Wings
By Alannah Tjhatra
November 15, 2024
November 15, 2024
We were shaped by sharp words, school fights, and fists of day-job money. We were clapped on the head if we didn’t set the table right. And everyone knew that Patrick Schneider was shaped by a belt that crisscrossed red over his bare legs in the summertime. That’s why we were so quick to turn on Dani. Dani Owens was shaped by soft love and we could smell its stench on her from a mile away. She was the kind of girl who liked talking to teachers for Christ’s sake. She carried stink bugs outside so that no one would crush them in the hallways and insisted on sharing her homemade cookies with Laura M when she forgot her lunch. And there was this pathetic, fragile look in her eye—as if she were perpetually on the verge of tears—like if you stared at her for too long, she might start weeping the entire Amazon River.
But the strangest and most laughable thing about Dani is that she believed, with all her heart, that she was a bird. I’m a bird, I’m a bird, she would call from the top of the playground. She would beat her arms and bob her head and slowly, painstakingly slowly, lift her feet off the ground until she was standing on her tiptoes.
We stared at her, both mesmerized and repulsed, and threw whatever taunts we could her way. Get down here and I’ll roast you in the oven, you stupid bird. Stop your honking, you ugly duck. But Dani just kept flapping her arms and bobbing her head. Sometimes it lasted only a few minutes; other times, she wouldn’t quit until the bell rang and we slunk back into the dark classroom, our vision stained by sunlight.
By March, most of us except for Pat Schneider had grown tired of taunting Dani, since it seemed like nothing ever got through that metal head of hers. So we went to play a game of kickball in the snow-pocked field. It was Henry Gao’s turn to kick when he completely froze up.
“What’s the matter with you,” someone yelled.
But all Henry did, with his jaw hanging open, was point wordlessly towards the playground. We turned to look where his finger led. Sure enough, Dani was up in her usual roost, cawing and flapping and lifting off her toes. And there was Patrick Schneider at the foot of the playground, sneering at her. In recent weeks, Pat, who seemed to relish in teasing Dani more than the rest of us, had taken to throwing birdseed at her. He brought a container of seed from his mother’s nursery and spent some recesses flinging the pieces at Dani whenever she was up on the playground. It had almost become a routine, where we perceived Pat’s menace and Dani’s lunacy as natural occurrences.
But something truly miraculous happened that Thursday in March, and this is why everybody thinks we're crazy. Dani suddenly jerked left and right, cawing faster and more urgently. Her legs grew thinner, and her eyes, smaller and beadier. Pat Schneider had fallen onto the playground rocks out of pure shock as Dani started flapping more quickly than ever before. She shook her arms up and down, up and down, until black and white feathers fell out of them in rows. Her head turned small and gray and her lips formed a long, hard bill, and soon enough Dani had completely transformed into an honest-to-God wood stork, and we gaped at her like she was Abraham Lincoln come to haunt us from the dead. The playground was painfully silent except for the sound of Dani’s gentle clicks. She looked around with her bird eyes as if she was seeing us all for the first time.
Pat Schneider, like the rest of us, was caught up in a sort of awe. Dani—and we knew it was still Dani, on account of her tearful expression—cocked her head and looked at Pat straight on. She let out a small, awkward cry and attempted to spread her wings, but the playground bars were too narrow and she tumbled to the ground. Dani let out a bray like a donkey and stood completely still on her two clawed feet. Pat, suddenly shaken from his reverie, took this opportunity to lunge at Dani in one rough motion. Dani skittered away. She flapped once, twice.
“Don’t you dare fly away from me, you ugly bird,” Pat thought to say. Someone had enough sense to tell Pat to shut up.
But Dani flapped her wings a few more times, and in one great flurry, she was off. Her flight was a sad wobble that brought her up, then down, then up again. And Pat was too proud and too invested to let go of the whole ordeal. He scrambled to his feet and began running after her, his legs pumping as furiously as Dani’s wings flapped.
“Come back, stupid bird! Come back, you dumbass,” Pat yelled. He ran across the playground, under the trees. And when he passed us on the kickball field, we caught a glimpse of his face, streaked with snot and spit. He was still holding the stupid birdseed, and it jostled out of its container, falling in a haphazard path across the schoolyard.
Pat ran with his fist in the air, with all the hard passion and rage and love he had in his chest, until he was almost wholly covered by Dani’s silhouette. Dani soared up then down, and in one deep swoop, she opened her bill and caught Pat by the collar of his shirt. We watched as he was pulled off the ground, kicking and shrieking. He was heavier than Dani, so she had trouble carrying him at first, but she didn’t let go. A few of us ran after her, yelled at her to put Pat back down. But of course she didn’t listen.
So we were left to stare helplessly from the playground as they ascended—two large, irregular blotches against the sky. They went over mounds of snow, past trees, and clear over the school roof. Soon enough they had gone so far that we couldn’t even tell which blotch was Dani and which was Pat, and then they disappeared completely. And all we were left with was the memory of how she clicked her bill so gleefully, how Pat shrieked. And then, how Dani’s wings trembled outwards to eclipse the afternoon sun. Nobody believes us when we try to tell it, but we try anyway.
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Alannah Tjhatra grew up in the suburbs of Southern Ontario, Canada. She spent four years in Michigan for university and is presently a California-based medical student. She is learning to write character-driven stories. Her short fiction has appeared in Glass Mountain Magazine, Macrame Literary Journal, and more.
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Author’s Note:
“Dani Owens was shaped by soft love and we could smell its stench on her from a mile away.” This line popped into mind while I was bored in class, and I ran with it from there. Childhood memories sometimes possess a dreamlike quality which makes us believe our experiences were half- or fully-imagined. I wish I could pour each memory into a large jar and study it up close. I think every one, whether imagined or not, shapes who we become as adults.