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Her childhood bedroom was on the second floor of her house. Finches liked to nest in the thin branches that rapped against her window in a steady tap tap tap on windy days. One day a cowbird with smooth black feathers and a brown head perched upon her window sill. It eyed the eggs in the finches nest. She thought it looked like a predator the way it looked at those eggs. Like it could gobble them up whole.
“There is a cowbird on my window sill” she announced as she walked into her kitchen where her mother stood over the counter preparing dinner.
Her mother looked at her with a keen look. “Its a brood parasite” her mother said, “it will replace one of the eggs in the nest with its own.”
She quirked a brow with curiosity as her mother continued “The infant will grow and likely starve out the real offspring of the hosts nest.”
Her mother was right, as she peered from her window she saw one egg that did not match the rest. It seemed the mother finch didn’t notice as when the eggs hatched she couldn’t help but watch in horror as one by one the babies starved and the cowbird became the only child of the finch and yet, the finch still fed it until it out grew its home in the branches by her window and flew off.
She dreamed the finch simply loved the cowbird as its own despite it all. The next year the cowbird hadn’t returned. A new finch family lived happily without a parasite robbing them of their offspring. But she hadn’t forgotten the cowbird and each year she quietly prayed it wouldn’t return so the finches could live peacefully.
She grew and grew and one day, like the baby cowbird, she found herself too big for her mother’s house. The military welcomed her with open arms and she found herself undergoing changes, feeling her humanity drain, something godly consuming her from the inside out. She hoped, like the brood parasite, her mother will see her as her child still despite it all. There was a comfort in her denial, until there wasn’t. Until she could no longer recognize her reflection and she knew whatever small child had loved the finches was gone and in its place was an endless anger.