The Wounded Stork

This story won the 2024 Anthony Grooms Short Fiction Prize.

The dead bird on the front-door step was a barn swallow. Makhosi recognized the copper face and glossy blue hood that continued towards a forked tail. Its clawed feet were tucked together, as if it had been arranged there. 

It was early and the morning rush had not yet begun, but already the air was unseasonably warm. London, Hotter Than Athens, the newspaper declared. Makhosi glanced up and down the street, as if the mystery of the bird’s appearance could be solved somewhere along their Victorian terrace. The city was hazy with heat. Plane trees lined the pavement, their new leaves, vivid and green, arching against the bleached sky. A black cab idled outside number sixteen and distant traffic rolled like an unseen ocean, punctuated by a muffled yap-yap-yap from behind their neighbor’s door. 

“Did the paper come?” Simon nudged alongside her in the doorway. He had tucked his tie away between the top buttons of his collared shirt and carried Jabu in the crook of an elbow. With his dark skin and blonde curls, their son was the perfect, beautiful combination of his South African mother and British father.

“There’s a dead swallow,” Makhosi said and crouched over the bird. Its open eye was as flat and black as a papaya pip.

“Don’t touch,” Simon said and shifted Jabu around his hip, putting his body between the dead bird and the boy. “Lice."

Makhosi tucked her hands into her lap. She’d felt the unexpected softness of a dead bird before. Some time during a barefoot school holiday on her grandmother’s farm in Zululand. Light bones beneath the feathers. 

“Probably flew into the window.” Simon tilted his head towards the transom window above their front door where the numbers one and three were sandblasted in the center. 

When they’d first viewed the house and Makhosi had expressed reluctance at living at an unlucky number, Simon had dismissed her superstition as “an old wives’ tale.” She knew it was considered good fortune for a barn swallow to nest in your house, but thought better than to wonder out loud what a dead one might portend. She looked up, trying to imagine the trajectory of the small body’s sudden, unconscious drop.

“But it’s perfect, as if it’s been positioned. What if someone rang its neck and left it here?”

“Who on earth would do a thing like that, Max?” There was an edge to his voice. 

Dread prickled the back of her neck as Makhosi’s eyes travelled down the row of quiet windows overlooking their street. “I don’t know.”

Simon snapped a stick off the wisteria that draped above the front door and poked the swallow. The jab rolled the bird onto its back. Its neck came to rest at an unnatural angle, exposing the soft triangle of its chin.

“Broken,” he said, as if settling an argument, and handed Jabu to Makhosi. “I’ll get a bag.” He carried the newspaper down the hallway. 

Barefoot, Makhosi took the boy up the path to the front gate. As a child, she would watch the high migratory V’s of birds arriving in South Africa each spring, and wonder about the vast northern world they’d traveled from. She’d imagine silent fields of snow running to the horizon like the yellow veld that flowed in all directions across the hills around her grandmother’s farm. Now, from her home in the London suburbs, Makhosi watched the swallows’ seasonal arrival and wondered if they felt regret at leaving the wide blue breath of Africa’s horizons.

This swallow would have flown thousands of miles across the Sahara, via Morocco into eastern Spain, and across the Pyrenees to summer in England. Makhosi glanced back at the bird. The air-bound creature lay incongruous against the earth. It didn’t seem right to simply dispose of the body. It deserved a proper burial. Somewhere in the small garden at the back of their house. Her oasis. Her mother, used to the more expansive suburbs of Johannesburg, referred to London backyards as “postage stamps,” and theirs was no exception, which was precisely why Makhosi loved it. It was neat and manageable, and every plant was there because of a decision she’d made, action she’d taken, and work she’d done. The accident of the swallow’s death and decay should be worth something to the life of a plant, or the soil.

Resolved, Makhosi turned back up the path just as Simon returned with a hand brush and a plastic shopping bag. He bent over the swallow and with a single, surgical movement, swept the bird into the bag and knotted the handles, once, then twice.

The unwelcome image of the bright body decaying to a slow liquid stench inside a sweaty plastic bag flared in her mind. “I was going to bury it!” She was embarrassed by the sudden emotion.

“Now you won’t have to.” Simon moved towards the bins. The bins that would bake in the heat for three days until the garbage men came. He lifted the lid and tossed the lightly weighted bag inside. It landed with a hollow thunk as another swallow darted out from the eaves of their house. 

~

Jabu sat on the kitchen floor constructing a cityscape of mismatched Tupperware tubs and lids and cups.

“Swallows migrate to South Africa,” Makhosi said as she tore a banana loose.

Simon pumped soap into his palms and scrubbed his hands. “Sounds like wishful thinking.”

She peeled the banana and pushed a fork through the flesh. “Let’s move.”

“I thought you loved this house.” Simon dried his hands on a dishtowel.    

“I love it because you love it.” Makhosi added a spoonful of vanilla yoghurt to the mashed banana and blended the two together. “It’s not the house, it’s more…” she waved the fork in expanding circles, trying to encapsulate the street, the neighborhood, the town, the whole country, “… I don’t know.” She thought of the watchful windows and the dead swallow. A nut of dread rooted in her chest.

“It takes time, Maxie.”

“It’s not a question of time.” 

“What is it then?”

“I feel different. I sound different. I am different.” Makhosi and her words ran out of steam. They’d had this conversation before. “It’s hard for me to explain to someone like you.”                   

“Someone like me?” Simon said under his breath. Then, more loudly, “If you can’t explain, how can I fix it?”

“I don’t expect you to fix anything.”

Makhosi opened the cutlery drawer and piano’ed her fingers across the selection of teaspoons within. Someone like me. She wore her skin, Simon lived in his. But she hadn’t meant to highlight their differences, she only wanted him to recognize how at home he was in the place where she felt lonely. She was a new mother, with a relatively new partner in a new country. She watched other mothers meet for coffee on the local high street, their babies like happy extensions of themselves. They made it look easy. Out of the noise of metal spoons, Makhosi selected the blue plastic spoon Jabu favored. She lifted him onto the kitchen counter, positioned herself in front of him, and offered him scoops of banana and yogurt.

Simon’s phone buzzed.

“I’d better go.” He pulled Makhosi into his chest and pressed his lips against her temple, then stooped to straighten his tie in the reflection of the oven door. “I wish you’d put him in his chair.” He nudged the feeding chair towards Makhosi with his foot.

“He doesn’t like being strapped in.” 

“It’s not safe.” Simon’s phone buzzed again, and his thumbs replied.

“We prefer it this way, nê, Jabu?” Makhosi blew a raspberry on the sole of Jabu’s foot. He squealed and grabbed for the spoon.

“If he’s in the chair he can learn to feed himself.”

“Okay, Simon. You do it.” Makhosi put the bowl down and stepped away. 

Released from his mother’s ballast, Jabu scooted forward to reach for the spoon.

Simon lunged across the counter. “Christ, Max!” He scooped the boy up and carried him to the feeding chair. Jabu arched his back and began to scream, slamming the spoon—slimy with banana and yoghurt—onto Simon’s tie and clean shirt.

“Fuck!”

“I told you, he doesn’t like it.”

Simon handed the squirming child to Makhosi and snatched a dish towel to mop at his clothes. He unknotted his tie and threw it in the direction of the washing machine. “I’m going to miss my train.” He thumped upstairs. 

“Thula, baba, thula,” Makhosi crooned until the boy quietened. She put him on the floor and handed him the spoon.

Makhosi and Simon had met when he’d travelled to South Africa to get experience in the trauma center at Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg, where Makhosi worked as a junior nurse. She’d been asked to show the group of young English doctors around the hospital, which had progressed to her showing them around the nightspots of the city, and after working late one night, happily acquainting Simon and his pale, enthusiastic body, with the inside of her bedroom. He’d tugged her dress above her hips and she’d twisted his tie over his shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt until nothing was between them. He’d moved into her flat, and when his work visa expired, he’d asked her to come home to London with him.

Simon’s phone buzzed face down on the kitchen counter. Makhosi flipped it over as a text from Catherine lit up his screen.

– Ready to go? –

Catherine lived next door and was a pharmacist at the hospital where Simon worked. She was one of those girls who liked to be the prettiest in the room. Catherine flirted with men, not because she wanted them, but because she wanted to know that they wanted her. 

Simon came downstairs buttoning a fresh shirt, with a clean tie draped around his neck. 

Makhosi held up his phone. “Your girlfriend is waiting.”

The mention of their neighbor tuned them both in to the persistent yapping coming from behind the shared wall of their terrace.

“When did she get a dog?” Simon asked.

“Not sure, but it barked all day yesterday.”

He accepted his phone from Makhosi. “She’s applying for a new position and asked me to give her a few pointers.”

“I’m sure she’d love a few pointers from you,” Makhosi said, turning to the dishwasher.

Simon pulled her towards him from behind and slipped his hands under her t-shirt. She sucked in her stomach, conscious of how her body had softened since pregnancy.

“Don’t do that,” he breathed into her neck. “I’m sorry for being a prick.”

“Jabu is safe with me.”

“I know. Of course I know that. I’m sorry.” He ran his hands down to her hips and Makhosi moved against him. 

“Not fair,” he groaned. “I really have to go.”

~           

Barking followed Catherine out of her front door as Makhosi kissed Simon goodbye at the gate. She was a petite woman. Well-groomed with make-up neatly applied and her bobbed hair freshly blow-dried. Makhosi was abruptly aware of her own unbrushed hair and the baggy t-shirt she preferred to sleep in, now smeared with Jabu’s breakfast. She tugged at the hem, conscious of her loose breasts beneath the thin fabric.

“Hi, Jamie,” Catherine used the anglicized version of their son’s name which Simon said, “made things easier.”

The little boy offered Catherine his spoon. She smiled and gently pushed his hand away. “You’re such a good mom, Max.”

How would you know? Makhosi thought, but said, “Did you get a dog?”

“It’s my sister’s. I’m taking care of it while she moves.” 

“It barks a lot.”

“I know. Who knew having a dog was so much work? It's like having a baby!”

Makhosi met Simon’s eye and had to look away. She juggled Jabu from one hip to the other as the little boy jammed the blue spoon into her cheek and then her mouth.

Catherine continued, “I’m trying to find someone to walk her while I’m at work,” and paused—her fingers already moving to slide her house key off the ring.

Makhosi recognized in the pause the expectation of servitude. She was familiar with the expression that accompanied it, eyebrows raised, eyes wide, and lips turned up. She knew how to wait out these encounters. She had done it often enough. With the white women at the playground who assumed she was Jabu's nanny. With the delivery guy who asked, “Is the lady of the house in?” when she answered her own front door. Or the woman in Marks & Spencer who’d asked for her assistance and then seemed annoyed when Makhosi replied, “I don’t work here,” as if Makhosi had knowingly misled her. She held Catherine’s gaze until her neighbor broke with a short cough.

“The back door has a pet hatch so she can get out into the yard, which should help,” Catherine offered an, it’s-the-best-I-can-do shrug.

“We should go,” Simon held up his phone with the time displayed. 

The high-pitched bark of the abandoned dog repeated behind Catherine’s front door as she and Simon walked towards the station with their heads angled towards one another. They could easily be mistaken for a couple. Two attractive professionals headed to their important jobs. Catherine’s coat had a slight petrol sheen like the iridescence in a starling’s feathers. An invasive species that must be managed.

Simon looked back.

“Wave to Daddy.”

As soon as they were out of sight, Makhosi lifted the lid off the bin and retrieved the plastic bag with its silent contents.

~ 

The air inside the house was close and warm, as if the heating had been left on. Makhosi kicked the front door closed and carried Jabu and the plastic bag down the hall to the kitchen.

She and Simon had traveled from South Africa to England via Europe. They’d carried their luggage on their backs and stayed in youth hostels and pensions where they’d made love on rickety beds in thin-walled rooms, with their hands over one another’s mouths. In Rostock, a small town on the Baltic Sea, they’d visited a museum where a white stork was stuffed and displayed, with an 80-centimeter spear through its neck. The wounded stork had been discovered in Germany in the 1840s. The spear that hadn’t killed it was African. The information board had described a time when it was generally believed that birds transformed into mice, or hibernated in lakes or under the sea during winter. The Arrow Stork brought with it the valuable clue that birds migrated unimaginable distances from Europe to central Africa, where, Makhosi imagined, a young hunter had pulled back his arm and let fly his spear at an ethereal creature with an expansive wingspan; a white cutout against the blue paper sky. The stork had borne its unwelcome passenger all the way to Europe. To places the young hunter could not have conceived. 

Makhosi took in the pile of laundry at the bottom of the stairs, the rubbish bin jammed with nappies, and yesterday’s newspaper strewn across the counter. Banana smeared on the floor and on the feeding chair. Simon’s ruined tie. Jabu’s toys and books and building blocks tumbling out of multiple soft containers. Tupperware piled on the floor. Dishes in the sink, waiting to be washed, only to be dirtied again. Endless, thankless chores, all underscored by the rhythmic yap, yap, yap from behind the wall, ticking above the heat like a metronome.

Sweat skimmed Makhosi’s temples, pooled beneath her breasts, and pricked her underarms. She hung the plastic bag on the handle of the french doors that opened to the garden, stripped Jabu down to his nappy and laid him in his pram. She yanked off her baggy t-shirt and leggings until she stood only in her underwear. She couldn’t catch her breath. Blood pulsed hot and urgent behind her eyes and for a moment the room tilted and swayed. She unlatched the sash window over the sink and pushed it up, hopeful the air outside would offer relief, but it only brought in the hot dry bark of Catherine’s dog-child. Landing like a hammer blow. Regular, purposeless, thudding against Makhosi’s skull.

She leaned her forehead against the tiled wall, acutely aware of those few cool, hard, square-inches, closed her eyes and imagined taking flight. Disregarding gravity to lift with an imperceptible shift of her shoulders. The brush of feather against feather. To tilt and rise higher and higher into the cool air. To soar and dive. She breathed in. The room righted itself. Makhosi pushed herself up and kicked her discarded clothes towards the washer. Jabu was babbling and drumming the plastic spoon on the side of the pram, completely absorbed in his internal world. She stood for a while, listening to his charming nonsense. The space between the sounds lengthened to the even in and out of his breath. The room expanded. The air felt light. It was quiet, not only inside, but beyond the walls too. Makhosi held her breath. The barking had stopped. 

Makhosi stole a quick shower and slipped on a cotton shirt and shorts. She pushed the pram with the sleeping boy into the garden, taking the light plastic bag with her as she went through the french door. Sunshine bleached the sky. Undisturbed by any breeze, the plants and flowers seemed to twitch and shimmer in the heat. She directed the pram into a corner of shade, as deep as it could go, then adjusted the canopy against the light. Jabu slept on. A chaffinch landed on the bird feeder and snapped a sunflower seed in its beak, to peck out the soft nut inside.

The small swallow had left its nest this morning, flicked its feathers, lifted its voice to the new day. She thought of the wounded stork, of the peregrine falcons that hunted through city skyscrapers, the white storks that nested on chimney spires, and the pelicans that lived on the pond in St. James Park.

A clematis waited in a black plastic tub alongside a hole Makhosi had dug the day before. It had begun to flower and searched the air with its blind tendrils for something to grip and climb. Makhosi had dug the hole next to the fence that divided their back garden from Catherine’s, so the clematis could use the slatted wood for support. The flowers had wide, white petals, blushed with lilac tips, which cradled a tighter cluster of purple petals at its centre. A flower within a flower, would make the perfect marker for the swallow’s grave. Makhosi reached into the plastic bag and laid the dead bird on the ground between the fence and the hole, careful to restore its neck to a natural position. She rose to get the hose.

A small, white, curly-haired dog pushed out of the pet hatch and stopped in a rectangle of shade on the terra-cotta paving stones in Catherine’s bare backyard. A lock of fur had been brushed and gathered in a ribbon on top of its head, like a toy you might find in a child’s handbag. It spotted Makhosi and began to bark. The exertion lifted the animal off its feet with a short hop of determination. Bark. Hop. Bark. Hop. Bark. Hop. Not in alarm, but as if it was calling, its brown eyes fixed on hers.

Jabu began to wail.

“Hey, wena, stop that noise.” Makhosi rapped her knuckles on the fence.

The dog rushed over, its entire body shaking with the force of its tail wagging. It shoved its snout through the gap between the ground and the lowest wooden slat, and lapped and licked in excitement and nervous greeting. 

“You’re noisy for such a little girl.” Makhosi squatted and reached her fingers through the fence to scratch the dog behind its ears. It pressed into the affection, nuzzling her palm. “Do you miss your mama?” 

The animal did an excited dance, twisting its compact body in a tight circle before returning for more. It made a high excited whine, like air escaping a balloon. Makhosi laughed and felt herself soften towards the dog and towards Catherine. Living alone, trying to be helpful to her sister, while making her own way in her career. Maybe she should be a good neighbor and offer to look after the dog? She was here most of the day anyway, and Jabu might like it. She pictured herself pushing the stroller, with the little dog running alongside her through the cow pasture, where the summer herd of ambling bovines with their sharp, grassy smell, grazed on the banks of the Thames.

Jabu continued to cry and Makhosi crossed the small yard to comfort her child, stroking a finger in a slow rhythm between his eyes. The small dog leapt against the fence with excitement, landing both its paws along the lowest strut and barked. Jabu felt hot. Makhosi lifted him out of the pram and bent to the tap where she let cold water run over her open palm, then swiped it around the back of his neck. The little dog yapped and scratched at the fence, pushing its nose into the soil as if to dig its way to them. Jabu calmed as Makhosi walked him around the garden. She hoped to soothe him back to sleep, but he was too distracted by the dog, scratching, whining, digging under the fence.

Makhosi went across to settle the dog, just as the animal darted its small nose under the fence and grabbed the dead bird in its jaws.

For the second time that day, she rushed towards the dead swallow as it was swept away from her. “Stop!” She called for the dog to drop the bird. To release. Release! But it dug in, exposing needle teeth and pink gums behind its blue and copper-feathered prize. Makhosi smacked at the fence with her free hand, until her palm stung, “Let go!” Her skin fizzed with adrenalin and rage.

Jabu began to cry.

Still gripping her son in one arm, Makhosi dropped to her knees and pushed her other arm through the slats of fence. Ignoring the splinters she snatched at the dog’s scruff. The animal jolted its head back, drawing the bird deeper into its mouth to secure its grip. Jabu was crying with the full force of his lungs. She could smell her son’s distress. A mustiness beneath the usual baked dough scent of his skin.

With effort, Makhosi calmed her voice, “Drop the bird. Drop it.”

The dog shook the swallow in its jaws. The defenseless blue head dangled and flinched.

A rage, like a white light, blazed behind Makhosi’s eyes. She clenched her teeth and pushed her left arm further through the slats. In her right arm, Jabu screamed and braced against her body. The dog crouched. Brown eyes stared at her. Its top lip curled back. 

“Here, puppy,” Makhosi sang. 

The dog replied with a low growl, but took a few slow steps forward. It thought it was a game. Maintaining eye contact with the animal, Makhosi pushed through the fence up to her shoulder. She felt the hot sting of a graze along the tender skin on her inner arm. 

“Here, puppy,” she flicked her fingers. “Come to mommy.” 

The dog took a few more careful steps, keeping its hold on the bird. Makhosi flicked her fingers again. The dog approached and sniffed at her palm territorially. When it was close enough, Makhosi grabbed the poodle by the scruff of its neck. She expected it to struggle but instead its small body immediately relaxed with some cellular memory of a mother’s gentle jaw carrying its body to safety. She dragged it closer to the fence and secured her grip. Makhosi began to shake the animal back and forth. “Drop it. Drop it!”

Her cheek chafed against the wood. Her shoulder ached and the skin along her arm stung like a burn. Jabu had a fist in her hair and he arched against his mother’s awkward embrace. She closed her eyes and kept shaking. She shook against the empty nests, the lost birds who fly across continents only to mistake a glass window for open sky, the judgement pouring from a dozen careless mouths. Catherine in her petrol-sheen dress which hung from her slim frame, You’re such a good mother, Max. Her own mother, You should raise your child with family, so he learns who he is. The white nurse in the London hospital where Jabu had been born, standing just out of arm's reach as Makhosi struggled to get him to latch on, asking, But isn’t it normal to breastfeed in your culture? Her English mother-in-law, directing her words at a crying Jabu, Poor baby, isn’t your mummy feeding you enough? Simon, this morning, telling her their son should be more independent. Not understanding for one minute how much it hurt for her role in Jabu’s life to be so casually erased.

Makhosi shook until the bird landed on the terracotta tiles in a disarray of wet feathers and clawed feet. She let go of the dog. It backed into the shade, panting hard and watching her with its round brown eyes. Makhosi scooped up the bird and pulled her prize through the fence. She drew her son into her body. Her neighbor’s blank windows leered into her yard. She tilted her head like a crane listening for the whisper of a mouse in the reeds. No bird song and no hum of traffic disturbed the garden. No dog barked. The world was still. Makhosi began to cry.  

~

Jabu was asleep upstairs when Simon’s phone buzzed on the arm of the sofa. He stood and walked to the kitchen with his eyes on his screen.

“Catherine didn’t get the job,” he called over water drumming into the kettle.

“She didn’t?” Makhosi followed him to the kitchen. 

Simon twisted a knob on the stove and held it down. It clicked until a blue flame erupted beneath the kettle. “Did the dog bark today?”

“It’s just lonely.”

“Tea?” he said.

She nodded.

Simon took two mugs out of the cupboard, tossed a tea bag into each, then crossed to the sink and looked out the window at their back garden. 

Makhosi joined him. It was twilight, and a golden glow lit the space like a blessing. 

“You planted the clematis.” Simon lifted her hand and kissed her wrist, his breath against her palm. “We can be happy here, Max. Can’t we?”

A pressure wafted off the bridge of her nose, like feathers shaken from a wing. Makhosi leaned against her husband. He smelled of heat and aftershave, underscored by the familiar acidity of hospital disinfectant. Together they looked out at their postage-stamp yard.

The young clematis angled its stem up the fence post.

The cover of the printed version of “The Wounded Stork” designed by Brittany Files

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.