“She Flies” from Crazy Loco, by David Rice. Copyright © 2001 by David Rice. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers. Used by permission.
One of my earliest memories is of setting free more than 300 parakeets. It was my fifth birthday, and my parents had thrown me a party at Tía Mana Garza’s house. Tía Mana had made me a dress and bought me matching shoes and a hat. She had decorated her backyard with ribbons tied to the trees and her two birdcages. One cage was filled with hundreds of para- keets. It was eight feet high and ten feet across, covered in chicken wire with holes so small that I could barely fit my little fingers through them. The other cage held Tía’s favorite possession: a green and red parrot named Pájaro. Pájaro wore an ankle band attached to kite string so he wouldn’t escape. Whenever Tía let him out of his cage, he walked to the top and stretched his wings. Sometimes he’d flutter them and then fly straight up at full speed, but the string would snap him down.
During my birthday party I walked up to the big parakeet cage with a cookie. I thought maybe I’d push the cookie under the cage door and see if the parakeets would eat it. Tía Mana had more colors in her big birdcage than there were in my biggest box of crayons. Some of the parakeets would fly back and forth really fast, hitting the cage with their bodies. Others would clutch the walls with their claws, and with their beaks they’d bite the cage wire. To me they looked as if they were trying to tear out of the cage. I think I felt sorry for them. Whenever I walked up to their cage, they turned their little heads and stared at me, fluttering their wings hard against the cage.
I turned around and looked at Tía Mana, who was watering her azaleas. She smiled at me but said nothing. I tried to push the cookie through the slit under the door, but it was too narrow. As I lifted the latch of the door, I heard my parents in the distance, telling me to stop. But I didn’t want to stop.
I pulled the door open, and the sound of hundreds of singing birds swept away the shouts of my parents. The parakeets flew out, and I felt as if I were floating in a rainbow. They swirled around me, their feathers grazing my face, chest, shoulders and arms. I wanted to float away with them. I could hear them whispering to me as they darted by. I lifted my arms and stood on the tips of my toes, wondering if I was about to fly. The birds swooped into the trees of Tía’s backyard, singing happily. Pájaro, on his kite string, sang too. And Tía Mana dropped the water hose and put her arms up, as if she were trying to embrace the flying colors. She was laughing, and her laugh was the same pitch as that of the singing birds.
My father ran to me and slammed the cage door, but only a few birds still remained. He started yelling at me, but I couldn’t understand him. He jabbed his finger inches from my face. I didn’t know what he was so mad about. To me the parakeets wanted to be free, and Tía looked very happy watching them spread their tiny wings. I remember Dad saying that the birds were “escaping.” It was the only word I heard, over and over.
Then I felt Tía Mana’s hands on my stomach. I looked up and she was standing behind me. She pulled me to her, and I could feel her warmth on my back.
“Milagros has done the right thing,” she said. “I’ve had those birds too long. They should be free.”
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