The Names of Birds
The first thing had been to memorize the room.
Jason did the flowers on the duvet, counting them and learning their patterns. Ten pink and eleven of the sickly, rotten egg yellow. In his boredom, he invented floral constellations for how they lay, proclaiming that he saw the shape of a snail and of a shoe. He sat on the bed chattering about them while his sister worked across the room, exploring their new domain and mostly ignoring him.
Linda took out the drawers from the dresser and, after poking her head into the cavities where the drawers had been, examined their contents. A dusty sachet of potpourri was all she found and she tore it open and dumped the dried leaves and flowers onto the floor. Linda took a crumbly, delicate bud, vaguely pink still, a mummy of a flower, between her fingers and pulverized it, letting the dust fall to the carpet.
“What did you do that for?” Jason asked. The pitch of his voice soared upwards, frantic now, and the last word cracked. He peered back behind his shoulder at the door and watched it for a few tense seconds, waiting for it to open.
His sister sighed and couldn’t really answer. Linda sat staring at the mess she had made until tears of frustration came to her eyes. Jason climbed down from the bed and helped her clean it up and she thanked him in a whisper.
That happened on their first day.
There was a painting of a horse on the wall, which they took down and sat between them to study. Jason wanted to name the horse and so they did, settling on Pumpkin Pie after a few minutes. This was mostly a concession on Linda’s part as she didn’t really care. She listened while he made up a story about the russet mare and watched his shoulders untense as he got lost in telling about the horse’s loving owner and the endless summer days they ran in. That passed half an hour, and because it calmed Jason and brought him joy, it was the happiest Linda had been since coming here, the only happy moment at all.
Together, the twins examined the view from the window, though there was only a dense forest to see, and a blue glimmer of water in the distance. This inspection took up hours of every day.
They chanted the names of birds that came to the window so they would remember them and it was soon a song they sang.
There was no clock, but three times a day, starting from sunup, Miss Amber came and took them downstairs for meals. She scrubbed their faces and hands for them like they were much younger than they were before sitting them at the table. Miss Amber always served good food, and eating with the appetite she did made Linda feel squeamish, especially when Miss Amber smiled at her and Jason with tireless focus and her face lapsed into an expression of bliss. After lunch, they stood out on the porch for fifteen minutes getting, as Miss Amber said, fresh air.
Knees hugged to their chests. They watched rain clouds in the distance.
Linda generally told her brother to shut up when he spoke during outside time, especially if it was to go on about the stupid horse in the painting again. She wanted to listen for cars so that she could figure out if there was a road nearby, or for neighbors, but she never heard any, just birds squawking and Miss Amber vacuuming inside the house and singing to herself.
When their time outside was up, Miss Amber came for them and sent them back upstairs to their room.
***
Jason brought in a leaf one day and it was allowed. In fact, Miss Amber beamed and complimented him on his good eye, on his ingenuity, and fawned for a few minutes. Linda gaped. It was just a stupid leaf. She could hardly look at Jason and she crushed the leaf that night after he fell asleep.
Her body uncoiled from its tightly held tension, and as the shards of dried leaf fell from her clinched palm, she laughed, covering her mouth as she looked quickly behind her to see her brother was still asleep. She was soon laughing so much that she was shaking with mirth. Her tautly held muscles, unburdened of anxiety at last, felt pleasantly exhausted, as though she’d run a long race. She wiped her hands on her pajamas and left the carnage easily visible. Back in bed, Linda was asleep instantly.
In the morning, Jason woke to see the leaf crumbled on the dresser, a taunt, and he burst into tears. When he cried, Linda cried.
“Sorry,” Linda said. She tried to pat his shoulder but he shrugged her off with an amount of force that shocked her and broke her heart. Jason didn’t speak to her for most of the rest of the day. At bedtime, they both sat in quiet anger on opposite sides of the bed until Linda pulled his hair and he spun around and yelled at her.
“Leave me alone!”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Linda screeched in exasperation. It was the thing she wanted most and least. Jason only relented and forgave her when she started sobbing out of frustration. He had a new chapter of the story of Pumpkin Pie to tell that night and Linda discovered that she was not just humoring him tonight, but invested, and disappointed when he fell asleep.
***
The twins knew only a few things for certain. They knew the face of the woman who kept them in this house: they had seen her sometimes back home, in the grocery store or park, or peering out from behind the curtains of the house three doors down from theirs. Jason and Linda had identical stories about the time she had bumped into their family’s grocery cart with hers, and another when she had sat on a bench with a red hat on. So on and so on.
They knew that the house they were in now was not that house three doors down. And they knew their parents had not gone to the hospital, as Miss Amber had told them.
Laying on their backs and staring up at the ceiling, they compared memories of arriving here.
“There was a party,” said Linda. “Too much noise. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Do you remember Mom coming into your room?”
Linda nodded her head. Mom had put a warm hand on her face, soft, and Linda smelled cigarette smoke on her fingers. She remembered thinking that Mom didn't smoke, but then she was asleep again.
There had been a car ride as well, but whose car it was and how they had gotten into it neither recalled. Linda thought she remembered being put into bed, this bed, and being kissed on the cheek. Peppermint sting on her skin. A longing sigh. Then there had been the electrically charged quiet of someone trying very hard not to move.
Jason said he dreamed in the car and recounted the dream in detail.
“That's not useful,” said Linda, rolling her eyes. Jason crossed his arms and glared.
“You don't think anything is useful. Except what you do.”
***
On the fifth day, the rain was heavy. Still, they stood out on the porch after lunch. Wind blew rain into their faces and they flinched away from it as best they could. When Miss Amber came back out for them, Jason and Linda were drenched and shaking. She tutted but did not apologize for keeping them outside.
For ten minutes, they were separated as Miss Amber put them into hot baths in different bathrooms. She noted Linda’s terror at not knowing where Jason was with eager curiosity.
“There, there,” Miss Amber said. She sighed in contentment, toweling Linda’s long hair dry after she was dressed. Linda felt she had never been handled so delicately and teetered between longing for closeness and revulsion at the idea of it.
“You’ll see your brother in a minute, dearie.”
Miss Amber was an old sort of young. She was on the small side for an adult, about Jason’s size, and seemed to be covering a pleasantly curved figure under bulky clothes. Her hair had started to gray but her face was youthful, her eyes large and a warm shade of brown. Linda thought a lot about if Miss Amber was pretty or not and tried to talk to Jason about this, but it bored him and she knew he wasn’t listening.
***
On the seventh day, Miss Amber brought books for them to read. They were for much younger children, and looked ancient. Their covers were grubby, speckled with old fingerprints, and they smelled of mold. Linda picked one up and saw that the first page was taped together.
“Good news,” said Miss Amber, sitting on the edge of the bed.“All is well with your parents now. They need me to look after you a little while longer though.”
Jason thumbed contentedly through a book and didn’t look up.
“How long?” asked Linda.
“Oh, they really don’t know just yet.”
Miss Amber stood and left the room, pausing briefly to revel in watching Jason with his book.
“Bullshit,” said Linda when the door was closed. A hiss under her breath. But she was sure Miss Amber had heard her, was in fact right outside the door, and when she thought about it, she decided that had been why she had said it in the first place.
“Linda!” Jason’s voice was reedy and scared, like the hesitant first whistle of a kettle just starting to boil.
The sound of footsteps down the hall. The silence when Miss Amber was really gone.
Jason spent the afternoon reading and Linda missed him telling his stories.
***
That night, there was a bucket of fried chicken for dinner and from the edges of her vision, Linda saw her brother tear into the food, oil sliding down his chin and onto his neck, until his hands and face shone with grease. She swallowed the bite of food in her mouth and put the piece of chicken back down onto her plate and rested her hands in her lap while Jason continued to eat voraciously for several more minutes. Her stomach growled, but the sight of her brother’s unrestrained enjoyment of the food, and Miss Amber’s stare made her feel that eating any more was repellant.
“Thanks,” said Jason to Miss Amber with the instinctual politeness that annoyed Linda. He leaned back in his chair. Linda glared at him while Miss Amber complimented his manners and looked over at Linda’s plate, where her food sat mostly untouched. The look of surprise and disappointment Miss Amber gave her was more exciting than she would have expected, but Miss Amber collected herself and glossed over her annoyance.
“Wash up, you two,” Miss Amber trilled as she cleared away the plates.
They saw a new part of the house that night, a den full of plush, rose colored furniture where they sat and sang songs while Miss Amber prompted them to bang on tambourines. Linda gave hers a perfunctory rattle against her knee and noticed that Miss Amber was engrossed in her singing and stopped. Jason, sitting next to Linda, played with enthusiasm after a while, joining in the singing until Linda wanted to pinch him.
There was a painting on the wall of Jesus, his face surrounded by soft, yellow light. Little dishes of potpourri on the coffee table. Linda’s fingers itched to overturn them, could feel some of the flowers and leaves between her fingers, so easily giving way. A sense memory from the first day. When they had sung for an hour or so, Miss Amber took the twins back up to their room and kissed them on the cheek.
“You’re being so very good,” Miss Amber told them as she stood in the door. “Your parents will be so happy to hear how you’ve behaved.”
She switched off the light. The door shut. Linda glowered at the space where Miss Amber had stood a second ago.
“Don’t say bullshit,” whispered Jason to his sister.
“Shut up.”
Where did she get the food, Linda wondered as sleep almost overtook her. The question brought her instantly back to wakefulness. There had to be a restaurant somewhere fairly close for her to get the takeout she bought. This seemed useful at first but Linda quickly became frustrated when she could not turn this information into something that would help them.
The nights were silent but Linda knew Miss Amber was there. The sound of the softest steps just when she had stopped listening for them. The occasional pulse of wavering light passing under the door when her shadow disrupted it.
“Should we try the door?” Jason asked. The frightened upward turn of his voice and the long pause after he spoke told Linda that she would be the one to do it. She nodded and got up quietly from the bed. She went across the room, walking slowly and purposefully, listening between steps. As she reached out for the doorknob, she started shaking and let her arm fall. Jason held his breath while she lifted her hand again. She did not move. Without speaking, Linda turned and ran back to the bed.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“It's okay.”
Linda wiped at her eyes with the duvet.
“I just have to know if that door is locked.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Jason said, sounding desperately relieved that they hadn’t tried tonight. The room soon filled with the sound of his unencumbered sleep.
Linda fell asleep crying a few hours later, and woke in the morning to Miss Amber opening the door.
***
Jason and Linda both cried the day the trees were more bare than not. The sky hardened. They fell asleep that night lying with their backs turned to each other, whispering to each other the names of birds that no longer came.
Linda carved her name in the soap during a bath one day, but Miss Amber threw it out. The days were very important, how many there had been. The twins went over the number every morning. It was the twenty-fifth day when Miss Amber cut Linda’s hair to her shoulders. She wiped away Linda’s angry tears with her sweater and turned her toward the mirror to inspect her reflection.
“There, there. It was time, dearie. It was time for all that hair to go. Too much fuss. Look at how grown you look now. We’ll throw it out for the birds to make nests with.”
Linda could hardly eat for days after that, not because of her repulsion toward Miss Amber, but now because of despair. It was the first time she noticed the fullness of her brother’s cheeks, the stomach growing under his shirt. Miss Amber thrilled to pamper him especially and Linda became more and despondent watching how he responded to it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
***
Then, the man came. Black hair with a gray streak in the front. The scratchy, silver beginnings of a beard. As thin as one of the branches on the trees. He wore a grubby gray suit and Miss Amber kissed him in the kitchen, the twins watching from the porch, peering through the window through the living room and into the kitchen. The man pressed Miss Amber against the kitchen counter and she reached to loosen his tie. Her body went slack against his. The man leaned down and kissed behind Miss Amber’s ear and her head tilted back as she gripped his neck.
Linda did not know if Miss Amber was pretty, but she thought immediately that the man was handsome.
He was not introduced, his presence was not explained, but Miss Amber called the man Rain Darling when he joined them at dinner.
“Rain Darling, more tea?”
“Rain Darling, do you like the soup?”
He rarely spoke, but on the evenings they sang, he took out a harmonica.
On day thirty five, he took Jason for a walk in the woods. Linda was nearly sick with worry the entire time, watching the kitchen windows for the sight of them coming back. Rain Darling and Jason gathered wood and brought it back and that night, Rain Darling built a fire in the fireplace. After dinner, all four sat in front of it. Miss Amber and he held hands as they sat staring into the flames. He reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears and she rubbed her face against his shoulder. Linda could not stop watching the two of them. It was early when Miss Amber sent the twins to bed that night.
“What did you do while I was gone?” Jason asked after they were alone in their room.
“I learned how to make bread. Do you like Rain Darling?”
Jason thought.
“He told me an interesting story. I like him. Yes.”
That night, the sounds of music and laughter came up to them from downstairs late into the night. Linda stayed awake long after her brother slept, listening to the now familiar songs. As sleep became a heavy weight on her, she heard whispers outside the door. Someone turned the doorknob and Linda bolted up. She held her breath waiting for the sound of a key or the absence of that sound, something that would tell her if they were locked in or not, but instead she heard Miss Amber speak.
“Let’s go to bed, Rain Darling.”
Miss Amber looked haggard in the morning but giggled as they ate breakfast. An empty wine bottle and two glasses, their insides stained red, sat on the counter. A full ashtray next to it sent up a nauseating stink. During breakfast, Rain Darling sipped coffee that smelled like the drinks at the twins’ parents’ parties and scratched at his beard. His eyes were bloodshot. Both he and Miss Amber smelled of sweat and cigarettes, but when Linda assessed how she felt about it, she didn’t find it exactly unpleasant.
Rain Darling put his hand on the back of Miss Amber’s chair and, after pushing her hair to one side gently with his fingers, stroked her neck. He smoked while he drank his coffee without speaking. Every few puffs of his cigarette, Rain Darling would pass it to Miss Amber, who would take her turn.
When Linda was finally able to stop watching them, she turned to her brother, he was staring open mouthed, a bit of egg yolk dabbed on his lip. He burped and Miss Amber giggled at him as she stood to clear the plates. Rain Darling stretched his long arms and reached in his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He stood, and pecked Miss Amber with a kiss on the top of her head before loping outside to the deck, where he stood in the fog and lit a cigarette.
Linda carved the bar of soap again that night and Miss Amber said Linda would only have liquid soap from then on, if that’s how she was going to be.
Linda shrugged. It used to be that she could feel her hair on her shoulders when she did that, but now there was nothing but a memory and that phantom tickle stoked anger deep in her gut.
“Fine. See if I care.”
This caused Miss Amber to bristle and, glaring, she took a few steps and stood close to Linda. For the first time, Linda noticed two crescent lines on either side of her mouth.
“Next time,” Miss Amber whispered, “I will give you a room of your own for good and you won’t see your brother any more.”
So, Linda listened.
***
Rain Darling went away on day forty nine and Miss Amber cried into her coffee. She didn’t come for the twins at dinner time that night and the house got cold. They were terrified in the morning when the sun rose high in the sky and Miss Amber still hadn't come.
Linda stared at the door, her face screwed up into an expression of anger and determination. Jason trembled behind her.
“Do it,” he said.
She stood and put a foot in front of her. Linda tried to inch herself across the room, but could not. She picked up a pillow and threw it and then curled up on the bed.
“You try,” she told Jason.
He sat up in the bed, turning toward the door, but that was all he did. Linda found herself momentarily disgusted with him, silent, puffing with anxiety as he tried to make himself move, his stomach poking out from under his shirt.
When Miss Amber finally threw the door open a few hours later, the twins were both crying. They shrank back for a moment then ran to the door, stopping just in front of her. After a shamefully short pause, Jason threw his arms around her middle. He was now taller than she was, just slightly, and squashed her awkwardly with his embrace until she pushed him away with a huff.
Miss Amber made breakfast in silence. That afternoon, she left the twins outside on the porch for hours and Jason cried. Linda comforted him, but reluctantly, appalled at his sniffling, even more so at how eagerly he took a hot drink from Miss Amber when she let them back inside. The more he started to look like a young man, the more he acted like a baby and in the incongruity embarrassed her.
“Thanks,” Jason said to Miss Amber’s retreating figure as she went into the kitchen, and Linda caught a frown when she didn’t respond. Her heart sped up to see how much he loved Miss Amber and needed her now, but fear was something she refused to acknowledge.
Miss Amber didn’t speak to them again until three days later, when she received a letter from Rain Darling, which she read to the twins after singing in the evening.
“Where are our parents? Is there a letter from them?” Linda asked.
Miss Amber looked up and sighed.
“They’re much happier that you stay with me,” she said.
As she was falling asleep that night, Linda remembered that the envelope Rain Darling’s letter came in would have on it the address of Miss Amber’s house. She woke Jason and told him what she knew. Linda felt a surge of energy at the potential for this knowledge and planned to try to search the garbage for it.
“In the morning. That’s when I’ll do it.”
Linda left a space for excitement over the idea after she finished speaking, but Jason did not take it up.
“Isn’t it a good idea?” Linda asked, turning over on her side to look at him. He fiddled with the buttons on his pajamas.
“Yeah, it’s a really good idea.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s just…”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Linda flopped over onto her back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Whatever,” she said.
“Don’t be mad, Linda.”
They stayed up late that night, Jason again telling her the story of the horse named Pumpkin Pie. Linda hated it now, thought him the world’s biggest baby, but let him speak, and he told his story until he was snoring beside her. Linda lay awake going over the steps of her plan.
The next morning, the trash can was empty, taken out the night before. Linda cried all afternoon and was sure she saw Miss Amber gloating, her plump lower lip stuck out momentarily in a faux pout done to mock her. Anger surged in Linda but she caught Jason’s eye, registering his bland acceptance. He was not angry, she realized, because he was happy here.
Sometimes, as winter deepened. Linda wondered if they should stop counting the days or trying to remember birds. Then it snowed and there was nothing outside but white stretching into the distance to meet the trees, and that was all she had, that and Jason. But she knew he had stopped fighting. He sang hymns happily at night, wriggled into his new, bigger clothes, napped in a chair in the living room while Miss Amber knitted on quiet nights. Like a puppy, he sniffed at the smell of food coming from the kitchen.
Linda sneaked a bit of soap from her bath one night and wrote a message on the window in their room after he was asleep. There was no one to see it, out here so far from everything, but she wrote it anyway.