Bird vs. Prey

            by Sienna Swan

 

           I hold the scalpel poised over the patient’s skin, and my hand shakes. Sweat rolls down my face, my attendants look on, and I make the plunge, cutting a clean slice into the delicate surface. Making the proper adjustments, I pull the skin back together, and, inserting the suture needle through both sides, I pull the wound closed, tying each stitch carefully and deliberately. Surgery complete, I have my attendants clean up the room, as I take the patient out to recover. “DAMN IT!” I seem to have dropped the patient. Tomato innards splatter across the floor, and my attendants, three faithful border collies, clean up the mess, licking the floor clean. 20 minutes of careful surgery down the drain. What a waste.

            It is the last day of summer vacation, the last day before seventh grade, and I have spent the past few weeks carefully performing complex grafting experiments on various fruit. Sitting on the front porch of my mother’s house, I would slice and dice tomatoes, apples, pears, and blueberries, mixing and matching stems to leaves to bodies to branches. By the end of the summer, I had created a Franken-bush of sorts, a once-alive raspberry bush now hanging with limp and lifeless fruit carcasses, dangling forlornly from the branches, tied and sewn on with surgical thread and occasionally yarn. My summer, spent largely at my mother’s house, has mainly consisted of running wild, dodging in and out of various back yards, stalking the neighborhood with my dogs, cavorting with birds and reptiles, and exploring Tilden on my horse. One neighbor went so far as to call me the ‘urban wolf-child’, because I was never without a pack of dogs. I fancied myself independent, feeding myself, setting my own bedtimes, cleaning my own wounds, and deciding my plan for each day. It was not that my mom didn’t care, or wasn’t present; on the contrary, she was almost always there, trying to feed me and urging me to do normal things like hang out with friends, but I was fine as I was, with animals for company and distant friends if I needed them. I largely  ignored her, forgoing human contact in favor of solitude, checking in occasionally so she wouldn’t worry, and in return she let me do as I pleased. Being accustomed to roaming freely, it came as a harsh awakening  to realize that the next day would bring an abrupt end to my lifestyle, that the season of schedules and structure was about to begin.

            Packing my bag for my father’s, I tried to delay as long as possible, attempting to prolong the last dregs of summer. Walking the two blocks down to my father’s had become second nature for me; since my parent’s divorce two years before I had been doing it every two days, like clockwork, until summer had come as a welcome recess from the routine. With my ‘traveling dog’, Ajax, at my side, I arrive at my father’s house, the house I grew up in, and go in the front door. The table is set, dinner is cooking, and  techno music thup thup thups from behind the doors of my older sister’s room. Lucie, at 17, has decided to reside solely at my father’s, a decision I am jealous of. I notice that the table has been set for 6, and deduce that my father’s girlfriend, Paula and her two children will be joining us for dinner. Attempting to usher Ajax silently up the stairs and into my room, I am intercepted by Paula, who herds me into the kitchen to talk to the assembled crowd. Her daughters stand uncomfortably by the counter, shifting nervously. After about 6 months of our parent’s dating, we still haven’t found much in common, and we stand in relative silence, all of us wishing we were somewhere else. This has happened before, many times in fact, but this time something is different, a little off. I glance suspiciously at my father, who is busy stirring pots on the stove; I make eye contact with the older daughter, Josephine, and I know that she feels it too. Something’s up, but we have no idea what. Sitting down to dinner, our parents strike up conversation a little too quickly, making small talk and occasionally exchanging meaningful glances. Now we know that something is in the works; the dialogue is a little too studied, the glances a little too often. Dinner ends, they leave, and I go to bed, dreading the day ahead.

 

            A few weeks into school and I am back into the tedious routine, but my feelings of unease have not abated. After several hushed closet conferences with Josephine, we had come to the conclusion that things were about to change, probably for the worst. We are constantly on guard for an announcement of any kind, holding our breath at any quiet moment, any serious turn in the conversation, both dreading and anticipating the “talk” that was sure to come. When my father took me to a dentist appointment one fall afternoon, I thought I was in the clear. After all, I was full of novicane, barely conscious, and we were in a public place, without Paula or her girls. Sitting down in the park, my dad began to talk to me in the serious tones I had been dreading. Alarm bells sounded in my head, and all I could think was ‘this is all wrong’. I had imagined this completely differently, with both Paula and my Father sitting all of us down at the dinner table and joyously giving the news that….the news that what? I had been so focused on the delivery of the news that I had forgotten to obsess over the news itself. My dad was still talking, but I wasn’t really listening.  Tuning in, I caught the words “moving” “wedding” and “new”. That is all I needed to hear to know that the great divide between my two lives was about to become a lot more pronounced, and that things were about to change, big time. This was divorce, phase two, and I was about to delve into the fray with no prior experience and only a dog for company. Things were about to get bad.

 

            On the way to my dad’s new house, the car stalls a total of four times: an omen, I’m sure of it. We pull up against the curb, and my stomach sinks. There, above what seems to be millions of stairs, towers a stucco fortress; a colossal, bland, and thoroughly uninviting house. As we climb up past piles of ivy, I enquire as to the whereabouts of my soon to be stepsisters.

             “Oh, they already looked through it..They’re very..enthusiastic” my dad responds in an offhand manner, swinging open the gate into the back yard. Silently, I doubt the truth of his claims. “Now, the realtor isn’t here yet, so we’ll just have to peer through the windows….see, this’ll be your room! Isn’t it…cute?! It is, isn’t it?! Look, it’s got it’s own..bathroo-well, it just has a sink, but we’ll fix that, won’t we! And you can paint it! ANY COLOR!” My normally composed father appears to have lost his mind, his voice climbing in pitch as my eyes narrow to slits.

             “THIS is my room? That’s not a bedroom...that’s a...I don’t even know what that is, but it’s not a bedroom” . My gaze falls back into the room. The open-house stagers hadn’t known what to do with this room either: apparently they had settled on something between a breakfast nook and a sunroom, despite the lack windows (save the porthole we were now peering through). A small table, awkwardly placed in the middle of the room, is brimming with plastic fruit and flowers; the flimsy chair beside it reflects the alarming puce of the walls off its shiny white frame. My dad, franticly overcompensating, reels off a list of improvements that will soon be made.

             “Well, first we’ll get you a little TV, then a nice bed frame, maybe some shelves..to put your new stereo on! Just until I can build an addition, then you can move into that...twice as big!” We both know that these things will never happen; he seems to have forgotten that I don’t really want a stereo, that I already have a perfectly nice bed frame, the only show I watch is ‘unsolved mysteries’, that Paula had put a stop to that when she walked in on me riveted to an especially grisly episode featuring a dismembered cub scout. The room itself is not what is upsetting me. It’s bad, but not Cinderella bad, nothing I wouldn’t learn to live with. What’s really getting to me, putting a lump in my throat and a distinct wobble in my voice, is that I obviously have no control over the situation. The house has been bought, the rooms assigned, and I really have no power to change it. For a girl who has been spoiled with relative independence, I can tell this is not going to be an easy transition to make.

            After about three weeks of shuttling back and forth from my mother’s north Berkeley home to my father’s new house in the hills, both my parents and I are ready to call it quits. Nobody is happy; my father and Paula are both stressed and nervous about their upcoming wedding, Paula’s daughters are moody, my own sister won’t talk to anyone, and my mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  After I broke the news to her about my father’s impending nuptials, she flew into a frenzy, calling my father and speaking in hushed, thoroughly outraged tones for 15 minutes, hissing “I just don’t see WHY  you couldn’t have told me before” every other sentence, until the line went dead. Upon hearing that he would be vacating the house I had grown up in, she instantly picked up the phone again, and bargained her way into moving into his house, formerly their house, seconds after he had moved out. So here I am, with my mother in my father’s house, my father in a stranger’s house, and strangers in my mother’s house. What had once been a fastidiously organized and stylish house turned literally overnight into what my mother’s old apartment had been: messy, chaotic and comfortable. My father’s living room, once outfitted in stylish velvet furniture and matching drapes, now held mismatched furniture and a pen full of wormy puppies. Within days, the hallways were painted a dramatic deep red over their former yellow, and all traces of my father’s residence there were systematically removed. Knowing my father would have a complete conniption if he saw what had become of his former home, I keep him away at all costs, often resorting to ‘Parent Trap” –like measures to make sure he never comes visiting. He has left a fair amount of belongings at the house, and most have fallen prey to the black hole that is my mom’s house. When he calls one day after school, I just assume he’s looking for that spatula that he’s been pursuing for a while now. Answering the phone, I scan the room, hoping to cut him to the chase.

            “Heeeeeeyyy! Soo, what’s uppp?” I’m instantly on edge. He only uses this sort of language when he’s really nervous.

            “Nothiiinngg.” I reply cautiously.

            “ So, I was just wondering..who’s house do you like better? Really? You don’t need to lie, just tell me the truth..we’re just trying to work out your..well, some kinks in your schedule. Just..who do you to spend most of your time with..or even all. I mean, I don’t know what you want, maybe you want to just go back and forth and back and forth and

             “-Yours” I cut him off mid sentence. This statement isn’t necessarily true; at this point, I can’t really decide between my parents. They are polar opposites, but I love them both, so I tell him what he wants to hear, as not to hurt his feelings.

             “OH good! That’s what I thought, just checking, I’ll run that by the lawyer..perfect. Alright well-oh, have you seen that spatula? I can’t find it anywhere, it must be there..I can’t imagine where else..” My eyes come to lie on the spatula in question, resting on the floor by the litterbox, apparently having been used as a scooper. I have a suspicion that it wasn’t an accident.

            “Nope, no sir, no spatula” I lie, silently cursing how easy it was to fib. “ no spatula here. You must have it up there or something” That night, my mother gives me the same talk, clearing her throat and speaking seriously.

            “Soo..If you were to say, you know, just hypothetically, which house you like best, which do you think you would pick? Don’t worry, I won’t tell your father. Strictly confidential.”

            “Yours” I instantly blurt out. “Of course yours. It’s so much more fun!” I glance at the baby goat who is now perched on an armchair, chewing up my Spanish homework “HEY! I NEED THAT! “ 

            “Oh, leave her alone, your teacher won’t really care. So, my house, huh? Would you be interested in living here full time? “ She gives me a sidelong look over her book, gaging my reaction.

            “ Uh..maybe..yeah, I guess” I reply, wondering how I’m ever going to come up with a plausible excuse for my missing homework. “

            “Great. Perfect. I’ll try to arrange it”. I cringe, knowing that sooner or later my two lies and my two truths are soon going to come face to face, and that I will eventually have to come up with an answer: which parent to I really like best?

 

            Apparently, it had been decided that I was to do trial runs with both my parents. I don’t know what led to this, or even how it came about, but I’m so relieved at not being confronted with my double lie that I just take it.  First up, my mother’s house. This won’t be hard. How can it be? It’s just living with my mother, that’s all. People do it all the time; don’t they? Granted, most people don’t live with MY mother, the one who sleeps with an arsenal of animals and once gave me a dictionary for my birthday, but hey, a mother’s a mother. After finally becoming accustomed to the constant switching of houses, I find myself nervous at the prospect of this much time alone with my mom. What will we talk about? What if we get in a fight and I can’t leave? What happens when I get sick of her? The possibilities for catastrophe are endless. Then there’s the packing. By this time, my possessions have divided and dispersed between houses; and the recent move hasn’t made things any easier. What will I need? Well, definitely my books...6 of them should do...well, 8 to be safe. Then, the clothes. Will it be sunny? It’s been warm, so some shorts. do I have shorts there? But it might rain...a jacket...a sweater...two sweaters….hey, there’s my flower press! I should bring that...then I’ll need the kit...I should really bring this vase too, I was going to...oh, then I’ll need the tape. My mom pulls up to my father’s house to find me waiting at the curb, a duffel bag, two boxes, and a large crate at my side.

      “Jesus H!” she caws. “Where you goin’, overseas?”

      “Careful!” I exclaim as she begins to load my belongings into her truck, and I see a tupperware tip perilously towards the ground. “My tarantula’s in there!”

 My father looks on disapprovingly from behind the curtains of his house, my mother stubs her finger and curses, and I wonder if my mother, my tarantula and I will all get out of this alive.

             The first week drags by, and I begin to get restless. I’m used to variety, to change, to two different lives. The little things that I used to find cute or fun about this household now grate my nerves. The cramped living room, the lack of technology, and most of all, the bird.  My mother’s ‘third child’ is a young white cockatoo by the name of Sydney, and while I  formerly thought of her neediness as endearing, now I resent her as I would a younger sibling. She needs constant attention, praise and affection, not to mention all the vile mashes and gruels that my mother spends hours concocting. Sydney and the other animals make breakfast a complete production, causing me to be late for school almost every day. There is no way to just sit down and eat a bowl of cereal; it is sit down, get up to let the dogs out, sit down again, bat the kitten out of the milk, get up to get a spoon, sit back down to find the lovebird floundering in your bowl of now murky milk, get back up for a new bowl, sit back down, and try to eat. Usually, I can get about halfway through a bowl before the familiar waddling pitter patter of talons on hardwood gets closer, and I feel the little tug at the bottom of my pant leg, and with a questioning

 “ Whaaaaa?” Sydney announces her arrival. Then comes the piercing pain as her claws puncture my skin as she attempts to haul her way up my leg, using only her beak and what feels like shrapnel as tools. On the way up, she emits little clacks and screeches to let me know she’ll be there any minute, allowing me to prepare myself accordingly.

I know what will come next; I know what she wants, and I know she will get it. There is no one to save me; my mom is at work, my sister gone, and I’m on my own, just me and the bird. She reaches the top, and I brace myself. She settles herself on the table, and eyes my mouth.

            “Whhhaaaa?” she enquires and I can read her face like a book. The beady red eyes, the coyly puffed feathers she has ruffled in attempt to hide her intimidating beak, her foot quietly tapping the table. There is no way I’m doing it this time. Not today. No way. She starts up.

       “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh” with a cry like an anemic foghorn, she refuses to be ignored. She wants to be fed. From my mouth. Again. Uggghhh. Thirty minutes later, I arrive in class, barely late, with only a scrap of dignity and a mind full of shame.

           

            Twenty days finds me sitting down at my father’s dinner table, barely recovered from my month with my mother, and extremely apprehensive about what my “father time” will bring. The order and routine of his house have been welcome, but already all the rules and regulations of his family are beginning to kill me.

            “Sit straight in your chair!” Paula’s reprimand rings in my ears. I shift slightly to the left, intentionally not completing her demand

            “More...more...oh for god’s sake, will you just do it?!”

 I know I’m being childish, but I just can’t bring myself to obey what I consider to be such a petty and even generic request, especially from a woman perched in the lotus position on her chair. She does this, I think, just to show off, and I feel my eyes narrow and my throat swell as I slowly and purposefully swivel in my chair, continuing until I am nearly sideways off the other side. She pretends not to notice. I’ve won, in theory, but I don’t feel happy about it. Eating their ‘gourmet meal’, I stop and consider my situation. Half a week into my stay at my father’s and I’m ready to throttle his fiancée. Though I don’t want to be at my father’s I certainly don’t want to be at my mother’s either; the end of the month had ended with us at each other’s throats, and I had left quickly and with a sense of relief. Sitting in my little room, now decorated with lurid green paint and a futon mattress, I consider my predicament. Both of my parents are driving me crazy, and will continue to drive me crazy if I live with either one of them. The question is, what sort of crazy do I want to be driven? Is it wacky crazy, with unconventional scenarios and grand adventures, or is it boring crazy, with the tedious routines and the monotonous dynamics?

            In the end, I settled on a little bit of both, choosing to forgo a sedentary lifestyle for a nomadic life, wandering between the tribes of my parents, between their separate rituals and lifestyles, never settling for too long. In this way, I managed to hold on to my sanity, and probably theirs, for a little bit longer. Three days is just enough time to get things done, to visit a little, to get reacquainted,  before moving on to my other life. No feelings were hurt, no bonds were damaged, and I can enjoy the best, as well as the worst, of both worlds.