The Heron After
by Gabrielle Griffis
There is a photo of a heron on my mantle taken by my dead friend. Elira was outlived by the bird, Alba, so named by the zoo. Herons rarely live beyond five, on occasion they make it past twenty. Elira was sixteen.
The picture is surrounded by feathers collected from birds who have likely passed. There’s a list of record lifespans of birds who evaded their fate longer than their counterparts: warbling vireo, thirteen, song sparrow, eleven, sandhill crane, eighteen.
I built a nest of wood and glass. Filled it with furniture and books. It didn’t look like the mud nest of a cliff swallow, or the cup of a redwing. It was square and angular, unlike the soft edged homes built by animals, refined by wind and weather.
Elira took the photo on a class trip. We went to the zoo and learned about the habitats of wildlife. Macaws eat clay to digest toxic alkaloids in seeds from sandbox trees.
Butterflies drink turtle tears for salt. Herons hunt by day and night, stalking moonlit waters for prey.
Elira snapped a photo of Alba. His white plumage and sharp eye stood out against the rockface. A year later she bled out on a delivery table. She died in bloodsoaked sheets. Her infant daughter turned blue. Her evangelical parents forced her to carry the baby, prayed over their corpses. They buried them together in a cemetery beneath a dogwood tree. In the spring, white blossoms covered their grave.
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Every year I drove to the zoo, wondering if Alba had died. I didn’t call ahead. I imagined his long limp neck, his feathers faded with age, and a new heron in the swamp habitat. I wondered what zoos did with animal corpses, if they cremated and sprinkled the ashes. The sacred forms of tigers and leopards, reduced to dust and nothing, float over lands far from home.
I listened to Elira’s favorite album through car speakers, recalled sleepovers. Eating cheese puffs, drinking soda, and singing to glow-in-the-dark stars. She wore floral pajamas and was better at lip-syncing. Everyone admired her smile and curls. The day we met, our hands were covered in finger paint. We made tree leaves with green thumbs. The years melted together in birthday cakes and inside jokes.
Elira said she wanted to be an ornithologist. She wanted to travel around the world to see rare and beautiful birds: malachite kingfishers, blue-eyed ground doves, rainbow lorikeets. She made lists of everything she wanted to do: visit swamps and ancient places, learn new languages.
She said she wasn’t ready. She cried into my arms. I watched snowflakes dissolve into darkness. I listened to her throat choke. Felt her humiliation like a shroud. My thighs were wet with her tears. Her bed was an island in a humorless ocean. She said despair was proof there was no God. Our existence proved the absence of a higher power.
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At the wake, I excused myself and instead of using the bathroom, visited her bedroom one last time. Her blue lace curtains billowed over a hot air vent. Pictures she had taken of landscapes and flowers hung on the walls. Binoculars sat on a bookshelf next to field guides. I couldn’t bear being in her parents’ house, with the crucifixes, and biblical ephemera. I took the picture of Alba and left.
I held onto the picture, carried it in trunks from one apartment to the next. I counted the years I went to see Alba, three, five, a decade passed. Alba loped around the enclosure eating small fish and aquatic insects. He stood like a statue. I had silver threads in my hair. I recalled the day Elira took the picture. Her curly hair and varsity jacket. I took another photo of Alba, wondering when it would be the last.
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I drove past factory farms and mega churches. Sickly cows limped behind electric fences. Women with snowy hair stood on street corners holding signs. Beer-gutted men wore sandwich boards of embryos. On the news, caskets returned wrapped in flags. Condemned buildings decayed in the rain. I dissociated and lost myself in the physiology of plants.
I focused on climbing vines. The world faded away, the screaming specters and church-dotted streets. Trees stood tall over buildings, held the ground where roots had been ripped up. I had a list of everything I wanted to do, and checked items off one by one, until the feeling of satisfaction settled into my skin.
I was ready. The need grew stronger, to nurture, to hold, to teach. My former self faded. I broke down and transformed. City streets were cold and dirty. Sparrows took residence where sweetgum and linden emerged from asphalt.
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As I held my daughter, I thought about Elira, and an afternoon we spent reading scriptures that contradicted the sanctity of life. Grisly stories of divine wrath and warring Israelites. We made pizza, and Elira told me her parents said they loved God more than her. It didn’t make sense how overriding my child’s will and watching her bleed to death could ever be the more moral choice.
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On a cold Saturday, I returned to the zoo to find Alba had finally been replaced. A blue heron waded through the water, oblivious to everything that had come before. Smashed eggs, infanticide were viewed differently in the bird kingdom. Moral judgements meant little to waterfowl.
Gabrielle Griffis is a multimedia artist, writer, and musician. Her fiction has been published in or is forthcoming from Wigleaf, Split Lip Magazine, Monkeybicycle, XRAY, Matchbook, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She works as a librarian on Cape Cod. You can visit her website at gabriellegriffis.com.
