Catherine, Called Birdy

by Karen Cushman

“Little Bird, in the world to come, you will not be asked ‘Why were you not George?’ or ‘Why were you not Perkin?’ but ‘Why were you not Catherine?’”

I told my mother and Morwenna that I’d spent the day sulking in the dovecote. They believed me. It is something I would do.

Shelves lining the walls hold books and scrolls, some chained down as if they were precious relics or wild beasts.

I do not mind Perkin’s granny’s muddle-mindedness, for she is the most roomy-hearted person I know,

teeth are yellow because I have no white paint. But maybe they truly were yellow. Most people’s are.

I think love is like mildew, growing gray and musty on things, spoiling them, and smelling bad.

the snow was so deep and the wind so fierce and the dark so very dark that I snuggled down into my quilt and decided to wait for an adventure on some warmer day.

She smiled then, a lovely smile except for the cabbage stuck between her only two teeth.

An unlucky discovery. Geoffrey looks like a hedgehog when he frowns. Mayhap he will grow out of it.

Thinking on it, I feel much like this bear. We can neither of us live alone and free and survive in this world, but we might wish for a cage less painful and confining. Deus help us both.

Now that I am about to leave, I feel how dear this place is to me.

I took it all into my heart so I can play it like music whenever I need to.

I think sometimes that people are like onions. On the outside smooth and whole and simple but inside ring upon ring, complex and deep.

And it came into my head that I cannot run away. I am who I am wherever I am.

Like the bear and my popinjay, I cannot survive by myself. But I also cannot survive if I am not myself.

At home even in exile.