By Nancy Coggeshall
“How’s my favorite parakeet this morning?” asked Henrietta Willoughby. And she lifted the ruffled chintz cover for the bird’s cage in the southwest window of the house she inherited from her mother.
“It’s not a parakeet, it’s a budgie,” Henrietta’s companion called, descending the staircase from the second floor.
Henrietta ignored the remark as she tried to ignore all that was unpleasant and unkind in her life and continued her conversation with the sky-blue budgerigar. “I’m going to clean your cage.”
The bird blinked his eyes slowly in reply as Henrietta placed the chintz cover on a nearby chair. “Yes, you’re my bluest boy, my Petey boy, my Peter parrot parakeet.”
“He’s a budgie and you know it,” said Pauline, this time from the kitchen. “Do we have any eggs?”
“Here,” said Henrietta, who suddenly appeared beside the much larger woman still in her nightclothes standing at the opened refrigerator door.
“If I were going to have a bird, I’d have a crow,” said Pauline, moving aside so that Henrietta could put the carton on the kitchen counter. “Will you fix my eggs?”
“No,” said Henrietta. “I have to clean Petey’s cage before we go,” and she walked past Pauline into the dining room. “Couldn’t you get dressed before you eat? Someone might see you.”
“Anyone coming to the house at this hour deserves to see me,” answered Pauline. “It’s not even eight o’clock.”
“I was hoping that we could get an early start. We have so much shopping to do today. And I want to go to the pet shop to get some more food for Petey.”
“Of course, we’ll have to get more food for the budgie.”
“Parakeet,” said Henrietta softly.
“Someone could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge just as easily as that man sold you that bird.”
Henrietta returned to the living room where she let Petey out of his cage. Perched on top he regarded his freedom and Henrietta with equal reserve, turning his head from one side to the other. She worked quickly with bird-like movements. When she finished, she placed her hand palm down on top of the cage, moving her hand slowly toward Petey. When her index finger met his claws, she stopped. He blinked several times, loosened his grip on the cage rungs, and placed one foot and then the other on Henrietta’s outstretched finger.
“Good boy. Good Petey,” she cooed. “That’s my pretty blue bird.” Carrying the bird on the curved index finger of her left hand, Henrietta walked the length of the living room. She continued talking to him then finally sat down in what had been her mother’s favorite chair.
The morning sun through the southeast window warmed her and she gazed adoringly at her pet. His black eyes returned her stare while his grip on her finger occasionally relaxed only to tighten again.
Outside the lawn was matted and dull, the grass not yet green; the trees were bare but for the beginnings of buds. A solitary robin hopped, then tried pecking for a worm in the earth between maple trees that marked the property line. The crocuses and tulips and daffodils that Henrietta tended, just as her mother had, were beginning to appear.
Pauline looked into the living room on her way upstairs. “I swear you’re in love with that bird,” she said. “I’ve been talking to the walls for two months.”
“I never had a bird before,” Henrietta said to Petey.
“If you ever had to take care of chickens the way I did, you wouldn’t be sitting there with a bird on your lap,” said Pauline, and she continued upstairs.
When Henrietta and Pauline returned from shopping, Henrietta got out of the car and hurried to the house.
“Do I have to bring all of these bags into the house by myself?” asked Pauline.
“Oh, no,” said Henrietta, unlocking the backdoor with her key. “I’ll help you.” Pauline manned one of the heavier grocery bags and followed her companion into the house.
“You look sleepy. Do you like it?” Henrietta said to Petey while Pauline placed the bag on the kitchen counter and returned to the car to bring in more.
All the groceries were out of the car when Henrietta went into the kitchen.
“Oh,” she said. “I was going to help.”
“Never mind,” said Pauline. “I brought them all in.”
“I want the small parcel from Fleming’s. It has bias tape and thread in it.”
“I think it’s over there,” and Pauline gestured toward the kitchen table.
“Thank you,” said Henrietta, picking up the parcel, and she went into the living room to get her coat and hang it beside Pauline’s in the hall closet.
“I’ll make supper for tonight,” said Pauline.
“But it is my turn,” Henrietta said.
“Yes,” said Pauline. “It is your turn. But I would rather be in the kitchen frying snakes than sitting in the living room listening to a grown woman discussing a green plastic ladder with a budgie.”
Henrietta left the kitchen.
“Your stew is very good,” said Henrietta as the two women ate their evening meal.
“It’s the same stew I’ve made ever since I came to live here,” said Pauline, looking at the bowl before her.
“That may be true,” said Henrietta, fixing her eyes on her silver salt cellar. “But it is always very good.” She continued, “After I fixed the hem on my dress, I came down and made some squares. You were asleep.”
Pauline’s head snapped up. “I was resting my eyes,” she said.
Henrietta’s eyes dropped as she carefully tilted the bowl away from her to fill her spoon with the last of the stew. “We can have them for dessert tonight, and after church tomorrow too.”
“What kind are they?” asked Pauline.
“Butterscotch,” said Henrietta.
“They have always been my favorite,” said Pauline.
“Yes, I know,” said Henrietta, and she began to clear the table.
“That man should not be allowed to preach,” said Pauline starting the six-year-old, olive green sedan she drove. “I could wring his neck.” She wrenched the steering wheel sharply and the car pulled away from the curb in front of the church.
“Would you like to take a ride?” asked Pauline. “We could go to the park to see if the spring plantings are in bloom. You have always enjoyed driving through the park.”
“That would be nice, but I want to be home early.”
“What for? We haven’t done anything for weeks. We’re cooped up in school Monday through Friday. We finally get some reasonable weather after a dreadful winter, and you want to go home to talk to a bird.”
“The book said that you have to practice a lot.”
“I just don’t understand why you want to talk to a bird when you have human company under the same roof. I don’t understand. A grown woman.”
Henrietta stiffened. She stared straight ahead. The car moved through the only landscape she had known in her life. “He is the color of the heavens,” she said, her mouth trembling. “He is a piece of the sky. He makes me feel, feel,” she said hesitantly, then stopped. “I don’t know what to tell you. You don’t understand.” “No,” said Pauline accelerating. “No, I don’t.”