Concrete Chick

Cherry Cheesman

Marbled Godwits — who usually live in thin strips of land along the coasts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico — voyage through shallow shore and scratchy grass and muck when they feel the blazing rebirth of the summer sun, the same color as their bright orange beaks. It is mating season, and they forget that they were never. 

A couple of weeks after quarantine turned my seventh grade classes virtual, I would lie under my lofted bed — around 7:00am — and listen to my mother, who had not been freed from her job at the Veterans’ Affairs hospital. With the legs of her scrubs gliding together, her keys knocking at each other’s flat sides, the quick and labored pull of her sneakers, I counted the seconds until she left. 

The Godwit nest is made of dry earth, short grass. The children hatch after a little under a month. Barely any time at all. They hatch and their delicate pink beaks are fed only by their parents for a few weeks. The chicks leave the nest early— already ready for more. 

For most of the way between my house and 7-Eleven, there was no sidewalk. For a little less than a mile, I walked alongside a two-lane road with a strip of shoulder too thin to be a bike lane. A section that ran next to a middle school — the middle school I went to for almost two years before quarantine, when there was a different way to see other people — was clear-cut, but the rest consisted of sticky wild grass festered with small black bugs. Sap and black pulp left a faint gray paste above my knee. I felt like an adult, like a voyager.

In late August, Marbled Godwits, their kinda-adult children in a loose trail behind them, migrate back to their winter homes on the coast. The juveniles walk the entire way home, their legs still wobbly, hobble to this new and great home. Beaks still pink, they eat on their own, hide in their own small hollow. They live in close proximity to other Marbled Godwits but don’t speak to them. Go to the mating grounds when they get lonely. I wonder if, at any point, they ever think of their mothers. 

There was a period where I snuck out every weekday for three weeks. As far as anyone knew — the only person who would have cared was my mother — I spent my days playing video games and watching grainy video lectures from my teachers. She had no clue about my adventures or the wealth of treasures I earned from them: plastic bags full of cheese and fruit pastries, strawberry paletas, family-size bags of barbecue chips. 

Sometimes, in the middle of my respite, my mother would text me and I would weave between ignoring or lying to her. Sitting on a concrete curb and watching the late sunrise was more important to me. Around the sun there was only orange— acidic and bright like Gatorade. But, above me, it was all pink. In the ozone, in the view of melting city lights as seen from from a plane, in the glow of the weak 7-Eleven sign, past the ruddy tips of my ears, and into my small pink brain. 

I wonder if the Godwit mothers still recognize their chicks after they mature — if they can nuzzle orange beak to orange beak, if her wing feathers still feel as large, as tender. I wonder if the chicks even grow that much at all. Maybe their stick legs carry them out of the nest before they ever see a mirror. Maybe, there was an arrow in front of their face the entire time, pointing them towards something they should have known. 

After I carried the plastic remains of my treasures to the dumpster behind the elementary school next door, all that was left was the bright, pink-rimmed feeling of recognizing the cashiers each time I came back to 7-Eleven, the comfort that came when they recognized me. The words “Excuse me,” said by a million bright new voices. 

Usually, I stayed hidden in my room when my mother came home. Sometimes I told her I missed the friends I used to have and hugged her for a long while. I plucked at her helpfulness, pulled away the pieces I wanted, and devoured them like loose snails. My love for her dipped, fell, and slipped away — lost in a fledgling’s first walk.