“Grammy, there’s a
bird in the house,” my grand-daughter, thirteen, cries, her voice breaking my
sleep. “I was letting Trixie out and the bird flew in.”
I
peel back the covers and slowly, I pull myself from my bed. We are alone in the
house. It has been a rough summer, her mom leaving, her dad having hip
replacement surgery, this child not knowing where she’ll be living, school
starting in days, her dog, her beloved Trixie, attacking and tearing another
dog’s ear, growling to protect her food bowl, and tonight the dog has diarrhea,
losing control inside a cloth travel crate.
Barefoot,
I pad down the stairs. “There it is Grammy,” my grand-daughter says, pointing
high to a skylight in the living room.
“Get her,” I say
eyeing the dog. The bird flies low, then disappears.
“I don’t know how it got in, Grammy.” My
grand-daughter’s voice tremors, and I imagine her fear. Will I yell? Punish
her? Tell her she’s stupid for leaving the screen door open. That’s what she’s used to at home. But home is
gone. Her mom has left without a forwarding address. This child has been with
my husband and me all summer. Mostly, her dad, my son has been here, too. Until
his surgery.
The ax hangs above
Trixie’s head. She needs to stop attacking other dogs. She needs to stop
guarding her food bowl. She needs to stop growling when I put her into her
crate. Mostly, Trixie is a loveable, friendly, smart appealing dog. A Catahoula
leopard dog, rescued dog from a kill shelter in Tennessee, she was taken from
her mother too early, spayed to early. Probably mistreated from birth, this dog
has issues. My grand-daughter loves this dog. She needs this dog. Tonight,
she’s been up every hour letting Trixie out. Not once has she awakened me,
until this bird flew into the house. “It was banging into walls, Grammy,” she says.
“I didn’t want it to die.”
Worry springs from
her skin, an aura of worry surrounding this lovely girl-child. She is so much
me when I was young. So much herself, smart, vibrant, inquisitive. Why has life
has dealt her a difficult hand?
Yesterday, we
shopped for back to school clothes, shopped although none of us knows where
she’ll go to school. We pretended all was well, buying a plaid shirt, a loose fitting
off the shoulder sweater, a pair of skinny jeans, rejecting a second pair
because they were too expensive. A sign in a window had promised forty percent
off. No, not these, a salesperson told me. At home, my grand-daughter went on
line. “Look, Grammy, they’re forty percent off on line. And I can get a fifteen
percent off coupon.”
The bird flies
into the dining room. Opening all three sliding screen doors that lead to a deck, I tell my
grand-daughter we’ll just let the bird fly out. We stand in the kitchen. Holding Trixie by her collar, my grand-daughter points. “There it is, Grammy.”
Something small
and brown on my kitchen floor. The bird. Probably a sparrow. Injured? Afraid? Stooping down, I
gently take the sparrow into my palms. I’ve never felt such warmth and fragility. Never felt a heart beating so wildly. Placing the bird onto the deck, I wonder about my scent. What
harm have I done? The bird is still. I back away, step inside. Still,
holding Trixie, Nina watches. “Grammy, it flew away.”
