Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(10)

My house is three miles from campus. On a good day, that can be a pleasant walk, almost enjoyable in its predictability. I know the route well enough that I don’t need to watch where I’m going; instead, I can keep my eyes turned upward.

Ten and eleven are waiting for me on the corner, big black birds that take off when they see me coming. Twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are pecking at the gravel of the median when I turn. Fifteen caws at me from a power line. Sixteen and seventeen peek down from a rooftop. Eighteen flies back, dark wings across the horizon, and then nineteen is looking at me, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, fearless. It does not care that I am bigger than it is. It does not care that I am a human being.

I stop walking. The crow remains.

“Nineteen,” I say. The crow remains.

Nineteen has always been unclear to me. I look at the crow, and the crow looks at me, and nineteen is not for an unasked question; this far into the rhyme, the questions have all been asked. The questions are clear.

“Nineteen is for the one who wronged you,” I whisper, and the rest of the rhyme comes clear. It was only ever missing that single piece, that revelation around which everything else turned.

Nineteen is for the one who wronged you, and I’m running, I’m running; the crow takes off in a flurry of feathers and still I’m running as hard as I can toward home.

The twentieth crow flies by and twenty is for a place to stand, and still I’m running.

The twenty-first is a jay in a hedge, and twenty-one’s all you have to offer, and still I’m running.

The twenty-second is another crow, this one perched on the edge of my birdbath, the birdbath where I counted most of my way to nine. It caws and takes off at the sight of me, black wings beating like a disembodied heart, and I’m home. I’m home. I don’t need to run anymore, and I know what the twenty-second crow means. I understand everything. I close the door behind myself and head for the kitchen. Everything I need is there.


Hours pass before the front door opens. I’ve been sitting on the stairs the whole time, waiting. I hear my mother’s voice. She’s talking to someone, speaking softly, struggling to offer a comfort that shouldn’t be asked of her, not yet, not with my brother’s death so fresh that it still burns when I try to think about it. She should be free to mourn, not tethered to someone who doesn’t understand that her pain matters as much, if not more, than his.

Carl’s voice is under hers, a low rumble of discontent. I stay where I am, waiting for the moment when they come around the bend in the hall and see me there. Carl, face still bruised beneath his bandages, scowls immediately.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“David should have been in school,” I say. He winces, looking ashamed.

My mother just looks sad. “Let us by, please, Brenda,” she says. “Carl needs to rest.”

I don’t argue. I simply stand and walk back up to the landing, where I watch as she leads him up the stairs, supporting him every step of the way. He glares at me when they reach the top. I look impassively back.

“Creepy-ass kid,” he says, and I say nothing, and my mother says nothing, and the crows have already been counted. They vanish into the bedroom that they share.

My mother comes back out alone a few minutes later. She pauses, looking at me, and for a moment—only a moment—I see the light that used to be there, when I was younger, when she didn’t have Carl to tell her that I was broken. I am grateful for the existence of Carl; without him, there would have been no David, and everything has been worth it, I think, to live in a world with David in it, even if it was only for a little while.

My mother says nothing. My mother walks on. I watch her go before walking down the hall to the closed door of their bedroom. It’s never locked. I turn the knob and let myself inside.

Carl is in their bed. He isn’t asleep, not yet, and he turns toward the sound of my footsteps, his eyes widening at the sight of me. “What are you doing in here?” he demands.

“One’s for sorrow,” I tell him. “You were one.”

“I swear to God, you crazy bitch—”

“Two’s for joy,” I say. “David was two.” I’m not crazy—I’ve never been crazy—but that’s a fight I’ve had and lost with him a hundred times already. I’m not here to have it again. “When you joined our family I was three, a girl, and he was four, a boy, and we were perfect. We were sixes and sevens, we were everything. But you tried to make me into a secret, never to be told, and I learned the rest of the rhyme because I had to. Don’t you understand? This is all your fault. I might have learned to live inside the ordinary numbers, if you’d let me.”

“Joyce!” he screams.

It takes me a moment to realize that Joyce is my mother’s name. She’s never been anything but Mother to me, the pale woman haunting the edges of the world, never brave enough to save me, never strong enough to let me go. I hear footsteps on the stairs. I turn my head and the door is open, and she’s watching me from the hall. My back is to her. She has to see the knife. I’m not making any effort to hide it.

She looks at it. She looks at me. She looks at Carl, lying still and halfway helpless in his bed. She knows what I am here to do.

She closes the door, and Carl and I are alone.