Uncaged

“Fuck you,” Dick said.

He didn't mean it. I'd only had Dick for three weeks, and he'd already learned some three dozen words. About half of them were swears. His tinny squawks morphed the obscenities into something hilarious and surreal; sometimes it took me whole minutes to stop laughing. Of course, this didn't help matters with Mum and Richard. It was the sort of thing that inspired Richard to dismiss me as “an immature little shit” - never mind that he was 32 and still read comic books like they were Dostoyevsky.

Mum used to defend me when he went off like that. It would turn into a big old spat, and she would say something like “he's just a kid, you can't talk to him like that,” and he'd say something like “stop being such a bitch,” and she'd tell him to watch his language and he would spit on the floor like some kind of animal. And every time, I would think that was the end of them, and every time, I would wake up the next morning to see Richard in his boxers sipping some coffee through lips so smug.

But now, she just shook her head a little and frowned. My loving advocate.

Back when I first got Dick, I did my research. I read somewhere that a Mynah bird could learn over one hundred words if you worked to teach it. This was problematic, as I only knew 26 swears – and that was counting the tame ones like “piss” and “hell”. So I had to turn to Brad.

Brad was two years older, and the authority on everything cool and dangerous. His mum was always strung out on some drug or another, and her addiction emancipated him. I was jealous. He didn't have to concern himself with being a disappointment or a worry. I didn't have that luxury, that freedom. Instead I just had to absorb Brad's experiences, to pretend that I was the one sneaking into clubs and sleeping with beautiful girls. It was a halfhearted osmosis, too distant from reality to take hold. But it was close enough for now.

Mum had banned Brad ever since The Incident, so he had to climb the fire escape and sneak in through my window. Mum would be off at work cleaning for the unnapreciatively wealthy and Richard would be in a drunk stupor, watching one of those talk shows where people hashed out there ugliest differences on national television. We didn't even have to be quiet.

“You're going about it all wrong,” he said, casually dangling a cracker between the bars of Dick's cage. “You're teaching him words, which is all well and good. But you're not teaching how to use them.”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“You've got to teach him whole phrases. Like you've taught him “Fuck you” and you've taught him “asshole,” but you haven't bothered combining the two. That's just sloppy teaching.”

And so we spent hours at a time cursing at the bird, using whole sentences so he'd learn proper context. It would start out giddy, with us laughing at the foulness of it all. But for some reason it would always escalate into something uglier, and our profanity would turn sincere, as if that charcoal bird had been the one who sold Brad's mum the crack, the one who smacked me around like a weathered tether-ball.

Sometimes I felt bad for Dick. He didn't deserve it. But then, none of us did.

Once we emptied ourselves of our sincerity, we'd go half-an-eternity without saying a word, just listening to Dick regurgitate our venom in his funny little way. Eventually, the heaviness would evaporate, and we'd go back to laughing at the cursing bird, losing ourselves in the simplicity of it all. Mine would come out hoarse and stacatto, his would come out nasal and breathy, and our laughter would mix into this cacophonous roar. These were the perfect moments, the ones where we could forget our troubles, if only for little while.

In a way, Brad's laugh was a reminder in itself. It used to be this deep bellowing rumble, almost volcanic. But since The Incident, his now-crooked nose added an extra layer of distortion. I'd feel sorry for him if not for Richard's deliciously swollen left eye. My pity was too inextricably linked to my glee to have any real power.

Really, it wouldn't have been bad if Mum hadn't been there. Brad had no patience for the drunk and the stupid, so he wouldn't lie still when Richard asked whether my “faggot friend” would be staying for dinner with his Neanderthal grace. Shoves escalated into punches. Richard smashed straight through Brad's nose on his second shot, splattering blood all over the living room carpet. I tried to step in, but Richard turned and bloodied his fist against my teeth. Meanwhile, Brad had recovered enough to bash him in retaliation. And, throughout it all, Mum screamed. No words, just a single uninterrupted wail.

At the end, I was sitting on the floor, spitting out blood through a newly formed canyon between my front teeth. Brad was standing, covering his nose with a scarlet hand. And, most importantly, Richard was lying on the floor, the skin around his eye undergoing a painful metamorphosis. It was one of the clearest victories of my life.

However, it only lasted for a few seconds. Mum chased after Brad, yelling “get out, get out, get out,” so many times the words all blended together. She gave me a washcloth for my mouth, but then turned to Richard, crying these pitiful moaning sobs. Her eyes were flush with pity, not anger or revulsion, and that's when I knew there never really was a chance.

Still, she couldn't forgive Richard completely for hitting her fourteen year-old son. He had to get me any present I wanted to make up for the displaced tooth. I thought long and hard about it, trying to think of what would be the loudest reminder of his crimes against my family. It took me two days before settling on a Mynah bird.

It was late. Mum and Richard had long-since gone to her room to do God-knows-what. I peered between the bars, and thought about Dick's innocence. He had been born into it, this caged life. All of his other Mynah bird brothers could be flying free in South America right now, but by some stroke of misfortune, he was stuck reciting obscenities he didn't understand in a place he didn't belong.

I thought.

If I let him out, he might not survive. He might be eaten by some feral cat, he might freeze when winter roared in, he might starve without a steady supply of crackers pouring into his beak. These were uncertainties. Staying in his steely cell could be the only way for him to survive.

But it wasn't any way to live.

I opened the cage.

I watched Dick dissolve into a smudge in the black canvas, crying obscenities out into the night. As I turned to bed, I began counting down the days until I could follow him.