Emily Borden first saw the Bird Lady one morning while waiting for the bus that would take her to school.
Every morning her father prepared her breakfast and inspected her feet. Satisfied that she’d eaten sufficiently and wore matching shoes, he would then let her out the door of their house to walk the short distance to the corner where the bus would stop to draw her up into its immense yellow body. After a short ride, the bus would expel her into the schoolyard where, seven hours later, she would return to repeat the process.
Since her mother had died, this process had become a quiet ritual for her, though the hours she spent listening to her teacher might just as well have been spent listening to nothing at all. She couldn’t concentrate, after all, with the memories of her mother crowding out multiplication tables and the proper spellings of various words. Her teacher, too, worried about her poor performance, though sympathized with her recent trauma.
Her father, who mourned Emily’s mother’s death just as deeply as Emily, worked long hours, perhaps to distract himself from his grief. Often Emily stayed with old Mrs. Parmesi next door after school, until her father drove into Mrs. Parmesi’s driveway, usually in darkness, to finally retrieve her. She and her father spoke infrequently these days, and never about her mother. Emily usually fell asleep fairly early in the evening. And in the morning, her father prepared breakfast for her and absently inspected her shoes.
So seeing the Bird Lady—or a figure she thought might be the Bird Lady—represented the first significant interruption to her ongoing emotional hypnosis.
But she wasn’t certain she was actually seeing the woman her mother described in the bedtime stories she used to tell. Emily only saw her from a distance, perhaps two blocks away down the diminishing corridor of the street, washed in the light of the rising sun. The woman seemed old, as old as the woman in her mother’s stories, wearing a wide straw hat fixed to her head by a large white scarf tied under her chin. Unfortunately, Emily couldn’t see the woman’s features well when she turned her head, but above that head, circling in an unnatural pattern, were several black birds adorned with bright white beaks.
The hem of the woman’s long black dress reached nearly to the sidewalk, and when she moved she seemed to shamble as if her legs were locked at the knees. The birds followed her as she moved, as if marking carrion.
But before Emily could study the woman more closely, the bus stopped in front of her and she dutifully stepped aboard.
#
“What does the Bird Lady do?” she’d asked her mother one night as she pulled the blanket on her bed close to her chin. Her mother had just finished describing the woman to Emily, taking great care to emphasize the black birds constantly circling her head.
Her mother, whose name was Barbara, but was only ‘mom’ to the girl, patted her leg beneath the blanket, her thin, pretty face glowing in the light of Emily’s bedside lamp. “She searches for people to take with her to where she lives.”
“Where does she live?”
“In a place full of beautiful birds living in great green trees.”
“Why would anyone want to go to a place full of birds?”
Her mother smiled. “Not just for the birds, but because it’s so beautiful there, full of gorgeous green hills and rivers with cool, clear waters. The weather is always warm but mild, and there’s always a breeze blowing gently through the trees. The birds sing together, making the most lovely music anyone could ever hear. There’s always something to eat, no one ever goes hungry. The Bird Lady brings people to the place with the birds because she’s a kind of angel.”
Emily’s father didn’t always like the stories her mother told her. He’d said they were too surreal for a little girl, but Emily didn’t know what ‘surreal’ meant. Perhaps he only meant that her mother’s stories were too frightening for a little girl, like some of the movies she wasn’t allowed to watch. Her mother just ignored her father and kept telling stories.
Emily didn’t believe they were too frightening: in fact, she loved hearing her mother’s stories because they made her feel as if she were listening to wonderful fairy tales of places and people she would never experience in life.
Her father once told her not to think too much about her mother’s stories, that her mother had too much of an imagination and sometimes didn’t realize that her stories were too strange to tell to children. Only once did Emily’s father comment about her mother’s death—he’d said, as if talking to an invisible person by the kitchen table, that her mother’s imagination had been the reason she died.
Emily didn’t understand this then, and she still didn’t understand.
She’d wanted to ask her mother more about the Bird Lady, and the beautiful place with the green trees and rivers with clear waters, but her mother died before she could ask, and her father never told her bedtime stories.
#
Emily saw the Bird Lady again, and then again, and each time the woman seemed to come nearer to her.
Her father had taken her to a small park to enjoy the early spring weather, though she didn’t really want to go. She sat on a swing, rocking back and forth, because she knew this would make him happy, or, at least, satisfy his need to be a good parent. The other children in the park drifted together, despite any shyness, to play on all the playground equipment, but Emily remained aloof. She didn’t want friends; she didn’t want to play.
Her father kissed her on the head and told her that he was going to walk to a nearby convenience store to buy her an ice cream, and she said she would wait.
But after he’d left, she turned her head away from the other children and saw the woman standing a block away, the passing cars first making it difficult to identify her, but then she was certain. It was the same woman, and above her head circled the same black birds with brilliant white beaks. The woman made no effort to cross the street to enter the park, but stood staring at Emily, or so Emily believed. Now the girl could see the woman’s face more clearly, and realized that this lady was terribly old, wearing a mask of wrinkles in which nested two vividly blue eyes.
She rocked back and forth on the swing as she observed the lady, wondering why the woman only stood across the street and didn’t approach. Was this really the Bird Lady her mother had told her about?
Emily watched the woman for a long time, and then decided she didn’t look at all like an angel, at least, any image of an angel she’d seen in her brief life. The stone angels in the graveyard were youthful, beautiful, without flaw, but this woman held a gravity in her expression that confused the girl. She began turning her head frequently, hoping to see her father returning down the street from the opposite direction—finally, she did see him walking toward the park, but when she glanced back toward the Bird Lady the woman had vanished.
She’d wanted to tell him what she’d seen as he handed her the bar of ice cream, but she didn’t. Her father sat on the swing next to her and they ate their ice cream together, neither saying much, because he never did say much anymore and Emily’s mind was filled with questions about the woman.
The Bird Lady’s next appearance frightened Emily. She’d gotten on the school bus as usual, somnambulant as usual, her small head leaning against the window where she sat. For some reason, the driver, an older man usually anxious to load and unload his charges as quickly as possible, sat idling, perhaps busy with his phone or some other piece of equipment. She closed her eyes, waiting for the bus to lurch forward; she was sleepy that morning, having been kept awake the previous night by unpleasant dreams.
She opened her eyes again when she heard the tapping on the window glass by her head.
She stared out the window and saw the old lady standing next to the bus, and now the glowing blue eyes locked on her own small brown ones with an intensity that rolled through the girl’s spine. The woman nodded to her repeatedly, as if acknowledging a question that was never asked, and Emily’s mouth opened in wonder. She quickly glanced above the woman’s head and saw the birds circling over the bus, more now, a great black cloud of birds swirling in the haze of the morning light.
When she gazed at the woman again, the woman’s mouth had opened, exposing poor yellow teeth. Emily couldn’t decide if the woman was smiling or grimacing, but suddenly the girl felt frightened, like the time her parents drove her to the circus when she was very young and the loud carnival music and leering clowns horrified her. Leering, yes. It seemed as if the Bird Lady was leering at her.
Before she could say a word, though, the bus suddenly lurched forward and began rolling on toward the school.
With her faced pressed to the window, she watched the woman grow smaller and smaller, and when the driver turned a corner the Bird Lady vanished again.
#
She finally told her father, “I saw the Bird Lady.”
He set his cup of coffee on the kitchen table and straightened in his chair. His eyes, set in dark circles on his face, widened as if she’d said something profane.
Emily stared down into her bowl of cereal, wishing she’d said nothing. But the old woman’s face, peering at her strangely through the window of the school bus, had scared her; she’d begun seeing her in dreams.
“Emmy, what did you say?”
She stared up into her father’s eyes. He seemed as if he were about to cry. “I saw the Bird Lady, the one in Mama’s stories.”
Her father sat quietly, his lips parted as if to speak, but saying nothing. He seemed now as if he were thinking very carefully of what to say. After he’d taken another sip of coffee, he rose from his chair and knelt by Emily.
“There is no such person as the Bird Lady,” he said, his normally strong voice straining to be softer. “That was someone your mother made up out of her imagination. She doesn’t exist.”
“But I did see her,” Emily countered, disliking the idea of being called a liar. “More than once. Birds were flying over her head, just like in Mama’s stories.”
“Listen, Emily.” He patted her arm gently, but she felt the tension in his hand. “You saw some poor old lady and maybe a few birds flying by and you only thought she was the woman from your mother’s stories. But she wasn’t.”
“But she looked just like the Bird Lady,” Emily insisted. “And the birds weren’t just flying by—they were all around her in the sky. Daddy, I’m afraid of her.”
“You don’t need to be afraid of her because she doesn’t exist. Listen, your mother just made up a lot of crazy stories. I don’t know why she told them to you, I don’t know what was going on in her mind the last few months she was alive, but—” His eyes glistened with subdued tears. “Emily, she wasn’t thinking right. Something was wrong with her, something that made her tell you those stories, something that made her—”
Her father lost his voice then and stood up. He looked away from her for a moment, before turning again and managing a sad smile. “Promise me you won’t talk about the Bird Lady again.”
“But I did see her—”
“Promise me you won’t say crazy things like your mother!”
Her father hadn’t raised his voice to her since her mother had died. She didn’t understand why he was suddenly so angry, but he was angry, and that, too, frightened her. She held back her own tears and nodded. He seemed to recognize his own anger and hugged her, telling her that he was sorry to have shouted.
“I just don’t want the same thing happening to you,” he said as he held her. “Not to you.”
“I promise, I won’t,” she said, not knowing why, but knowing it was important to him. She loved her father, and if telling him that she’d seen the Bird Lady hurt him then she would never tell him again.
#
For the next few days, Emily made certain to keep staring at her shoes so she wouldn’t accidentally see the old woman again. She wouldn’t look down the street, or from the window of the school bus, or from the window of her classroom as her teacher spoke of unimportant things. And after school, after slipping off the bus, she walked straight to Mrs. Parmesi’s house and watched television until her father came for her. Not once did she see the Bird Lady, and she began to believe she never would again.
When the next Saturday came, she knew she wouldn’t have to leave the house all day, and the fear which had followed her that week slowly diminished.
But that night, as she lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, but not being able to sleep because she was thinking about what her father had said about her mother, she heard a tapping at her bedroom window.
She sat up in the dark of the room and saw a black bird sitting on the sill outside determinedly pecking at the glass with a brilliant white beak.
Emily pulled off her blanket and stepped to the window, wondering why a bird might be ceaselessly tapping on the glass, but when she was close enough to tap the glass herself, she saw the dark silhouette standing in the moonless night. She almost cried out—she knew, by the woman’s shape and the outline of the hat on her head, that the Bird Lady was standing outside her window.
She wanted to call out to her father, but if he came into her room and she told him the Bird Lady was outside her window—would she still be there when he came in? And if the woman left before he did see her, would Emily have to explain to her father why she’d broken her promise?
Before she could turn on the lamp on her bedside table, the woman moved toward the window and Emily clearly saw the piercing blue eyes in the light of the streetlamps. The old woman’s smile wasn’t comforting, only disarming; now more black birds appeared, lighting on the sill, perching on the woman’s shoulders, fluttering near the glass.
“Come out to me, Emily,” the woman said, her voice as heavy as the air before a thunderstorm. “Your mother sent me to bring you back to the place with beautiful birds and green hills. You must come with me.”
“My mother sent you?”
“Yes, Emily. She’s waiting for you, with the birds. Don’t you want to come with me to see your mother?”
Her mother’s face blossomed in Emily’s memory, bringing so strong a desire to see her that she nearly opened the window then—but the old woman’s frightening grin stopped her from moving on impulse, and she thought about the stories her mother had told her. The Bird Lady in her mother’s stories was beautiful, kindly, a lovely woman with lovely birds as her companions. This woman was frightening, not lovely, not even matronly like Mrs. Parmesi.
“Why didn’t my mother come for me?”
“She wanted to,” the Bird Lady said. “But she’s not allowed to leave where she is, so she had to send me to get you. Come with me now, Emily, come.”
Emily dearly wanted to see her mother again. But she loved her father, too, and he was still alive, in this world. Surely she would see her mother again, in time. Why did she have to leave now?
“My mother told me stories about you,” the girl said, her fingers pressed against the pane. Black birds pecked at her fingertips, defeated by the glass. “So you must know the stories, too. Tell me one of the stories so I’ll know you’re the same Bird Lady.”
The old woman rocked on her heels, her eyes wide. “We don’t have time for stories, we must leave now. Come, Emily, open the window!”
“Daddy told me that the Bird Lady doesn’t exist, that you’re not real. If you’re real, tell me one of my mother’s stories.”
“Open the window!”
“My father was right,” Emily said to the apparition beyond her bedroom window. “You’re not real. There is no Bird Lady.”
“I am real, Emily! And I’m here to take you to your mother! Open the window!”
“Once upon a time,” the girl said aloud as she turned from the window and slipped back into bed, “there was a little girl whose mother had died. She thought she saw the Bird Lady one day, and again, and again, but the woman wasn’t real, her father told her so. One night, the Bird Lady came to her window to take her to where her mother had gone to a place full of birds and trees. But since the Bird Lady wasn’t the Bird Lady from her mother’s stories, she couldn’t really be taking the girl to her mother or the beautiful trees and clear rivers. So the girl told herself a story, about her father and her mother, and she told the Bird Lady that she really wanted to stay with her father, because he needed her. And the Bird Lady went away, far away back to the place she really came from, and never bothered the girl again.”
Emily pulled the blanket to her chin and closed her eyes. Slowly, the tapping at her window ceased. She knew she would see her mother again one day. But not the Bird Lady—never again.
She knew she had it in herself, had always had it in herself, to tell stories of her own.
—
Lawrence Buentello is a writer and poet living in San Antonio, Texas. A short story specialist, he has published innumerable tales in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He holds a traditional degree in English literature and has twenty-five years of experience working in academic libraries.
