The Bird Market of Paris by Nikki Moustaki

Author:Nikki Moustaki
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805096521
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Chapter 13

When I applied to New York University in the spring of 1995, I never believed I’d be accepted, but I was, and in late summer, my writer/bartender boyfriend agreed to drive me to New York City so I could begin graduate school in creative writing, with a poetry focus. I’d had terrible grades in high school and not much better at Miami Dade Community College, but they had improved once I took a few English classes at Florida International University. I think the weight of the graduate application rested on my writing sample: ten pages of poems, mostly about birds. I wanted to study at NYU because of Sharon Olds, a poet whose work explored depths I also wanted to plumb, a soft-spoken woman who penned dark, sexy, semiconfessional free verse pocked with curse words. I was twenty-four, and this would be my first foray into living as an adult in the real world.

I packed the rental car to the roof with black plastic bags filled with clothes and linens, and a giant cooler and boxes filled with food. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find food in New York City and I’d starve before classes began. I brought dozens of cans of tuna, chocolate and granola bars, Cup Noodles, cereal, and beef jerky—as if I were going camping in the mountains for months. My dad chuckled when he saw the car. He promised me there was food in New York, but he couldn’t convince me to leave anything behind.

Pets weren’t allowed in the graduate dorm, so my mom and Poppy said they’d care for the birds while I was gone. I removed all nest boxes and anything else that would prompt breeding. My mom requested that I thin my flock, so I reluctantly rehomed some of the birds, my brood winging from my grasp again. I said a special good-bye to Bonk, telling her to be a good girl, kissing her all over her beak and head, and begged Poppy to pay special attention to her.

A few hours before my departure, Poppy walked into my room and closed the door.

“You are my hope, Chérie,” he said.

“I know, Poppy.”

“Call me every day. Do not talk to strangers. The world is a hard place for a sensitive girl. There are hunters out there.”

“I know, Poppy.”

“You can come home any time you want if you do not like it.”

“I know, Poppy.”

“You know everything, Chérie.”

“I know, Poppy.”

He grasped his bushy eyebrows at the outside edges and curled them upward.

“Don’t do that!” I said, and squealed like I was eight years old.

He grimaced, formed his hands into claws, opened his eyes wide, then stepped toward me with a zombie’s gait. I screamed and leapt over the bed, tore open the bedroom door, and ran across the house, Poppy right behind me. I flung myself on the couch, where he cornered me, and the tickling commenced.

“Be careful,” Poppy said, hugging me. Poppy pointed at my writer/bartender boyfriend. “Drive slow. You are carrying precious cargo.

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