The Bird Market of Paris (14 page)

It didn't occur to me that I was disrupting Poppy's life.

“
Chérie
, you are still naive and young. You come home all hours of the night and I think you are drinking.”

“I am not,” I countered, feigning offense. “I'm almost twenty-three. I have nothing else to do here.”

“I understand. I was once your age. I like to have fun. But sometimes I see you leave your car somewhere else and you concern me.”

I decided to take Poppy to Baja Beach Club to show him that it wasn't a dangerous place. On Wednesdays they had a happy hour buffet. The spread was a Fourth of July party meets Cinco de Mayo: hamburgers and tacos. The crowd was sparse, the lights bright, and the music not as loud as it would be later. We walked up the tall staircase to the double doors and I winked at the doorman as he handed us four free drink tickets. I walked Poppy to my favorite bar and we ordered soda. We filled our small plates and sat in a booth on the far side of the club, where black lights shone on fluorescent murals and made our teeth glow purple.

“This place is nice,” Poppy said, eating a taquito. “We should do this every Wednesday.” So we did.

I still attended all the local bird club and society meetings, and I started writing and mailing the newsletter for one of them under the pseudonym “Lolita Lovebird.” I became an expert in lovebird genetics and color mutations, and received at least a dozen phone calls every day from people asking questions about breeding birds, bird behavior, and bird problems. I called one of my mentors when I didn't know something, usually Dr. Z.
Bird Talk
magazine—the gospel in birds and my
New Yorker
with feathers—hired me to write for them after I had submitted dozens of unsolicited articles.

People gave me more unwanted birds, including a large blue-crowned Amazon named Lolita who had become homeless when her human owner died, and who trilled her own name in a singsong voice, over and over, endearing herself to everyone in the house.

“She is so cute,” Poppy said, handing Lolita an almond. “But I think she is saying
lorita
, not Lolita.”

“Why do you think that?”

“
Lorita
is ‘little parrot' in Spanish,” Poppy said, studying her. “Maybe we should teach her to say ‘fat bird' instead.”

Someone brought me a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot after his dog had torn off one of the bird's wings. I took the parrot to Dr. Z to see if “Captain Hook” could be saved. She said someone had rubbed a salt poultice into the bird's wound, so she cleaned it, added a thousand dollars to my already lofty vet bill, and then wiped my bill clean because she was touched that I'd been taking in unwanted parrots.

“Why don't you find a man and have some kids?” she said, handing me Captain Hook's carrier. Dr. Z had just returned from maternity leave after the birth of her first child, and showed me photos of her adorable newborn. “Kids will cure you of this bird mania.”

“I have
feathered
kids.
Fids
,” I said, looking into Captain Hook's carrier, the frightened one-winged bird huddled in the back.

“You look terrible,” she said, scrutinizing me up and down. “How are you going to find a husband in this condition? Preferably one who doesn't like birds.”

I might have had bird poop on my shirt and a little in my hair, but “terrible” seemed an excessive estimation. “This from the avian vet who owns only one bird,” I said.

“I can't stand birds anymore. Birds are driving me crazy. And
you're
driving me crazy. Get out of here. Stop taking in all of these birds.” She waggled a finger at me and I hugged her.

*   *   *

My parents had left the car dealerships and were back in the garment business by my early twenties, making screen-printed T-shirts with tropical birds and fish on them for hotels and cruise ships. They let me sell the shirts at bird fairs and expos to support my bird habit, which had grown to well over a hundred birds.

I'd done well at a pet expo in Coconut Grove one weekend and was packing my unsold T-shirts when I overheard the people in the booth next to mine complaining that they hadn't earned a dollar. I'd been eyeing a Meyer's parrot that rode around on the lady's shoulder for the entire three days, and when I heard them talk about needing to cover the booth, I asked about him. The lady said he was four years old and his name was Jesse. He was a deep shade of brown, almost dark gray, with a bright yellow head and a turquoise chest. I had other Meyer's parrots, but they were breeders, not tame, and they were also terrible parents who always ate their eggs or killed their babies. I took Jesse onto my finger and he lowered his head for a scratch.

“How much?” I asked her.

She paused. “You can have him for two hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“You're going to sell Jesse?” the breeder's husband asked her. “Seriously?”

“We haven't sold anything else,” she said.

I had sold enough T-shirts at the expo to not haggle about the price. Jesse perched on my shoulder the whole drive home. I didn't know it then, but I had just bought myself a future lifeline.

Careening on avian autopilot with no brakes, I also brought three huge macaws into the house: a blue and gold macaw named Comet, whom I bought as a baby from a breeder friend; a green-winged macaw named Sonnet who was seized in a legal situation, auctioned, and given to me; and a vicious scarlet macaw named Satan-Bird-From-Hell who had become useless to his breeder after he killed three females. These birds were beautiful, like avian supermodels, but louder than all the others combined.

If the house had been noisy before, these guys cranked the volume to
deafening
. My parents and Poppy liked the macaws—the birds were flashy, intelligent, and status symbols—and my mom had a particular relationship with Comet, so for a few months no one said anything about their noise. Everyone loved Jesse, not only because he was sweet and marched around like a confident little Napoléon, but also because he was
quiet
. My mom didn't even care that Jesse hung out in the kitchen and chewed up her cookbooks.

Bird noise is cumulative—it might be manageable for months, even years, but one day the chirping, squawking, talking, and twitting breaks someone's sound barrier, erasing whatever noise tolerance they'd built.
I
didn't hear the birds anymore. A macaw could scream in my ear and it wouldn't register; but my dad didn't share this quality, and we started fighting about the conures, Amazons, and macaws. He even blamed me for the feral colonies of parrots that visited us. I was forced to thin the noisier birds from my flock. Each bird I rehomed tore at the thin scabs that had formed over the dozens of bird-shaped wounds I'd suffered in the hurricane, and alcohol was the only thing that alleviated the sting.

On the Fourth of July, I walked to Baja Beach Club to meet two guys and a girl I had been hanging around with there. I found them at one of the back bars, already drinking. I rolled up to the bar, greeted them, and ordered a margarita on the rocks. I shot that and ordered another.

We walked toward the side bar, where it was a little quieter. I took the lead, and on the way stumbled into a girl, spilling part of her drink. Cold liquid and ice splashed onto my sandals. I looked into her face, waiting for a reaction.

“You spilled my drink, bitch,” she yelled over the music. Her red mouth formed the word “bitch” in slow motion, her hoop earrings swaying against her cheek as she swiveled her neck in my direction.

I could have said, “Excuse me” or “I'm sorry.” But I stared into her eyes, stunned, waiting for her to speak again. Instead, she pushed me. Without thinking, I shoved her drink into her face. She dropped her glass, shattering it on the floor.

In seconds, she and three other girls jumped on top of me, punching and kicking. I gripped one girl's long, red hair, pulling her toward my face while her friend pounded on my back. The redhead laughed.

“I didn't do anything to you!” she yelled, smiling like a carnival barker. I released her hair. They were punching me, and I was throwing punches, too, though my punches were not connecting. Two bouncers squeezed through the crowd and pulled us apart. I had two seconds to breathe before they pushed us back together for round two. I thought bouncers were supposed to stop fights and kick out the perpetrators, but these bouncers wanted more of the show. Punching, slapping, kicking. I couldn't get my bearings: faces, lights, the floor, the ceiling, each a flash, like wayward images in an ill-edited movie. The bouncers pulled us apart again, and the girls disappeared into the crowd. No one asked me if I was OK, nor did they ask me to leave.

I looked for my “friends.” They stood with their backs to the wall, drinks in hand—watching, frowning. I stumbled over to them, wiping my face.

“Why didn't you do anything?” I yelled over the music. I was livid. And drunk. And my shirt was torn.

“You can't do that stuff when you're with us,” one of the guys said. “I'm on probation, I can't get into that.”

“I've got a weapons charge pending,” said the other guy. “You need to be more careful.”

The girl sipped her drink from a red straw. They walked me to the bathroom. My nose gushed; my right eye was red, the skin puffing taut like a grape. I found a cop sitting on a stool at the back door to the club.

“Some girls beat me up,” I told him, pointing in the direction of the fight.

“You can leave through this door right here,” he said, pointing to the metal door leading to the fire escape stairwell. No expression, no concern.

“Can you do something about it?” I screamed over the music.

“You're free to leave,” he said.

I found my supposed friends again and asked Mr. Weapons Charge to take me home. I was too scared and shaken to walk home alone.

Poppy stepped out of his room wearing a long red nightgown as we rambled into the house. My parents were away on business, the one blessing of the night. I sat at the dining room table and cried as Poppy and Mr. Weapons Charge tried to console me. Poppy filled a plastic bag with ice and I held it against my eye as I sagged at the table.

“I should go,” said Mr. Weapons Charge. “You want to walk me out?”

Mr. Weapons Charge leaned out of his car window and grasped my forearm. “You shouldn't invite people like me into your house,” he said. “Don't do that again.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just don't.” He released my arm. “You don't know what someone can do.” He drove off into the night toward Baja Beach Club. I never saw him again.

I woke up with a black eye, my nose swollen shut, and bruises on my ribs and back. I looked at my reflection in the mirror, expecting to be horrified, but I smiled. I gave that girl a few good smacks, didn't I? Then I thought about Mr. Weapons Charge. Poppy was right. I was more naive than I'd thought.

 

Chapter 12

On my twenty-fourth birthday, Poppy called me into the yard and handed me my birthday dove. Of course, I knew by now that this “dove” was really a white pigeon, but we pretended it was the international symbol of peace anyway. I cherished our birthday ritual, but this year I didn't want to release the “dove.”

“I'll keep her,” I told Poppy. I wanted to protect the bird—make sure she had a safe and happy life. I didn't want her to become a star in the sky, floating in the emptiness with nowhere to perch.

“Let her fly,
Chérie
,” Poppy said. “She wants to be free.”

I felt sad holding the bird in my hands. I had anticipated her, and prepared a large flight cage for her new life with me—food and water already filling the dishes.

“You have so many birds.” Poppy put his arm around me and gestured above us. “Look at the sky, how big and beautiful. Let her go.”

I knew once I opened my hands, I couldn't take the gesture back. I had so many bird-shaped scars on my heart, and I didn't want another. I thought I might die if something as gentle as the breath from free-flying bird wings touched me.

“Where does my birthday dove go?” I asked Poppy, as I did every year, but this time I said it as an accusation, not a question. I wanted him to tell me the truth for once, that the dove wasn't magic, that she was a fragile soul whose life could be extinguished with far less trouble than it took to create her.

“To the stars, of course,” he said. “You can see her every night if you want.”

“I don't know if that's true anymore.” I rubbed the warm bird onto my cheek and Poppy gently pushed my hands down.

“You are too old now to believe your Poppy?” He gazed over the water, his face sad, eyes cloudy.

I breathed deeply, closed my eyes, and launched the dove into the air with both hands. Her wings whistled as she left us, arcing to the right in a big curve and disappearing over the rooftops. I felt relieved, which surprised me. Something inside me healed a little.

“Happy birthday,
Chérie
,” Poppy said, clapping his hands. “May you have many, many more.”

*   *   *

When our lease ran out on the rental house in Fort Lauderdale, my parents, Poppy, and I moved to North Miami into another rental, away from Baja Beach Club, but closer to Florida International University's north campus, where I continued taking creative writing classes after graduating with a bachelor's in English and a minor in philosophy. Our new rental house sat on a wide waterway, similar to the waterway behind our hurricane house. Gone was the safety of a grassy backyard. I'd gaze over the waterway and imagine water breaching the seawall, forcing its way into the house with intent to drown us.

On the positive side, the house had a large, sunny patio, perfect for the birds, and a living room with an alcove, where I placed the cages for the larger birds. I had grown up in Miami, and was happy to be back.