Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders Read Online Free PDF Page B

if they could strap big enough wings to their bodies. Wrong. Birds’ bones are hollow and often can fill with air when the bird breathes. Birds don’t have diaphragms because their entire bodies act as bellows. You’d have to change your entire skeletal and respiratory systems to fly, in addition to getting feathers and wings.
    That morning, my mother told me Mrs. Devlin wanted me to fix a toaster oven and to write a poem for her daughter’s wedding. This is another way that I’m of use—poetry. I know how to write poems for all occasions. I come from writers and should take advantage of the gift that God has given to me or it’s rude to God.
    I asked my mother if Mrs. Devlin had two daughters.
    My mother said no. She was making me a glass of Tang and the spoon went clang, clang, clang, which rhymes with Tang, Tang, Tang.
    I asked her if Mrs. Devlin’s singular daughter was getting married again.
    My mother said Mrs. Devlin’s daughter is getting married again.
    My mother left to get Mrs. Devlin’s broken toaster oven, but she came home carrying a television down the street. I watched from the kitchen window. It was too heavy. She put it down and sat on top of it.
    We would own birds if that were possible. You cannot own a bird, even one in a cage. Not really. But when Wee-ette was dying, she told us about a room filled with caged birds. She was delirious. Her eyes milky. Her eyelids violet. Her lips like a small crack in a vase. My mother bought five cockatiels for her. Then Wee-ette died, and my mother set the cockatiels free because I wanted them freed. Later, I read that caged birds set free die because they don’t understand the wild. My mother says this is important to keep in mind. She says what you know is better than what you don’t. She regrets setting free the birds.
    Ruthie asks me how I can be trapped in this house with nothing to see or do. She doesn’t understand that there is so much to keep track of—the migratory birds, for example.
    I have never broken a pact. Ruthie has never kept one.
    But I remember when I was scared and climbed into her bed at night, and my blonde hair mixed with her dark hair like we were bound together by different kinds of silk strands.
    Why did my mother bring me a television? It was too heavy! We used to have a car. It was struck by another car in a parking lot while my mother was pushing a grocery cart with both hands a mere twenty-five feet away. The car was old and therefore totaled. She could have been in that car. That was the end of cars.
    My mother knocked on the door. She didn’t have her keys. I don’t know how to unlock the locks. My mother shouted at me through the closed kitchen window, telling me not to panic, but she was speaking in her panic voice—the kind you use when your daughter is crying while you’re trying to get the birds out of a damn cage but they are idiot birds! Idiot birds! Damn idiot birds! They won’t get out of the cages, and then, once forced out, they won’t fly away! They stayed in the backyard for so long. Wee-ette was dead, but she stayed behind windows like I do now. She told me that we have matching souls, like mittens that are connected with a string and clips. I don’t have to tell her things because she already knows!
    My mother patted her pockets like she was trying to put out a fire on her person. She opened her pocketbook and her hand was a trowel, digging. No keys!
    Tell me how to work the locks, I begged.
    She shouted, No. No. No. You can’t come out, Tilton! You’re agoraphobic—on top of everything else!
    I told her that in emergencies, like a fire, agoraphobics are supposed to go out through the bay window.
    My mother jogged to the bay window. She isn’t a jogger. Mrs. Frier and her husband, Joe Frier, of Frier, Wells, and Bender, are. The Eldermans’ youngest son, a year older than I am, is a jogger.
    I ran to the living room and to the other side of the bay window, trapped. I told my mother that I’m