Bird by Noy Holland

that one then and could I have that one again? Puh-uh-lee-zah?
    The baby’s nursing, which makes Bird weepy.
    Somebody quick say why.
    They move from tub to rocker, the rocker beside the window, the bus whistling down the hill.
    I want that one.
    Wasn’t that how it felt—not so long ago—looking out over the Lucite bins where all the born babies in the hospital slept or were fed or cried?
    That one.
    â€œWhen I was a born baby,” the baby will come to say. “When I was a baby that died.”
    I want that one.
    Say may I. Say please.
    Bird thinks of Doll Doll—picking pups out, pickingTuk. Of picking Mickey, Bird crossing the room with her shoe in her hand. I want that one. Bop you between the eyes.
    Get your lucky bone out, get your talisman.
    That one there is mine. This one?
    In a mood, Bird is, wanting. Like to take off. Like to scream.
    She took her babies out to Coney Island, to the aquarium there beside the sea. Her two.
    Used to light out. Ride out there with the dog, she and Mickey. Let the dog swim. Come the cold months. Get in under the boardwalk, let his pants down. Smell the sea. Little bit. Sit out on a towel by the water.
    I want that one.
    Sweet time. Sweet little way of living.
    She’s got the more always, got the gimmes . Wants the old life, wants the new. All the many dips and surges, she wants, the stations of alarm and bliss. The luxury of a day to kill taking a bath with the baby. Kissing on the baby. Kissing her fancy man. Four days, she wants, in bed with him, every meal delivered. Créme brulee and cocktails. Wax paper packets of junk. Have a romp. Ask it in—all the old somebody elses they have been, everything they hoard.
    Quick now. You fly through!
    Waaaa. Nothing but heat and sunshine.
    Come the cold months, nobody out there. Come the sunshine beside the sea.
    She gets the tab of Mickey’s zipper down, gets the buttonslipped out through the buttonhole and she can’t see him yet, she waits to see him, she waits, and he is rising up. Oh, hi. Lifting out of his britches. Pleased to see you, sir. Hello, hi .
    I want that one.
    Who boy. Boy do I , Bird thinks.
    She kisses the baby’s toes. The bottoms of her feet, wrinkled from the tub, her little wrinkled hands. Bird dresses the baby in her sparkle dress, her little beaded shoes. Props her up among pillows on the couch, takes a picture. Takes a dozen more.
    The day passing. Pfft!
    She goes through the Family Album, the snapshots buckled and blotchy between the plastic sleeves. They are orderly, chronological; she has sorted them some by color. Not the old life, but the new. Not the wedding, even, but the babies. Everything else is loose—Bird as a kid among horses, the snapshot of Mickey’s dog. The picture she took of Tuk and Doll Doll, Doll Doll on the hood of the Ryder truck with bobby pins in her hair. Her legs bloodied. Her belly rounding up under her culotte.
    A mess. The passing of years unrecorded—but Bird records them now.
    This then this then this then this. Turns the page.
    She finds the one of her boy at Coney Island, the aquarium there beside the sea. Belugas turning circles in the murk, the tank Lucite so they can see.
    â€œThey are watching a movie of us and we are watching a movie of them and everybody’s happy,” her boy had said.
    And it was true, or could seem to be true: the whales had smooth impish faces. They were at play, smiling through the murk, coming around again.
    They were never going to get very good at that part, Mickey and Bird weren’t: at coming around again. Not at once, she thinks, not together. Not a movie to take your children to, nothing to show your ma: the little gougings, the wreck of the way they lived.
    Hot blue bramble of welder’s sparks. A boat passing. Everything is blue.
    Pretty yourself how you used to, Bird. I’ll take you back to Paris. I’ll take you to Timbuktu.
    Bird slips her hand between her legs and sees