I went to a meeting yesterday midtown and it was a very stupid and boring meeting. So I was sitting there thinking about this blog I was planning to write because I’d decided I should write what I was planning to before I go, and I was thinking about the one about the Shah, about how he has to be evaluated in the context of his times, like the Reich and McCarthyism and the Gang of Four and the gulags and things like that. It’s a very good blog and I felt very optimistic.
I was happy about a bunch of other things too and when I left I was walking down 32nd Street near Macy’s. My stride was jaunty. I was singing. And I remembered how when I was a kid I saw Jackie Onassis once at Kennedy Airport. And how she was walking briskly in my direction with this overwhelming elegance and presence and blazing eyes and smiling. And how people were calling Jackie Jackie and she would look at them and nod slightly and acknowledge them. And how she swept right by me with such purposeful grace, like a very strong wind. I tried to walk more jauntily.
I turned the corner on Sixth Avenue and when I was about halfway down the block I saw this little sparrow all alone walking back and forth near the gutter. It is unusual to see a sparrow walking up and down the sidewalk all alone in midtown Manhattan so I thought maybe she can’t fly. She was so pretty of course I thought of her as a she.
She was pecking at the ground so I thought maybe she’s just foraging for food which there was none, but it went on too long and I realized she really couldn’t fly. It was strange because she didn’t seem to have a broken wing and there wasn’t any tar on her wings or anything like that either. She just couldn’t fly.
So I decided to take her home. I had to give away my cat last year because when I was sick I couldn’t take care of her and I thought now I am ready to take care of something again. And I felt so happy and I imagined carrying her home in the subway under my coat against my breast feeling her heart beating against mine and how I would get a big cardboard box, the biggest one I could find, and make it soft on the bottom and she could live in there, and I would let her out when I was home so she could walk around and I could pick up the poop.
I started following her trying to catch her but every time I got close to her she’d run away. She was very fast. Then another sparrow flew down out of nowhere and started walking with her. Suddenly she attacked her and started pecking at her and they were scuffling pretty badly. At first I thought the second sparrow wanted to kill her but then I realized she was just tryinng to get her to fly. But she couldn’t so she flew away but then she had second thoughts about it and came back and tried again but the first sparrow just couldn’t fly. So the second one gave up and flew away for good.
She started walking again and I following her. At a certain point she began to stop every time I got close to her but as soon as I’d bend down and try to grab her she’d run away again and she started to try to hide in these little corners where the building facades meet these kind of partitions that stick out to separate the stores. I’d never noticed these partitions before. But even when she was in the corners as soon as I’d get close and bend down to pick her up she’d get away. I knew it was my fault because I just couldn’t get up the force I needed to move quickly and purposefully enough. I was too tentative. I think somehow I was afraid to grab her .
There was this jewelry store with the door open and she ran in there and hid under a glass jdisplay stand next to the glass door. It wasn’t very expensive jewelry, some of it was synthetic amber, and there weren’t any customers either but the owner came running over really mad and said she can’t be in here. I said she can’t fly I want to catch her and take her home and he said well you’ll have to do it outside and he managed to push her out from under the display stand and he kicked her out the door. And the whole cycle started again. Finally she ran into a corner again and then ran into this small hole at the bottom of a door that was sticking out from one of those partitions. It was a big thick heavy old rusty metal door about a foot deep with this big old lock on it like the ones you use for gym lockers only much bigger and heavier. The door looked like it hadn’t been opened in decades and the funny thing was it didn’t seem to lead anywhere either.
I got down on all fours like a dog to look inside the hole and nobody stopped to ask what I was doing. It was very hard to see, inside it was so dark, but I saw the hole led right into this very narrow groove and I saw her tail and I knew she was stuck. I knew she’d never be able to go backwards and even if she managed to move forward it wouldn’t matter because there was no opening at the other end of the door. I tried to pull her out by her tail but my hand couldn’t get in quite far enough. I started crying but nobody stopped to ask why.
I realized that even if I could get the lock broken it wouldn’t matter because inside the door seemed thick and solid and to get to the groove would’ve proably been impossible. But hoping against hope I went into the shop next door. It was one of those GNC’s where they sell cheap crappy vitamins. I went over to the employee and I said is that your door outside and he said what door and I told him what had happened and we went outside together and he said that’s not a door it’s a LOCK. What he meant was that the door hadn’t been opened in years and didn’t even seem to lead anywhere as I told you so it really wasn’t a door anymore. He said there was no way to get her out and that she was in a better place now. I cried and said no no you don’t understand, she’s not she’ll starve to death and he looked at me kind of bored and said I have to go back to work now and went back into the store.
I tried one more time and I saw she’d gotten in a little further but I knew it didn’t matter and I gave up and leaned against the building. My hand was on my chest and my breath was heaving and I could barely stand but nobody stopped to help Then I sat down on the ground and started crying harder and no one stopped either. Finaly I got up and started walking to the subway which was a block away and I kept seeing her all cooped up so tight starving and this image came to me of all those starving people in their striped uniforms lying there emaciated all crowded together on those planks when they liberated the camps. Then I realized that if I’d put my handbag on the ground to block her while she was in one of those corners, I would’ve been able to pick her up. And I thought of all those chickens cooped up in those little cages artifically fed and the horrible way they kill them and I tried to convince myself you eat so much chicken it’s just one more bird but it wasn’t. When I got to the subway I could hardly walk down the steps and hallfway down I stopped and held onto the banister my hand on my chest and no one stopped and I went down into the subway.
I was too dazed and weak to go to the turnstile so I just stood there with my hand on my chest all alone trying to breathe with all these people passing by me. Finally an old man stopped, about eighty,and he said “Miss are you sick, I’ll take you to the hospital.” I looked into his eyes and they were blue and they had that kind of tranparent film over them that old people get when their eyesight is poor. He had a very kind face and a working class accent like the old time New Yorkers. He wore a beret. His face had all the grooves of time etched into it. He had seen it all. He’d lived through the Depression and World War II and the tumult of the Sixties and the icy sleek estrangement of the Globalization. He’d seen loved ones born and wedded and he’d buried them too. And he knew hard work and he had that patient look of waiting for the final rest. He had seen it all.
I told hiim what had happened, how I’d chased this little bird into a hole and how she was stuck and was going to starve to death and he looked very sad and said “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” I said I know and he didn’t know what else to say. So he paused and looked deeper into my eyes and searched for some words and finally said slowly “Try to pull through. Try to pull through”. I nodded and said I would and we went our separate ways, he through the turnstile to the train heading uptown and me through the downtown one.
It’s only about ten minutes to my station from 34th Street, then six blocks to my house and I was so dizzy and weak. About halfway home I stopped walking and started screaming and screaming but no one was around. I forced myself to start walking again and when I was almost home the sky had gotten a little dark like it might rain and I noticed this big dark cloud. The cloud was moving steadily overhead but it didn’t look like a rain cloud, it was far too black, but it didn’t look like chimney smoke either. There was something different about it. Too big, too black, too dense, something too perfect about the shape, and moving too purposefully forward in the wind. I’d never seen a cloud like that before and I stood there staring up at it
And I thought of Hiroshima.
