Hands Like Birds

She was seventeen, with a pucker in her lips and a bounce in her hair. Her wide hips were swathed in soft denim, her pink-tipped toes squeezed into a tacky pair of high heels. She smoked cigarettes on the front porch, her heels cocked on the sashaying rail, hands draped like birds on the arm of a plastic lawn chair.

Inside the house there was shouting, the sound of a lamp shattering on the floor, a tower of cardboard boxes being knocked over, but it was the shouting that rattled her bones. Smoking didn’t help either—it made her nervous. She flicked the end of her cigarette too often, and finally the cherry fell out—dropped like a dive bomber, spraying ash and flame—and she stood up, dusting herself off frantically.

The sound of glass shattering inside the house sent tingling sensations up and down her spine. She tried to ignore it—looked blandly across the street, smoothed her hair, tried to appear nonchalant—but a twitch in the corner of her eye gave her away.

She began to pace—click, click, click—and her hands fluttered up and down her body, like a mechanic searching for faulty parts. They hovered by her face, rubbed her neck and shoulders, pinched her waist; they picked and pryed and pleaded. Please! Everyone just sit down and be quiet!

Then suddenly, it was. A stillness descended on the house, a silence so complete that even her fluttering fingers were forced to observe it. Her nails anchored themselves in the skin of her forearm. Her painted lips froze in an “o” shape. Even her hair quieted, rolling fields of golden grain as still as stone.

A cautious hope turned over in her stomach. It trembled like an abused dog, then rolled onto its back, exposing its under-parts. What better symbol of trust than a upturned belly?

Her hand reached to put out her cigarette, remembered it was already out, and ran shakily through her hair and down her lightning rod neck. Finally, she stepped forward and reached for the door. Her fingertips brushed the doorhandle. She clenched her eyes closed, afraid that at any moment the belly of hope might burst open, dumping sizzling, squirming guts onto the floor of her unconscious. But there was only silence, punctuated by a stubborn thump: the tenacious tail wag of optimism.

There followed three clicks. The first was the sound of the doorknob being released, revealing a rectangle of darkness. The second was the sound of a tacky high heel striking the bare, plywood floor. The third was the sound of a trigger being pulled.

The bullet sang through her, nearly knocking the pretty helmet of hair off her head. Her skull was the first to hit the floor, followed by the rest of her denim-swathed body. Her hands fluttered once, bird-like, up and down her body. There they were cardinals, crimson colored creatures on a snow-white background. Then her lips settled into that startled “o” shape, and—finally—the birds were still.