I mulled this over as I let smoke roll off my lips. Her directness was rare, and it resonated with me. There was truth in what she said. I nodded.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Birdie,” she smiled again, revealing that gap.
We smoked the rest of our cigarettes together and it became a routine. I brought my own the next time, but we made a habit of standing on the sidewalk and hashing out solutions to the problems women faced in our world. There was something about Birdie. A steadfastness, maybe. It was the way she never backed down on her opinions. She was a fighter. I got to know her over the coming weeks and months, and she became my best friend.
Our bond was quick, like the glue that holds on a fake nail, and perhaps just as fragile. A female friendship in its infancy is something to be nourished and nurtured, but Birdie overwhelmed me in the way that a wildfire sweeps through open prairie. I hoped that maybe part of her passion would rub off on me.
One night, in class, we each shared a piece of writing. The class quickly descended into a colosseum-esque blood bath in which sides were taken and favorites were picked. I shared something that got mostly praise, but when it came time for one of the guys to speak, he tore it apart.
“It’s weak,” he concluded after a two-minute diatribe about why my writing sucked. “It’s like you wrote this five minutes before class started.”
Some in the class snickered. Others gasped. Dr. Wolsieffer didn’t intervene. Unlike other professors, he didn’t mind when the class devolved into a game of favorites and emotions ran high. He was like a wolf-watcher at Yellowstone. His job wasn’t to save the elk; it was to observe the kill.
“Remind me,” Birdie spoke up. “Bryan, right?” she asked the guy. He nodded. She went on. “Why don’t you share what you brought with us?”
Bryan looked at Dr. Wolsieffer. He shrugged and nodded.
Bryan cleared his throat and began to read his piece. It was centered around an intensely unlikeable protagonist that was inherently misogynistic. Alcoholic, abusive with his family, addicted to his work. It was bad, I thought. But Birdie wasn’t looking for technique. She was looking for a chink in his armor.
People commented, once again forming cliques that would stay strong throughout the semester. Some favored Bryan, while others didn’t. Finally, Birdie spoke.
“I guess you expect us to pat you on the back for stringing two sentences together coherently in spite of the fact that this is garbage.”
Dr. Wolsieffer didn’t stop her.
“I mean, let’s look at the part where he’s talking to his wife. Page four, I think. Where he says, ‘What are you gonna do about it, little bitch?’” Birdie paused, waiting for everyone to turn to the page. “Where did you come up with that?” she asked with a smile.
Bryan shook his head.
“You hear that a lot growing up?” she asked.
The class went silent. The tension gained a pulse and Bryan’s face reddened. Whether with embarrassment or rage, I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to disappear. Whatever anger he felt seemed to melt into shame. He cowered to her like a beaten dog. She smiled sweetly at him.
“Enough,” Dr. Wolsieffer finally intervened.
But when I looked up from the pages and into his eyes, they were locked on Birdie. He wasn’t appalled or angry. There was something in his eyes, though.
Admiration.
Unnerved by the entire experience, I was quiet when we smoked that night. Birdie filled the silence.
“I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but it came out before I could stop it. This is a bad place—this world—and we have to stick together. I promise that I’ll always come back for you, even if it means hurting someone else.”
I was silent. I looked up at her. We’d grown so intensely close in the last few weeks that I wasn’t sure where we were fused and where we weren’t. But I knew one thing, I never wanted to not be on the same side.
“I want you to promise, too,” she said.
I loved Birdie. I loved her passion and her fiery personality that seemed to be inextinguishable. I loved her gapped teeth and I guess I even loved that piece of her—that jagged piece—that snaked through the middle and laced cruelty through her tongue.
“I promise,” I said.
I told her that I would always come back for her, even if it meant hurting someone else. Even if that someone else was me.
VANESSA
Vanessa stares at the extra pillow beneath Birdie’s head. Two support it. She could slide that bottom one out and place it over the girl’s face and press down, down, down until her body melts into Birdie’s and she snuffs the life out of her. The only thing stronger than Vanessa’s resentment for her husband’s mistress is the feeling that Tom is right: this unborn child is special—chosen—and it’s Vanessa’s duty to bring it into the world unharmed. And so, she chooses not to smother its mother. For now.
She prepares the change of bandages for Birdie’s injury. The girl’s shoulder is swollen and bruised. In days, if not hours, the dark lines delineating infection will spiderweb across her collarbone, embedding themselves inside her like a root system. With the more time that passes, the harder it will become to extricate them, just like grass overtaking a flower bed. Vanessa knows this because she was a nurse in her previous life. The life before Revelation Ranch.
Vanessa left everything behind for Tom long before he became the leader of this small faction of people. She left it all behind on the day that she said, Yes, I’ll marry you. Like so many other women, she had discovered herself too late, obscured from the sun by her husband’s lengthy shadow. She’d sought identity in Tom when she was younger,
