Саманта Швеблин: Mouthful of Birds

The third night after Silvia’s call, before I went home, I stopped to look in the birdcages hanging from a pet store’s awning. None of the birds looked like the sparrow I’d seen at Silvia’s house. They were all brightly colored, and in general a little bigger. I stood there for a while until a salesman came over to ask me if I was interested in any of the birds. I said no, absolutely not, that I was just looking. He stayed nearby, moving boxes around and looking out toward the street, and then he realized I really wasn’t going to buy anything and he went back to the counter.

At home, Sara was waiting on the sofa, upright in her yoga position. We greeted each other.

“Hi, Sara.”

“Hi, Dad.”

Her rosy cheeks were fading, and she didn’t look as healthy as she had on previous days. I made my food, sat down on the sofa, and turned on the TV. After a while Sara said:

“Daddy…”

I swallowed what I was chewing and turned down the volume on the TV, unsure whether she had really spoken, but there she was, her legs pressed together and her hands on her knees, looking at me.

“What?”

“Do you love me?”

I made a movement with my hand and accompanied it with a nod. The whole gesture together meant Yes, of course. She was my daughter, right? And just in case, thinking mostly about what my ex-wife would have considered “appropriate,” I said:

“Yes, sweetheart. Of course.”

And then Sara smiled and looked out at the yard for the rest of the TV show.

We slept badly again, Sara pacing her room end-to-end, me tossing and turning in bed until I finally drifted off. The next day I called Silvia. It was Saturday, but she didn’t answer the phone. I called back later, and again around noon. I left a message. Sara spent the whole morning sitting on the sofa looking out at the yard. Her hair was a little disheveled and she wasn’t sitting up so straight anymore; she looked very tired. I asked her if she was all right and she said:

“Yes, Dad.”

“Why don’t you go out to the yard for a while?”

“No, Dad.”

Thinking of our conversation the night before, it occurred to me to ask if she loved me, but right away that struck me as pure stupidity. I called Silvia again. I left another message. In a low voice, making sure Sara couldn’t hear me, I said to her voice mail:

“It’s urgent, please.”

We waited, each of us at our end of the sofa, with the TV on. A few hours later Sara said:

“Excuse me, Dad.”

She went to her room and closed the door. I turned off the TV so I could hear better: Sara didn’t make a noise. I decided I’d call Silvia one more time. I picked up the receiver, but when I heard the dial tone I hung up. I drove the car to the pet store, looked for a salesperson, and told him I needed a small bird, the smallest he had. The salesman opened a catalogue with photographs and said that prices and food varied from one species to the next.

“Do you like exotic species, or do you prefer more household ones?”

I pounded the counter with my open palm. Everything displayed on the counter jumped and the clerk was silent, looking at me. I pointed to a small, dark bird that was moving nervously from one side of its cage to another. They charged me a hundred twenty pesos and gave it to me in a square, green cardboard box with little holes poked through it, and on the lid, a pamphlet from the breeder with the photo of the bird. They also tried to give me a free bag of birdseed, but I turned it down.

When I got home Sara was still in her room. For the first time since she’d been in the house, I went upstairs and opened her door. She was sitting on the bed across from the open window. She looked at me. Neither of us said anything. She was so pale she looked sick. The room was clean and neat, the door to the bathroom ajar. There were some thirty shoe boxes in a neat pile on the desk, but flattened so they didn’t take up so much space. The cage hung empty near the window. On the night table, next to the lamp, was the framed photo she’d brought from her mother’s house. The bird moved and its feet scratched the cardboard, but Sara stayed still. I placed the box on the desk, and without a word I left the room and closed the door. Then I realized I didn’t feel very good. I leaned against the wall to rest a moment. I looked at the breeder’s pamphlet, which was still in my hand. On the back was information about how to care for the bird, and about its reproduction cycles. They emphasized the species’ need to be in pairs during warm months, and the things one could do to make the years in captivity as pleasant as possible. I heard a brief shriek, and then the bathroom sink turned on. When the water started running I felt a little better, and I knew that, somehow, I would make it down the stairs.

The Christmas when Santa Claus spent the night at our house was the last time we were all together. Mom and Dad stopped fighting after that night, but I don’t think it was because of Santa. Dad had sold his car a few months before because he’d lost his job, but he said a good Christmas tree was important that year, and he bought one even though Mom was against it. The tree came in a long, flat cardboard box, along with an instruction sheet explaining how to fit the three parts together and spread the branches open so they looked natural. Once the tree was assembled, it was taller than Dad, really huge, and I think that’s one of the reasons why Santa slept at our house that year. I had asked for a remote-control car for Christmas. Any would do; I wasn’t after any model in particular. The problem was that almost all the kids at school had them, and when we played at recess, the remote-control cars did nothing but crash into the regular toy cars like mine. So I had written my letter to Santa, and Dad had taken me to the post office so I could mail it. And he told the guy at the window:

“We’re mailing this to Santa Claus,” and he handed him the envelope.

The guy at the window didn’t even greet us because there were a lot of people and you could see he was tired from so much work. The Christmas season must be the worst time of year for those guys. He took the letter, looked at it, and said:

“Zip code’s missing.”

“But it’s for Santa Claus,” said Dad, and he smiled and winked. You could see he was trying to make friends, but the guy said:

“Won’t go out without a zip code.”

“Now, you know Santa Claus’s address doesn’t have a zip code,” said Dad.

“Won’t go out without a zip code,” said the guy, and he called the next person.

And then Dad climbed over the counter, grabbed the guy by his shirt collar, and the letter went out.

So I was worried on Christmas Eve, because I didn’t know if my letter had made it to Santa or not. Plus, we hadn’t been able to count on Mom for almost two months, and that had me worried, too, because the one who took care of things was always Mom, and things worked well that way. But one day she stopped caring, just like that, from one day to the next. She went to see some doctors; Dad always went with her and I stayed next door at Marcela’s house. But Mom didn’t get better. Then there were no more clean clothes, no more cereal and milk in the mornings. Dad dropped me off late wherever I had to go, and then he’d be late again to pick me up. When I asked for an explanation, Dad said that Mom wasn’t sick and she didn’t have cancer and she wasn’t going to die. That something like that could very well have happened, but he wasn’t such a lucky man. Marcela explained that Mom had simply stopped believing in things, and that that was called being “depressed.” It made you not have any desire for anything, and it would take a while to go away. Mom didn’t go to work anymore or get together with girlfriends or talk on the phone with Grandma. She just sat in her robe in front of the TV and flipped through channels all morning, all afternoon, and all night. I was in charge of feeding her. Marcela left food in the freezer with the portions labeled. I had to combine them: I couldn’t, for example, give Mom all the potato casserole and then the whole vegetable tart; I had to combine the portions so her diet would be healthy. I thawed out the food in the microwave and brought it to her on a tray, with a glass of water and silverware. Mom said: