FEBRUARY 11
Bird Girl.
Blame the parrot for this letter. At least I think it’s a parrot. Being a bird nonexpert, it’s difficult to tell. If you were here, you’d laugh in that way of yours and say, “Parrot?! Aaron, it’s a…”
Wow.
My ornithological knowledge is so poor I can’t even think of another bird with multicolored wings that might be kept in a cage for the amusement of the customers. Not this customer, though. Oh no. This customer can no longer look at a bird behind bars without thinking of a certain girl with a certain love of the sound of freedom.
I’m in a town called Rurrenabaque in Bolivia, having a drink. Perhaps you’re imagining me sipping beer from a gnarled keg in a makeshift bar on a long stretch of gold beach, surrounded by locals. Well, let me set you straight: I’m sitting on an ordinary plastic chair behind an ordinary plastic table by an ordinary busy road, and two drunk English guys are having a competition to see who can burp the alphabet. It’s quite the spectator sport. Mr. Stubble just got to the letter F before Mr. Bald reached the dizzy heights of N. N! In one belch! No wonder they’re cheering.
Watching them, I swear to God I could be back in York. It was the same in Ecuador, no matter where I went. Even during a trek in the remotest part of the Andes, stuff felt familiar. Take this family who agreed to let me stay for a couple of days. Walking into their hut in the middle of the mountains, I thought they were different at first. The people wore a style of clothes I had never seen before and spoke this strange language, not even Spanish. There was no Internet, no electricity even, so no way of knowing what was going on in the world, and that was fine by me.
My bed was a heap of rugs in the corner of a drafty room, and as I dropped my backpack onto the floor and looked out of the window, I saw a woman kill a chicken with her bare hands. She’d done it thousands of times, I could tell, holding the chicken upside down and snapping its neck as she laughed at a baby who was playing with a stone at her side. Now, it’s possible that chickens aren’t birds in the way that spiders aren’t insects, but either way I bet you’re pretty much appalled. I was, too, don’t get me wrong, but I was glad to feel horrified. Here was something so far from my experience, my jaw actually dropped. Home felt a million miles away. Mum. Max. You. You all sort of faded away, which is what I needed because remembering hurt too much.
But then this baby with the reddest cheeks I’ve ever seen pulled himself up to standing by holding on to his mum’s skirt. He was wobbly, his chubby legs unsteady. His mum dropped the chicken and crouched down, gently taking the baby’s hands. Shuffling backward, she helped the baby walk, and she was grinning and the baby was grinning and then the dad appeared and he was grinning, talking excitedly with his wife. Of course, I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew full well what they were saying.
Look at him go! Can you believe it? Oops, be careful! Who’s a clever little boy?
The baby tottered right into his mother’s arms and she held him tightly as the man kissed the top of both their heads before going inside, and my stomach ached with disappointment at the familiarity of it all. Humans. We’re all the same. There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter if you’re a bald English guy burping the alphabet or a woman killing chickens in the middle of the Andes. Doesn’t matter what language you speak or what clothes you wear. Some things don’t change. Families. Friends. Lovers. They’re the same in every city in every country in every continent of the world.
I want you to take your place among them, Bird Girl. You—the most exuberant, most vibrant, most beautiful person I know, the girl who writes about Bazzlebogs and makes happiness out of croissants—deserve to live. The day I left for South America, I came to the library to see you. Who knows what I was going to say, but when I got there and saw you stacking shelves, I decided against it. Your back was to me, but I could tell you were upset. Your movements said it all, the way you lifted the books as if they were heavy and paused regularly, one hand on your hip, your shoulders rising and falling as you sighed. I’d sighed like that myself a thousand times since that night by the river. I knew how it felt. The sad weight of your heart. The gnawing guilt. The desperate desire to hide away from preying eyes and be alone. When a lady came up to you to ask about a book, you didn’t smile and you barely spoke, just pointed up the spiral stairs with a finger that drooped. I almost ran over to grab it, to make it stand firm and to look in your eyes, urging you to forget what happened and live.
I didn’t, of course. Talking to you at all would have made things worse, reminded you of things you were desperate to forget, and besides, I knew if I got too close I would cave, wanting to hold you to take your pain away and to tell you I love you, because I do, Alice, deeply. Instead, I said good-bye under my breath and turned to leave, and those five steps to the cold glass door were almost impossible to take. When I reached the place we’d kissed in the rain, I stood there for the longest time, remembering how your lips had burned against mine and how wrong it had been but how right it had felt, and then I was gone.
It goes without saying I’ll never send this to you. It wouldn’t be fair, and I’d be too afraid of someone reading it and discovering the truth of what happened between the three of us. When it’s finished, I’ll tear it up and throw it away, just like I’ve done with all the rest. And when I get back to England and see you again, whenever that may be, I won’t say anything that will make it impossible for you to move on. I won’t tell you how much I love you or how scared I am of being without you or how I need to hide away from everyone because no one will ever compare to you…. I will simply let you go. True love is about sacrifice, after all, and if I want you to be free of the memory of Max, you need to be free of me.
Mr. Stubble and Mr. Bald have left. Light is fading and the traffic has died down, and there is just me and the parrot trapped in its cage. That’s not how you’re going to live, Bird Girl. Not on my account. Spread those strong wings of yours. Fly.
xxx
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