Caitlin Stobie

Butcher Bird

Lorraine has inky eyes – you can’t see where the irises end and her pupils begin. Her fringe is chopped blunt above her eyebrows, but they’re so light, it’s almost like they aren’t there. You noticed this as soon as you sat next to her, when Miss Whitelaw asked you to move seats. Well, told, not asked. She said you’d concentrate better by someone quiet.

Thing is, Lorraine is dead-quiet. Doodstil. It makes you wonder if you’ve said or done something to upset her, these last few days, but the truth is you’ve not talked much. You did ask to borrow her eraser. Maybe she’s the type who gets offended by that kind of stuff. Or it could be because you said rubber, not eraser. It’s irritating that something this small even crosses your mind, but the girl is still-silent all the time – so, no, Miss Whitelaw was wrong. You are not concentrating any better.

Miss Whitelaw likes to laugh with the new librarian. She stands by him when he’s on playground duty, twisting her staff ID round and round. (‘Nice lanyard, Miss,’ you said, the day she moved you.) Mr Ntuli dispenses Ritalin each morning, Monday to Friday, five minutes before homeroom starts. Now you have to line up outside the library doors with the Special Students and wait, even if it’s raining. The others look at you, too, like a stuffed animal in the museum.

At first Nana said not to worry. ‘In my day they didn’t have all these things, these pills.’ He said your ma also couldn’t sit still when she was your age. You just need to get your energy out with judo. ‘Repeat after me: I yam what I yam. Now eat your spinach, la.’

But he hasn’t acted like Popeye for a while. Not since the teacher-parent conference. Nana opened a bottle of Castle when he came home that night. He said Miss Whitelaw told him you might struggle with faces. Something about expressions. She said it was difficult to tell with girls. When you asked him why, he didn’t have anything funny or even punny to say.

****

Next Monday, you spot Lorraine in front of you in the library queue. Has she been here before? You’re not sure. There never seems to be anything wrong with her speech, unlike some of the others. You can’t remember her mixing up people’s names or going blank with faces.

She turns around and catches you staring.

Ignoring the two students ahead in the queue, you blurt out that you wish your eyebrows were like hers. You’re proud of this comment: it proves you can notice things. See. She raises her fingers and tugs her fringe down over her now-wrinkly eyebrows, so you smile with teeth to show you mean it. She turns to face the librarian, but then waits around after Mr Ntuli measures her dose, stepping a little closer to you. Together you walk to homeroom.

There’s a fuss inside. Miss Whitelaw is crouched over a shoebox and telling one of the boys, ‘Stop it, stop poking now. Leave it’. She instructs everyone to take their seats as you enter the classroom. From the new spot next to Lorraine, you can see a small bird in the box. It’s not flapping around like the canary Nana once had. This bird’s tufts are mouse-brown – muisbruin? – and its feathers grow darker from the eyes up, like it’s wearing a cap. It only moves its head left and right, up and down, once everyone’s chairs are pulled in.

Miss Whitelaw explains that her fiancé rescued a chick, a fledgling, from a gutter over the weekend. He’s identified it as some type of shrike. They live in a small flat where no pets are allowed, but she has an idea. Since your class are studying animals, this will be a new friend for everyone to learn from.

‘So like a class pet,’ Niki at the front interrupts.


(‘No, you’re Class Pet,’ you mouth at her ponytail.)


‘Well,’ the teacher smiles at her. ‘Let’s say he’s the class rescue bird.’


‘Or she,’ Niki says.


Miss Whitelaw smiles again with no teeth. She says Mr Ntuli will look after the Class Rescue Bird tonight so that everyone can ask their parents for permission. Then, anyone who wants to take the Class Rescue Bird home will get their chance. Two nights at a time. When he’s old enough – ‘She,’ Niki repeats, and this time Miss Whitelaw doesn’t react – he will be set free.

She shows everyone how to mix Pronutro with water and spoon it into a syringe. ‘This will keep him nice and strong,’ she says. The bird tilts its head up and goes sweeu-sweeu. Its beak is a dull grey but inside the mouth is angry orange. You imagine you see a tongue. Vuurrooi, fire-red. Do birds have tongues? You will have to check.

While Niki and the other girls argue over who’ll look after the bird first, Lorraine turns and asks if you would like to visit her house on Friday.

****

Lorraine cuts her own fringe, with scissors stolen from her mom’s sewing kit, every Friday after school. She lives near a pine plantation in the new part of town. Together you play Bridge to Terabithia with a tyre-swing, stealing bricks from construction sites to build a fort near a fast-flowing stream. After a couple of weeks, she dabs ‘Terrorbirthia’ onto a plank with rust-coloured paint and nails it to a tree.

She likes to stay inside and play The Sims if it’s raining. She makes the women have babies and leaves them in a room, deleting the doors. When the baby Sims die, social workers arrive, and the women cry and cry. ‘Serves you right,’ Lorraine cackles.

You like that she doesn’t say anything about your ma’s cancer. She never asks where your dad is or what Nana means and she hasn’t held her nose around your packed lunches, like Niki once did.

Lorraine has two older brothers. Jacques is training for the army and lives in a flat at the back of the garden. Pierre is four years older than you and goes to the high school that your name is down for. He hangs out with girls from the swimming team. They’re all blonde and thin in the same way and smell like pink sour sweets. After the girls leave, Lorraine’s brothers mime big boobs and make fart noises.

She says her family only eat at the table when you visit. Her father is on business in Mozambique, and Jacques just takes protein shakes out to his flat. Pierre sits as far away from you as he can. Once he asks if you like to eat curry in a warbling accent and his mother reaches across the table and slaps him.

At judo practice you picture his face during the warm-up. Takedown, back throw. You hit through the air and imagine cracking his knees. (‘Choke, choke, choke,’ you shout in your head. ‘I hope that you choke.’)

You start to have a recurring dream that you’ve got Pierre pinned on the floor. His head is trapped between your thighs. You squeeze. Hard. He’s trying to run his hands up from your knees so you lock his palms down on the floor, too. Harder.

The alarm must go off when you have these dreams but you don’t hear it. On these mornings, Nana is starting up the bakkie and you have to throw your uniform over your vest, running through without even brushing your teeth.

****

The judo instructor is off with flu, so you stop by the library while waiting for Nana. Mr Ntuli is at the front desk. No one else is inside. You’re about to back out the doorway but he waves and widens his eyes like he knows you.

‘I was just wondering about birds,’ you explain.


‘You’re in the right place for wondering,’ he says. ‘What was it that made you wonder?’

‘It’s silly. I think I know the answer already.’

He moves from behind the desk and says, ‘Even better. Let’s take a Wander’. (You hear the little letter turning capitalised and in delight you almost say, ‘I yam what I yam.’) While walking through the shelves he says, ‘Sometimes I think I know the answers too. Sometimes –’ he stops in the study nook at the back corner, ‘I’m even right. What kind of bird do you need to know about?’

‘I think Miss Whitelaw said it was a shrike.’


He steps back a bit and nods. ‘You’re in her class.’


‘Ja. Uh, it might be another name actually. Her fiancé thinks it’s a Something Shrike.’ He’s been smiling with his mouth wide open but now his eyebrows drop. You apologise; you weren’t concentrating again.

‘No, no. That’s right. You’re quite correct.’ He reaches for a book on a shelf near the copiers: Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa. ‘As for her Fiancé –’ this he mutters, not as a pun, but kind of like how the other teachers say Special Students, ‘he’s got it a bit wrong. The species are commonly known as southern fiscals.’

‘Oh.’

‘But that’s not what you came here to learn.’

‘I was wondering – I wondered. Miss Whitelaw was feeding it and I just thought, do birds have tongues?’

You wait for him to laugh but he doesn’t. He asks, ‘What was she feeding it with?’

‘Pronutro. Original flavour.’


He shakes his head. ‘Mixed with water?’


‘Ja.’

He clicks his tongue and lays the book out on top of a photocopier. There are two birds in the picture and they don’t seem anything like the Class Rescue: they have white tummies, glossy heads, and long tails. Mr Ntuli explains how juveniles look quite different. Then he reads some of the second paragraph aloud:

‘Member of the shrike family... Usually feeding on insects and small rodents... It is sometimes named Butcher Bird –’ capital letters again, though they’re not there on the page, ‘due to its habit of impaling prey on acacia thorns.’ His voice deepens here. ‘You see they need lots of protein. More than Pronutro can give. Also, feed them too much water, and they’ll drown.’

You imagine the Class Rescue Bird digging its head deep into a rat’s belly. It sucks out blood with its beak and wipes its eyes on the animal’s fur, left to right, up and down. ‘So they have tongues?’

‘Oh, yes, sorry. All birds do. They’re not like ours though. It depends on the use.’ He shows you more pictures of different shrikes. Some of them have yellow beaks and bright circles round their eyes. You try to look at your watch but the face is sticking inside your wrist. ‘Anyway,’ he says, closing the book at last, ‘Miss Whitelaw should know not to raise a fledgling on breakfast cereal alone. I’ll have a word with her.’ He winks like something’s funny.

You thank him for his help and ask him not to mention your question to anyone. He promises he won’t. As you’re putting on your jacket he says, ‘I’d like to ask you something too, if you don’t mind. Secret for a secret.’

****

Lorraine’s turn to look after the Class Rescue Bird falls the next day, on Friday. Miss Whitelaw shows her how to make sure the lid on the shoebox sits right, not so tight that it stops letting air in. Niki and the girls at the front whine that it’s not fair how she gets three nights instead of two. Before the final bell Lorraine slides a note onto your desk: ‘Sleep over tomorrow?’ She has signed a cartoon bird with crossed, goggly eyes.

She doesn’t want to go to Terabithia when you arrive on Saturday afternoon. It’s not raining but she turns on The Sims. She clicks and clicks the mouse, more silent than when you first met her. When you ask to see the Class Rescue Bird, she says it’s gone to sleep, the shoebox is in her mom’s room.

Pierre goes to the movies that evening with a girl he’s brought home before. She laughs in little yelps, somewhere between a hiccup and a snort. You can’t imagine a worse person to watch a film with. When they don’t come back after the screening, Lorraine’s mom phones his mobile. It starts ringing from his bedroom.

Later that night they still aren’t home. Lorraine’s mother doesn’t try contacting the girl or anyone else. She takes a glass of red wine and a pack of cigarettes to the back porch, turns on the jacuzzi, and slides the door closed.

Lorraine dares you to go inside Pierre’s bedroom and fetch his phone. The room smells of Axe body spray and something oily, almost like fried meat. His phone is next to his bed. Too easy. You pick it up but linger in front of the closet. He’s taped bikini pictures of Ariana Grande and actresses on the doors. A pained feeling darts up your legs while looking at their skin: so browned. So intense, like they, and you, are the word charred. But on their toned tummies there’s no hair, or it’s white, not at all like yours. Does Pierre take these down when he has girls in his room? What about if his mom walks in?

Lorraine is waiting in the lounge. When you throw the phone on her lap, she grins and says, ‘Nice. Now let’s have some fun.’ She starts typing text messages to the girl that Pierre is with. First she says something about boobs. Next she sends a link to a Youtube clip called Uyajola. In the video a man is lying about how many girlfriends he has. Soon the message tone goes off: Fck off Lorraine I know its u!! Ill kill u! The stinging feeling is in your thighs again. You ask Lorraine if you can do something else now, maybe see the bird.

‘It flew away,’ she says while typing a dagger emoji on the screen.


You say you thought it was asleep.


She looks up and sighs, ‘Forget it. It’s dead.’ Her voice is high but unhurt, eyes glazed, as if she’s already explained.


You ask what happened, what to do, what she’ll say.


‘Pierre killed it.’
 You ask if that’s what happened or what she’ll say.


‘Look. I’ll just show you tomorrow, okay? You have to swear not to tell.’ She adds a skull and crossbones and hits send. ‘We should go to bed anyway.’


The mattress next to Lorraine’s bed smells like dogs. You can’t lie on your sides without feeling the floor tiles against your hips. Just as you’re falling asleep, you hear the front door creak. A loud voice asks something, another door slams, and you could swear there’s a rustling in the hallway. Then nothing. You wait. You dream. The bird is perched on your tummy, digging its beak into your skin. It pulls out your insides like long sausage strings, except the sausages are crawling – no, burying back into you. Your intestines are insects and mice. You try to scream but someone’s hands are holding you down, moving up your knees.

In the morning, Lorraine makes you toast with Lurpak, not Stork, and a big mug of Milo. Her mom’s car isn’t in the driveway and Pierre’s bedroom is empty. You remind her about the bird and she says it’s at Terabithia. Your thighs clench.

When you reach the brick fort she takes a spade from behind a tree and starts digging. The forest floor has already been upturned, freed from dried pine needles.

(‘What the fuck?’ you mumble to yourself over and over while she’s looking away.)

She senses your movement and through her fringe the eyes are glassy and wild. ‘Please, you can’t tell them. I didn’t mean to.’ Her spade hits something light. She pulls out the shoebox and lays it on the ground. By now she’s crying so loud that you have to step closer – it would be wrong not to.

‘Open it,’ she pleads. ‘We need to give him a proper goodbye.’

You say you’ll open it if she tells you what happened.

****

Lorraine isn’t in class on Monday. Miss Whitelaw tells Niki not to worry, she can have four nights as well, it will all be fair. She’s sure Lorraine will come to school tomorrow, but she’ll phone her mom later, just to check. Your tummy feels watery.

Nana is meant to fetch you straight after school, so you have to rush to the library at break time. Mr Ntuli will be able to list plausible causes of broken necks in birds. You will let him talk and talk and then ask at the end like you’re just curious. (‘What about the lid of a cardboard box?’ you practise to yourself. No, then he’ll know.)

There’s no one at his desk and the only library volunteer is on a computer in the office, doing her homework. You wander through the bookshelves, tracing the same route as last time. Mr Ntuli is speaking with Miss Whitelaw at the back of the library. He’s turned away from you and her back is pressed against the wall next to a photocopier. Their voices are louder than they should be, but you have to move closer to hear what they’re saying over the zzzz-zzzz of the machine.

‘– it’s just not good for them,’ he’s saying.

‘And you’re an expert how?’ she asks.

‘It’s not like sweets –’


‘So now you’re upset –’

You blush as you remember how his eyebrows, and then his voice, dropped. You shouldn’t have mentioned Pronutro. Maybe he really is angry. Perhaps he’s told her about your question. You imagine the entire class laughing, pointing their tongues.

‘– five kids told me they started the highest dose –’


‘– if this is about Jordan –’


‘Please. How could it be about him? I didn’t know he existed till last week.’


Miss Whitelaw brushes around Mr Ntuli to bundle up a stack of copies. She says something short as she lines a new page onto the glass and presses a button.


‘How,’ he says. ‘Him as well. Isn’t it.’ She’s moved back to her spot by the wall but doesn’t respond to his flat questions. ‘Anyway, it’s not about us. It’s a matter of principle. In fact, I should tell the Principal.’


‘Who do you think she’ll believe?’ your teacher shoots back. ‘You or me?’


Mr Ntuli raises his hands, lowers them. He exhales something you don’t catch. When he turns to leave, you are right in his line of sight.


‘Oh, it’s my bird friend,’ he says.

Miss Whitelaw straightens her back and moves from the photocopier. A muscle in her neck twitches as she spots you.

‘No, no, don’t go,’ says Mr Ntuli. ‘I have something to show you. Miss Whitelaw will like it too.’

She makes a spluttering sound and starts organising the papers into smaller piles, turning away again. He reaches over your head for Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa and opens it to a bookmarked page.

 ‘Did you know,’ he says, tilting his body towards you but looking at your teacher’s hair, ‘that southern fiscals are targeted by cuckoos? Three types. Jacobin Cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus), Diederik Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius), and African Cuckoo (Cuculus gularis).’ He pauses, glances at her again, and then flips to the index. ‘But what does that mean. Well, let’s look at the entry for cuckoos. Oh, here we go.’ He adopts a sing-song reading voice: ‘Like many other cuckoos, the African cuckoo is a brood parasite. The female lays her eggs in the nests of other species, removing an egg already present in the nest.’

Miss Whitelaw snaps the lid of the photocopier closed.

‘What this means, dear friend, is that your Butcher Bird was probably kicked out the nest as an egg. Doomed before it even hatched. Well, I say probably.’

Your teacher is pushing reams of unstapled papers in her tote bag, gathering her coat.

‘Know what’s worse? Is that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. It was just unlucky.’

Miss Whitelaw storms past you, between the bookshelves, one arm of her jacket dangling inside-out.

‘What this means,’ he is almost shouting, ‘is you must be careful who you trust.’ Then he turns to you. ‘Sorry. Is there something you needed help with?’

Caitlin Stobie was born in South Africa and lives in Oxford. Her debut poetry collection, Thin Slices, is forthcoming with Verve Poetry Press in 2022. She researches global health at the University of Oxford's Ethox Centre, teaches creative writing at Leeds Arts University, and is an editorial assistant at Stand. Twitter: @caitlinstobie