My Gentle Barn Read Free Page B

man and me and my parents and my brothers and the crowd. And one more time, up went the ladder and up went the man, and again a moment of hush.
    “Puff,” I said quietly, and I closed my eyes, almost like I was praying, “please, please let this nice man bring you back to me.”
    As he reached toward my parakeet, she extended her wings, but then she folded them back in. And the man closed his hand around her.
    He climbed down the ladder, parakeet in hand, and the crowd applauded. We put Puff back into the box and taped over the hole. “Thank you so much,” I said, and I hugged the man. “Thank you for saving my bird.”
    My mom grabbed my arm, and off we ran, this time toward the plane.
    Disheveled and out of breath, we boarded the plane at the last possible instant. But Puff was with me, and she made the move with us to California.

    Puff and Simon and the countless other animals who passed through my life helped me get through the social inferno of high school. Itwas a religious all-girls school within a tight-knit Jewish community, and I was the new kid in the middle of ninth grade. Not only was I an outsider to this community, but I was an alien to this faith. I had never understood the god my parents prayed to, never understood how standing and sitting in temple and swearing to obey narrow, rigid rules connected us to something bigger. The only thing that connected me to something outside my humanness was the warm, honey-hay scent of a horse’s breath or a blue iris poking up through the snow in spring or a field full of butterflies.
    My feelings about God and religion were sealed one Saturday during that first year in Los Angeles. I was walking with my mother to temple, and a dark fluttering drew my eye to the gutter. On the pavement a pigeon was flapping, lopsided and frantic. When I picked her up, my mother said, “Ellie, put it down. You don’t know where it’s been.”
    “But she’s been hit by a car,” I said. “We have to get her to a doctor.” The vet was nearby and I thought the pigeon just might make it if we took her straight there.
    “We have no time to take it to the vet,” my mother said. “We’ll be late for temple.”
    My mother’s words didn’t compute. Wasn’t the purpose of temple to help us be good people? Why would I go sit in a building to learn to be good when the opportunity to be good was right here in my hands? “Wouldn’t God want us to help this hurt bird first?”
    “No,” my mother said. “Put that bird down and let’s go.”
    “No,” I said, and I planted my feet on the sidewalk. My mother stormed off to temple to learn to be good without me, and I walked with the pigeon to the vet. The poor bird was in horrible shape and didn’t make it, but I could live with myself for the decision I’d made.
    After that I found as many excuses as I could on Saturdays—sore throats, menstrual cramps, whatever I could think up—and went to temple only when my mom called my bluff.
    Those first couple of years in Los Angeles, I spent most of my free time isolated in my room. I’d get home and Puff would fly to me and climb all over my head and give me parakeet kisses, and the awkwardness and angst of my day would be lifted. But all lives eventually come to an end, and the life spans of small animals tend to match the size of their bodies. Two years after our arrival in Los Angeles, Puff died, and I was inconsolable. I couldn’t stop crying, even at school. All day, one girl after another asked what was wrong. Some instinct kept me silent. “I’m fine” is all I would say, but they could see I wasn’t fine. Their questions finally wore me down and by the end of the day, I revealed the source of my pain.
    “Puff passed away,” I said.
    “Who’s Puff?”
    I hesitated before saying, “My parakeet.”
    As soon as I’d said it, I was flooded with regret. The girls exploded in laughter, and as I watched them double over in delight at my expense, some door inside me