YELLOWBIRD
I
I couldn’t say for sure, but there is no way that Thursday night could have been as bad as Friday morning was turning out to be. When I had awakened the clock read two in the afternoon; my appointment with Bertha was at nine in the morning. My mailbox was empty; no check. And the Yellowbird wasn’t at her perch. I had one hell of a hangover and a vague suspicion that something had happened the night before. I know that I had gotten drunk again last night, shooter drunk, the result of which it seems that my car was wasn’t where it should be, and, I had missed my appointment with my now undoubtedly smoldering mad landlord, Bertha McMannis. So, at the moment I was still broke, on the verge of being homeless and for me far worse: car less. Where was YellowBird?
YellowBird, my 1963 Ford Thunderbird. She was bright yellow, and when all her cylinders were running perfectly smooth cruising down the road, she made a sound like the wild cry that some birds of prey make when they have spotted their next victim; in a word bee-u-tee-ful . I gave her the name YellowBird not only because of her color and the sound she made, more so, because she embodied, mechanically, the characteristics of this bird that I fell in love with while visiting the Franklin Park Zoo Bird Sanctuary one summer while I was living with my uncle in Boston, Massachusetts.
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The year was 1963 and my mother and father were not getting along so she decided to spend a little time with some relatives from her side of the family. The elder of the second generation of the Thornberg family, James, had migrated to Boston, Massachusetts during the forties and by and large had integrated himself successfully into the growing African-American community. He was honest, industrious and by the time we arrived, city wise. He became the head of the Roxbury Clan (as my mother liked to call them) and was my mother’s oldest brother. Uncle Jimmy had been the first to arrive in Roxbury in the 1940s.
My grandfather admonished my uncle to not settle for the type of work that he had to endure for most of his adult life (he had been a hod carrier who graduated to bricklayer). He also told him to find a way to go to college. My uncle’s successful plan was to first join the military (Coast Guard). He applied for and was accepted to the Aerodynamics Engineering Program at the then prestigious Boston University, using the GI Bill benefit. Four years later he graduated with a degree in Aerodynamic Engineering, a wife and two children, James Jr. and Kenneth, with another on the way (we know now it was a girl, the beautiful Rose). He was hired immediately by one of the airline companies at Logan airport as a line mechanic. Two years later he and my aunt, India managed to secure a mortgage and buy a starter house in the traditional immigrant area of inner Boston: Roxbury.
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As in most southern African-American families my mother had many brothers and sisters, alive and deceased. The child mortality rate was high in the thirties, forties and fifties for all racial and ethnic groups but especially for African-Americans. Therefore it seemed that the average African-American woman of the times was accepting of and satisfied with the natural urge and desire to have many children; partly to overcome the also natural, enemies of the new born. Even those new born that some with a racist bent believed came into this world with the unnatural animal strength and resilience that African-American children seemed to have. This they believed was a physical attribute that was passed down to generations from our ancestors who had the strength to survive the hardships of he middle passage and slavery.
My grandmother, Annie had her own admonition: the eldest of the children should and would help the younger siblings, in any way that was needed. So it was the responsibility, and the burden, of uncle Jimmy and aunt India to welcome the rest of the siblings with a place to stay until they were able to find a job and a place of their own.
Therefore the guest room in the house was always occupied. In this June of 1959 the vacancy sign was up and it was my mother’s turn to use the back room of the Thornberg house, the New Underground Railroad accommodation as it were.
II
Everyday that long and exceptionally hot summer, my mother had looked for work that a woman of her intelligence would not find too boring or demeaning. Luckily for her Massachusetts in general and Boston in Particular was still in the industrial stage of economic development so many of the factories and businesses dedicated to manufacturing were still in existence. She was able to get a job as a line person in a company that made holiday ornaments. The job was boring and backbreaking but it paid the bills and allowed my mother to keep some of her independence. But she was not happy. Neither was I.
I remembered the days not so long ago when summer meant being with her and my father and my baby sister, Rachel, who was now with my grandmother back in Huntsville. It meant playing baseball with my cousins (on my father’s side) and church and Sunday School every week It church socials and the annual church outing to the beach. I knew that my mother missed them too and longed to be home, where we belonged. My mother and father were both as stubborn as the old ram goat on my father’s family farm; neither would be first to give in to the other. The rift and the work left my mother spiritually without the energy to do much more after her workday but to sit at the kitchen table and talk to my aunt and other members of the family, for what seemed like to me, hours on end. I wasn’t allowed to sit with them so I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about. Sometimes though I heard my father’s name mentioned with various expressions of emotion.
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As I said my mother did not have the energy or the inclination to spend the time that she used to spend with me. When she was working she said that I was supposed to spend my day in my uncle’s small front yard, or on the sidewalk in front of his house. I did as she said, at least for a while. A child’s battle has always been to do what he has been told to do on the one side or follow his curiosity to explore, on the other. The 1950’s in the northeast, in Boston, Massachusetts had its problems, including crime and social unrest, but none of this was on the mind of a 11 year old country boy in a large city like Boston. Each day I walked a distance in a direction chosen by how I felt at the moment when I gathered enough courage to take the chance. I knew that if my mother or my aunt and uncle came home early I would not only feel the strap but be placed in the hands of one of my uncle’s neighbors and would not be able explore again. I walked and explored many directions until I found myself returning to one place. I had found the Zoo. I loved the zoo. I loved the Bird Sanctuary at the zoo most of all.
III
There must have been a thousand birds of all sizes, colors and pedigree; sitting, flying or darting across the concrete. In all that confusion there was one sight and sound that caught my attention. The bird wasn’t very big, or very small It wasn’t moving, not a bit. What made it distinguishable from all of the others were the bright yellow feathers it possessed. Even though it had perched itself in the shadows on one the natural looking manmade limbs above the first level of confusion, out of the rays of the brilliant sunlight, it’s feathers fairly glistened, glowed, with a sort of liquid light created through some fusion of their own. I had become mesmerized by the glow that was cast and stared entranced, to me the aviary was silent, there was no movement; all I could see was the yellow icon before me.
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The sound came as a whisper at first, barely audible to the ear, only detectable by some long unused innate sense. It was a sound unlike any that I had heard before. I knew of stories told by sailors over the centuries and written down as fable and myth, of Sirens, whose songs are so beautiful that all who hear them are lost to nothing but that sound, even unto their doom, against the hidden rocks. This was that sound, passed down.
I wanted to look around to see from where the sound originated but the image of the yellow goddess in front of me was too strong. It had started pulling me slowly towards it. My soul was divided, torn between two senses. Which would win? I had found perfection in sight and sound but now I would have to choose between the two. I thought, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the…..’ I did not want to lose break with certainty so I knew what my choice should be. I forged ahead, moving ever so close to the steel cage that held her hostage. Strangely, the closer I came to the yellow bird the better I could hear the Siren call. I stayed the course. Coming within a few feet in front of and under her, the melody became not only recognizable but also clear. Finally I arrived within an arms length of this unique creature, whom I could see was now facing almost completely away from me. Not being able to see the face of this divine demigod, the spell was broken for a moment; as I dared turn to hopefully pinpoint the sound that moved me so. Glancing first right then left, cocking my ear each turn, I tried to draw a two point azimuth. Within seconds I was pulled back to my lovely as she turned slowly with her beak opening and closing. Suddenly it became clear: that sound, that wonderful sound was breezing, floating from my yellow angel, my Yellow Bird. I couldn’t hold back any longer, I reached out…........
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