Саманта Швеблин: Mouthful of Birds

He doesn’t even have time to lift his foot when he realizes something strange is happening. He looks toward the doors and then, as if a sudden wind had breached the locks, the doors open and hundreds of butterflies of every color and size rush out toward the waiting parents. He thinks they might attack him; maybe he thinks he’s going to die. The other parents don’t seem to be afraid, and the butterflies just flutter among them. The last one comes out, lagging behind the others, and joins them.

Calderón stands looking at the open doors and through the windows of the main hall, at the silent classrooms. Some parents are still crowding in front of the doors and shouting the names of their children. Then the butterflies, all of them in just a few seconds, fly off in different directions. The parents try to catch them.

Calderón, on the other hand, stands motionless. He can’t bring himself to lift his foot from the one he has killed. He is, perhaps, afraid of recognizing his girl’s colors in its dead wings.

I turned off the TV and looked out the window. Silvia’s car was parked in front of my house, its emergency lights blinking. As I stood there wondering whether there was any real possibility of not answering the door, the bell rang again: she knew I was home. I went to the door and opened it.

“Silvia.”

“Hello,” she said, and came inside before I could get another word out. “We have to talk.”

She pointed me to my own sofa and I obeyed, because sometimes, when the past knocks at the door and treats me like the past four years haven’t happened, it turns out I’m still a dumbass.

“You’re not going to like this. It’s… It’s intense.” She looked at her watch. “It’s about Sara.”

“It’s always about Sara,” I said.

“You’ll just say I’m exaggerating, and that I’m crazy and all that. But there’s no time today. You’re coming home with me right now, you’ve got to see this with your own eyes.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Plus, I told Sara you were coming, so she’s waiting for you.”

We sat in silence a moment. I was wondering what the next step would be, until she frowned, stood up, and walked to the door. I picked up my coat and followed her out.

From outside the house looked the same as always, the lawn newly mown and Silvia’s azaleas hanging from the second-floor balconies. We both got out of our cars and went inside without exchanging a word. Sara was sitting on the sofa. Although she’d finished classes for the year, she was wearing her high school uniform. The way she filled it out, she looked like those porno schoolgirls in magazines. She was sitting straight up, legs together and her hands on her knees, focusing on some point on the window or out in the yard like she was doing one of her mother’s yoga exercises. She had always been fairly pale and thin, but now she seemed to be brimming with health. Her legs and arms looked stronger, as if she’d been working out for several months. Her hair shone and her cheeks were slightly flushed, like blush but real. When she saw me come in she smiled and said:

“Hi, Dad.”

Although my little girl really was a sweetheart, two words were all it took for me to realize that something was really off with the kid, and I was sure it had something to do with her mother. Sometimes I think I should have brought her to live with me, but I almost always think otherwise. Not far from the TV, beside the window, there was a cage. It was a birdcage—maybe a foot and a half tall—that hung from the ceiling, empty.

“What’s that?”

“A cage,” Sara said, and smiled.

Silvia motioned for me to follow her to the kitchen. We stood by the window and she checked to make sure Sara wasn’t listening. The girl was still sitting bolt upright on the sofa, looking out toward the street as if we’d never arrived. Silvia spoke to me in a low voice.

“Look, you’re going to have to take this calmly.”

“Come on, Silvia, stop jerking me around. What’s going on?”

“I haven’t fed her since yesterday.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“So you’ll see with your own eyes.”

“Uh-huh… Are you crazy?”

She told me to follow her back to the living room, where she pointed me to the sofa. I sat down across from Sara. Silvia left the house, and we saw her cross in front of the window and go into the garage.

“What’s going on with your mom?”

Sara shrugged her shoulders. Her straight black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she had thick bangs that hung down almost over her eyes.

Silvia returned with a shoe box. She carried it level, in both hands, as if it held something delicate. She went to the birdcage and opened it, then took from the shoe box a very small sparrow, the size of a golf ball; she put the bird into the cage and closed it. She dropped the box to the floor and kicked it to one side, where it lay with another nine or ten similar boxes under the desk. Then Sara got up, her ponytail shining and bouncing, and skipped over to the cage like a little girl five years younger. With her back to us, standing on her tiptoes, she opened the cage and took out the bird. I couldn’t see what she did. The bird screeched and she struggled a moment, maybe because it was trying to escape. Silvia covered her mouth with her hand. When Sara turned back to us, the bird wasn’t there anymore. Her mouth, nose, chin, and both hands were smeared with blood. She smiled sheepishly. Her gigantic mouth arched and opened, and her red teeth made me jump to my feet. I ran to the bathroom, locked the door, and vomited into the toilet. I thought Silvia would follow me and start laying blame and ordering me around from the other side of the door, but she didn’t. I rinsed my mouth and face and stood in front of the mirror, listening. I heard them carry something heavy down the stairs. The front door opened and closed a few times. Sara asked if she could have the photo that was on the shelf. Silvia said yes, and her voice was already distant. I came out of the bathroom trying not to make noise, and I peered into the hallway. The front door was wide open, and Silvia was loading the birdcage into the backseat of my car. I took a few steps with the intention of going outside and shouting a few choice things, but Sara came out of the kitchen and onto the street, and I stopped short so she wouldn’t see me. They hugged. Silvia kissed her and put her into the passenger seat. I waited until she’d come back inside and closed the door.

“What the hell?”

“You’re taking her.”

She went to the desk and started to flatten and fold the empty boxes.

“My god, Silvia, your daughter eats birds!”

“I can’t do it anymore.”

“She eats birds! Have you taken her to the doctor? What in hell does she do with the bones?”

Silvia stood looking at me, disconcerted.

“I guess she swallows them, too. I don’t know if birds…” she said, and she stood looking at me.

“I can’t take her.”

“One more day with her and I’ll kill myself. I’ll kill her, and then I’ll kill myself.”

“She eats birds!”

Silvia went into the bathroom and locked the door. I looked out through the picture window. Sara waved happily to me from the car. I tried to calm down. I tried to come up with something that would help me take a few stumbling steps toward the door, praying that in the time it took to reach it I would go back to being an ordinary man, a fastidious and organized guy who was capable of spending ten minutes in front of a shelf of cans in the supermarket, making sure the peas he’s buying are really the most suitable ones. I thought about how, considering there are people who eat people, eating live birds wasn’t so bad. Also, from a natural point of view it was healthier than drugs, and from a social one, it was easier to hide than a pregnancy at thirteen. But I’m pretty sure that until I reached for the car door handle I went on thinking, She eats birds, she eats birds, she eats birds, on and on.