Hummingbird Salamander(11)

My husband nodded, as if she had explained my day to him and there was nothing I could add. Eat more asparagus, cut into the crisp skin of a potato. Take another sip of Malbec.

I made a note to tell my daughter more about my job, not hold back the way she did about school. Let her know things—like how few women did this kind of work when I entered the job market. How few worked in management at my job. I truly meant to.

I asked my husband about his day because I didn’t want to risk talking about mine. He went off on a story about a stubborn potential client he’d shown six perfect homes to, mugging for our daughter so she’d laugh, and I was safe again.

I made it through sitting in the living room playing card games and our daughter going upstairs for a shower and then to bed. Through more rituals with the familiar beast I loved, this bear I could hug, cuddle with, bite the ear of.

The presents under the tree belonged to the future, and still do.





[15]


Somewhere along the way, for reasons I misremember, I had bought a go-bag. Maybe a paranoid moment at work. Or at home. Left it stored in my gym locker. A thick lump that lay in the bottom compartment and moldered there. Didn’t think about it much. But I’d bothered to buy it pre-made. With a credit card my husband didn’t notice because I’d never told him about it.

That didn’t mean I meant to leave without my family. I think I just wanted to protect them—from the thought, the impetus, the raging landscapes of the nightly news. Protect them from the idea that I believed such a future might come to pass.

So when I pried the hummingbird’s eyes out sometime during that first week, I stashed it all in the go-bag in my gym locker. I worked on the hummingbird in the unisex bathroom, with the door locked. Sitting on the ancient, cracked toilet seat. Using the tip of a nail file and a toothpick. Took an obscene amount of time and I cringed every time I thought I might be crushing the hummingbird.

Ghoulish, wrong, a violation … but a security situation with a client and a camera situated in the eyes of a teddy bear had made me think of it.

Scrutiny with a magnifying glass had revealed evidence of a prior excavation. The hint of glue leaking from one bird eye as I’d examined it close, shook it for some dislodged rattle.

The adrenaline rush at what was revealed, like I’d achieved something. As if I had some sense of why Silvina had chosen me.

Hidden behind, etched, delicate and tiny, into the sockets, still hard to make out even with the magnifying glass.

Two numbers: 23 and 51.

Combination or code?

I did a visualization, which helped sometimes. Tried to look down on myself, there in the crappy bathroom. Feverishly prying eyes out of the hummingbird. This hulking, bulky shadow doing brutal things to a delicate bird. Everything about that act wrong.

What were that person’s assumptions? What might this person miss?

One was this: the number could just be some taxidermy reference. Some manufacturer’s designation. Nothing to do with Silvina.

Still, I wrote the numbers down on a slip of paper, stuck the paper in my wallet. Stuck the wallet in my purse. The next day, I would glue the eyes back in because I couldn’t bear the thought of the hummingbird without them.

Left the mystery alone, did not tug on the string of it. But, all the while, the string was tugging at me.





[16]


Things I learned, I couldn’t undo or forget. Things that hurt me in the knowing of them.

The hummingbird had gone extinct because of poaching, habitat loss, and climate change. The wildlife trafficking cartels manufactured need—they told those inclined to buy that this or that animal was good luck or the next hip thing for the rising newly rich. They pried open the coffers of countries that would look the other way. They dealt in volume, so the inconvenience of a shipment or two caught at a border meant little to them.

They’d played off specific Latin American traditions about love potions, and what had been a few hundred birds, caught and killed for the purpose in Mexico each year, became thousands and thousands, smuggled around the world. Stuffed into little plastic pouches. Sometimes well cleaned enough, not just dried, to wear as the centerpiece of a necklace. A rabbit’s foot. A dead animal. But people wore dead animals all the time.

Their route became more arduous and terrifying because of unthinking development, their normal rest stops on the way to their summer habitat taken away one by one. They had to fly farther between food and water. More died along the way. While in South America, the warming climate meant their preferred habitat moved higher and higher up the mountainside—and became more degraded. With more competition from other species seeking cooler temperatures. A susceptibility in a smaller population to disease had created micropandemics that didn’t help. Spiked use of pesticides and herbicides everywhere had taken its toll.

Finally, it was not so much that this fierce bird had given up or given in but that the numbers were too few. Even if some birds could now winter in Southern California due to climate change. It was still too long a migration for too small a group.

I had a vision of that last small expedition, the last group, setting out. Maybe it was just a dozen, maybe less. Tried to imagine it as Silvina had. Trying their best to overcome those obstacles. Each one of those individuals on an epic journey. One they never came back from.

But: the joy. Even then, there must have been moments of joy and of contentment on the journey. Sanctuaries and times of plenty. It wasn’t just a winnowing. It was a life. I held fast to that. Even if it was selfish, for myself.