Caballito

by Kelsey Goforth

I waited for him everyday for a decade. Overwhelming tiredness overtook many of my afternoons but without fail, I perked up at the right moment. When the lightheaded daze of exhaustion set in—something that was regrettably becoming more frequent—I imagined microscopic men holding up each eyelid, as though they were barbells above their heads. Our brown brick home along Parque Centenario was a short walk from the city’s natural history museum, and I timed with precision when I could expect his footsteps on the front stoop each day. This was my special talent.

Noah’s greeting was always the same: “Alma! What a day I’ve had!” We went to the kitchen and he poured wine, never straying from his favourite, a Mendozan malbec whose plum and leather he wafted while sighing out the day’s stresses. Standing side-by-side in the kitchen, he chopped red and green peppers and carefully arranged slices of steak into a shallow bowl of marinade; the scent of freshly ground peppercorns tickled my nose. Classical music danced around the house after dinner as he read biographies in his armchair. I was always nearby.

He grew up in Buenos Aires just a few blocks from here in a small home with burnt orange shutters and chipped paint on the door frame. There was a well in the yard and he would imagine the frogs living at the bottom of it—out of reach, but real just the same. His mother was his salve, curing every fathomable sadness and protecting against all possible harms. Earthy burgundy collected under her fingernails as she peeled beets, her apron stained and her hips encircled by a toddler’s tiny arms, Noah’s head leaning into her side.

He told me about all the years he lived before I came into his life—how he loved animals as a young schoolboy and how he came to work with them in adulthood. I listened serenely with my head in his hands, smiling in the only way I knew how, at the tales of all that came before me, all that shaped him into the man he is today. Even if I wanted to, I could never share the same details with him. I just appeared one day, plucked from somewhere and put in this place. Any memories of where I came from evaporated almost instantly, like ice cubes disappearing on a summer day.

He was introverted and a homebody—content with books and newspapers but hesitant to actually experience the world he read so much about. But that was okay with me, as it meant more time spent together. Aside from leaving to go to work, his only consistent outings were to Recoleta on Sundays to place yellow lillies on his mother’s tomb, and monthly visits to the ecological reserve across town. He would return at twilight to tell me how his conservationist colleagues at the museum would be envious that he had seen a new nest of black-neck swan cygnets camouflaged in the pampas grass of the riverbank.

#

I was being swallowed whole by quicksand, its strength pulling me underneath the floorboards. I was falling—but not fast, and I felt the oddest sense of peace and comfort, as though swaddled and safe in a giant cradle.

#

My eyes threw open like dawn curtains and focused in on the corner’s dust bunny collection. Despite the odd dream, it felt like I had woken up from the deepest, most tranquil sleep I’d ever had. Something, however, had changed. Upon jumping into bed, Noah remained still, his eyes fixed on the stucco ceiling. His energy was low, his sighs heavy. I licked my speckled cafe-au-lait belly, fur sticking like velcro to my tongue.

Later that morning, he walked by me as I sat on the kitchen counter; I knew I shouldn’t have been up there as I had been scolded before, but at least this would get his attention. His distant eyes didn’t react. The day of confusion continued. I had so much I wanted to ask him and no way to do it.

My questions were answered a few days later, on a rainy autumn afternoon, when his familiar footsteps brought with them a pain I could have never expected. His hands were full when he came to the front door; I heard him struggle to find the right key on the crowded ring. He entered holding a small red cooler and struggled to close his dripping umbrella. A trill rang out behind him and a small brown bird fluttered through the doorway to the right of his shoulder. I had watched warbling creatures like this through windows and on television screens but to see one this close was foreign, like the first time I’d heard the bizarre buzz of a cicada.

The bird moved erratically, its wings almost colliding with the light fixture, its beak grazing the bookshelf’s sharp edge. The corner of my eyes strained as they tried to take in the chaos that surrounded me. Why was Noah okay with this imposter following him inside? Why wasn’t he doing anything to stop this wild beast from destroying our home?

Noah kicked off his brown leather Oxfords and made his way to his office at the back of the house, the bird shadowing him. I reluctantly tiptoed toward the open door.

What emerged in the horrific moments that followed stopped me from moving any further: the grating sharpness of something serrated, crepitus, and scraping of metal on something hard and hollow ...

#

I woke up in the corner, my muscles tense and tight, my stomach tangled in knots like a ball of yarn. I could still hear Noah in the office, and once again, left the pillow’s comfort to try to figure out what was happening. Peeking around the doorway, I saw the carnage. A mess of wire and foam bits were splayed from one side to the other of his cluttered desk. Downy feathers hung suspended like fireplace ashes. Amid the chaos, I thought I saw red flesh—taut elastic strips over a small form. I thought I saw bone...

The bird fluttered past me and landed on the lampshade next to Noah's reading chair.

“Who are you?” I asked. My mind was racing and my fur stood up straight, electric with uncertainty.

It looked at me in silence, opened its mouth briefly, and then pressed its beak closed.

“What’s your name?!” My quivering voice was louder this time, demanding an answer.

“Well, I’ve never really had a name before.” It nodded towards the office. “That guy keeps calling me ‘the rufous hornero specimen.’ I don’t know what that means, but I guess it’s my name now.”

“That guy? That guy is Noah and this is our home. I don’t know who you think you are, but you shouldn’t be here.”

The bird puffed out a breath, deflated. “I’d happily go, but the problem is, something is stopping me from leaving.”

It explained how it was trapped here, and how each time Noah opened the door, it would try to flee, only to be sucked back inside by some mysterious force. After several attempts at escape, it had had a realization.

“I used to fly over Recoleta and I’d see the humans. Rain would fall from their eyes and they’d be hugging each other. They carried big wooden boxes through the little doors of the tombs ...”

I listened with curiosity. The bird had seen so much of the world. I had seen nothing at all. Its face scrunched as it remembered more.

“One time, a young woman had this big, framed photo of a man’s face. His hair was gray and he had an itchy looking mustache like some pale caterpillar resting above his mouth. She carried the photo with her as she walked with other humans towards the tomb. She put it on a stand next to its entrance. After an hour or so, all the people left and the woman took the photo with her. But for that hour, I sat in a tree staring at the photo and studying the face. His eyes were kind and he reminded me of the type of man who’d bring seed to the park and toss it softly towards me. He looked like the type of man who always smiled.”

The bird stopped. I took a breath.

“Several weeks later, I was back at Recoleta and it was the oddest thing. The woman was back too, and she was sitting on a bench near the tomb of the kind-eyed man. She was looking straight ahead and was breathing deeply, her eyes collecting a puddle of rain in their narrow bottom rims. A dog’s bark distracted me for just a second, and when I returned my glance, I saw him. The kind-eyed man had returned and was sitting on the bench with her. She continued to look ahead, blinking so many times. She looked to the sky as the rain from her eyes started to slide down her face. The man put his big hand on her shoulder and rested his nose to her temple. She didn’t move at all. It was like she didn’t know he was there.”

The bird sighed out a pause and continued.

“The woman got up to leave, and the man walked with her, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed. When they reached the cemetery gates, he paused suddenly, and watched her continue on ... I think I’m stuck here just as the man is stuck at the cemetery ...we both need to stay close to our bones.”

#

I couldn’t escape the bird’s words; they were beach waves pulling me in and turning in circles around me over and over again. Like gravity, some invisible string kept whatever the man is now, connected to what he once was. Now, the bird felt as though a strange power was keeping it here too. “We need to stay close to our bones.” My eyes widened. The bedlam of the other day was beginning to make sense. I made my way to Noah’s office. Replacing the mayhem and disorder was a neat workspace, clear of all the carnage. Scanning the room, my pupils dilated and swept their focus along each detail: the green glass lamp, a spiky aloe vera plant, a photo of him and his mother. Conveyor-belt-like, my eyes continued in their linear motion across the room and its surfaces until one detail made me throw everything into reverse, my neck whiplashing to the right. There it was. In this form, it was more beautiful than I had ever seen. Its sepia-hued features were striking in the afternoon sun. Seeing it perched in stillness beneath its bell jar brought wetness to my eyes and wrapped my heart in elastic bands.

#

I woke up with a fire roaring within me. Despite confirming the bird’s story, my throat was tight with anger. None of what was happening explained Noah’s behaviour towards me. None of it explained why he seemed so far away, or rather, why I seemed so far from him.

With its brown decay, the underside of an apple drew flies to the ceramic fruit bowl. I swatted at them, trying to prevent the collection from multiplying. The bird joined me. Its tongue peaked out from its beak, grabbing at the tiny bugs and slurping them back.

“I know we don’t need to eat anymore, but catching these things is still quite fun,” it said.

“Huh? Of course we need to eat.”

It laughed as it flapped its wings, levitating to grab at an escaping fly. “Okay, buddy, whatever you say. Call me crazy but I thought the one advantage of being dead is not having to worry about keeping a functional body anymore, but suit yourself.”

I froze. A fly squirmed in my paw, its wing impaled by my claw. The bird paused, noticing my changed expression.

“Alma, I’m sorry. I thought you knew.” The bird’s eyes widened, its face wrinkling as it watched the pain radiate across my face. “Why do you think Noah is acting the way he is? He can’t see you anymore. I’m not even sure he knows you’re here.”

“What are you talking about?! I’m not like you! I’m not dead. I’m not stuffed and perched under glass!” My stomach was an acid-sick tempest. My tail puffed out like a skunk’s.

“You’re right. You aren’t stuffed and displayed like I am. I don’t know exactly where you are. But just like the man entombed at the cemetery, I’m sure you must be somewhere close.”

#

I was still melancholy blue as winter became spring. My mourning was a complicated fog. I could see through it and could watch Noah and our home the same way I always had. I could see him making omelettes, the rain clouds filling the sky, a spider repelling off a wooden crate as it crafted a new web. I could feel love. I could feel loneliness, something that had been familiar to me each day when he was at work. But that isolation was no longer remedied by the opening of the door. He didn’t tell me stories about his day. He didn’t even know I was here. This sadness was intensified by the mystery that remained: why was I still here? The bird’s remains were beautifully displayed and after a thorough search, I knew with certainty that mine were not.

As time passed, I learned more about the bird’s adventures and the journeys it had been on. It had seen so much and was able to watch the behaviour of many different people. It listened to live music on outdoor patios, while I had only heard guitars and pianos on records or from computer speakers. It had heard people speaking in all sorts of languages, while Noah spoke to me in only one. Every day of the bird’s life was new and exciting, while mine was marked by consistency and routine. This sheltered life, contained by walls and doors and closed windows, began to feel small to me. What had I done with my life? Had I even lived at all if I hadn’t felt the mist of a waterfall, or heard arias fluttering like melodic butterflies out of the Teatro Colón? Had I really known the world if I’d never seen the ocean? The questions fettered me, wrapping themselves around me like a constricting snake, immobilizing me from thinking of anything else.

“What makes a life well lived?” I asked nervously.

“What do you mean?” The bird replied.

“I haven’t done anything,” I confessed. “All I do is stay in this house. There is so much I haven’t seen, or felt, or heard.”

The bird shook its head, its neck a metronome, as it looked down. It lifted back up after a moment and smiled. “But you have felt. You’ve felt love and belonging from Noah, and you, too, were home to someone else. There is no greater thing than that.”

Many times, Noah returned from Recoleta with red and puffy eyes. When he held me after those visits, I could feel his heartbeat thumping quickly through his shirt. As we laid together on the couch, my body somersaulted on his chest; I could feel his breathing relax and his heart return to its normal pattern. I remembered all this now. As I looked at all the relics of our life together, I remembered what it was like to be a companion and to feel companionship reciprocated. I saw the corner where he would put a Christmas tree each year, under which I would lay for hours, as he missed his mother during that heightened season of grief. I saw the kitchen table where he watched the news and its constant stream of greed and war and pain.

A levee broke within me and the recollections surged. I thought of the hard days he had had and the frustrations of missed buses and workplace politics. I felt his heaviness in those moments, and I vowed to help hold it with him. For a decade, I had experienced all this with him as a comfort and confidante. Brightness and darkness coexist in life in mostly distinct ways, but at times, they blend together into something bittersweet. It is the tender pain of a sunburn after the greatest day at the beach; I feel that today as part of my story ends while Noah's typewriter clicks away without me. But my job remains the same as it has always been: to watch him and love him just as I always have.

I let go of my need for answers. Unlike the bird, I may never know what keeps me here. I may never see my own body—rigid, cotton padding the hollowness, beaded glass eyes following me around the room. I may never have a tangible connection to the old me, but to have any semblance of contentment, I must let go of the yearning to stay the old me.

I heard Noah wake up, and I trotted up the stairs.

#

Things are different now. I know I will never feel Noah’s touch again, but I wonder if he can feel mine in any way at all. I watch him still from the window, webbed often now with spiders’ silky leavings. With grayer hair and a more rigid gait, he still climbs the steps at the same time each afternoon having walked along the park’s cobblestone trails covered in fallen narrow leaves the length of banana peels.

Often when I wait for him now, the sun reflects off a small gold plate on a box on the fireplace mantle. When the sun is hammocked in the sky at just the right place, the gold plate’s glint ricochets into my eyes, notifying me at that perfect moment. The box on the mantle is the same one he touches each evening after returning from work. With two gentle taps, he says to it, “Alma, what a day I’ve had.”