By Beth Sherman
All kinds of birds come to our backyard—robins, jays, sparrows, wrens—but my mother is obsessed with the pigeon. There’s only one. It flies in at dusk, perches on the deck railing by the begonias, and swivels its purple-green head back and forth as if answering a question no one’s asked.
Perhaps it is my mother’s question: “Do you think it’s him?”
She’s wearing a stained bathrobe over a polyester nightgown and fluffy bedroom slippers, an outfit she’s had on for days. She hasn’t eaten since Tuesday.
“It might be.” Though the notion that a pigeon traveled 50 miles from New York City to Centerport, Long Island, just to be with my mother is ridiculous.
Before she moved in with me, she lived in a rent-controlled apartment with a small terrace. Pigeons were a nuisance—pooping on the furniture and waking her at dawn.
“Did you know they have great eyesight?” she says, staring at the pigeon as though she wants to bring it inside and invite it to watch TV. “They can find their way home from anywhere. There’s a compass in their brain, like a map.”
She’s used the “Google machine” to discover more pigeon facts: they’re fast, they’re clean, they may have been the first pet, the poop she used to complain about was once considered valuable fertilizer, they can recognize their own image in the mirror. Then she forgets what she’s learned and has to start over.
“I want to go home,” she says, a refrain she’s repeated dozens of times a day ever since she got here.
“I want that too.” I want things to be like they were before. When she was the responsible one, a person who made decisions and plans, who didn’t need me to remind her where she was.
The pigeon has a puffy chest and bedraggled tail feathers. Its orange eyes regard us quizzically. When I look at my mother, I see she’s crying.
“He’s the one,” I say and try to persuade myself he really is, try to remember him perched on a sill, looking through the kitchen window as my mother fixes breakfast: poached egg, whole wheat toast she made herself, caffè macchiato.
They’ve known each other for years, these two. The very best of friends.
Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Portland Review, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached at @bsherm36 or at bethsherman.site.
