The Bird Market of Paris (28 page)

I turned the bird over in my hands. He was calm and warm, breathing hard, but not struggling. I could have launched him right there, but he was injured. And I needed to process the weight of this sign, this billboard, this cosmic, divine, feathered Jumbotron.

I told the cart lady I didn't know what to do with the bird. Once, in New York City, I had paid $45 to have a pet taxi take a baby pigeon that had fallen from its nest to a bird sanctuary on Long Island. Another time, I took an injured city pigeon I found in Times Square to the veterinarian for $85 worth of X-rays and paid $60 to have it humanely euthanized because it would not have healed.

Here, I was clueless.

“Come,” the lady said. “I know a place.”

She waved me in her direction as she pushed her cart toward a side street. I followed her around a corner onto a shady, narrow lane. The temperature dropped ten degrees. We wound through the back alleys of Pigalle, her pushing the cart, me holding the pigeon to my chest with both hands. I had no idea where we were going, or if I should be following her in the first place.

The pigeon felt soft in my hands and I wanted to rub him on my face, but resisted. He looked around and blinked. One of his feet was normal, but the other was clenched into a knot, a piece of twine wrapped around it, digging into the flesh. I surmised that his chick-hood nest had been composed of trash and string, and this piece of twine had wound around his foot when he was a squab, and stayed there as his foot grew, causing it to grow abnormally. He didn't seem in pain, though there was dried blood on his foot and feathers.

The cart lady stopped in front of an open window in the middle of a block and rapped on the frame.

“Juliette!” she called in a loud whisper. She pronounced the name like “Juli-ET-ah.” “Juliette!” she called again.

We waited a moment in silence, the pigeon resting in my hands, calmly regarding our surroundings. The cart lady turned to me and cupped her hand to one side of her mouth, as if to tell me a secret.

“This is a place of prostitution,” she said in a loud whisper, tapping on the window's frame again.

Oh. My. God
.

No person in the world besides this lady with her cart knew where I was at that moment. “Juliette!” the grocery cart lady called again.

A woman came to the window—Juliette, I presumed—and the two women exchanged words in French. Juliette opened the door and gestured for us to come inside.

I stepped into the dark, narrow hallway, the grocery cart lady behind me, blocking my way out. I clutched the pigeon tightly as I walked deeper into the brothel, which looked like a regular apartment. The walls were painted a light icy blue. A beige couch sat behind a glass coffee table, and flowers bloomed in a porcelain vase in the corner below a series of three small paintings of birds.

Juliette was in her late forties and had a soft, round face and chestnut hair pulled into a loose bun. She wore a long skirt, sandals, and a flowered peasant top. She walked with determination. I guessed she was the madam, not one of the working girls, but what did I know?

Juliette tried to wrench the bird away from me, but I wouldn't release him. The women exchanged more words in French, which I didn't understand. I had to leave there, bird and all. I felt dizzy. My hands tightened around the pigeon.

Juliette managed to force the bird from my hands and walked him further into the brothel. I followed on her heels. I should have focused on finding my way out rather than on keeping the bird, but I wanted him. I needed him.

I followed her into a tiny clean bathroom. She plugged the sink, ran the water, and dunked the pigeon into the sink a few times, feet first. She dried him with a washcloth and examined him. Aside from the raw, clubbed foot, he had a small wound on his hip. Behind me, the grocery cart lady spoke to Juliette in French, and Juliette answered, then walked out of the bathroom, further down the long, dark hallway, further from the front door, my only way out.

Juliette
kind
of knew what she was doing, I conceded that; but I still wanted my pigeon back. What was she going to do with him?

Juliette approached a door at the end of the dark hallway with me trailing an inch behind her. She opened the door and the brightness of daylight stopped me in the doorway. As my eyes adjusted, a large sunny picture window came into focus, and below it perched various pigeons and doves on wooden dowels and plastic makeshift trees, strutting on the floor and eating seed from large tin baking pans. Juliette was not only running a brothel—she was running a pigeon sanctuary. She had regular rock pigeons and wood pigeons, but she also had white fantail pigeons and a pair of ring-necked doves.

The birds winged around the room, dust clouds glittering in sunbeams as they whipped the air beneath them. They seemed comfortable in their sunny space. Some of them stood in wooden cubbies, like those found in a kindergarten class where kids put their backpacks—but here, the birds nested in them. Juliette released my pigeon into the room and he flew straight to a pan of seed. Another large pigeon pecked at him, and Juliette shooed the bigger bird away and chastised it in French.

All I could do was thank her. “
Merci
.”

“
Merci
,” she said back, smiling. Why was she thanking
me
?

I emptied my wallet, all 150 francs, and gave it to Juliette. The lady with the grocery cart gave Juliette fifty francs, too. Juliette thanked us again and kissed me on each cheek.

As we left, I noticed hundreds of pigeons crammed into the crevices of the building and under the eaves around Juliette's apartment, cooing softly. I hadn't seen them before, too focused on the pigeon in my hands. The door shut behind us with a loud click and the pigeons bolted in every direction, a wave of gray bodies launching themselves into the sky as if to cool it with their wings. They were glorious. I felt like flying, too. The pigeons schooled in a wave above the alley, swooping over the rooftops, then careened back toward us in a black, synchronous swarm, and lighted again in the eaves.

The grocery cart woman and I kissed each other good-bye on both cheeks and I strode back into the sunlight onto Boulevard de Clichy. I felt something lift in me, a gate unlock, a fortress crumble. Poppy stood beside me, his silver hair swept behind his ears. I smelled his cologne. I took a step. He took a step. I reached for him. We strolled arm-in-arm along the broad sidewalks, ambling across the Pont Neuf, over the cobblestones on the other side, until birdsong drew us toward the bird market like the beam on a lighthouse.

I followed punctuated staccato trills, melodic whistles, such distinct voices—lovebirds. We rounded the corner into the bird market of Paris, a halo of sunlight hanging over it like a messenger. There was something here I needed to learn, something I could almost touch, out of my reach, like a frightened bird.

“Poppy, please help me release a pigeon for you.”

“
Chérie
, release yourself.” He pointed to the sky and I followed his finger to a flock of pigeons swirling against the glowing white summit of the Sacré-Cœur. “You are already free.”

I released his hand and lifted from the ground, my feathers igniting the air beneath me. I saw him from above, pointing, waving, and I waved back with my gray wings. Then he was with me and we soared over Paris, playing with the last rays of sunlight, the Eiffel Tower an etching against the sky.

A motorcycle backfired. The pigeons at my feet launched into the sky in a symphony of grays and blacks, their wings whisking the air around my head. I waved my hand in front of my face to clear the dust and looked around for Poppy, but he was gone. I turned, trying to spot him among the crowd, but saw only the backs of strangers.

I stood in place for a long time, thinking that if I moved, I might blow away. I felt light, like wings. Poppy was here with me, in a black velvet sports coat with a silk handkerchief in his pocket, his footfalls in cadence with mine, speaking in hushed tones, endowing me with powerful wings, feeding me Paris in small crumbs, and making sure I ate.

I gazed out my window that night and saw all twenty-four of my birthday dove stars, the light from the tips of their wings pecking out a signal in a cosmic Morse code that I understood. I couldn't translate the message into words, because the message didn't come through that way—it spoke to my heart directly, in a feeling I can best describe as
loved
.

We're on the beach at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne, Poppy teaching me to play paddleball with his worn wooden racquets as the sun wends its way west and the moon arrives early, a white ghost against the blue sky: I'm seven and naked from the waist up, the ball a little blue planet soaring between Poppy and me, etching our love indelibly in this space. I'm the best-loved girl on the beach. Poppy and I oblige the ball's orbit regardless of gravity, sending the ball on its favorite path, jumping against our paddles like seconds into creation. My wrist remembers the ball's strike against my paddle, the whole beach brimming with our indiscriminate destiny: his last breath is twenty years away. I can feel it in the ball's perfect arc. I can see it in a handful of sand.

I would rewind those beach days if I could, give myself up to the counterclockwise turn of time. There's a tumor that never starts, his hair blackens, I shrink as the ball turns again, I'm a crumb, then not even an indication, Nona pressed to his starched shirt and velvet jacket, the ball flattening, flying, reviving itself. He's smacking the ball to no one, then there is no ball, no lesson, beach, or memory—just the bird market of Paris, Poppy walking into the birdsong like a sonic fog, shaking the cold off his wings, imagining me, maybe, in a future where he'd have a granddaughter he can teach to charm birds to eat from her hands.

 

Author's Note

Birds remain an important part of my life, but I don't breed them anymore. There are too many abused, neglected, and homeless birds that need help and homes, and I don't want to contribute to the problem. Some endangered species need to be bred to ensure their survival, and some birds are domesticated, such as canaries, certain pigeons and doves, and society finches; I don't argue against the breeding of those.

I also don't oppose the breeding of most finches, budgies, lovebirds, cockatiels, parrotlets, and some grass keet species—small birds that are easy to care for with a little knowledge and attention. The bigger birds are far more complex, and I believe only people who can provide for
all
their needs should keep them.

There is also a sound argument that breeding birds saves species from poaching in the wild. If domestic breeders make hand-raised birds available, the people who rape the rain forests of feathered creatures won't have a market anymore. Birds are a miracle, and though not everyone is equipped to keep them, those who are able to handle these fussy, feathered supermodels
can
give them happy, healthy lives.

This being said, I feel sad when I see a bird in a cage.

Bonk, my feathered green angel, lived to be sixteen—seven years beyond Dr. Z's diagnosis of inoperable cancer and her prognosis of six months to live. She spent the last few years of her life in a large flight cage at my parents' house in Fort Lauderdale. My mom called me one afternoon to tell me that she thought Bonk was dying. Bonk had faded over a few days, sitting on the bottom of the cage and refusing food, and I knew it was her time. I called Dr. Z and she suggested not rushing Bonk into the office, which would stress her even more. She said to make Bonk comfortable.

Sweetie seemed to understand Bonk's condition and pushed his head underneath her chin when she couldn't hold her head up anymore. I talked to her on the phone and I can only hope she heard me telling her I loved her. She passed away in the middle of the night. Bonk, my faithful, miraculous friend who saw me through the darkest times and back into the light, was dead.

Sweetie died three months later.

I think about their progeny, and I wish I had kept their line going so I could have a part of Bonk with me today, likely her great, great, great grandchildren. Somewhere, probably in South Florida, Bonk and Sweetie's genes have built a foundation of fiercely loyal, beautiful, transcendent lovebirds. I hope they're cherished as much as I cherished Bonk.

Little Miss Mango, my surviving twin from the single egg from the yellow Fischer's pair I'd had long ago, also lived to be sixteen. I found her dead one morning in her cage, sitting at the front door, waiting to be let out, her head cocked to one side, her eyes half-open. I was heartbroken. I couldn't help but think she had been waiting there for me to soothe her as she took her last breath, but I was absent at her end.

I found Jesse dead at seventeen on the bottom of the cage one morning, and spent several hours crying and pacing my apartment, cradling his body, which was still warm when I found him. He should have survived far longer. Meyer's parrots are known to live upward of thirty years.

I could have ordered a necropsy to determine the cause of death, but one week before he passed, my beloved avian veterinarian, Dr. Z, died suddenly at forty-nine years old. She left behind her husband and two children.

I learned the news through a letter that Dr. Z's veterinary office sent to her patients to tell them that another avian veterinarian would be taking over her practice. I read the letter four times. “Dr. Z” and “passed away” didn't make sense. I spent the next four days in bed. I'd known her twenty years and she was a wellspring of positivity, light, and humor in my world, not to mention great avian and dating advice. Wherever she is, I hope she's flying with the birds. I hope Bonk is with her.

I have not had a drink since that disgusting red beer in Paris on July 9, 2001, and I hope to never have another drink, one day at a time—Poppy would be proud of that, too. Changing my life in that way, breaking the habit, wasn't easy at first, but now drinking is a glimmer of a memory—a bad memory—and I don't want to go back.