want it to be something special. When my mother isn’t in the kitchen, I take the cut glass butter dish she got when her mother died. We never use it except for company so I’m sure she won’t notice if it’s missing one night. I put the dish in the bottom of the cage that afternoon after I’ve fed all the birds.

I move two nests of young birds into the other flight cage; they’re eating egg food and starting to crack seed. I’m saving the male flight cage for Perta and myself. I call her Perta because that’s the closest word I can think of for the sound I know her by.

So, now I’m getting into the dream, and in the dream I’m forcing myself to sleep again so I can dream.

Perta comes in the dream-dream. The water is on the floor, in the late afternoon sunlight, just as it was when I left it that afternoon. The light is going through the cut glass and making rainbows on the floor and on the back wall. I wait patiently, on my perch in the upper, darker part of the aviary. I know I’m making it
happen, I’m controlling the dream in the dream but I also know I have feelings and knowings beyond myself, that I can’t know what will happen. I’m into the furthest back parts of my mind.

Perta hops onto the side of the dish and puts her beak into the clear, cold water. She lets it roll back down her throat, tipping her head back and thrusting her breast forward, stretching upward on her thin legs. She does this again. I watch. Then, she pushes her face into the water and splashes back under her wings. She flaps her wings to capture the cold water under the warmest parts of her wings, inside where the down of softest feathers is. She does this two or three times before she lightly springs into the water, arches her back, tilts her head and starts throwing the clean water onto the feathers between her wings on her back.

I can see all this with unnatural clarity. It’s as if I’m beside her. I see each drop remain intact and roll off the soft feathers. I can slow down the rapid movements of her bath and see them happen slowly, unfolding with infinite grace.

Then, I start to sing. I’m singing, and I’ve made no conscious decision to do this. Perta has flown onto a perch and is preening herself. She doesn’t seem to hear me. I’m excited. I feel hot blood rushing through me. All my muscles are contracted and my wings are lifted in tension. I’ve pulled myself tall on my legs and I’m rocking back and forth with my song; dancing to my own rhythm, aiming all of me toward Perta. I feel a sense of haste, of need, of desire for completion. Perta continues her preening.

I fly down next to her. I land beside her on the perch and increase the strength and desire of my song. Perta pays no attention. She doesn’t turn her head or move. I edge toward her. She doesn’t move away. I’m prepared to have her fly from me; I want to chase her, to sing to her in flight. I come closer. She reaches back with her beak and pulls out, straightens the feathers on her back. There’s only one thing to do; I feel it inside myself. I fly over Perta and lower myself onto her. I’m turgid with passion.

There’s nothing! I come down on the place where Perta was and there’s nothing at all. I’m alone! I find myself falling, not from the perch but from the dreams. I fall out of my dream-dream into my
dream; know myself for a second, alone, asleep on the top perch, then I fall again out of the dream and into my bed in my room.

I wake up. It’s the first time I’ve had a wet dream. I’ve kept hearing about wet dreams but never had one. I go into the bathroom and wash myself off. I bring back the washcloth and wipe up the sheets.

I lie back and feel as if I’ve fallen from a far place. I’m terribly alone again.

That weekend I go looking for her. I know she has to be somewhere. I must’ve seen her and not known it. I couldn’t make her up completely. Instinctively, I go to Mr Lincoln’s first. His cages are in full breeding. He shows me his new young birds. He has two very dark ones. He tells me he thinks he’ll have his pure black canary in only about ten more years if he keeps going at the rate he’s going. He’s worked out a chart on a curving graph. He says the getting darker tapers off as you get closer. The difference looks less and you’re always having regressions. He calculates he’s ninety percent of the way; it’s going to take ten more years to get to 99.96 percent black. He points to himself and says, ‘I ain’t even ninety percent black myself, not by a long shot.’

I ask him if he has any females he’s not using. I want to see if she’s there. She isn’t in any of the breeding cages. I knew she wouldn’t be. He points to the cover over his flight cage on the left. He says he keeps it covered because these free females will flirt with the males in the breeding cages and those males’ll sing back, and sometimes a female on a nest will get so mad, she’ll abandon the nest. I’d never thought about that. He tells me he’s going to sell off these females; most of them are sterile, or lay an egg or two per nest, and none of them are important on his breeding charts.

I look into the cage and there are about ten females. I see her right away. It’s Perta exactly. Some part of me, the bird part, remembered her. I’m in love with her as a boy. I fell in love with her in my dream as a bird but it’s come through to my life as a boy. I have to have her; I turn to Mr Lincoln and point her out. It seems so strange to see her as a bird when I’m a boy; I feel as if I’m spying
on her. It’s as if I’m looking through a keyhole and seeing something I’m not supposed to see.

‘You mean that one there?’

He’s pointing. I nod.

‘She’s not going to do you much good. I’ve had her for two years now and she hasn’t had a fertile egg yet. I’ve tried three different males on her. The last one was the most ruttinest buck of a bird you can imagine. She just has a regular four clear eggs every time. I’m sure she’s been bred, but there’s something wrong with her.’

Mr Lincoln watches her with me. She’s moving sideways, back and forth on the perch. She’s seeing me. I know it.

‘I don’t know anybody I hate enough to sell her off to. I should wring her neck but she’s such a pretty little thing I can’t get myself to do it. Still, there’s no good in a female who won’t give off a fertile egg. I’m sure she’d make a great little mother, too. You should see the fine nest she builds; and she sits it tight and brave as you could like, all for nothing.’