Berries - Chelsea Stickle
The neighborhood waxwings are drunk on fermented berries. They’re singing out of tune perched high in the Rowan tree until they lose balance and take flight before they hit the ground. One bangs against my bedroom window. Its beady black eye catches mine as it’s momentarily stunned. The red juice on its cream-colored chest looks like blood. Its wings begin flapping again and it flies back into my window at the same spot.
I’m at my closet before I know what I’m doing. I spot an empty Nike shoebox I stashed away for possible school projects. With Mom dead it’s up to me to think about things like that. I poke air holes with scissors and line it with the ugly scarf I got for Christmas. The waxwing is still ramming itself into my window. In the fraction of a second when it’s stunned, I snatch it.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I got you.”
I expect more of a struggle, but it’s so drunk that the best it can manage is wiggling and chirping. It rams itself against the sides of the shoebox. A rubber band keeps it inside. I bring it downstairs to rummage for food that’ll sober it up. I settle on a slice of bread because I heard it soaks up alcohol fast.
Dad enters the kitchen sipping his beer and quickly guesses what I’m doing. I think the chirping box gave me away. “You’re getting in the way of natural selection,” he says. It’s a fact, not a criticism.
“People are born with all kinds of advantages,” I tell him. “What makes me helping this bird so much worse?”
His dewy eyes widen with longing for her. He always called her soft-hearted while handing over his checkbook or picking up his tools for another family. He looks like he wants to call me that. Soft-hearted. Like the heart has anything to do with it.
Absently he wipes the scar on his forehead like the gash is still bloody and fresh. I wasn’t in the car when Mom died, and if Dad says the deer came out of nowhere, then that’s what happened. That’s why we needed a closed casket funeral. But sometimes I wonder if a slice of bread could’ve improved his reflexes enough to save her life.
The waxwing eats up the bread. It nests in the ugly scarf. I set the shoebox in the empty guest seat at the dinner table. Dad looks at it funny but doesn’t say anything. Tonight he’s made spaghetti. Boxed pasta, canned sauce. Hard to mess up.
We eat in near silence, offering up tidbits of information, aimless without the rudder of Mom’s conversation skills. Dad’s always been almost monosyllabic unless he was completely sloshed and his boastful side came out. Since the accident he doesn’t boast. He gets depressed and cries alone. I walked in on him once and saw the agony in his eyes. It reached into me and mingled with my pain until his overcame mine in desperate gulps as it tried to swallow me whole. He didn’t scream or ask me to leave. He didn’t have to. I ran out of the room, out of the house and into the darkness outside. The daffodils Mom planted the year I was born choked me with their sweetness. It’s been months and we still don’t know what to say to each other. I guess we never did.
In the morning, I pet the waxwing’s silky feathers and try to figure out whether it’s sober enough to venture outside. Its head swivels for the best escape route, so it’s alert and capable of planning ahead. It’s ready.
The frost is crunchy on the grass. The air is sharp and deadly as it slices to my lungs. I yank down my sweater sleeves. With the rubber band around my wrist, I peek into the box. “Hey, little guy,” I say. “It’s time for you to return to the world. Be good, okay?”
It’s hopping, hopping ready to go. More stable on its feet than it was yesterday. I open the box. The rush of wind against my face is bracing as I follow its progress, wings strong and certain, proud of myself. Until it lands in a tree full of berries and begins eating again.
Originally published by After the Pause, 2019
Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Her stories appear in Passages North, Fractured Lit, Identity Theory, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Her micros have been selected for Best Microfiction 2021 and 2025, the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2022 and the Wigleaf Longlist in 2023. She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Learn more at chelseastickle.com
