Flutter

It was another blistering Florida summer, probably sometime in July. I was about ten years old at the time; it was about then when I had started to seclude myself back into the house more often than not, swimming with my neighbor didn’t have the same allure as it had when we were both androgynous children. We used make up new poses to strike mid-air over the glistening water together, the Kangaroo, the Starburst, the Egyptian. He eventually came over less and less, both of us separating ourselves inside the adjacent houses, peering out over our sun basked, empty yard.

            I never understood why my dad felt that summertime was the best time to do yard work, he still worked just as much as any other season but the heat was stifling thereabouts and work had lost what little “allure” it may have had, to me anyway. I always felt that my dad had laid out an expectation of me to be both a son and a daughter to him. People used to seem envious of me being an only child at times, “you get all the presents” they would say, “you don’t have to deal with a little brother/sister” or vice versa. It’s true that Christmas time remained my favorite holiday for a reason, but there is a completely different level of expectation from being the only daughter: you don’t have that older brother to mow the lawn or clean the pool or lay out the splintery mulch in the garden beds (my least favorite chore). No siblings to hide your naughtiness, either I might add. Working in the yard eventually became a way for my dad to get me out of the house while doing what he could to bond with me, in his own way that I never understood then. I gained my omniscient eye from him, I think.

            “Go turn on the sprinkler.” He told me, back bent over the pool as the beads of sweat trickled down off one wrinkled surface onto another. Groaning and rolling my eyes at his demand, I turned and flung the pool gate shut behind me with a clatter. The sun dappled my skin as I bounded across the driveway into the front yard where the sprinkler sat caking in the afternoon sunlight. It was a fairly standard sprinkler, nothing fancy, it was zip-tied to the top of a faded red milk crate so the grass couldn’t get stuffed up in the mechanics. I kicked it several paces across the tall grass, making sure it was in the middle before meandering back to the spigot against the house. The only way to find the faucet was by reaching behind an expansive holly bush, full of prickly, waxy leaves and those weird pastel blue berries. Too many times had I been scratched on the fringes of its grasp, so I squished as close to the house as possible while looking into my bedroom window and seeing the tiny knickknacks on the sill inside.

            When I glanced to my left, I saw her. I clung tight against the wall, and held a tighter breath within my chest as I peered through the dark leaves. In a small nest of twigs and grass, there sat a female cardinal in a small crevice beneath the canopy of short branches. Not two feet from the shaded faucet, the bird rustled aimlessly and picked at its rosy brown feathers with its rosier beak. Presumably she concealed three or four small eggs, speckled brown and about the size of my trembling finger beneath her ruffled down. Whatever it was that I felt in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to move from that spot with my eyes fixed on this creature. Hesitantly, as softly as I could, I whispered. I felt a little crazy; I had grown out of my ditzy, childish scatterbrain and found this strange sentience with myself in those lost summers in the house.

“It’s okay.” The words creaked from my throat. She twitched in the bush, and so did I when my expectation of haphazard fluttering went unrequited. I spoke again, my eyes transfixed, explaining to her my intentions. Again and again I murmured to the bird, inching my fingers forward glacially with no other sound but my breath hanging in the air. My hand soon fumbled onto the metal spout, and moved it grudgingly beneath my fingers and saw the sprinkler sputter happily to life through the screen of the holly bush. I exited as slowly as I entered, backed around the far corner of the house and let out my caged breath.

Maybe I was fooling myself, surely the bird couldn’t understand the subtle whispers that escaped my lips, but it makes you wonder. She sat still, natural, as I curved around unnoticed. I felt like a piece of glass reflecting the scene around me, merely distorting the quiet afternoon sun. After a moment of watching the water twinkle down over the grass in arcs, the bird gazing out mildly from her recluse, I flitted around to the backyard again to find my dad, listening a little more keenly to the soft rustles in the trees.