Sugar Water
She told me, “This is how you make hummingbirds come,” as we bent over the sink, pouring sugar water into the feeder.
We were both barefooted. Her toenails were painted ruby red and mine were a shimmery turquoise. I watched her toes scrunch and her lips form a tight straight line while she concentrated on not spilling any of the mixture.
“Their hearts beat so fast and their wings flap so quick, they’ve gotta eat a bunch in a day or they’ll starve,” she told me and smiled. My own heart quickened and warmed with the new knowledge, with the smile.
She sealed the top of the feeder and checked the flower-shaped holes at the bottom to make sure they were clear of any debris.
We went outside. It was one of those days where if you stayed inside, you felt embarrassed. Everything was blooming, and everything was light. It rained the night before so all the pollen had been doused, and my allergies were kept at bay. I walked with naked feet behind hers, navigating around little pebbles and crab grass, stepping lightly. She seemed to float.
We reached the post for the feeder, and she hooked it onto the bent nail at the top of the post, stretching onto her tiptoes to reach.
There were two Adirondack chairs positioned to view the feeder a couple feet away, and we slumped into the low seats of them.
“You have such a beautiful place here,” I said because I could not think of anything to say and because it was the truth.
“Yes,” she said in her slow, meditative smoky voice. She paused and continued, “It’s the result of generations of work. My grandparents bought it and cut down the same trees that make up the walls. My mother did a lot of the landscaping you see, and I-I just tried to hold it down.
“Heh. It’s the constant battle of living in the forest, you know. You feel like you’re Snow White or something with all these woodland creatures around, but then they knock over your fencing or eat through your vegetable patch, and it kind of takes away from the magic.
“You know birds can be some of the worst offenders. Sparrows and swallows will build their nests in gutters and gum up the works, and woodpeckers are horrendous when you have a hangover.”
Her laughter at her own words was full of light and air like she was not composed of bones and blood, but of wind and bells.
She ran her bare feet across the blades of grass and dug her toes into the moist soil as she talked, and it was hard for me not to stare. I didn’t want to talk or breathe or move in case any signal from me might disrupt the wave of thoughts she was sharing with me.
She groaned and repositioned herself in the chair before continuing.
“I’ve always had a soft spot for hummingbirds, though. They always seem so out of place. They move so fast, and they suckle nectar like bees, but whenever you catch sight of them it’s like they force the world to pause around them. They’re like a buzzing electron in that minute vastness around a nucleus.”
She laughed again, and I felt a heat flare up beneath my cheeks and chest. I wanted to hear this laugh, her laugh, eternally, and I felt shame for the reason of my being there. Who was I to squash it out? Who was I to remove so much beauty from the world?
“Oh, listen to me. I sound like a stoner. Haha,” her voice rang out. “They’re just birds, but hummingbirds really are my favorite.”
We would stay out here until one of her winged friends appeared. It was one of her last requests.
I took her hand in mine. I was scared to do so, because there was so little time we had together in our past and our present, and because I imagined her skin flaking away at the slightest touch, but her grip was strong. In her hand, she didn’t hold the same fears I did. Her skin was smooth, and her fingers were sure, though the harsh lines of bone below the layers hinted at the waste within her.
My concentration was so on our entwinement that I would have missed it if she hadn’t pointed it out to me.
It flitted around from one side of the yard to the next like it was teasing the red, plastic feeder. When it came close and dipped into one of the holes for nectar, it was only for a moment and then it did a whole other series of flits and zigzags.
“Oh, I know this one,” she whispered of the hummingbird. It was white and silver blue with a glaring patch of red on its throat. “He comes often. He knows this is a good place to get some snacks. At least for now.” Her voice was low and more full of little puffs of air than words. I worried that she was out of breath and getting tired, but her eyes gleamed and darted around after her quick-as-light friend.
She gripped my hand harder and leaned forward in her chair to watch. She nearly bent herself in half because of the low dip in the chair. I leaned forward with her and put my lips so close to her ear that I was sure she could feel my breath drift through the tiny hairs of her lobe, and I asked, “Does your friend have a name?”
“Oh no,” she said and sounded sad, “for some reason, I made it up in my mind a while ago that it’s bad luck to name them.”
She paused and sniffed, wiping her face with the sleeve of her free arm, then continued, “Anyway, they don’t belong to me. They belong to the flowers and the forest. It’s not really my place to name them.”
We watched in silence a while longer as her little bird came and went from the feeder, like taking multiple trips from the car to grab groceries. When he fluttered off and showed no sign of returning, I led her inside.
“I wish he came back one more time,” she said, her voice fluttered and rasped like tissue paper.
She rested heavy against me. I took her weight on as if it was one of my limbs, as if it was something I carried everyday without burden. I wished I could have taken all of her inside me and kept her there; kept her safe and laughing there. I wrapped one arm around her shoulders, and we went through the house and down the hall to her bedroom. There, yellow light glowed through the delicate lace curtains, and we glowed with it.
I lifted her, my featherweight, and laid her on the down comforter. Her knees knocked together. The covers on the bed absorbed her as if she was floating in a pool of water. Her eyes were closed, but her face was crumpled into wrinkles like she was trying to compartmentalize the pain in those lines. With my hand, I smoothed them out, and I laid her hair evenly across the pillow before taking the throw blanket from the foot of the bed and pulling it up around her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice low, and would have been lost to my ears, but the house was so quiet, even the old floorboards ceased their groaning.
“Of course.”
I stood by her bedside for a while without moving, not wanting the moments to keep coming. I wanted to stay in this one—the one where she was glowing.
“I’m ready,” she said into the stillness.
I held back my own tears, my own feeling of loss, and just said, “Okay.”
I left her there while I fetched my bag from the kitchen. When I came back, she hadn’t moved. She was stuck in the sunlight.
I removed the syringe from my bag and set to work preparing the injection. When it was ready, I took her hand and straightened her arm, creating a whirl of purple at the crease of it.
“It won’t take long, and you won’t feel any pain,” I told her.
“And you’ll stay with me?”
“Yes. I’ll stay with you the whole time. Until the very end.”
“Thank you, my angel.”
I pressed the metal to her skin. There was hardly any resistance.
Her body soon relaxed, and her breathing slowed, and I stood with her hand in mine and my other hand pressed against her wrist.
Everything wound down like a tired clock. I saw the last breath eek out of her mouth, and her hand was limp. I let go.
And the only sound was the faint flapping of wings.
Molly Ashline is a creature and writer with a temporary obsession with everything. She lives in the South with other animals. Currently, she is an MFA Candidate for Creative Writing in Fiction at AULA and serves on the staff of Lunch Ticket.