The Bird

By Shirina Lee Edwin

 Elicia Burton settled into her regular spot at The Union Cafe, a corner table that offered an unobstructed view of the busy street in front of her. It was impossible for her to forego her daily journey to The Union. As a produce buyer at Whole Foods across town, it was her opportunity to plan for the day ahead. She gently inhaled the perfume of freshly ground coffee while balancing the rising steam of the largest Americano on the menu, trying to prevent the burn that would inevitably accompany such a treat. As she took that first sip, she let herself rest against the antique metal chair, made cold by the morning dew. Thank God for coffee. 

After finishing the first cup, she began to feel more prepared to deal with the day ahead, which would be filled with pushy wholesalers, uptight, always in a hurry vendors, eccentric coworkers, and semi pretentious customers. Without fail, coffee was the ideal companion. She remembered telling Raymond, the guy she was serious about, that she’d marry coffee if she could. He stood up from the table, walked away, and gave her a strange look before shaking his head and leaving the very table she sat at now. She never saw him again. 

Elicia looked at the clock through the café window. She hated wearing a watch for two reasons: the suffocating feeling of something wrapped around her skin, and the fact that when she was in sixth grade, she never forgot reading about a man who was hell-bent on traveling the globe without a watch and how that decision made it necessary for him to speak to strangers. That story would be the blueprint for her own travels and learning about the world around her.

When cell phones came along, she stopped asking for the time and instead, observed the routine of things around her. She learned that it was almost eight a.m. in Bali when an old man wheeled a cart full of goldfish into the center of the village; fat clear bags filled halfway with water, air, and a tiny orange fish were hanging on peg boards on either side of the cart. Every day, the local schoolchildren would buy a bag, show it to their friends, compare sizes, laugh, and run to school. She learned later they would release them at school and watch them swim to freedom. The old man would catch them in the evening and repeat the same scene in the morning.  She knew it was close to seven in the morning in India because when the sun rose between the building with clothes hanging on lines and the other building painted pink, a hunched-over man pushed an old wooden cart with melons and mangoes through the street.  He rang a large cowbell above him once and called, “AAM LASSEE!” Sometimes, she’d run downstairs, grab some paper rupees or change, and run out to buy the mango lassi he offered. In Ireland, she knew it was time to go to work when the little red boat came puttering around the bend of the inlet. And here, at her coffee shop, watching the birds land around the tables looking for food, she knew it was time to look for the woman she called Miss Ma’am.

Right on cue, after the birds took off, Miss Ma’am came shuffling into view, wearing a purple blouse and sweater over a long skirt that matched the purple head scarf wrapped around her thick, silver hair. She wore her hair down today. Miss Ma’am looked like a painting from a time no one ever thought about anymore. Like the one she found in Louisiana that was unsigned and dated “1918.” Four black women wore hats made only for church Sundays, while the fifth wore a white, silky looking doily and a look of utter joy in her eyes. Three of the women stared pointedly at the doily wearing woman, while another looked just over her head with pursed lips. Elicia remembered thinking the doily looked like something that belonged underneath a glass of tea or lemonade, but somehow it also looked perfect on the woman. She felt bad for the oddly joyful looking woman, until she saw the title of the painting was “Only God Sees the Heart.” After a while she forgot about it until three years ago when she saw Miss Ma’am the first time and immediately thought the doily headed woman had come to life. 

Elicia watched as Miss Ma’am took her regular seat at the small ornate metal table with the matching chair. Sometimes, there was a second chair across from her that she moved farther away. She used to sit at the table closest to the sidewalk whenever the sun was out and closer to the shop door whenever it rained. Elicia figured the shop owner must have installed the awning to deter the birds from flying inside where the pastries were and to give Miss Ma’am shelter from both the sun and the rain. That’s what she hoped for anyway. In any case, although she never smiled, she never looked upset or mean. Elicia hadn’t watched her closely or with so much intensity to notice if she smiled, but she did notice that Miss Ma’am never spoke or initiated a conversation with anyone. She responded whenever someone said hello by making eye contact and tilting her head slightly. After a while, someone would buy her a cup of coffee and a pastry, which Elicia noticed she would leave sitting across from her untouched. Every once in a while, she wanders around the tables outside, looking at the ground. She said good morning to her once, and even though Miss Ma’am didn’t verbalize her response, Elicia smiled when she stopped next to her to look under her table. She was so excited that she stood up and looked with Miss Ma’am under and around her table. When each woman found nothing, Elicia sat back down and watched as Miss Ma’am took light steps back to her own table.

Elicia had been watching Miss Ma’am for three years now. The longest she had ever stayed anywhere was two years and nine months in India. But here she was back in America, in a city she no longer liked, doing a job she was so good at that she was offered a managerial position. But she became restless after three years of tolerating her work and living somewhere she promised she’d never stay, and waited for a sign to tell her it was time to leave. So restless, that her legs moved constantly whenever she sat anywhere for a period of time. The only reason she had stayed this long was that Raymond had promised her they would get married whenever she was ready and because when Elicia saw Miss Ma’am the first time, her silver-white hair was shaved close to her head, and she was wearing a purple sari with a pair of Timberland boots. Her skin was the color of a dark mocha latte, and her eyes were an incredibly bright brown that she blinked slowly whenever anyone approached her. 

The first time Elicia saw Miss Ma’am she watched as an older lady came up to her table and said something with a pleasant smile. Miss Ma’am tensed up as if waiting for a harsh word, or a shooing of the hand, but when nothing happened, she blinked slowly at the woman, who walked away with a smile on her face. Elicia was mesmerized. That was three years, a buzz cut, and different shades of purple ago. In that time, Elicia had gotten better at her job, lost a man who actually thought she loved coffee more than him (good riddance), planned her next adventure, scrapped those plans, made other plans, canceled them, and learned to wrangle in her restlessness and make it more manageable by participating in the world around her. She knew she had to thank Miss Ma’am for that last part, so she thanked her silently by watching her hair grow out, the seasons change and appreciating shades of purple she never knew existed. Lately though, she started feeling restless again, even though the urge to keep going hadn’t taken over her yet and that made her even more nervous. 

Elicia noticed in the last year that whenever Miss Ma’am wasn’t sitting in her regular spot or was sitting beyond her sight, a tiny bird landed on the table across from her. Eventually, the bird went to Elicia’s table and sat there watching her eat breakfast or wait for her to leave her food alone. Once, when she spilled a good amount of coffee and returned with a wad of napkins, she saw the bird standing before her coffee cake, taking minuscule nibbles from one corner. After that, the bird, smaller than her fist, sat on the empty side of Elicia’s table and stared at the street or even looked directly at her until she pushed a small corner of her pastry over or until Elicia looked away, not wanting to share her food. No matter what, Elicia always left food for the tiny creature to eat. She didn’t move much when the little thing landed because she wanted to watch it nibble, fly away, then return, as it always did. For someone as restless as Elicia Burton, whose legs moved constantly underneath the table, watching a tiny bird develop a routine meant more than any adventure that she could imagine. 

Elicia looked at the clock on the shop wall again. It was time to catch her train. Even though the stop was just across the street from her, she sometimes missed her train since the bird had shown up and Miss Ma’am seemed to have left. Like the kids in Bali, The Lassi Man in India, and waiting for the red boat to appear in Ireland, the pattern was becoming too familiar. Since there was too much to look forward to, there was also too much that would be disappointing if it ever ended. It was time to go, but she wasn’t sure where to go yet. As she crossed the street and saw the train coming, she looked one last time for the bird and found nothing. Then she saw Miss Ma’am sitting under the awning, staring at the street. A slow-moving thought started to develop in her mind: what if the woman dressed in purple, with no name, beautiful silver hair, and rich chocolate skin, turned into the bird when Elicia wasn’t looking? What if the woman who won’t tell anyone her name or look anyone in the eye, what if she becomes the tiny bird, lands on tables at the coffee shop, and waits. And what if when she’s a stoic, beautiful old woman and walks around the same tables looking for something, what if she’s just looking for a place to land.

Shirina Lee Edwin is a US Marine Corps veteran and an Athabascan Indian from Alaska who, at the age of eleven, learned to swim, won a gold medal, hugged Jesse Owens, and got lost in Disneyland for eight hours. Fearing she may have peaked that year, she takes great joy in being described as “deceptively complex.” She includes “traveling” as anything more than 100 miles away from home, with living in parts of the world she used to fantasize about as a child. Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Annie Dillard are a few writers who influence her life and writing.