HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

    Gerald

    I am roughly seven when I claim as a pet a dead pheasant my father hunted.

    The pheasant had been shot through one eye by buck shot, so it was always red. His nest was our garage freezer, the chill lingering along his soft feather tips. I take him out often and play with him. I decide to name him Gerald.

    I love Gerald. He is the first bird I get up close with. Unlike the others, he doesn’t run away. He always keeps his feathers clean, and he is very gentle with me. Gerald is what I want to be. Now that I own him, I can have him fly to all the impossible places he never could before.

    I sit on the floor of the garage, gently petting him, imagining what his song sounded like. I hum it. It’s sweet, like Gerald. Day after day I play with him, keep him safe and never leave him out for too long in case he thaws to mush. I love his talons. They are sharp and pretty.

    He’s thin for a pheasant and my father cut off his tail. I like to imagine that he is a black sheep, like me. I think he’s the strongest pheasant ever. I like to imagine his talons can protect me from anything. I trust Gerald.

    My parents don’t like Gerald. Sometimes my mother won’t let me play with him, and threatens to throw him away often. My father doesn’t like to watch me play, so it is just me and Gerald in the garage. He always gives me a strange look whenever I go out the door. I know he thinks I’m an odd child, but I just get along with Gerald easier than with any other animal. He listens the best.

    It’s probably because he’s dead they don’t like him, but I wish they would stop trying to take him away from me. Sometimes I can’t find him. Sometimes that makes me scared.

    I get yelled at for climbing up the freezer, but I can hear Gerald at the top calling for me. My mother moved him from his nest and he is sad. The whole time my mother yells, all I can think of is how scared Gerald must have felt suddenly being yanked from his nest and thrown carelessly to the top shelf of the freezer. I found him on his side, and that’s not how he likes to sit. He likes to sit on his legs, straight up with his wings folded against his body. I’m so preoccupied with my worry about Gerald I forget to cry from my mother’s words.

    After the yelling, he is even sadder he called out for me. I tell him it was worth it. He was worth it.

    I stop telling my mother about my adventures with Gerald.

    I love Gerald because he is soft. He is quieter than a live bird and he doesn’t need much care. His feathers stay shiny from the oil on my fingers. I keep his nest nice and cozy for him so he doesn’t get lonely while I’m away.

    I love Gerald too because he can never leave. He is the one thing I have that can never abandon me. He can’t fly away. He can’t yell. All he does is sit with me and let me be gentle to him. He’ll even let me paint his nails if I ask him.

    I don’t tell people about Gerald, but nobody really listens anyways. While my classmates talk about their pets, I sit and think about Gerald’s pretty wings and how they are all sorts of brown and speckled and blue and green. I start to imagine armor for him.

    But then I come home after school and he’s gone. I ask my mother where he went and she says that since we ate all the other pheasants, he was the next. Gerald was for dinner in with the noodles.

    I know better than to cry, so I don’t, but I’m all too aware that the feathers are shiner than any other bird because of how many hours of love I put into fixing them and petting them. My mother asks me if I want to play outside like normal, and I say no.

    I don’t tell her that it’s because Gerald was the best playmate. Instead I say it just doesn’t sound fun. Her eyes narrow and I wait for a snide remark or to be forced outside. She doesn’t say anything and I am glad.

    My father gives me his talons as a reminder of Gerald. They are warm and they shouldn’t be. Gerald was the strongest bird alive, so I have to imagine how he lost them.

    I put them on my bookshelf, imagining they can still protect me. Maybe they are magical, and now they’re like a talisman, a final gift from Gerald. The loneliness that lives in the corners of my room begins to gurgle as it gets ready to attack me. I wonder if now that Gerald is dead if he can fight it even harder than before. Maybe Gerald can still use the talons and will claw the lonely shadows into ribbons whenever they get too close.

    I carefully dust them every day. They stay there for years until in a fit of rage; my mother throws them away in front of me. I know better than to go through the trash. She tries to give me other ones to replace them, but they aren’t Gerald. I don’t want them.

    I tell myself that even though Gerald was out of the freezer, he cares about me. Maybe he fell through the freezer and now he was in pheasant Narnia. I try to forget the neon fact that even he, my dead pet, could still abandon me, just like it always goes. Even so, as I cry that night, I’m all too aware that it wasn’t his choice to abandon me.

    Next hunting season my father brings me another “Gerald” and asks if I want to keep him.

    I say no.