Late on a spring afternoon, my grandfather shouted from the outside back hall, “Lila, come quick!”
“Papa, what’s that?” I asked. He cupped a white handkerchief in his bricklayer hand and pulled back a corner of it. A wet brown baby bird lay there. “Where did you find this?”
“Maybe I didn’t do right,” he said in his old country accented English. “It vas on the ground. I thought it vas dead. So I threw vasser on it to be sure, and it voke up.” I was eighteen years old then, and adored my grandfather; to me, he never did the wrong thing even when he did. He was the finest man, one who would rather harm himself than hurt another person or the tiniest animal. He was in his eighties then, yet still strong from years of being a master brick mason. The baby sparrow appeared as innocent as he was to me.
“It’s ok Papa, “I reassured him and took the treasure from his hands. “You did the best you could.”
“Ven I saw it vas alive, I brought to you. Maybe a cat vould eat it. The nest in the tree it fell from is too high up for my ladder,” he explained. That would have been dangerous for a man his age, especially the delicate ballet necessary to place the fledgling into a nest on narrow branches. I loved his work ladder, spotted with concrete. Summer days when the huge impression in the middle of our broken concrete back yard wasn’t filled with a pond of rain water, he hoisted that ladder against the garage, and climbed up carrying buckets of water to fill pans for the birds, mostly city pigeons and sparrows, away from the cats.
Weary, Papa went upstairs to his flat in our Boston wood triple-decker house. “Maaaaa!” I yelled, “Look what Papa found!” I waited in the back hall, afraid to bring unknown bird germs into the house. My mother came slowly, painfully. Severe arthritis, and the lasting affects of rheumatic fever on her heart since she was twelve, were her constant companions. She looked at the bit of life I held in Papa’s handkerchief and frowned. “Can you find me a small box for the bird?” I asked. She said nothing and found a small cardboard box.
I asked my mother what to feed it. “I don’t know, Lila. The Audubon people will know,” she answered as she settled onto her kitchen chair and rested her head in her hands at the table. I called. The Audubon lady yelled at me for disturbing nature, said the bird would die, and to feed it canned dog food every hour. Fortunately, I had a dog.
That night I slept in the back hall beside the bird and fed it every hour. Before dawn, I went in to use the bathroom. My mother sat wide awake at the kitchen table, still in her clothes and apron. “Mom, why are you up so late?”
“I’m not going to let a pretty young girl be alone in the back hall all night. It’s doesn’t lock.” she said.
The bird peeped after the sun came up. I was so happy. My mother was too. I let my dog, Jeffy, a sweet mutt who looked like a fox, sniff the box. The wild scent didn’t bring out the beast in her; she sat down and graciously raised her paw at that speck of life, uncertain what to do.
I set the alarm clock for the next hourly feeding and finally lay on my bed. When it rang, I scooped out a teaspoon of dog food and went to the back hall. The bird was dead.
My mother gave me her nicest scarf to use as a shroud. Papa came down in time for the small ceremony, but I wanted to bury it alone. My mother watched from the kitchen window overhead as I dug a hole in the tiny patch of city dirt and buried the bird. Weeping, I whispered a eulogy and went inside. My mother’s eyes were red from crying too and she comforted me.
