/ Nonfiction /
When I was 12 Aqua Net was everything. I thought maybe it would be cool but maybe retro but still cool if I styled my hair like Boy George on the cover of the Kissing to be Clever LP I found on the bottom shelf of the cabinet my father built in the living room. Boy George was ruffled bangs and braids, and I was tangled curls and coils; it took me two hours to get it right. When done, I thought maybe I looked cool and maybe retro but still cool; mostly I just wanted boys to think I was pretty. I preened. My mother said, “Go fix your hair. I’m not taking you to the Mall like that. You look like a little black bird.”
The 1977 Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region held space on a middle shelf of my father’s living room cabinet. He used the Guide to identify birds in the backyard of the 200 year old New England colonial where we lived. Mostly finches camouflaged among the branches and, infrequently, something colored.
I was born in 1977. Over my crib in a frame with a drawing of a dove and a winged white angel baby it read:
Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone
But miraculously, my own
Never forget, even for a minute
You were not born under my heart
But in it
When I got old enough to ask, my mother called it the Prayer of the Adopted Child, even though I never prayed to have come from inside her. She told me also I was half white, which meant I wasn’t really Black, and I think this was the Prayer of My Adoptive Mother.
The Audubon Society is named for John James Audubon. He famously published a collection of life sized paintings of North American birds he called his Great Work. Audubon was born on an island sugar plantation to a white, French slave ship captain and a French Creole chambermaid who was not white. She named him Jean-Jacques Rabin. His mother died when he was an infant and he was sent to France where he was adopted and raised by his father’s white wife, who changed his name to John James Audubon.
I was 15 when, in Simi Valley, the white officers in the video were acquitted; Los Angeles burst into flames. From our 200 year old New England colonial across the country, my mother stood in front of the television with her arms crossed, shook her head in disgust and said, “They’re burning down their own neighborhoods.” I understood she was talking about the murder of crows.
That same year, at a figure skating competition in upstate New York, my best friend fell during a practice run-through. Her head hit the ice and she lay there like a chickadee collided with a window. Medical staff pronounced her concussed and barred her from competing. On the five hour bus ride home that night, she wedged her white body against the arm rest, doped up on prescription pills to dull the pain, but still couldn’t sleep. I wanted my friend to be comfortable so I abandoned my perch next to her and, instead, lay down in the aisle because there were no empty seats. I stayed there until Mrs. Jackson, one of the chaperones and the only Black adult I’d ever seen in real life, accidentally kicked me in the dark. I thought her a stupid dodo.
Audubon was hunting in the Louisiana woods when he came upon a runaway slave. The man called Audubon “Master” and pleaded for his life. He’d successfully reassembled his wife and three children after they’d been sold off to different owners. “‘Master,’ he said, ‘my wife, though black, is as beautiful to me as the President’s wife is to him; she is my queen, and I look on our young ones as princes.’” Audubon ate their food, calling it “as hearty a meal as I ever had in my life,” and, in the morning, he betrayed them, returning the escaped man and his flock to their former owner, who repurchased them from Audubon. According to Audubon, the family’s recapture rendered them “as happy as slaves generally are in that country.”
I was 43 when, in Minneapolis, the black man in the video was murdered. My city, Seattle, burst into flames. From her 200 year old New England colonial across the country, my mother called me on the telephone because she was afraid I was caught in the wake of vultures she saw on television. I told her I was fine and the vultures were nowhere near my nice neighborhood.
Some bird species are Mimics, copying the calls of other birds as a way to court mates or ward off danger. This is different from what is known as occasional mimicry—the result of a single bird erroneously learning the song of another species. Data suggests that birds who learn the wrong song fail to procreate. Natural selection takes them out so the mistake is not perpetuated.
It wasn’t true that I was fine and there was never a wake of vultures, just a murmuration of starlings.
Audubon Society members have begun to reconcile the legacy of their namesake, a man who enslaved people, railed against emancipation, and painted himself white in his self-portraits. They make uncomplicated arguments, as is the purview and privilege of those who, if nowhere else, were safe from racism within the confines of their own coops.
The New York Historical Society is within walking distance of the apartment where I live now. On the second floor, in a room painted robin’s egg blue, are originals of Audubon’s life-sized prints; they are worth millions. Also amongst the Historical Society’s holdings is Burrowing Owl, Little Owl, Northern Pygmy-Owl, and Short-Eared Owl, one of Audubon’s original engraved copper plates with which he created his Great Work.
I migrated to New York City in 2021 when I decided I could no longer live, if not surrounded by my same species.
I stare into the eyes of the owls in Audubon’s plate, trying to find an angle from which to take a photograph so I can see them clearly, and not just my own reflection in the glass. If I push the button on the right, I can hear birdsong.
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