Fiction: My True Love's Mother Gave To Me

My second ever Christmas story. I wrote this short story last year for a Reedsy short story contest where you are given a prompt and have a week to write and submit. I didn't win, but I like this story because it reminds me of our Dudley, who I still miss.

            My True Love's Mother Gave To Me

The bird bobs its head at me, swaying back and forth. Is it trying to tell me something? Or is it dancing to some funky beat only it can hear? 
What in the hell kind of bird is it anyways? Is this even legal? Why would anyone give me anything to take care of? First off, I’m a dude. And, I can’t even keep a cactus alive.
    The bird is staring at me now. It looks like it wants to tell me something. It’s looking me right in the eye, cocking its yellow head, a little fan sticking up on its head, and its orange cheeks puffing up somehow.

I’m going to call it a he. I’m going to name him Bruno because the beat of his bobbing has put the song “Uptown Funk” into my head.  

What kind of person gives a pet for Christmas? 

Every year since I was five, I wrote my letter to Santa asking for a puppy, eventually downgrading to an aged dog, and then any pet whatsoever. My parents said Santa didn’t give pets as gifts because it was irresponsible. Some of my friends had badass Santas I guess, because puppies, kittens and hamsters appeared under their trees. Kind of like, we had the conservative tooth fairy who never swapped candy, or bills for teeth, only coins. Around thirteen though, I realized it wasn’t Santa saying no, it was my mom. 

“I don’t need another thing to take care of,” she’d say, though I insisted I would take care of it. That was the whole point.

But I didn’t even get to take care of myself.

Hence, the dead cactus on the windowsill.

Mom took care of everything, and everyone. Housewife and stay-at-home-mom was her chosen career. No one had to do anything, and I never once heard her complain, only ask what more she could do for us.

“Do you need anything else?”

“What can I get for you?”

Too bad Mom isn’t here now. Too bad she wasn’t around when I had to do my first load of laundry. Did she think I’d go right from home to being married to someone like her? Fat chance this day and age finding a girl to wait on you hand and foot. The washing machine in my dorm was old, and the instructions were ripped, faded and warped. I had to call the RA down to help. She was hot, and overly nice so that I felt like a real fuckup-in-the-making.  

And the first time I made my own bed, I thought the fitted sheet was defective with all that scrunched up elastic. 

You’d expect my sisters to have fared better, being girls and all. But they soon realized they were just as screwed. Janine told us the fire department came when she didn’t know any better than to not use styrofoam in the microwave. It was then that we realized the disservice Mom had done us out of her sense of duty, and love.

Mom took a ten-day vacation every year to visit some sickly relative or other that we never met. She’d come home from those trips rejuvenated, and ready to resume duties. We were overjoyed at her return because Aunt Pat, dad’s sister, refused to cut the crusts off our sandwiches, and she made our beds all the same way, not taking into account that Marcy hated the foot of her bed tucked in. That, and she muttered under her breath the whole time, so that we felt she was not happy at all about spending time with her nieces and nephew. 

Bruno had been dropped off with the landlady while I was at work, endlessly entering health codes so insurance companies would know what to bill their patients. His cage was covered with a-what do you know?-fitted sheet that wrapped the cage perfectly. I thought at first it was some kind of magic trick box, I don’t know. The tag read “From Patricia''. The only Patricia I knew was my girlfriend’s mother-the girlfriend I hoped would soon be my fiancée, if I could get the nerve up to pop the question. And then, a chirp from underneath, like ‘hello out there?.’ 

What the-? I peeked underneath enough to be met with a frenzied flutter of wings.

“It’s a bird,” I said aloud.

“Uh-huh,” the landlady said, continuing to sort through her mail. 

“Don’t leave that thing out on its own to chew up the wires!” my landlady yelled after me as I left with the cage, and the small bucket of food beside it. 

Bruno hops off his perch, onto the floor of the cage where he steps back and forth at the door. He chirps and looks at me, flutters his wings.

“Sorry buddy, you won’t get too far being in here.”

I unlatch the door and stick my hand inside. Bruno hops onto my knuckle, his claws gripping my skin. He walks sideways up my wrist, and ducks his head to clear the doorway. He scampers the rest of the way up my arm to my shoulder. I’m a little freaked out, thinking he might poke my eyes out or something. Instead, Bruno fluffs up his feathers, and closes his eyes. He’s sleeping! I stay still as a statue, afraid to wake him. I glide my left hand over my phone as I Google what kind of bird I had: grey bird yellow face with thing on head. Then, I order the highest rated book on caring for cockatiels, arriving December 27th. 

Before I put my phone away I take a selfie with Bruno. I look at the picture, and get all choked up. This fluffy, feathery thing has instantly made himself at home on me. He has one leg tucked up, and his eyes drift open and closed. 

My phone rings. I silence it, but Bruno is already shaking himself out, and has one eye open. 

“Hey, babe.”

“Why are you whispering?” Viv asks. 

“Bruno’s sleeping.”
    “Who’s Bruno?”

“The bird.”

“Whose bird?”

“Mine. From your mom. You didn’t know?”

“Are you shitting me? Why would she get you a bird?”

“I think she’s trying to send me some kind of message.”

“Poor bird,” Viv says.

“For your information, I’ve already rocked it to sleep, and Googled how to take care of it.”

“You can’t even make coffee! And-And, you couldn’t even keep that cactus alive.”

I swipe up, and go to Photos to look at the picture again. I share it with Viv, and hear the ding on her end.

“Oh, my god. My mother is a genius.”

I’m not sure what she means by that, but it’s definitely the strangest Christmas present I’ve ever gotten.

“I gotta step it up, woman. But I can do it. I’m going to take care of Bruno here. And... I want to take care of you too.”

    “Wha-?”

    “Will you marry me?”