Читать книгу 142 Ostriches - April Davila - Страница 12

FIVE

“Have you changed their routine lately?” the vet asked. I had called him that morning when I woke to find the corral still empty of eggs.

Bob was a short man with a comb-over that did little to shield his shiny scalp from the sun. “Different food? Anything?” He stood in the corral with total confidence despite the fact that his head came only as high as an ostrich wing. Most people were intimidated by three-hundred-pound birds that towered eight feet tall, and only the foolhardy didn’t respect such powerful legs. Tipped with prehistoric-looking claws, the two-toed foot of an ostrich could easily disembowel an enemy.

“Our schedule’s been off ”—I hesitated—“with all the funeral arrangements. And it’s just me now.” I couldn’t seem to adjust to that. I picked at a hangnail, felt the pinch of it in the tender skin of the nail bed. I wasn’t used to my grandma’s absence.

It would be good to sell and move away, if only to be somewhere that didn’t hold so many memories of her. Every doorway held an echo of her footsteps. Every bit of wire fencing had been strung by her hands. Every bird in the corral had grown up under her care. I kept being ambushed by feelings of loss and guilt and regret. Simply walking around the ranch felt unsafe. Several times a day, it struck me, again, that she was gone.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bob said. He had wild, bushy eyebrows that looked out of place under his balding scalp. “Your grandmother was a good woman.”

I nodded and relaxed a little when he refocused his attention on the birds.

He ran his hand along the spine of the nearest female and pulled down her beak to inspect closely before gently guiding her into the crook of his fleshy armpit. The hen fluffed her feathers, shifting forward on her feet, but with her head low, she couldn’t kick. Bob tested each wing between his fingers, then pressed gently along her rib cage. After he inspected her from tip to toe, he had me hold her steady while he took a small blood sample.

Sweat spots formed on Bob’s shirt. I followed him over to the feed trough, where he crouched to pluck up a wayward grain of corn. He pulled an empty vial from his pants pocket and took a sample of water. It looked clean and clear.

“Thoughts?” I asked.

He lifted his gaze from the center of the corral to take in the bigger picture of our surroundings. The storm from the day before was a fading memory and our little plot of land was a clean thumbprint in the sprawling sage scrub of the Mojave Desert, about a hundred miles east of the San Gabriel Mountains, with Highway 66 marking the eastern edge of the property. The gravel driveway climbed the subtle slope from the highway to where the house and the barn sat on opposite sides of the walnut tree. Every fall the branches of the giant tree sagged under the weight of its green pods. The thump of each one falling to the ground come September coincided with the dwindling of the eggs in the corral and marked the beginning of our off-season. Grandma Helen collected the fallen walnuts in paper grocery bags. In the kitchen, the medicinal scent of the green husks would infuse everything as she spent hours listening to public radio, peeling the skins and setting the exposed craggy shells on a rack to dry.

I would retreat upstairs to waste away the hours on social media, happy to have a little downtime, but Grandma Helen didn’t do well with downtime. When we weren’t outside fixing things that had been put off during the busy summer months, she was inside smashing walnut shells with a hammer and teasing out the wrinkled, meaty flesh. Then, after every weak spot in the fence had been mended, the barn hosed clean, the feed silos stocked, the oil changed on both of the trucks, the tumbleweeds cleared from the corral, and every last walnut shelled and packed into the freezer, Grandma Helen would pace, waiting impatiently for the birds to lay eggs again, as if the routine had varied at all in the forty-six years she had been raising ostriches. But apparently, she had been right to worry. Because there I stood, surrounded by birds in the middle of July, without a single egg in sight.

“I’ll run a few tests on these samples, rule out anything serious,” Bob said, “but dollars to donuts, it’s stress.”

“Really?” It was hard to fathom what a flock of ostriches could possibly have to be wound up about.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “A change of ownership. That storm. See it all the time with chickens. Doesn’t take much to set them off.”

Ostriches didn’t have much in the way of brain power. They operated on instinct and flourished with routine. I thought about the many unfamiliar cars that had been coming and going. “How do I get them to start laying again?”

He pulled a notepad from his pocket and set to scribbling. “Try one of these supplements. You’ll want something with folic acid and choline. Just add it to their meals.” He handed me the list. “That should help them bounce back.”

I studied Bob’s messy scrawl. There was a farm supply store north of Victorville where Grandma Helen and I shopped. They had a section devoted to poultry care that would likely have the items on Bob’s list.

“You take care of yourself,” he said as he climbed into his car.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and from the shade of the walnut tree I watched him drive off.

Take care of yourself. If you need anything . . .

Stupid things to say. I’d taken care of myself all my life without anyone telling me to do it, and in my experience, asking for help was a waste of time. Depending on people was just setting yourself up to be let down.

I reviewed Bob’s list again. I wasn’t excited to make the ninety-minute haul to the supply store, but the sooner the birds were laying eggs again, the better. If Joe Jared discovered that the birds had fallen mysteriously barren, I’d have a hell of a time convincing him to go through with the sale. I’d be left with no source of income and 142 birds to feed.

I wished I could ask Grandma Helen for advice. Not that she would be happy to help me sell the ranch to Joe Jared, but at least she would know what was going on with the birds. She always knew what to do.

I remembered when I first saw her, when I was thirteen, through the peephole in the door of my mother’s Oakland apartment. She was a thin woman with gray hair pulled into a low ponytail. Her narrow face, distorted by the fish-eye glass, had looked unnaturally stretched, her lips cut a pale line above her square chin. A series of deep wrinkles lined her forehead and traced down to encase her deep-set blue eyes. She wore jeans and a white, button-up shirt tucked in behind a large silver belt buckle. Even before I knew who she was, I knew she didn’t belong in Oakland.

She peered nervously down the hall to her left, then back at the door. She seemed downright ancient to me that day, but then, when I was thirteen, anyone over twenty counted as old. She looked surprised to see me when I opened the door, but she recovered quickly. “You must be Tallulah,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m your grandma Helen.”

Her hand was strong, the skin surprisingly smooth. Her thin lips spread upward in an easy smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She asked for a glass of water, so I showed her in and filled one from the tap. On the kitchen table, my cornflakes crackled in their milk. I wondered if I should offer her food, but then the door to my mom’s room swung open and she emerged, dreadlocks sticking out in every direction. An oversize Raiders T-shirt hung almost to her knees. Her eyes, bleary with sleep, were circled with charcoal shadow that had smeared unevenly in the night.

“Hello, Laura,” Grandma Helen said.

My mom put her hand on the wall. She’d had a late night, and she’d brought someone home with her. I’d heard them stumble through the door around four. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Grandma Helen said, motioning to the round table where my breakfast sat turning soggy.

My mom wiped at her nose with the back of her wrist and sniffed. “I gotta take a piss,” she said and slipped into the bathroom.

I gave up on breakfast and waited in silence with Grandma Helen. She sat with her shoulders squared, her back perfectly straight, taking in the disarray that was our apartment.

We couldn’t afford two bedrooms, so the living room doubled as my bedroom and we didn’t have enough storage space. Things tended to pile up. My pillow and blanket were strewn on the couch, my clothes piled high in the corner, and my schoolbooks sat stacked on a low table by the TV. The chairs had been salvaged from a dumpster and were meant to have cushions, not folded bath towels.

I saw it all through Grandma Helen’s eyes and was embarrassed. I spun the ring on my middle finger, a cheap, shiny piece of metal my mom had given me on my thirteenth birthday. The skin underneath had taken on a pale green hue. When my mom finally appeared again, she had washed her face and pulled her dreadlocks together with a rubber band.

Grandma Helen rose to her feet. “I’d have come later—I know you’re not exactly a morning person—but I’m hoping to get home before dark.”

My mom slumped into the chair beside me, pulling up one knee under her giant nightshirt. “Whatever,” she said, cupping her forehead in her hand and peering sideways at her mother. “Why are you here?”

Grandma Helen sat and resumed her perfect posture. “Well, there’s just no easy way to say it, so here it is.” She cleared her throat. “I’m taking the girl to live with me on the ranch. You can come too if you want.”

“Don’t be stupid,” my mom said, reaching over to tousle my hair. “You’re not taking anyone anywhere.”

Grandma Helen ignored her and spoke to me. “We’ve got a good middle school nearby in Victorville, lots of fresh air, and I could teach you to work with the ostriches if you want to make a little money. Since your grandfather passed, I could use the help.” She waited for me to say something, but no words came. I was trying to envision the ostriches. I had never seen an ostrich in real life, let alone many ostriches. And now here was this woman I didn’t even know proposing that I leave Oakland with her that very morning to go live on an ostrich ranch.

“Seriously,” my mom said, her voice growing louder, “what are you talking about?” She snatched her pack of cigarettes from the table and lit one.

Grandma Helen’s voice remained calm. “I’m talking about the fact that I don’t much approve of the way you’re raising this girl.” A rush of smoke came across the table at her. “And frankly, I’m not convinced that the money I’ve been sending you these last few months has gone toward the private school you said you were enrolling her in.”

Private school? I didn’t even know there was a private school in Oakland.

There was a shuffling behind us, and a pale man with red, curly hair came out of my mom’s room. He was wearing her tattered purple robe, with one side of the collar folded under the wrong way. “What’s up?” he asked.

Grandma Helen stood and extended her hand. “Helen Jones,” she said. “You must be . . .”

He blinked hard a couple of times, then hunched forward with a little gag and ran for the bathroom. From the table, we heard him retching. “You might like it out on the ranch, Tallulah,” my grandmother said.

“What the fuck is she talking about?” I asked my mom.

“Watch your mouth,” my mom snapped, tapping her cigarette against the edge of the yellow glass of the ashtray.

Watch my mouth? She never said that to me. When I was younger, she and her friends used to throw me quarters as I made up little songs using words most parents didn’t allow. I cast a sideways sneer at Grandma Helen. This was all her doing. She looked like the kind of woman who would tell a kid not to swear.

“She’s not going anywhere,” my mom said again, sounding tired. “She doesn’t even know you.”

Damn straight, I thought.

My grandmother hesitated, but when she locked eyes with my mom again, there wasn’t a trace of indecision. “I’m not sending you any more money, Laura.” In the silence that followed, we could all hear the man vomiting behind the bathroom door. “But the girl’s my granddaughter, and I care about her well-being. I’ll take good care of her.” She kept her distance but addressed me directly again. “If you hate it, I’ll drive you back here myself,” she said. “I’d only ask that you give it three months, till the end of the school year.”

I waited for my mom to protest again, but she didn’t. Instead, she trudged into the kitchen and yanked the empty coffeepot from its base.

“Mom?”

Water rushed from the tap.

“Mom?” I repeated.

She spoke to Grandma Helen. “It might be worth trying for a few months.”

I stared at her, disbelieving. “Are you crazy?” I wasn’t moving to the desert to live on an ostrich ranch. My life was in Oakland. My school, my friends, my boyfriend. No fucking way.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said, a bit of her usual ferocity returning. She slipped her cigarette between her lips and it bounced as she spoke. “If you stay here, you’ll be pregnant by the end of the year. Don’t think I don’t know that boy comes over when I’m at work. You’re thirteen, for fuck’s sake.”

I bowed my head to hide my surprise. My boyfriend came over all the time when my mom was at work. I didn’t know she knew. “Mom,” I said, my voice pleading. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s not like it’s boarding school. You’ll be living with family.”

“I don’t know her,” I said, pointing at Grandma Helen, who was patiently waiting out our discussion.

My mom sighed. “Well, I do,” she said. “She’s stubborn and old-fashioned, but she’d take care of you.”

“Right,” I said. “Because she did such a fucking stellar job with you?”

The smoke from her cigarette trailed up in a perfect, unbroken line. “I’m sick of this shit,” she said. “Go pack your things.”

“No,” I yelled, pounding the table.

I swear, she grew three inches. “Go. Pack. Your. Shit,” she said. “I’m done with you.” And she went back to making her coffee.

Tears threatened, but I refused to cry. Instead, I glared at her with all the anger I could muster. “I hate you.”

Two hours later, I had packed everything I owned into three giant garbage bags. Grandma Helen helped me load them into the bed of her pickup. I thought about the new boots my mom had bought the month before and the expensive bottle of liquor she’d brought to her friend’s birthday party—bought with money meant for me. The more I mulled over the details, the angrier I became.