Birds in the Modern World

Anna bends over the sewing machine, the pedal beneath her foot whirring like the thread of wind through the cracked window of Stitch and Sew. A ceaseless pile of to-be-altered pants, dresses, and coats balances by her elbow. The sun fades while she rips out and repairs seams, a knot of minimum-wage hours gathered at the base of her neck.

Hand pressed to the small of her back, she stretches, then drags the nearly-finished swath of black material from the bag she stores under the table. The steady puncture of fabric resounds as she feeds her creation under the metal foot of the machine. Thread unspools while she plucks out straight pins with one hand and guides the thick, dark wool under the needle with the other.

“A girl needs to be like a tailorbird,” her mother warned Anna when she was fifteen and unafraid, hair preened, boots stilt-high, hands on her hips like a confrontation.

“Stupid, stupid mother,” Anna had whispered under her breath, not understanding that tailorbirds are master seamstresses for a reason.

At sixteen—heels and crop tops traded for combat boots and oversized sweaters after the boys did what they did at the party—she’d opened her mother’s dogeared copy of Birds in the Ancient World:

The tailorbird weaves plant fibers, spider’s silk, and strands of cotton through holes she’s pierced along the perimeter of a leaf with her needle-like beak, and then raises the walls of her home around herself. She fills gaps with feathers, moss, a tangle of fur. Camouflaged inside, her tiny bird ears listen for the click of lizards, the hiss of snakes, the scratch of red spiny rats.

Under the glare of Stitch and Sew’s fluorescent lights, Anna checks her phone—eight texts today even though it’s been weeks since she told him it’s over. The police won’t do anything.

She rubs a cramp in her neck and peers out the window smudged with grime, a fingerprint, the worm-like imprint of open lips. Shadows ribbon the street. Headlights prick past.

Anna turns off the machine, tugs her arms through the sleeves of her creation, and cinches the tie at the soft underbelly of her chin. Her mane of hair disappears under the beaked hood, her shoulders broader, waist thicker. Heart fluttering in her ribcage, she steps onto the street, senses heightened. The folds of black fabric rustle like feathers as she hastens down the sidewalk and turns the corner, the entry lights of her apartment building ahead glinting.

Fifty feet.

Twenty.

Fifteen.

A whistle pricks the night air. The grainy scuff of shoes. A breath. A sigh. Did someone whisper her name?

Did he?

She pulls back her shoulders. Stands taller. Her garment spreads out like dark wings.

A figure steps from behind a sycamore, the cherry-tip of a cigarette illuminating a face—not the one that haunts her nights, when she wakes, alone, sheets damp and twisted about her thighs, but another one with the same hooded eyes, the same dank scent of need and hate.

Footsteps not too slow, not too fast, she soldiers past, her cloak a home she’ll occupy at night. Somewhere, a bird trills—maybe a tailorbird—and the frantic rhythm of her heart calms as she steps into the warmth of her apartment building and double locks the doors.