True story.
It is.
OK.
And for my next offering, I'd like
to read an excerpt from the essay "Beautiful
City of Tirzah", which I hope will draw you even more
deeply into my family's strange and weird world.
So OK-- it's from "Beautiful City of Tirzah".
Animals come after my father dies--
dogs, cats, ducks, geese, goat, a peacock.
They wander our to our home several years into his absence,
appearing on our doorstep or catching our eye
from feed store cages.
Always, we take them in.
We line our laundry room floor with bath towels and bed
sheets, fill cereal bowls of tap water and dry food,
then flick off the light to watch them sleep.
Strays make the best pets, my mother
tells the five of us kids.
They won't leave.
Beggar's night, 1970-- my big brother is late again.
Our mother has said he could play after supper on the ditch
bank behind our house to see if neighbors will give him
Halloween candy a day early.
But when I peek outside to investigate, to check on him,
the sun is already set.
Shadows drip like blue ink from the cottonwoods.
But I don't say anything to our mother, who
sits in her antique rocker, tapping a Russian olive
switch on the floor.
I scoot on my knees across the hardwood floor
to take my place before the living room TV
where my three sisters huddle before a movie
of the week, Doctor No.
It's a school night.
We've changed into our pajamas.
Our hair is damp from the bath.
Mom?
The back door thuds open.
My brother clamps to the kitchen,
breathing hard, as if he's been running.
Our mother stand, grips the switch,
and intercepts him in the dining room.
The overhead light flicks on, bright
as an interrogation lamp.
Wait!
He pleads.
I found something.
Look.
I scramble to my feet and jockey for position with my sisters.
Our brother reaches into his jacket
and extracts a small bundle--
a baby bird squints at us.
An owl, my mother says.
It's adorable.
Where did you find it?
My brother had been hurrying home
along the acequia when he heard a rustling from the bushes.
When he slid down the embankment to investigate,
a hatchling skittered through the dirt.
He thought it might have broken its wing, so he scooped it up.
I looked for the nest but couldn't find it, he says.
And I saw its mama by a tree.
Someone shot her or something.
Our mother holds the owl to the warmth of her body.
It looks up at her and blinks.
An ornithologist who lives down the street tells my mother
we've adopted a screech owl--
probably a female, given the description over the phone.
Although it's not allowed under city codes,
we can probably nurse the chick until she gets stronger,
he says.
Feed her bits of stew meat, keep her in a cage,
and watch out for our cats.
My mother follows his advice but vetoes the cage.
She wants the owl to fly freely in her home.
She retrieves a cardboard box from behind Safeway,
lines with newspapers and old towels,
and places a pinion branch inside as a perch.
Then she sits the whole thing on the dining room pottery case
where our fat tabbies can't reach.
The owl is the size and shape of an upside-down pear.
Her feathers are gray with salt and pepper speckles.
She has two tufts that look like ears or horns,
and a beak as sharp and shiny black as her talons.
What I like best are her eyes, piercing
yellow, the size of dimes.
When she looks at me, it's like she's reading my mind or seeing
something I can't.
My aunt Molly can't even meet her gaze.
The owl's eyes, Molly says, are too human.
My mother considers the bird's name carefully.
Usually, she names the pets after artists she admires--
like Toshiro, the Japanese actor for the silky black and white
cat.
Or sometimes, she chooses characters
from her favorite films, like Tonya
from Doctor Zhivago for the German shepherd.
For the owl, my mother selects Tirzah.
Tirzah, she says, savoring the syllables which
break like the morning sun through the crystal
above her bedroom window, turquoise and gold.
My little Tirzah.
What's it mean?
I ask.
It's an old name, a religious name from the Bible.
Later, I looked it up.
Tirzah, a city in Palestine, a beautiful place
alluded to in the Songs of Solomon.
You're as beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah.
Each morning, my mother sets the owl's box
on the dining room table while she sketches or pays bills.
Tirzah hops out and waddles over to nibble my mother's pen.
If she leaves the room, the owl scurries after her.
The only way she can finish her chores
is to wrap the bird in a washcloth
and tuck her in the breast pocket of her denim work shirt.
Tirzah remains there for hours, lulled
by my mother's heartbeat.
On Sunday evenings, my grandmother Desolina
stops by our house for red chili enchiladas.
Over supper, she grumbles about her childhood in Corrales,
growing up among horses, cows, and chickens in a drafty adobe
where black widow spiders dropped from the rafters
into her tin cup of milk or coffee.
She hated every minute of it, she
says, chewing with her mouth open--
but learned the old ways despite herself.
She knows how to bleed a goat, how to age red wine,
and how to treat a rattlesnake by chewing tobacco.
And she knows about spirits.
While my mother collects the supper dishes,
I line up my toy knights on the kitchen table
and listen to the two of them whisper
in Spanish about dead relatives.
When Desolina catches me eavesdropping--
and she always catches me--
she laughs under her breath and beckons
with an arthritic finger.
Come here, mijito, she says, leaning forward and clutching
a shiny black handbag.
And then, in a low, raspy voice, she
describes the fireballs dancing along the Rio Grande bosque,
the footsteps dragging down her hallway at midnight,
and the crone who transformed into a banshee
when one evening to chase her brother home with an acequia
near Bernalillo.
It's all true, she says, nodding at my white eyes,
then breaking into a smile of red lipstick and crooked teeth.
And did you go to church like I told you?
When Tirzah flutters by, my grandmother
makes the sign of the cross.
Owls, she says, are bad omens, messengers of the night.
Que fea, she mutters.
Why did you bring that ugly thing in your home?
My mother shrugs.
I think she's gorgeous.
When Tirzah settles on the chair back across from her,
Desolina holds the owl's gaze for a full 30 seconds.
Then she slips the glow in the dark rosary from her purse,
turns her head, and spits.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Almost done.