El Pájaro Taíno

alyssa m. ortiz rodriguez

In Fine Feather
      Amongst the remote hills of Moca, Iván Sánchez’s first cry resembled that of the island birds. In the darkness of his family’s shed, his mother didn’t realize that her pleasant pregnancy had produced a terrible mutation. His father, with the dimming light of the evening, saw explicitly what he had created; a monster of flesh and feather. At the sight of the wretched boney things sprouting from his son’s back, the man fled like a colibrí seen only once in a lifetime. The mother called out to him, but was instead handed the malformed boy and his two too many limbs. She held him like one holds a cat, by the pits and with caution. As little Iván continued to scream and squirm, the wings spasmed as if they were a separate beast responding. Her midwives glanced at each other, sharing suspicions of brujería before tracing crosses over their chests for protection. However, the more Iván’s mother stared at her boy, the more she fell in love with every aspect of him.

Free as a Bird
      As a child, Iván spent every day feeding the palomas down at the plaza. They had grown to like him and his wings, sidling up to his cold dry legs and perching on his shoulder to purr whenever the sun hit him just right. Iván studied the birds, mimicking the way they moved their wings and cocked their heads. Whenever he did, the people in town would stare, shake their heads, and scoff.
      In the evenings, his mother was his teacher. Although they tried to get Iván into a proper school, going so far as to gel his hair and wings, no school would take the boy. Never did they point out his wings, instead they picked on his short attention span and his inability to do things as simple as saying the alphabet. Since then, every evening was school time where he learned how to count to one hundred without stuttering and how to recite the alphabet al revés. His
mother was tough, not mean, but the days that she arrived tired or depressed from work, her pajarito was always there to make her feel better.
      Aside from being an expert at housework, Iván was also a fantastic paquetero–he knew he’d done a really good job if someone’s husband chased him into the trees because of something he said.

Birds of a Feather
      As Iván stretched and matured, so did his wings. The arrival of adolescence caused his feathers to fall out like baby teeth, growing back big, stiff, and strong. The years spent neglecting the supernumerary muscles began to weigh around this time and, in order to prevent aches, he woke up early every morning to stretch his wings as one does with their arms.
      This is how he met Fabio, el hijo del panadero. One morning, the boy called out to Iván, “¡Oye, pollito!” then threw breadcrumbs at his feet. When Iván saw the boy, who had hair and height like el San Pedrito, he thought he looked funny. And when the boy proceeded to cluck  like a rooster, Iván couldn’t help but laugh. Fabio’s unsuccessful bullying molted into an inseparable friendship. The two were unruly, disrupting la misa every Sunday with their squawking and tormenting rooftops during the evening. Although they acted like animals with each other, Fabio was soft-spoken and comfortable. He was scared of bullies and of going against his father’s wishes. So, he accepted everything that was handed to him–whether it was a black eye or a predestined future as a panadero.
      However, when it came to defending his friend, Fabio was brave.
      One day, three boys from a nearby secundaria approached Iván and Fabio with sticks and stones in their hands. Iván imagined they were there because of un embuste, so he joked and laughed but the tension did not ease. When rocks were thrown and punches began to land, Iván and Fabio ran to the trees like many times before. This time, however, their opponents did not stop at the treeline. Instead, they continued after the two, circling and overpowering them in number and size. In the reckless fight, Iván ultimately lost sight of Fabio and resorted to climbing the nearest tree, kicking at the hands of his pursuers. Higher and higher he climbed, branches scratching his arms and leaves trapping his wings, until the bullies could no longer keep up. To make sure it stayed that way, Fabio came running out of a bush, hurling rocks that hit with thumps against the heads of their oppressors. He snarled with a fury Iván had never imagined would come from a boy that cried when his father yelled at him. Once the bullies were scared away, Iván began to descend the tree only for a branch to snap under his weight. While plummeting, his wings unfurled and spread open, flapping with enough strength to just barely hold his weight off the ground. Instead of running away and screaming about Iván’s unnatural ability, Fabio grinned wide, thinking about how cool it was to have a best friend that flies.

Under Her Wing
      Years later, Iván’s mother became too weak to work and she found him a job on a farm. Happily, they accepted the help of his upper body strength on two conditions: that he stay hidden during farm tours and that he never fly. Because of this, his wings were more of a burden than they were any help as he chopped down bundles of plátanos. Every day he returned from work, he spent hours painfully washing each wing and between each feather so as to make sure he didn’t carry any animal-like stench.
      Drawn to her like a bird to a window, Iván met the farmer’s daughter, Sonia. Rubia and sun-freckled, she was strong as her graying father and as tough as her older brothers who never let Iván near her. At the echo of her voice, Iván’s extra limbs would act up, fluttering or gradually spreading outward as he gazed at her. Sonia was clever; she negotiated as if never satisfied and worked as if every day were her last. Above all, Sonia was kind. She picked up the feathers that Iván left behind as he worked and thanked him for every small deed, which was enough for Iván to fall head over wings.
      Conversations with her usually evolved into lessons. Once she realized his slowness–after Iván recited the alphabet backwards five times to impress her–Sonia insisted on teaching him a few things. His first lesson was on how to properly count money, which then turned into a class on grifting. Afterward, she taught him how to write in cursive and about a new language called inglés. Iván later discovered that the reason she was learning the language was because she was going to attend college in the States.
      In the weeks leading up to her departure, Sonia secretly took Iván inside the house and sat him in front of a sewing machine where she showed him how to sew and alter clothes to fit him and his wings. Too touched to know what to say, Iván refrained from speaking during their first lesson. Sonia, however, spoke for hours about school and her family, about her future. Eventually, she talked about him and began to ask questions, trying to wrap her head around his existence. Iván could only provide short answers.
      The last conversation they had was on the rooftop of her home. Sonia asked him, “¿Porque no te vas de aquí, Iván? Con esas alas, yo exploraría to’ el mundo.” Iván answered that he doubted he’d make it far. Sonia hummed to herself in her broken and accented English, “If you could leave el nido, would you fly?” Then she met his gaze and asked, “Should you?”

Two Birds Hurricanes, One Stone
      Iván didn’t get to reflect on Sonia’s question because, a few weeks after she left, twin hurricanes named Irma and María destroyed the island. Iván and his mother were forced out of their home by floodwaters and, from a neighboring hill, they watched their aluminum walls float down la cordillera. Once he was sure his mother was safe, Iván left to check on Sonia’s family. Trudging through waist-deep water, he was surrounded by screams of auxilio and, in other parts, eerie silence. Sonia’s family reassured him that they were okay, so he searched for Fabio and his father. Under debris and a toppled tree, Iván only found Fabio. Voice trembling, instead of asking where his father was, Fabio pointed to the sky and asked Iván; “¿Qué rayos tú haces aquí? ¿Por qué no estás allá’rriba?”
      It was enough of a push for Iván to take to the skies as if flight was something innate to him. From above, he scanned for survivors, hazards and signs of landslides. He mapped out pathways through the town to redirect more people to safety. It became his duty and, even exhausted, he flew into the day and night to find where help was needed. In his expeditions, he encountered old women that thought him Arcángel Miguel as he delivered goods and children called him a superhero as he carried them out of destroyed houses.
      A relief group arrived and citizens gathered to receive them–Iván included. This was the first time people outside of Moca saw the boy with wings and, rightfully so, they stared in awe. Even those that did know of him expressed shock, whispering and calling him el hombre-pájaro sent by their Taíno ancestors to protect them. The crowd’s applause was interrupted by an old man who pointed to Iván and challenged, “E’perate un momentito, negro.” He called Iván a traitor, a fraud who feigned uselessness for years and now wanted to take advantage of them. He targeted his mother for bringing a demon to life on their island, for letting him roam free. The man said Iván was a curse.
      As more people joined the man’s rally, the boy whose wings saved them from nature and an ignorant government, grew scared and confused. But their rejection had given him his answer to Sonia’s question. If he could leave the nest, the island, he would.

To Spread One’s Wings
      In the months that passed, the island struggled to pick itself back up. Iván was no exception. More people died and less supplies arrived, y los problemas del pueblo were blamed on him and the wings he began tucking behind his back. He started to hide with a fear he had never felt as a child; the fear of not belonging. Everything became a struggle; rebuilding his mother’s house, maintaining Sonia’s farm, and restoring his friendship with Fabio who became
bitter after losing his father.
      His escape came in the form of two güeros, dressed in suits as black as the extinct Puerto Rican crow. They stood at his doorstep with an offer. With the little English he knew, Iván understood that he was wanted somewhere. That in Nueva York, unlike in Moca, he was considered a hero. Against his mother’s pleading for him to stay and forgive his people for their ignorance, Iván left. In his last memory of her, Iván’s mother waves to him from the panadería. Fabio waves from the doorway.

A Bird’s Eye View
      The cold of a New York winter beat Iván to a pulp. He was sick within the week and forced to attend meetings, many of which his traductor failed to appear at. Iván signed papers he couldn’t read in the weak cursive Sonia taught him long ago. Iván searched everywhere for el pan sobao that Fabio was so great at stealing for him but came up empty-handed. He thought of his mother as he hung his clothes to dry, his dryer unused.
      Iván was presented to the world on an unmarked date, not in a conference room, but in the sky. Instead of a suit and tie, he was handed a costume, a pair of boots, a script, and told to fly. He’d never thought of himself as an actor, but he did as instructed, even if it meant questionably punching a man. Each week was a new play where the English became more complicated and his lines much shorter. The few times Iván was able to call his mother (who answered from the only phone in the panadería), he reassured her that what she saw on the television was fake, that the blood gushing from his nose wasn’t real, and that he would send money home soon.
      Gradually, dishes piled in the sink like the bills that piled on the counter. Feathers falling from stress or plucked out by his anxiety crowded the floor. His front door opened and closed exactly once a week, on acting day, and never again. There were no doors here that he wished to open. Afterall, none of them led to Sonia’s sewing machine or filled his belly with mallorcas and good laughs. Missing was the door that his mother walked through every day to offer him a warm hug.

Back to the Nest
      As strange as Iván’s birth was, the death of his mother was stranger. She died over the phone, the instant Iván heard Fabio’s voice on the other end. Fabio explained that she’d become weak and thin, like the boney neonatal wings she’d once labored. Iván’s mother died unseen and unheard by her boy when all she ever did, even while he was away, was look for her pajarito.
      That same day, Iván had a script to stick to. For the first time in five years, he was going to win a play-fight. He thought of his very first victory: scaring away three bullies with his best friend. This was a performance, practiced, and now executed. He stood at a ledge waiting for his cue but looked down at the glittery asphalt. If he squinted his eyes just right, it resembled the sun peeking through a dense canopy back home.The reflection he saw on the windows wasn’t one he recognized. It didn’t swirl and morph like when he was a child and used the river as a mirror. It wasn’t him. He wasn’t home and he couldn’t stand it anymore.
      Iván shot upward out of the concrete jungle and into the place that, like his mother, always welcomed him with open arms; the sky. He searched for it, that piece of cielo that could direct him southeast to la isla del encanto and into the town that is named after the Moca tree. Into the place that taught him how to fly, but also how to sew and climb and count to one hundred. Where he didn’t need to act to live or be accepted, where he experienced both love and
rejection. It was there that el pájaro Taíno needed to be.