Skylark

Mother birds will abandon their kin if they smell a human has touched them.

~***~

Mother always loved birds. She'd sit in the garden for hours, perfectly still, like some chipped statue in a filmy nightgown. When the frost came, she still wore the same damn nightgown, let her bare feet melt the ground a little and perched outside-not unlike a bird, really. They landed all around her, gathering in bunches on her wrists and pecking at her sparkly gold-painted plastic ring, worn on her left ring finger like a wedding ring. I'd bought it for her at a thrift store for her twenty-first birthday, when I was six, after I heard her complaining to Grandma about raising a child without a husband. She thanked me and slipped it on, then went back into the garden, trailing shimmering wrapping paper at her heels. I knew she loved it, though, or she'd have taken it off after all these years at least once. She hasn't.
I could never understand her fixation with the birds, and could never really find out because Grandma forbid me from asking. She said it was rude to pry, and I should just shut up and drink my tea, and she'd smack my little ass if I ever dared bring up the subject of mother and the birds again. I shut up and drank my tea. It was a ritual of Grandma and I during my childhood to drink a cup of tea or so when mother was outside, mostly so I wouldn't follow her and pester her with questions. Earl Grey, every day, for thirteen years, until Grandmother died.
The doctor said it was a miracle she'd lived that long, and we should be thankful. Mother didn't look thankful, though, but she'd never really looked like anything more than dazed and daydreamy. She and I were the only ones at the funeral- Granddaddy died before I was born, and Grandma never really had any friends to speak of but me. But really, what kind of a friend is a thirteen-year-old boy who couldn't even remember the colour of her eyes a week after they closed?
After the preacher finished his sermon and left, white collar like a magpie wing at his throat and a sad sigh drifting off his lips, mother wandered off across the graveyard and I had to catch her and bring her back before she tripped over a gravestone. I pointed to Grandma's grave.
"Mother, you gotta say bye to Grandma," I told her. Mother looked at me quizzically, squinting her bruise-coloured blue eyes and jutting out her bottom lip like a waning moon.
"Who?"
"Grandma. Your mother."
"Hm. Yes. Bye-bye, see you soon." Mother waved once at the open grave, her palm just a thin flash in the air before she returned it to her coat pocket. I said nothing and led her back to the bus stop, rummaging for fare. We were short fifty cents and ended up having to walk home, but mother didn't even notice the biting cold.
It's been three years now, and nothing's changed for mother. Every day when I get home from school, lugging piles of homework I'll never finish and fail at anyway, she's out in the garden with birds in her thick blonde hair making little nests and birds pecking her lips and birds snuggling under her blouse when it's cold out. I never ran my fingers through mother's hair, never kissed her or hugged her- not once. I envy the birds a little.
When I get inside,  I brew a cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table, staring at Grandma's empty place and feeling a little empty inside and a little like I just don't care. I pull my phone out of my back pocket, flipping it open with one hand and studying the glowing rows of buttons. A new text message flashes up from Jared, who says he is my best friend and I only met him three months ago. His number and the suicide hotline, put in by Grandma when I was twelve, are the only two numbers on my phone. I don't know why we still bother paying the phone bill.
"Lark!" The screen reads. "I'm coming over now, make food." I don't even make the effort to groan and roll my eyes, just stand up and find some Top Ramen in the cupboard. Jason arrives ten minutes later, green eyes bright and brown hair mussed up from his winter hat, and greets me with an unexpected hug. He reminds me of a warbler perched up in the top of a tree, hopping from branch to branch and calling out to everyone who wants to hear.
"LarkLarkLarkguesswhat?" he says. I stir the ramen and dump it into two bowls, handing him the larger portion.
"What?" I say, playing along. Jason slurps up some noodles, broth spattering the table, and laughs.
"Well, I heard from Lenny who heard from Mella who heard from Katie that Ebony's dating Josh now, 'cept I know for a fact Josh is gay because I just do, and Ebony doesn't know I'm sure, and..." he babbles on and I tune him out, staring out of the window. Mother is standing now, pulling off the robe I'd bought so she didn't freeze in the September air and raising her arms to the sky. She closes her eyes and spins, making the birds around her jump and flutter. Jason falls silent and follows my gaze.
"I need to get her back in here before she catches a cold," I say. Jason nods and remains silent as I stand and walk as calmly as I can to the door. Jason's seen mother before, but I don't want him staring at her in her nightgown. It only takes me a handful of steps to reach her and take her arm, scooping up the robe in one hand and mother in the other. She doesn't protest-rather, she slumps in my arms and I'm forced to carry her inside and lay her down on the couch. Jason looms over her, ghoul-like, still miraculously silent and a bit stunned by something. Mother refuses to unlatch her arms from my waist, so I sit there with her and stroke her hair. Finally she falls asleep and I stand.
"Let's go to my room,"  I say to Jason, and he comes to life again.
"Yeah, cool." We scuttle up the stairs as quickly as we can, only breathing when the bedroom door slams behind us. Jason settles on my bed with a creak of springs and a click of joints and scans the bare walls. Three photos of us are taped to the wall above my desk, and several postcards with animals on them that I bought at the same store mother's ring was from, but other than that the room is empty and bare. I can tell Jason is uncomfortable. "So, I mean, I've seen your mom before and stuff, and I gotta ask- is she crazy or something? Like, she seems kind of broken, if you know what I mean..."  before he can continue I slap him with all my force and he sprawls backwards onto the mattress.
"Don't you dare insult my mother," I growl. "You don't know her." Jason sits up slowly, rubbing his cheek and looking like a hurt dog.
"I'm sorry," he says simply. "I don't know why I said that, it just sort of came out." He touches my arm and I flinch away. "Lark. Um." He stands up behind me, but I don't turn until he whispers in my ear. "I guess why I really came over is cause I want to talk to you."
"What?" I say, backing away from Jason just a step and folding my arms like origami. Jason's eyes are green glass bottles, rubbed smooth from seawater tears that threaten to appear if I hurt him again. I tell myself I won't.
Jason matches my step, pulling back up to me. He smells of peppermint. "Just... I think I love you."
I close my eyes and unfold my arms, not saying anything for a very long while. Finally I speak. "I've never heard that before," is all I can manage. I laugh weakly. "Jason-oh."
Jason kisses me once, on the lips, so gently it takes me a while to realize what's happening, then pulls away. When I open my eyes he's gone and the scent of peppermint has gone with him.
I stand, dazed, for a minute, then suddenly I wind up like clockwork and spring out of the doorway, slamming into the wall outside of my room and sprinting down the stairs. The front door hangs open and Jason's coat is gone, and when I get outside his car is, too. I skid to a stop, bare feet on cold concrete stinging. Mother is outside again, no robe, throwing out sunflower seeds for the birds.
"Mother," I say. She turns.
"Lark. Your person left," mother says. "Look. Birds." She lets a black-capped chickadee take flight from her finger, almost smiling.
"I see them, mother." I walk to her, frost crunching under my feet. The birds scatter when I get near. "Mother..." mother ignores me. "Mama. Mama, I don't feel so good." Mother turns and reaches out her arms to embrace me for the first time in my entire life. I tentatively hug her back. Her skin is warm, her fingertips gentle as though I were a bird she was carefully cupping in the milky white palm of her outstretched hand. A second later, though, she lets go and pushes me away, making a strangled sort of hissing noise.
"Go away."
"Mama?" I ask, stunned.
"Go away. You smell like him, the person. What did you do?"
"Mama, I swear, I didn't do anything, he just—"
"Go! You are not my son!" she screams, throwing the bag of sunflower seeds at me. They scatter in my hair, reminding me of snowflakes even though it's too early in the year. I nearly fall backwards, scrambling away from her and back onto the concrete. The birds flock around her like souls and she coos to them, more her children than I know I could ever be.
Like mother's favourite bird, the skylark, going South for the winter, I leave that night.
But I don't come back.