Birdy

watch poor Perta in her cage with her sterile eggs. It doesn’t seem fair for her to do all that sitting for nothing. When she’s been sitting on them for seven days, half way through the brooding period,I take them out one at a time and hold them up to a light. They’re all sterile.
    I decide to do something about it. There are three hens who have nests due to hatch within a day or two of Perta’s. One has five eggs and the others have four each. I take two eggs from the nest of five and one from each of the others. Three birds in a nest is a good number, not too crowded, and the young have a better chance of survival.
    I give these four eggs to Perta as substitutes for the sterile ones. I feel much better. I’m sure Perta will be a good mother. Two of the eggs came from Birdie and Alfonso. I don’t think Birdie minded my taking them. Perta doesn’t seem to notice the substitution and accepts the new eggs without trouble. I check each egg before I put it in the nest with her and they’re all fertile. I use a small hand flashlight to check the eggs. A fertile egg of seven days has opacity and small red veins running through it.
    In the dream I look into the nest of our eggs but there is no change I can see. Changing Perta’s eggs in the cage has not changed our eggs. I’m hoping it will give our eggs a better chance to be fertile. I’m feeling a strong desire to be a father. I want to be able to feed my own babies. I of ten feed Perta on the nest and sing to her. Being a father, knowing I’m there in the new babies, will be more proof that I am. I feel that I’ll be more, not only as bird but as boy. Knowing he’s a father is one of the only proofs a male has that he is.
    On the night when the babies are to hatch, when Perta tells me she can feel the babies moving in the shell, I sit on the eggs while she takes a bath to help the babies by softening the shell. I feel them moving. I can feel movement in each egg. They will all hatch in the morning. I know it. When Perta comes back to the nest, I sing her this song. I’m sure the babies are mature enough to hear me now. The shell of the egg is so thin.
    Become now,
    Tap through the shell
    Of being and taste the
    Soft air of your beginning
    This is yours, the safe
    Surrounding blanket
    Of new life.
    The day the birds are to hatch is a school day. I play hooky for the first time in my life. I know they’re bound to catch me. I usually eat lunch with my father down in the boiler room; he’ll know I’m not there. I don’t care. I can’t hang around the aviary or my mother would catch me. Instead, I go down to the woods and climb a favorite tree, not far from where we had the pigeon loft. I wedge myself into a fork near the top, high over the bank of a hill.
    I spend the day up there. I can’t keep myself from thinking about my babies trying to hatch from the eggs. I can feel their struggle. I lie back on the length of the branch and try to put myself into the dream. I can’t do it. I know also, in my deepest part, it would be dangerous to enter the dream in the daytime. I’m not sure what would happen, whether it would break the dream or I would not be able to come out and back to life as a boy, but I know it would be dangerous to do.
    While I’m up in the tree, I think of myself trying to teach my babies to fly. I look down from the tree and wish I could fly here and have them fly with me in the open. It’s that day in the tree when I decide how to do it. I make all the plans and I’m so full of them, I hardly pay attention when my father and mother holler at me during dinner about cutting school. They keep wanting to know where I was. I tell them I was up in a tree but they won’t believe me. I don’t know where it is they wanted me to be.
    After my parents finally settle down, I go out to the cage and listen, but none of Perta’s birds have hatched. I wonder if the birds in the dream will hatch if hers haven’t. It’s hard to tell which is in front anymore, the dream or real life. I go to sleep not knowing what will be.
    When I arrive in the dream, Perta is excited. She tells me one of the babies is cutting the shell with its beak. She stands high on her legs so I can look in. One of the eggs is opening. Perta reaches inand carefully pulls off part of a loose shell with her beak. We can see a dark eye and moistened head. I’m nervous but Perta is serene and happy. I do some of my best flying around the cage to calm myself.
    Within two