Baby Blue Jay

The baby blue jay had fallen to the ground and my father ran out to the side yard of our borrowed house in Larchmont, New York to rescue it.  It was 1957,  I was seven and he was (can it be?) thirty, and although this was the country he was born and raised in,  this was the second continent and fifth house I had lived in.   “It’s  only temporary.  Bill lent it to us while he’s in Europe.” Yes, it felt temporary. I still hadn’t gotten used to the new world I was in, and the strange new English language around me. 
“Abuelo,” I  said to my grandfather in Spanish four months ago,  before leaving Uruguay,  “when will I see you again?” “I will always be in your heart, see?” he said as he showed me the latest drawing he’d made for me of a large heart surrounded by lilies of the valley, my grandmother’s favorite flower.  But I knew, even then, even at seven, that only the red heart on the paper would stay together.  Mine was going to break.
“Papa, Father, Father, it’s there by the rosas.”  From inside the dining room window I pointed at the exact spot on the window where I could see the crumpled mass of gray.  How strange it was to say “father.”  I liked the Spanish  sound of “papa,”  rounded and formed from closed lips and then a burst of energy and an outward puff of air, and then again, “pa” “pa”.  But in English a forcing of air through teeth trapped on the bottom lip, the mouth hinged open and then the tongue thrust out along the teeth and a growl deep in the mouth, “fa th er.”
But this was his language and his country and here we were going to live a fine life and be happy.  He said so.  And I wanted us to be happy.  I knew things in Uruguay were bad, and there was never any money or hope.  “Plata, “ there.  A word meaning “silver,” something shiny and real.  “Money,” here.  A word that didn’t have a picture and I kept confusing with the first day of the school week.
The baby bird wasn’t moving much as my father scooped it up in his gloved hands and to reassure me that it was still alive showed it to me through the window before turning to the tree, turning toward the nest.  Perhaps (quizas) had we not been looking at each other through the glass and then at the almost lifeless mass in his outstretched hands, he would have seen the mother blue jay. Her attack came from some high place and was a direct and fierce stabbing of my father’s head.  He yelled in pain as she pierced him once, twice, three times.  Blood trickled over his ears, down his face onto his shoulders.  I saw him look at me through the glass as I stood frozen with my mouth open wanting to call for some help and not finding the words or the breath.
The baby in his left hand, waving off the wild mother with his right, he climbed the ladder he had leaned against the tree, and deposited his charge into the nest.  When at last he came inside, before my mother saw him and fainted, before we went to the hospital, he said to me, “Sylvia, you see, this is what matters .  You must always help others.  It might hurt sometimes but you must help the world however you can. Remember this your whole life.”

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