the birds.

My little sister always had the strangest belief about birds. It all started when we were younger and my mother began collecting these small bird statues, the kind you find in the craft store under painted wood with Bible verses in script font. My sister told me that they came alive at night and ate the concrete off the basement walls. She said they were digging. When asked where, she would simply say, “To the other side.” ​ Of course, I never believed her. The concrete was always the same, uneven surface it had always been, it never seemed thinner. My father told me it was her overactive imagination and we left it at that. ​ My mother died the fall before the birds disappeared. It was a freak accident. A man being chased by the cops swerved in the oncoming lane and, well I don’t need to explain the rest. My sister took it especially hard. She was a freshman at a university in Pittsburg and after the funeral, she didn’t go back. ​ It was February, around Valentine’s day and I was living at home, to make sure my sister and father were all right. They needed the extra income, besides. Then one morning all the birds, and there were a lot of them, they were just gone. I thought Dad might have packed them up, that it hurt to look at them, but he was just as confused as I was. ​ I was taking out the trash when I saw them. For some reason, I looked up at the roof and there they were. Hundreds of birds. Ceramic and plaster and clay and marble even. Some I don’t even think my mother owned. But that wasn’t the strangest part. They were pecking at the roof. It’s strange I didn’t hear the noise because it filled the air after I saw them. And some of them were breaking as they pecked at the roof. Their beaks shattered off, but they kept pecking until their heads broke off and then they threw what was left of themselves at the roof. And I couldn’t look away. I just watched my mother’s birds break through the roof. I don’t know how long I stood there, it must have taken them an hour or so. My sister came out eventually and we stood there together. ​ “What the hell are they doing?” I finally voiced as the birds worked on expanding the hole in the roof. “They are trying to get to the other side. They are trying to get to her.” She sipped her coffee from a bird-shaped mug. After she finished she climbed the front porch and placed the mug on the lip of the roof. As she climbed down the mug walked to join the ceramic birds. “I think I’ll go with them.” “Now why would you do that?” For the first time since I got the phone call from my father that night in October, I was scared. “Because, I think I would shatter too, if it meant getting her back. I think I would rip the entire house apart to find her. Just for a second. Just for a goodbye.” “I think I would too, Leah.” My father came out and we watched as my mother’s birds brought the house down. All that was left was bird bodies and wood and plaster. And I cried. There in the front yard. I didn't even cry at her funeral, I couldn’t. Not in front of Leah and my dad. But as the bird's body stilled, it felt like I was watching her. I felt like I was watching her.