A Girl, Stagnant, Asks Her Backyard for Options

by Leah Skay

1

Sadie Mae, a pug with a muscular back and weak joints, is old and blind. She’s got a lot of problems: a sensitive stomach, persistent ear infections, itchy feet that she chews incessantly, but the eyes are the worst of it. Black melting gumdrops with green crust caked into the folds; she can’t see worth shit. The medication helps for a day, but the dryness returns and her eyes crust over again before the next dose. She stands in the backyard of her new home, vaguely familiar with the locations of trees and fenceposts. We guide her around for the first few days. She’s anxious about leaving the deck, pacing back and forth until someone tells her she’ll be okay. Good girl. It’s okay, I’m anxious too. She stands in the backyard for the first time on her own and trots back towards the house. She understands the perimeter, not the whole. She prances, her head swiveling as if looking for something, and collides with the stone firepit in the side of the yard. Sadie no, not that way! If her pug face wasn’t flat before, it is now. She recoils, stunned by the impact, and backs into a plastic lawn chair. Pivot, turn, retreat. Another plastic lawn chair. She’s trapped in a cage she can’t see and waits for someone to retrieve her. Someone is coming, right?

2

A bumblebee, heavy with pollen from a fresh forage in the garden, comes to inspect the floral pattern on my dress. My little friend hovers near my knee, bobbing like a balloon with half the helium leaked out. When they weigh themselves down like this, working too hard for their own good, I stroke their bodies with one finger. Hi there, friend. As long as I don’t touch the wings, the bee remains unfazed by my touch. They’re soft, fuzzy like yellow tennis balls, and harmless by most definitions: no teeth, no stinger. The only time they hurt me is when I stick my hand out the car window on a leisurely afternoon and one flies by, minding its own business, and crashes into my hand at 60 miles an hour — Holy fuck I think I just got shot. The welt lasts for a few hours. This bumblebee lingering near my dress keeps bumping into me like it thinks persistence will make the flower manifest into something tangible. It never happens. What are you doing? Give up, buddy. It’s not going to happen. It floats off sometime later and probably finds something else somewhere. At least, I hope it does. 

3

A cardinal, with matted and missing red feathers from his forehead, crashes into the kitchen window. He perches on the spindly branches of a young tree, stares at the glass, and charges full force. Thwack. The hell was that? Was that a bird? He collapses to the mulch, freshly damp from a midsummer rain the night before, and flutters back up onto the branch. He tries again. Thwack. I stand in the kitchen, investigating what seems like nothing, until he does it again. Thwack. I turn towards the dining table, where the windows lined with striped café curtains overlook the backyard, and I catch him readying another jump. Dipping his head forward with his wings ready for the initial liftoff, we lock eyes. Or at least I think we do. He jumps again and falls. Dude, stop! What are you doing, dumbass bird? 

He comes back the next day and most days following with the same routine. Jump, hit, fall, repeat: a persistent, bloody ragdoll. I hear that if a cardinal comes by, it’s actually a spiritual visitor from heaven. I don’t know where I heard it, who from, or if I believe them, but the ongoing war between this cardinal and my kitchen windows is too specific to not have some sort of intention behind it. I stand out in the backyard. Alright, you’ve got my attention. What do you want from me? The bird ignores me and keeps on chucking his limp, stained body against the glass. The window, from this angle, isn’t opaque. It’s a perfect square reflection of the sky. Stop hitting it! It’s not real. I rig the curtain to cover the whole window with some fishing wire. The reflection distorts, clearly showing red stripes instead of white clouds. The cardinal leaves for a few days, and when he returns, he dives headfirst into the window as if he can still see the sky. I don’t know. Maybe he can.