Pretty Bird

Content warning: breastfeeding, starvation, infant death.

On the road to the capital, the baby wouldn’t stop crying, at first. I knew my milk was drying up because at first they fussed and sucked their fingers after we finished nursing. But I can feel the difference in my breasts, too; I remembered when I had nursed Terra three years ago and how the milk would let down. It happened for a few weeks after they died, quietly punctuating my grief with the milk that had no babe to feed. The milk tingled and ached inside of me. I would squeeze some out with my hands into a bowl and give it to the land where we had buried her in the earth. She hadn’t been old enough for a name, either, but when I gave her back to the dirt I decided to call her Terra for the sake of my memories.

The crops were still growing, then. The fevers had found us, but the dust hadn’t yet.

The new baby is two months old. They aren’t old enough for a name yet. We left the dust behind two weeks ago, piling our most precious things into the cart: the last small ceramic crocks of lard and salt pork. A crock of rough-ground corn flour. My iron skillet, a small water barrel, some clothes, and the strange, smooth rectangle Ma had given me before she died. She said it had been Mamaw’s back before the satellites fell, and that it used to light up and talk to you, or let you talk to other people across the world. She told stories of how Mamaw and Zaza had used it to learn to farm, somehow. It sounded like magic, to me. I’d heard of other people in town tell stories like that, of the devices their parents had left them, too. One of the old men had seen one working when he was a child, he had said. Now, its smooth black glass was inert when I held it in my hand. But there were rumors that the folks at the ferry would take them as payment for rides, so we brought it with us.

The mule died around when the baby was born, so Jim pulled the cart himself. I walked as much as I could, carrying the baby, but I was weak and rode a lot. Jim was weak, too, but pulled us along. None of us had enough to eat. We tried to make the crocks stretch; I fried corncakes in the fat of the salt pork, but it was gone after a week. But we had to keep moving.

When we reached the first ferry town, everything was choked with dust. It piled against the short buildings and gathered in the corners of the supplies store. We didn’t step into the church because we left the gods behind with the farm, and we couldn’t afford anything at the saloon. So we just sat in weary silence in the queue for the ferry.

We had to wait a day, sitting on wooden benches in the heat. A few other people were camped out the same as us; not enough money to stay at the guesthouse. The night was long; the heat from the ground radiated up and felt good in my bones, but the baby was sleeping a lot, which scared me. I woke them up to nurse a few times, but I knew they weren’t getting much. I wondered how long it would take for us all to die. If we didn’t reach the capital to turn in the farm’s papers before we ran out of food and things to sell, we’d die on the side of the road. But Jim and I knew the baby would die first. They were so small. We didn’t talk about it. Jim slept like the dead with his hand on my leg for both of us; he knew I needed touch to stay calm in the night. I knew he needed to have some reassurance we would be safe while he slept.

There was another parent awake in the night among the benches. They made eye contact with me a few times as they patted their children back to sleep after they woke. Their children were older. Past the age of nursing. They stared at me once when the baby was crying after nursing. I stared back as I shushed the baby, patting their back. We didn’t speak to one another.

The next day, we woke early to the sounds of the horse team that was hitched to the ferry and the hissing of the thin layer of water the ferry sprayed down in front of itself to keep it gliding over the hydrophobic channel’s surface. The horses were a team of four, hitched two abreast in two rows. The gear jangled and the horses snorted; their hooves hit the ground in puffs of dust. It was a real marvel to see, tired as we were. Once people could see them, the folks waiting in the queue for tickets roused quickly and things were soon busy with antsy people, chattering among themselves. Many more folks arrived all at once; they probably had stayed at the guest house in town. I saw another family from our town amongst the crowd. We were all trying to get out, I suppose.

We were blessedly close to the ticket officer, once he arrived from wherever he likely lived in town. Jim traded the empty food crocks and the cart to get tickets onto this skimmer ferry and three meal tickets. We did our best to pack everything up into large cloth bindles. I tucked the baby into a sling tight against me and Jim helped settled the smaller of the bindles on my back. He carried the bindle with the skillet and the bigger bundle of clothing and the farm papers. We drank water from a bucket that had been set out in the waiting area. The sun beat down and I sweat where the baby’s skin touched my own against my chest. The baby fussed, starting to cry. I put them to my breast and they suckled even though I knew not much would come for them.

We were some of the first to board the open-air ferry, and waited another hour while other people crowded in around us on the floor and on wooden benches. The other passengers looked to be adults, as a rule wearing dingy and worn clothing. All of us were trying to leave the dust behind, I guessed. The other parent I had made eye contact with last night in the dark was fussing over the children. They had the whole family wearing bandanas over their mouths; I craned my neck, looking out to the horizons around the boat, wondering if they’d spotted a dust storm on the way. Jim saw me looking and looked, too.

There was a pale brown cloud on the horizon to the west. Jim and I locked eyes and he pulled a thin blanket out of his bindle to drape over me and the baby. It was hot, and I felt myself sweating more as the morning sun blotted out under the blanket. I knew Jim would take a turn holding the baby under the blanket if I asked him to, but I didn’t. I wanted to keep them close and on the breast as much as I could. I wanted them to be with me when they slipped away.

There was a flurry of activity I could hear, muffled through the blanket, as the dust storm got closer. The passengers hurried to get out blankets or bandanas and the ferry workers rushed to get set off with a fresh team of horses before it hit. The dust would make it hard for the ferry to work; it took more water to make it glide when the dust hit. Storms could dump enough dust to cover the channel entirely and took a week to turn off the waters, let it dry out, and sweep it all away. I rocked back and forth with the baby under the blanket to comfort us both. I didn’t want to cry because it’d waste the water and take it away from any milk my body could make. I swallowed a lump in my throat as my mind begged the ferry to hurry and the storm to slow down. Jim’s hand was on my back next to me.

A buzzing alarm went off, and I heard the hissing of water and the driver clicking at the horses to start walking, felt the motor of the pumps begin to vibrate underneath, and then the ferry was gliding over the surface. There was a weak cheer from other passengers and the ferry workers yelled to each other cheerfully as the horses and then the ferry picked up speed. I stayed under the blanket, swaying a little still. I stayed under the blanket, feeling the wind from our motion pushing the blanket against my body. The baby woke up, dark eyes looking up at me.

“We are on our way,” I whispered to them. The baby’s face scrunched and cried, so I put them on the breast again. They suckled. A half-hour later, Jim gingerly pulled the blanket off from over us. The dust storm cloud was far behind us and no more a danger. The sweat on my skin cooled me instantly in the breeze that pushed against our faces. The air still smelled like hot dirt, but I could smell the water of the ferry’s spray, and the pleasant stink of the horses too. I smiled at Jim, and he rubbed my back affectionately. It was a small amount of hope.

The other passengers chatted quietly at each other in a combination of mouth and hand words. The children in the other family were exclaiming loudly about the ferry and the landscape we passed. It’d been years since I’d been on a ferry. The channel ahead, shallow and shining beige surface, was small. Small holes pushed gurgling bursts of water onto the surface ahead of us, making a thin layer of water for the ferry to slide ahead on with minimal work from the horses. The reservoirs at the front and back sprayed extra water to ensure the layer stayed even, their motors powered by solar panels atop the big rectangular tanks.

We’d come in on it some six years ago to take up the farm, going the opposite way. The government had given everyone the option to go out and farm the land, with equipment and a promise of labor paid in exchange for the food we could produce, but the drought came, and after it, the dust. After heartbreak, two babies, and dust, we were done trying to make it work. The government would have to give us something new to try. We would turn in our papers and find some other work to do. They were going to have to help most of us. The dust was punishing. People were dying. But here on the ferry, the thin trickle of water between the channel and the ferry’s flat hydrophobic bottom, with the warm wind keeping us cool and the scent of precious water in our noses, I felt relief. And some hope, even though we knew the food shortage was everywhere. We had heard the same news like everyone else, that the government was turning to greenhouses in the cities and great suspended farms between the trees in valleys, where the heat hadn’t burned everything away.

After another hour, the meal bell rang, so Jim went to the little cookhut at the back of the ferry where he exchanged our three meal tickets for two nut butter sandwiches on thick wheat bread and a crusty roll, hollowed out and filled with stewed beans and onions. He filled our water skin at the communal barrel and brought it all back. We had no utensils, so I scooped my fingers into the beans and sucked the thick gravy off my fingers. Jim ate a sandwich and a half, giving the other to me. It tasted like luxury having eaten nothing but corncakes and boiled salt pork the last several weeks. After emptying the waterskin, I sighed. I felt a little sick; it was rich and felt downright indulgent. But I was excited to nurse the baby; they needed it more than I did.

“It’ll get more crowded as the ferry gets closer to the lock,” Jim said to me. I nodded and laid my head on his shoulder. I didn’t have any words to spare. But we didn’t need many words, Jim and I, we never had.

The ferry kept on down the channel all day. There were two stations where the ferry stopped for fresh teams of horses and the channel had been dug deeper to hold reservoirs of water. The landscape slowly became greener, and forested, and we went up a long, slow slope throughout the day. The horses pulled us against gravity as the sun went down. The last uphill station had working electricity, and the lights shined over us as the ferry was tied off and secured, and the walkway dropped. We were all tired, but everyone slowly shuffled off the ferry and into a large building. The depot was open and full of wooden benches and cot spaces, lit around the edges of the massive space. People were already there, sleeping and talking in low voices or signs. We, the latest batch, filed in and took places that we could.

The night felt short. The depot hall woke early, with bells going off and ticket-takers coming in to shout the next ferries to come through. Jim and I collected our few things up from the bench we’d inhabited overnight, the baby nursing at my breast in the sling, and headed outside back to the ferry. I gasped when I went out.

Despite having seen this station years ago, the sight was a shock. In the dark, there wasn’t anything to see outside of the lights of the station. In the early sunlight, we were on the ridge of a great, forested valley. It was green and lush, with black and blue solar panels glinting among the canopy. The long, beige stripes of other hydrophobic ferry channels lead the eye down to a central water reservoir, glinting in the sun. It was surrounded by machinery; water stills and C02 scrubbers huddled next to each other in long rows, as well as great pumps and pipes for the water that ran through the ferry channels and everything else.

Soon we boarded the small ferry again, most people settling into the same spots they’d been in the day before, though more folks had joined us. No horses were hitched; the ferry instead was hooked to a thick cable that ran down the side of the channel. Though we went down the valley’s side at a quicker pace, the cable kept us to a safe speed, and then entered us into a lane of the reservoir. We unboarded again after the ferry was pulled into an even larger depot, full of people.

Jim and I found a place to sit in just one of the huge depot halls full of travelers. Then, Jim left with Mamaw’s old smooth metal and glass rectangle; he would trade it for passage to the capital. I waited with the baby, who was sleeping. They were sleeping too much. I looked down at their quiet face, holding their head in my hand. We were so close to hope. So close! But I still knew she was starving. Even if the capital trip went well, there was no guarantee we’d find enough food to eat to keep the baby alive. My eyes watered up, and I angrily wiped the tears carefully with my fingers to lick the water back off them. Even in this place surrounded by water, the habit was ingrained.

I blinked hard, swallowing the lump in my throat, and looked up at the ceiling. When the lump had passed, I looked down, my eyes landing on a group of people sitting on the benches nearby. I felt my lips press together hard. They weren’t dirty. These people were in a group, maybe a family. They had clean clothes. They didn’t look thin.

I was ready to be angry at these people, whoever they were and whyever they weren’t suffering as much as I was. But one of them was rocking back and forth in agitation, signing “cloth” over and over, making soft moaning sounds. One of the women with them was patting them rhythmically and had her eyes scanning over the crowds. She was watching for someone or something. Soon, she raised a hand to shout a name, and someone found them, carrying scraps of cloth. They began to help the rocking person stuff folded cloths in their shirt, in front of their breasts. I realized their breasts were leaking.

I felt a pang of despair and hope echo inside me.

I stood up.

I willed myself to walk over, still cradling the baby.

The person kept rocking where they sit, though the women with them looked at my approach.

“Milk?” I asked, signing. The person kept rocking, but brought their hands up to their chest, pushing the tops of their hands together. “My baby needs milk,” I said, signing awkwardly with one hand as I used mouthwords too. “I don’t have enough.”

The person slowed their rocking and held out their arms while they grunted softly. I pulled the baby out of the sling and put them in their arms. The women that had helped them put cloths over their breasts helped them guide the baby to the breast until the rocking person had them securely. The baby cried, but when the wet nipple touched their lips, they latched greedily. They fed the baby, rocking and moaning and crooning softly, a pained expression on their face.

“Their baby died two days ago,” one of the women said to me. I couldn’t look away from my baby suckling. The person moved the baby to the other breast, continuing to rock.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hearing my voice crack. I felt numb even as my mind started to form the words. “You aren’t dirty. You have so much milk.” I paused, and I knew the person was listening even though their eyes didn’t meet mine. I saw their hands carefully stroking the baby’s hair. “Are you going somewhere safe?” I choked on the words. “Will you take the baby?”

The moaning and rocking increased in volume and frequency.

“Yes,” the woman next to them replied.

“Will you love her,” I whispered, and heard the same response.

Later, I held the baby close to my chest. I felt them being peaceful and still in a way they hadn’t been in weeks. I rubbed my lips on their head. I smelled the scent of the other person’s milk on their breath. Jim took the baby next, holding them close to his face. I saw tears run down his face into his beard. Then he stood and walked the baby back to the other family, handing them over.

They had a piece of paper — real, white paper, crisply folded — with their name, and where they were going. We could look in on them, if we ever had the chance, they said. I gave them our names. But I couldn’t say anything else. I felt hollow inside. I knew it would crumble and cave into grief. There was also kernels of hope.

The next day, as the wire clicked and hauled the larger ferry under us up the valley side, my breasts didn’t ache at all. They didn’t leak or overflow. Jim sat close to me, holding my hand. I looked up the valley’s trees, up towards the blue sky, and I sang.

Fly, fly away, little pretty bird

Fly, fly away

Fly away, little pretty bird

And pretty, you’ll always stay

Author’s note: This story is based on a dream I had some time ago. In the dream, I gave my baby away to a woman who could feed them when my own breasts had gone dry. The hydrophobic ferry and the valley was in the dream, too. The memories of this dream and my own struggle with breastfeeding were brought forward in my mind due to the current horrific shortage of formula in the United States and elsewhere.

At one time in my life, I learned a great deal about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I imagine a different place and a different culture could experience the same unique experience of the 1930s transitions from horse power to electricity and the great ecological affects of weather and exploitation of the land. The song referenced in this story is “Pretty Bird” by Hazel Dickens, written in 1972.

I took the photo of the sparrow in downtown Chicago in 2020.