Garbage
The bird crashed into the glass window on a Friday morning, stunned and dazed. A mess of feathers exploded midair, slivers of dark purple and gray falling to concrete. Miss Lainard’s seventh-grade classroom had been in the middle of speeches for oratory week, when the feral rock pigeon smashed its body into the clear thick glass, interrupting them. The children’s heads all turned quickly to look outside, and before Miss Lainard could command any authority over the situation, Patricia, a child that struggled at the concept of when to ask permission to go to the bathroom, let alone during an inciting incident, stood up to see what all the commotion was about.
“Patricia!” Miss Lainard called out in warning. “Sit down, please.”
Miss Lainard should have stood up at this point, been the one to take charge and see what was going on, but she was in no state to invoke such authority. She had had one too many martinis last night with Mr. S., the Geography teacher. Their night had ended with her awkwardly running her tongue around his chin before deciding this was a terrible idea and that they should “maintain a professional relationship.” As a result, her reflexes were slow this morning, heavy with stale gin and a wave of embarrassment that fluttered in her chest if she thought about the night before too much. Thank God all that was required of her this period was to sit at the back of the classroom, sunglasses on, and let the children recite their speeches.
Patricia walked out of the classroom, crossed the carpeted path lined with lockers, and stood in front of the large, slanted windows of the J-Block building. The sky was a gray blue, like dull brushed metal, overcast and piercingly gloomy. It cast a clarity over everything in the building, making the carpet and ridges of the lockers blend together. Bang. Bang. Bang. She watched the pigeon as its confusion increased with each slam against the glass.
“What is it, Patricia?” Miss Lainard called from inside the classroom, her voice a bit croaky from the one shameful cigarette she had indulged in this morning.
“A pigeon keeps slamming against the windows,” Patricia called back.
She waved her hands towards the window in the hopes that the pigeon would see her.
“Stop! Turn around! This is a window!” she cried out.
Bang.
Bang.
Patricia winced at the sight of feathers falling free with each smash of the bird into the glass. She imagined the softness of its body against the cold hard surface of the windows. Bones and lungs and internal organs jamming themselves against each other, jerking back and forth as the bird helplessly rammed into the glass.
“It’s killing itself,” she said.
She heard the squeaking of chair legs and a shuffling of feet behind her. Miss Lainard, along with several other curious children, had filed out behind her, into the hall. For a moment they all watched the bird, everyone silent and awestruck at the disaster before them. Under the gray clarity of the overcast light, the death-in-making felt like a classical tableau. A biblical renaissance painting about the doom of hope and mankind. It was both beautiful and wretched—and no one knew what to do.
Bang.
Bang.
“Uhhh, is that blood?” another child, Louisa, asked.
The others looked for what she was pointing out, and sure enough, reddish brown smears had splattered the windows, across every spot the bird touched.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Louisa said.
Patricia waved her arms even more. “Make it stop!” she cried, her head turning to look at Miss Lainard.
Miss Lainard noted that she didn’t look dissimilar to those smiley inflatable mascots in front of car dealerships, beckoning customers in with their jostling enthusiasm—except this one was about four and a half feet tall and had tears streaming down her face. Miss Lainard snapped out of her hungover haze and clapped her hands. She turned her back on the giant windows to face the children directly.
“Ok, everyone!”
Bang.
“Back into the classroom!”
Bang.
“Nothing to see here.”
Bang.
“I’ll call for help.”
Her skin prickled in anticipation of another bang, but nothing came. The skip in beat and the heavy silence that came after it was infinitely worse. She peered at the children’s faces and saw that they were now looking down, towards the ground. She looked over her shoulder, glimpsed the gray, limp body, and snapped her head back towards them.
“Ok everyone, back into the classroom! Party is over.”
One by one, the children turned around and made their way back to their desks. A couple of them had puffy red cheeks, their eyes swollen with salt and their brows crinkled with worry.
“Do you think the bird is dead?” one whispered to another.
“Of course it’s dead,” the other child replied. “Didn’t you see all the blood?”
When everyone was back in the classroom, Miss Lainard cleared her throat and pressed her forefinger firmly against the space between her eyebrows, kneading the headache pulsing between her ears. If only there was some sort of treatment to remove one’s brain and eyeballs from the skull, perhaps through the nasal cavity, give it a nice rinse of saline solution, give it a good rub, and plop it all back in moisturized and rejuvenated. She would pay good money for that.
Before Miss Lainard could think of how to resume class, Patricia raised her hand and spoke.
“Don’t you think someone should check if the pigeon is okay?”
A couple of muffled observations of pretty sure it’s dead and gross and shotgun not spread around the room. Miss Lainard squinted her eyes and tilted her head to the side, considering the proposition. Now that she mentioned it, some fresh air would be lovely. “You’re right Patricia, someone should go and check if the bird is really de—, I mean, okay. I’ll be right back. Everyone stay seated, I’ll be back in five.”
Miss Lainard walked out of the classroom and closed the door behind her, as if closing in the children and their antics. According to the teacher training manual she had been given during her first week at the school, teachers technically were not allowed to leave a classroom unsupervised. If circumstances unfolded in which you absolutely had to leave the children unattended, the correct protocol was to pop over to the classroom next door and alert a fellow teacher of your absence, ask if they could watch both classrooms, and be as quick as possible. Such incidents could include a family emergency, diarrhea, or a death. This pigeon would count as a death, she suspected. Unfortunately, her classroom was the only classroom in the J Block, due to renovations being made to expand the computer labs downstairs. All the other classrooms were at the building over, which meant she would have to walk up the steep driveway, and who knew how long that would take with her hangover. She wasn’t feeling very nimble. She could just quickly check in on this bird, maybe spot someone on her way out, get them to help.
Five minutes, tops.
She headed towards the stairs and pushed the glass doors open. The air felt perfect and cold against her skin, she hadn’t realized how much she had been sweating. She took a determined, deep breath and turned, her eyes scanning the ground of the building for the body. She was hoping to have spotted someone else by now. Someone who she could call over to help her, someone who could handle this like a proper adult. She edged toward the body, scrunching her nose as the scene became more obvious with each step. The pigeon lay flat against the paved path, its neck tilted and leaning on the glass window in an unnatural way that only death could embody. Miss Lainard didn’t let her eyes linger too long on the bird, but she saw the neck, the smears of dark oil and blood on its head and wings, and the plucked feathers surrounding it. It was enough to confirm the worst. She turned around and scanned the horizon for someone to help, but the playground and the distant cafeteria looked empty. Where the fuck is everyone? she thought to herself. She peered up at the glass wall of windows on the J Block. From her vantage point, the glass reflected the stretch of sky almost perfectly, a mirror image. She could barely find the seam of where the building ended and the sky began, only if she looked hard enough and saw the shimmer of darker shadows that implied something beneath the glass.
“Poor thing didn’t see it coming,” she muttered to herself.
“Is it dead?”
Miss Lainard, startled, spun around to find Patricia standing behind her.
“Patricia!” she exclaimed, the pitch of her voice betraying any trace of her command. “You can’t just leave class whenever you feel like it!”
Patricia ignored Miss Lainard and walked up to the dead bird. She looked down at the body and sighed in disappointment.
“Fuck, it really is dead.”
“Patricia!” Miss Lainard hissed. “Language!”
Patricia bent down and picked up a nearby twig. She gently poked the side of the bird’s head. The head rolled around heavily before collapsing to the side. It felt strange to see the bird’s battered face up close, unmoving. Patricia was used to seeing the quick jerky movements of pigeons, their necks always pulsing forward as they scoured for food on the lunch grounds. Their beady eyes always shifting, even in flight. It was unnerving to see something so still.
“We have to bury it,” she said.
Miss Lainard placed her hands gently on Patricia’s shoulders and guided her to take a step back with her.
“We are not going to do anything. I will call for help, and someone else will handle this. You will go back to the classroom and join the others.” Patricia looked up at her and pursed her lips in a way that implied Are you mad? Miss Lainard released her shoulders.
“Please, Patricia, there’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s go back inside and—”
“Isabelle. I mean, Miss Lainard?”
They both turned to see Mr. S., the geography teacher, standing next to them.
“Louis!” Miss Lainard’s voice teetered uncomfortably close to shrieking.
He was carrying his laptop bag and a folder of papers, gripping a flask of coffee. Is he just getting in, now? She cleared her throat and corrected herself, “I mean…Mr. S.” He smiled meekly at her and both adults glanced at Patricia who remained expressionless, bored by their fumbling and sexual tension. Miss Lainard gestured in the direction of the dead bird.
“A pigeon has, um, died…and we were trying to take care of it.”
“It killed itself,” Patricia offered.
“It did not!” Miss Lainard said. “It couldn’t see the glass, the reflection on the windows was too clear for it to tell the difference.”
Mr. S. stood and stared at the two. This was all a little too much for a morning. He had gotten home after his date with Miss Lainard, drunk and embarrassed at his failure to seduce her, disrobed immediately in his kitchen and marched to bed with a plastic bag containing a burrito and fries. The next morning, he woke to a screeching alarm, sheets damp with hot sauce and burrito juice, his laptop propped up next to his head as the exaggerated moans of Pornhub streamed through its muffled speakers. When he glanced at the clock and saw 9:30 blinking at him, he yelped and sprung from his bed. With no time to shower, he splashed cold water on his face and lathered his armpits with deodorant. The drive over had been chaotic, he barely had a chance to do his tie mid walk before stumbling across Miss Lainard, the child, and the dead bird.
“We obviously need to bury it,” Patricia said.
Both adults nodded solemnly in agreement but neither made a move.
“When something dies, you bury it,” Patricia continued. “Isn’t that the right thing to do?”
She moved forward to crouch down but Miss Lainard stopped her with a warning hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t think we should touch it with bare hands, there could be rabies.”
Patricia tilted her head and looked at the dead bird.
“What’s rabies?” she asked.
Miss Lainard glanced at Mr. S. and waited for him to answer, as she did not actually know the textbook definition herself.
“It’s a disease animals carry” she explained, after he returned her glance with a blank stare.
“It causes severe paralysis and makes you foam at the mouth,” Miss Lainard said.
Patricia’s face scrunched up and she took a step back.
“I don’t know if birds can carry rabies, but definitely dogs,” Mr. S. said.
The two adults and child stood still, observing the dead bird.
“I…I really must be getting to class. Miss Lainard you’re okay to handle this, right?” Mr. S. said, breaking the silence.
Miss Lainard stared at Mr. S. in disbelief. Before she could respond, he cleared his throat and took a gentle step back. He kept his eyes lowered as he gave a curt nod and salute, and walked towards the direction of the F Block. Miss Lainard and Patricia both stared with furrowed brows as he became a speck in the distance with each step. He never looked back, although his speed and stilted short steps betrayed an unsightly desperation. A flutter of disgust bloomed in Miss Lainard’s stomach and hovered over her gut.
It was just the three of them again: Miss Lainard, Patricia, and the bird. The two stared back down at the corpse, and Patricia gave a little whistle that fizzed at her lips and died quickly in the wind. It was strange how the corpse had become almost neutral to both of them. What once felt like a brutal and tragic sight, now felt almost gentle and serene. There was comfort in knowing this bird no longer held any surprises, it would not suddenly jump to life and spring away. Enough time had passed and the status of ‘living being’ was shifting quickly to ‘inanimate object.’
Miss Lainard looked at the edges of the bird’s broken beak, chipped from impact, and a surprising tenderness came over her.
“Where do you think we should we bury it?” Patricia asked.
Miss Lainard did a quick scan and wiped a bead of sweat that had been stagnating on her forehead. She took a deep breath and exhaled, envisioning a clean slate.
“I can take it from here, Patricia. Why don’t you go back inside with the others and I will grab some gloves from the office and bury it somewhere nice.”
Patricia tilted her head at the word nice,surprised by the sudden display of initiative.
“Are you sure? You don’t need any help?” she asked.
Miss Lainard exhaled, her shoulders relaxing at her sides, and nodded curtly. “Absolutely. Go back inside and check on how the others are going. I will join you in just a sec.”
Patricia didn’t move from her spot and a tense flicker washed over Miss Lainard’s gaze.
“Patricia, go.”
Patricia idled for a second before turning around and walking away. Miss Lainard let out a tiny breath of relief and waved back at Patricia as she walked away, out of sight.
It was now just the bird and her. She looked down at the body and nudged a wing gently with the edge of her boot. An image of a rabid bird pecking at her leg flashed in her mind, and she recoiled her foot away from the corpse. “For fuck’s sake,” she said under her breath. The office was about a ten-minute walk from here and she had already been absent from class for at least five minutes. She couldn’t risk leaving the kids for any longer. She wanted to be back inside, she wanted to guzzle a cup of coffee, she wanted the day to be over. She scanned the ground for something to act as a barrier between her and the bird when she picked it up and moved it. Brittle autumn leaves, shredded trash, twigs, a discarded chip packet. Chip packet! Miss Lainard bent over and grabbed the sea salt and vinegar packet between her thumb and forefinger. She crouched, balancing precariously, and swiveled her body towards the bird to gently wrap the plastic around the edge of its wing, applying pressure to secure it. She lifted the surprisingly light limp body, and then she stood.
Back in the classroom, the children clucked and cooed around Patricia, interrogation filling the air. What happened? Is it really dead? Did you see if it smashed its face up? Did you touch it? Patricia felt her chest puff out proudly as she answered each question, not used to being the center of attention. She was in the middle of demonstrating an animated concept of rabies, when the door opened and Miss Lainard returned. The clamor of questioning shifted from Patricia to Miss Lainard, and Patricia’s posture drooped at the warm glow of attention swiped from her. Did you bury the pigeon, Miss? Where did you bury it? Do you know about rabies? Miss Lainard clapped her hands with a sharp crack and forced her lips into a smile. “Everything has been taken care of, there is nothing to worry about. Back to your desks, please.” The children moved quickly back to their seats, eyeing each other wordlessly. As the bodies shifted to their chairs, the sound of the bell that signaled the end of first period rang. The children collectively sighed in unanimous frustration as they rose again from their seats and made their way towards the hallway. “Ok everyone, great job today! I will see you all tomorrow.” Miss Lainard sat down at her desk at the front of the room, thanking every mercy in the heavens that the next period was free. Maybe she could run to her car and have a nap, or a cigarette, or both. She rummaged through her desk drawers for the emergency mints she kept for such occasions, when she noticed Patricia standing in front of her desk.
“Patricia?” she said, hurriedly shutting the drawer as if caught red-handed. “Everything alright?”
“I was just wondering where you ended up burying the bird,” Patricia asked quietly. “…And do you think it really tried to kill itself?”
Miss Lainard paused and felt the room shift beneath the weight of the question. She had been too hungover and riddled in her own crusty shame, that she had forgotten that this brush with death could impact her students.
“I’m sorry you and your classmates had to see that, Patricia. The poor pigeon didn’t see the glass and was confused. I ended up burying it down by the garden next to the library, and I think he will be very peaceful and rested there. Right near the sunflowers. What do you think?”
Patricia thought. “He must have been scared, when he kept hitting the glass, I mean. He probably had no idea what was going on.”
Miss Lainard tilted her head and looked at Patricia, examining the genuine musing of the child, and nodded slowly. This time she wouldn’t lie.
“Yes, I think you’re right. He was probably very confused and scared.”
They both stood in silence, considering the sight of the bird on the ground, and said nothing.
There was nothing left to say.
During second period, Miss Lainard walked briskly to her car and practically swallowed a cigarette in a flurry of anxious huffing and puffing. Afterwards, she sprayed herself with a can of deodorant, coughing up dark clumps of phlegm as the aluminum and sweet-smelling chemicals clung to her lungs.
The rest of the school day passed quickly. At four, the clatter of noisy children died down, footsteps carried outside as the building emptied. The end of the day had finally arrived. Miss Lainard collected her things and made her way through the schoolyard, passing the J Block. She glanced at the now-clean windows. Spotless. Not a smear of blood in sight. The school janitor, Mr. Wells, had barely batted an eyelash when she relayed the morning’s event to him.
“I’ll get the spray,” he had grunted, before disappearing down the hall to the supply closet.
While walking across the courtyard, she paused. She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was around, and then shuffled quickly to the row of covered trash cans next to the girls’ bathroom. These trash cans were off-limits to the children, used exclusively by the cleaners when they emptied out bins at the end of the day. The trash cans were intimidating in their bulk, large gray metal bins with heavy lids that made them unapproachable and impractical for the children. She opened the lid of one trash can and peered down, eyeing the splayed feathers and soft form of the pigeon that rested among the scrunched-up tissues and damp wrappers. Still there, where she had discarded it. Still. She had half imagined some miracle happy ending, in which the bird regained life, its cracked beak formed anew with some flashes of bright light. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the dead bird. She closed the lid and walked to her car, breathing in the sharp night air. As she drove home, she thought of the bird being collected at the street curb in the morning—carried away in sacks of rubbish—and disposed of as if it was never there. It would be sent to the landfill, or incinerated, she wasn’t entirely sure what they did with garbage these days.
Either here or in the ground little bird, she thought to herself. What difference did it make?
Irene Feleo is a Filipino-Australian artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing is inspired by family folklore, superstition, and the peculiarities of human connection and longing. Her work has been published in Free the Verse and Passing Notes. She is currently working on her first novel, a ghost story about mothers and daughters.