We've been perched on the telephone wires all day, bearing gifts. There are many of us, more than you can count. Each beak holds a special something. One of us holds a Simply Lemonade bottle-cap because that's Girlfriend's favorite drink. A couple of others hold discarded Wendy's wrappers from Asiago Chicken Sandwiches, because Girlfriend loves them; she swears they're cooked with crack. Many others hold fortunes from those Chinese cookies, or assorted clips, pins, and other shiny things. I, myself, hold a live salamander. It's squirming and I feel sorry for it. The other pigeons think I'm strange and stubborn, that the salamander suffers for no good reason, but I am the leader and that means respect. The others don't fight me on the things I consider important. This reptile will be the vessel for my feelings, I told them this morning. Trust me, I know these things. More pigeons land on wires all around me, and they do trust me; that's something I appreciate. So we've remained perched all day in the August swelter, thrusting our breasts forward as if we were robins and not pigeons, silent and imperial. Girlfriend's out, but she'll be back soon. We watch and wait.
A red Mustang flies into the neighborhood, disregarding the STOP sign, and brakes on a dime. We know who the car belongs to and we're immediately compelled to crap on the windshield. I catch one of us hunching forward, prepping for flight. Wait, says my gesture, a single raised wing, Let's just see what he does.
Boyfriend remains stopped in front of Girlfriend's house, right in the middle of the street. He doesn't even bother flashing the hazards, he just puts it in park, sits there daring the traffic with his Do-Something-Nigga expression. Cars whip around him violently, grazing the front bumper of the Nissan heading the opposing traffic.
A black man hops out of the Nissan, angry, but exposed, and cars blow by him. Now, instead of an accident victim, he's just someone else in the way. "Move, nigga!" a driver yells, and leads several cars in speeding past the man, nearly clipping him. Drivers proceed carelessly as if the black man were nothing. Even the children playing basketball in narrow driveways, or double-dutch on the cracked walk, have to pause and step further away from the curb. The black man hops back in his Nissan, slams the door, and drives off.
The children resume play: business as usual.
In that moment the black Nissan driver was one of us, caught in the whirl of a rough city. Drivers speed up when they see us in the road; passersby fling unfinished food at us; ketchup and mustard and saliva spray our dark feathers.
Girlfriend leaves us alone. We often leave our telephone wire perches to peck crumbs out of the road. Girlfriend slows when she sees us. Come on birds! she says, drumming the wheel, Ya'll got wings, now go! But she's patient in her own way, watching us finish our meager meal. Girlfriend doesn't fault us. She just lurches forward in her Honda Accord. She wants us to move. If she accelerates, she knows we'll take flight and scatter instantly. She waits instead, annoyed. But I feel her protection, her bleeding heart that refuses to risk hurting us. In those moments, we appreciate the gesture, the kindness—
Honk! Honk!
Everyone jams angry palms into their horns, honking at Boyfriend's red Mustang. Boyfriend also honks, because even though he's the problem—the red Mustang blocking the middle of the road—he wants the hood (as he's announced many times before) to see his big fruitful nuts and manly warrior chest. Now he wears the fierce scowl we're used to seeing, the expression fired toward anyone who dares challenge him on his stomping grounds, in his hood, and right in front of his girl's house too, his girl's house.
We wait for someone to tell Boyfriend to move his car, but that's not going to happen. Boyfriend is the-nigga-you-don't-mess-with as the locals often say. He's tall and muscled and even if he were a bird it'd take many of us to stop him. He's the one that empowers dark skin in the night. In these parts, dark people grow powerful, cloaked by the urban pitch. People around here say it, so we believe them. But we never get to see for ourselves; the streets are mostly empty at night. The people are afraid of each other.
Boyfriend steps out of the car, clenching his fists. He glares at the stopped cars and the air suddenly changes.
No more honking. Everything goes quiet.
Cars slowly make their way around Boyfriend as if apologizing. I imagine the cars standing on their rear wheels, tip-toeing—tip-wheeling—around a really big man. Truth is, he should move, but he doesn't—he won't. He doesn't have to. Fear is his superpower.
But Girlfriend won't have any of it, and Boyfriend knows that. That's why he's here, even though she told him not to come back. Nigga you on Time Out, she'd said, Time Out. I better not see you for three months, or ever.
Time Out isn't over, it's been two days, but Boyfriend is here anyway. With some planned brilliance I suppose.
Boyfriend closes his eyes and breathes deep, doing a couple ins-and-outs, something we've never seen him do before. He reaches a hand into his right pocket, lets the hand linger there for a couple seconds, and takes it out. "Control," I hear him say to himself, "Impulse control, like momma told me. I got this. Impulse. Control." Like the impulse to not do the things we're used to Boyfriend doing. The things that made all the cars apologize to him and his red Mustang, which is still parked in the middle of the road. The things that drew us to Girlfriend's house in the first place—other than Girlfriend herself—in case Boyfriend got out of line, or out of control, again.
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Boyfriend eyes Girlfriend's door like a target and steps onto the curb. He advances up the cement path toward her front step. His gait is measured and steady, his back straight and tall, and his face has softened from a scowl to something neutral, a calm expression. He's not slouching or stomping or furrowing his brow like we're used to. His peaceful façade makes us nervous. The quiet before the storm, people say, and that's true. Our senses are keen and we're gone long before the first drops hit, before the sky grays with the storm to come.
We cinch our gifts hard in our talons and beaks, anxious for Boyfriend's next move.
The salamander in my mouth wriggles wildly. It's thrashing in pain because I almost killed it, but it's alive, which is what matters. It's alive. The thing's got fight.
Boyfriend reaches the door and knocks.
"Baby?"
Boyfriend's deep baritone nearly rattles the windows. We're waiting for Girlfriend to get home; he thinks she's there. She left dressed in her best, for church and then family time. That's what she does—especially when Boyfriend isn't acting right. He knocks again.
"Baby? It's me. I know I'm on Time Out and all that craziness but I just wanna tell you that I'm sorry. I apologize from the bottom of me because I know I hurt you, though ... I didn't mean to do all that...all that stuff I did to make you raise up on me like that, I was just having a moment, a bad moment, that's all."
Boyfriend looks worried. He breathes in, breathes out, and knocks again. Meanwhile Girlfriend's Honda Accord pulls up behind his Mustang. She makes an angry face at the familiar car, but remains stopped, turns her hazard flashers on. She watches Boyfriend shuffle on her doorstep, speaking from the bottom of him and all. She doesn't say anything, just joins us in our watching, and listens.
"Now," Boyfriend continues, "if you could just like, tell me what I did, then we'll be straight. We'll be cool and all that and we can get back to all the lovey stuff we be doing 'cause girl, you really bring out the soft in me, you know, that huggy feely man in me that don't come out. Baby, you know I'm troubled. But, um. What I do, though?"
He reaches into his right pocket, leaves his hand there, rolls it around a bit, feeling.
"Seriously though, how you gonna put a nigga on Time Out and not tell him what he did though? How can I learn from what I did and what I'm sorry for if you don't guide me into what's right? I just need you there for me so I can be there for you, you dig? I did things. And you're upset. But this, Timing Out, I don't know babe, it's questionable. Not quite objectionable or anything, not there yet, but it's getting there, though."
He waits for a response. Nothing. Girlfriend is still where she's at, listening, losing patience because she takes Time Out seriously. She's flustered even though she's always so tightly in control, and you can see her thinking hard, looking pained because reflection is tough business. As birds, all we have is the sky and our thoughts. We come down for scraps and then fly back up into blinding meditation. Things down here are so complicated. These people do too much, torture themselves by how much they're always doing—even Girlfriend sometimes. But we don't blame her. The ground is not a blessed place.
Boyfriend pulls his hand out of his pocket. He's holding a condom in a black package with gold lettering: Magnum. He leaves it on her Welcome mat.
"Anyway," he says with a deep smirk, "I learned my lesson, and I'm sorry. So yeah, just hit me up babe, when you ready for the, you know, that Make-Up Sex. You know what it is, how we get down. Just call me, I'll finish my Time Out, and you know, we can get to being close again."
He begins to leave and sees Girlfriend in the walkway, stomping angrily toward him.
I look across the telephone wires at my brethren and they look back. They're waiting for my signal. So I give it to them; I raise both wings and they go flying.
Girlfriend continues her advance; she's at the curb, then halfway up the cement path toward her door where Boyfriend waits, smiling widely. He opens his arms to receive her in a hug; Girlfriend cocks her fist.
One of our brothers drops his item, the Simply Lemonade bottle-cap he's gifting Girlfriend. It lands between Girlfriend and Boyfriend, bouncing, rattling, rolling, and after a couple of seconds, finally stopping.
They both look up.
We pigeon brethren circle above, casting dark moving shadows over the house. Now they're all dropping their special something's for Girlfriend. Pieces of Styrofoam that once contained her favorite Hawaiian Fried Rice, wrappers from Asiago Chicken Sandwiches, fortunes she's thrown away from Chinese take-out places she frequents—all of it floating down slowly, ceremonially, like small papery blessings.
Boyfriend goes running because he feels attacked. He flies into his car and yells to Girlfriend, "Go inside! Call me later!" And then he winks, says, "I know you will," before speeding off.
The children playing in the streets, and the neighbors walking by, follow suit. Everyone scatters, running to their houses, fleeing this stretch of sidewalk.
Bottle-caps and clips and pins and hair-bows and other gifts we think suit Girlfriend also come flying down. They land around her and she's scared; she's terrified; she looks as if she's about to cry—but that's not something we can help. Girlfriend is afraid and she's ready to go inside, shut us out, reject our goodwill. She steps toward her front door and quickly stops; she sees the Chinese fortunes peppering the doorway.
Life ebbs and life flows. If you allow it, life will bring great joy.
Winning numbers: 7, 23, 5, 38, 10, 12
Happiness exists. It's closer than you think.
I descend toward Girlfriend, swiftly, with the salamander still thrashing in my grasp. I land before her, impeding her path to the doorway. We lock eyes. Her pupils shimmer with tears she refuses to release. But she's still here, waiting, giving us the chance that nobody else would.
My brethren circle above in the shape of a human heart, something we find on trashed red cards, trashed flowers, and on all of Boyfriend's apologies. My brethren circle and continue to drop gifts.
I lower my beak, reverently setting the salamander down. It's injured, its spine crushed, but it manages to crawl toward Girlfriend, slowly, tenaciously. The salamander crawls and gets closer and hisses something that I can't understand. Something guttural and hurt. But the salamander persists. It won't stop. It crawls closer and closer to Girlfriend. It's almost there, almost to the tip of her shoe. In our animal tongue it hisses Girlfriend's name, Jacq! Jacq! She shouldn't understand, and in fact she's confused, but her eyes soften.
Girlfriend bends down and cups her hands toward the salamander because she knows. She knows.