It began when the birds brought the morning in a different tune. Marta awoke, ruffled in her sheets and stopped to listen. What was normally an upbeat and sunny musical number, a perfect accompaniment to the rising day, was instead awash with an eerie droning, like a funeral song. She listened to the birds banter back and forth, sending out their dismal calls with similar responses returned.
She got up from the bed and looked out the window. The sky was still holding onto night, but the sun's early rays were making quick slices through the darkness. She looked at the tree in her backyard and noticed there were more birds in it than most mornings. The tree, which normally housed less than five birds, was overly filled with what looked to her to be a hundred or so, as though the tree suddenly sprouted birds rather than pine needles. One hundred small darting faces, one hundred black beaks and feathered wings and one hundred low hums that seemed to disrupt the flow of everything.
Marta turned from the window quickly. She went to her bureau to try and decide on an outfit for the day but as she opened her shirt drawer the bird's song became louder, closer. She whirled around and ripped the curtains aside to find five of the birds perched on her windowsill. Their heads bobbed left and right, watching her with their beady eyes and humming their funereal morning sound.
At first she tapped lightly on the window, hoping the sound might scare them off. But the birds remained, unflinching, on the sill. Marta's skin shook across her bones. She looked beyond the birds at the tree which breathed with eyes and wings and a never ending sound. She tapped again and then began to beat the window with her fist so hard she feared she might punch right through the glass. The birds on the sill kept their positions and began to sing even louder. There wasn't even a pause, the sound poured from their beaks as though they weren't breathing. She stared into their eyes, how they glimmered in the light and how their endless black feathers matched their endless cries and calls.
Seeing the failure of her fists against the window, she stepped back and took a deep breath. She decided to ignore the birds and turned back to deciding on an outfit. She went through her shirt drawer but couldn't find anything satisfactory. She threw all the shirts back in, slammed the drawer shut and sighed aloud. When she looked back over at the window there were more birds on the sill, birds on top of birds, eclipsing the entire view, like some creature sporting too many heads. She didn't understand what was going on or what would make birds behave in such a way. She wanted a shower, needed a shower, she suddenly felt filthy in the gaze of the birds. She hoped by the time she was done they would be gone, their rant over and she could finally get her day started.
She went to the bathroom and turned the water to hot. She stripped out of her clothes and stepped in and closed her eyes as the water coursed down her body. But her brief moment of relaxation was soon interrupted by the bird's song that now thundered through the walls, as if they knew she was trying to escape their soundtrack. She held her hands over her ears and paced about the shower, once almost slipping but she managed to catch herself on the wall. She turned off the water and dried off and went back to her bedroom, ears once again plugged to try and block the awful noise.
When she entered the room it only worsened, the sounds surrounded her on all sides. She let the towel loose and walked naked over to her bureau, desperate to drown out the birds somehow. Again she fidgeted through her shirt drawer and thought of anything she could to distract her from the bedlam. She thought briefly of her last fling with a boy named Andre and how he could never look her directly in the eye. She thought of her mother's long black hair, her voice both soothing and harsh, like a waterfall and then her mind drifted to her mother's funeral, of the tears that streamed down her cheeks and the dropping of the casket into the ground which only brought her back to the birds. She reached the bottom of the drawer and was about to begin searching through her shirts again when she heard a tap on the window followed by the cracking of glass.
She whirled around to see the birds pecking away at the window, slamming their beaks with full force. She fell onto her bed and curled up into the farthest corner she could, naked and vulnerable, covered in cacophony. The glass shattered in one corner of the window and the birds flew in one by one. Their hums continued, intensified and she threw herself off the bed and hid beside it, peeking up only slightly as she watched the birds invade her room. The tree had released the birds from its branches; outside she could no longer see the sky, replaced by a wall of black singing eyes and wings, talons and beaks.
She heard them trotting across the roof and shuffling their bodies across all sides of the house, engulfed in a swarming, vocal nightshade. Birds now covered her bed and sprinted across her pillows and comforter; and peered down to stare as she cowered beneath them on the floor. Marta's mouth dried up and she found it hard to swallow. Finally her nerves pushed her body up and she fled from the room.
Somewhere in the miasma of babble was the distant ringing of a phone. Marta, who had been completely set off course by the birds and their song, realized it must be Debra. Marta stopped for a moment as feathers fell onto her shoulders and the shrill noise of the birds kept with her and thought of Debra. How slender her body was, how perfectly she slipped into any outfit, the accentuated puff of her lips, the galaxies in her eyes, the flow of her hair, as though the air around it was privileged to be in its presence.
“A different song,” she kept saying. “No, this one won't do. We need a different song.”
“This isn't good enough?” Marta always asked from behind the microphone, isolated in her booth.
“No,” Debra would say. “Your voice is almost there but you're missing that vibe...the one you had at the club. Where is that? We need that baby doll, give me that. Vulnerable yet protected, fierce but coy, you know what I mean. Give it to me!”
“But I am…”
“No, no, no. You're getting there. I'm going to string together a new tune, something that will really rip you up inside. We need a different song, something to cut you. I want blood on that microphone girl, bleed for me. Let's get a different song.”
“I wrote this song. I am...”
“Sing child! That's all I need you to do. Sing for me, paint with that voice, pour yourself out.”
In the company of the birds Marta replayed the sessions with Debra over and over. The long and tiresome hours of singing songs that were never quite good enough. Words that Marta had pulled from her heart, words she had slaved over, cared for and nurtured, a voice she had come to craft, all of it unsatisfactory to Debra. She kept insisting there was more for Marta to give, more of her body to be exposed, more of her soul to bear, to the point where Marta would burst into tears and Debra would record it and play it back looped, relentless in her attempt to capture the essence she craved.
“And your name,” Debra had said one time.
“What about my name?”
“It doesn't grab me,” she replied. “I mean, who is Marta? More importantly, what is Marta?”
“Isn't this about my voice?”
“It's a big part. But what is a book without its title? It's nothing but words, the idea is lost, the title makes it clear, pulls it all together. You need something flashy, something that demands attention. Something that says ‘I hurt like the rest of you, I am your pain, I am your every emotion'. You got me?”
“When will we have the right song?” Marta asked.
“You will feel it baby doll.” Debra reached over and poked her in the middle of her chest. “Right there, you will feel it all right.”
It was a measly talent competition with a prize of five hundred dollars. For those in attendance it would be another night out on the town, another club to get drunk at and watch acts which, in their intoxicated state, they could inevitably get lost in. For Marta it was a chance to showcase everything she had honed privately in her house. All those lonely nights locked away in her room, singing to herself, scribbling down lyrics and filling tattered notebooks with heartfelt words.
Sometimes she sung in front of her mirror and watched how each word looked when it came out of her mouth, how her lips would curl and curve with each pronunciation. Everything had to be perfect. If one word didn't look right or sound beautiful then it was cut and another more aesthetically pleasing one would be put in its place, something the lips could better illustrate.
Once the words were perfect and every part of her body was in agreement, her stance and posture, her jaw and mouth, when all of these things were harmonious in displaying the lyrics and emotion of the song then she would write the music to accompany the piece on her electric piano. That was a whole other process in itself, hours upon hours of endlessly matching her fingers to her words, singing to her double in the mirror, keeping focused while inspecting her movements, careful and casual.
After months of long afternoons and nights spent alone, sequestered between the four walls of her room to write her music, she had three fully complete songs. Three musical pieces she had strained over but was now utterly proud of. She sung and hummed them over and over in her daily routines, doting motherly with each one.
She saw the poster on her way to work one morning, driving past the bars and clubs downtown. There in the window of the Hot House, glowing with the gleam of the sun was the advertisement for the talent competition. It was only a slight glance at first; she only briefly witnessed the words, thought nothing of it and continued on her way to work. Her day at the diner was long and slow, serving up pancakes and omelets to the usual customers but once the morning rush had dwindled the place was as empty and abandoned as her bedroom. Her shift was coming to an end, she was wiping off the countertops and her music was weaving through her mind, entangled with the words from the poster that hung from the club window.
On her way home she stopped and got out to read all the details. Far more rewarding to her than the monetary prize was the chance to perform for others, to let others experience all of her hard work, her perfectionist ethic. It was simple enough to enter, all she had to do was fill out a form and return it to the club. She walked in and filled out the form and gave it to the club owner who graciously accepted and after eyeing her up and down, told her with a pearly smile that he looked forward to seeing her perform.
Marta pushed past the birds in her way to find the phone. It wasn't in the spot she normally left it, the kitchen table was empty. Still, like a compliment to the bird's incessant calls, the ringing continued. She turned over the pillows on the couch; she ripped open drawers and cabinets but could not find the phone anywhere.
Debra was there in Marta's mind, waiting on the other end, tapping her foot impatiently. She could see Debra sighing and then swearing, hitting redial and then placing the phone back up to her smooth cheek. Marta wondered if Debra had finally found the right song, a song that would work in favor of her voice, music that would pierce her and make her bleed the way Debra desired.
Marta sat on the couch and abandoned her search for the phone despite its continuous ringing. There were birds in every room of the house now, singing across the hallways, embedding themselves in small cracks and under furniture and a few of them danced on her lap. She didn't try to shoo them off, her energy had deserted her after hunting for the phone. She looked down at the birds hopping over her skin, leaving track marks all across. Their song still hung heavy in the house and she wondered how the birds were breathing, how they could banter on like they had for hours without a single rest or pause. Their chests were neither rising nor falling and their beaks were frozen open, emitting their tuneless cries. Marta shut her eyes while the birds continued to sing and dance, on her and around her, above and below.
The last two weeks before the competition Marta took off work and locked herself in her room, determined to further perfect the songs she had already perfected. She pondered all the aspects of the performance, the placement of her piano and how she should face the audience, the best position to make the lights hit her face just right, illuminate her eyes like blue fire. Everything was in place except for one thing, one aspect that to some may contribute to her standing apart from the rest of the acts: her wardrobe. She needed to be wearing something eye-catching, something unique and invigorating, something sexy yet not too revealing. She enjoyed the allure of mystery and that often seen envy in men for beautiful overly dressed women. She wanted to take the sweat and blood, the heart and soul she had poured into the music and smear it all over her skin.
First she considered a dress, something strapless that came down to the knees. Her closet didn't house anything suitable, or at least not anything she deemed worthy of accompanying her songs, so she browsed around in the local boutiques for something that might strike her fancy. After many long afternoons she was still empty-handed and the idea of wearing a dress began to sour. More and more, as her hands flipped through the dresses on the boutique racks each one appeared blander than the one before it. The store associates tried to help her, grabbing various gowns from this rack and that and holding them up, saying “How about this?” or “You would look so lovely in this one!” And to each Marta shook her head without trying even one of them on.
Back in the solitude of her room she pondered more about her wardrobe situation and tore apart her bureau and closet for new ideas. Her mind was blank and she grew excessively anxious, with her clothes strewn about the room and her music floating nakedly, unable to be presented in the proper fashion. For another few days she cried and kicked at the walls, threw her clothes in all directions and screamed at the top of her lungs only to immediately regret it in fear of damaging her vocal chords.
Marta finally adapted to the bird's song, allowing it to melt into the background along with the ringing of the phone. She stood up and the birds that had perched on her stomach and shoulders clung to their position while others flew up to cover her breasts and below her waist like avian armor. She strode across the living room and into the kitchen and with each step more birds attached themselves to her body until she was feathery and black from the neck down.
She leaned down and propped her elbows against the counter and listened to her skin sing, to the walls around her, the breath of the house. In an odd way the song of the birds was beginning to say something to her. The perpetual sound, unchanging in its pitch or tone and containing nearly no melody, had begun to sound like music and words that she was very familiar with. What she could make out now, woven throughout the hum that expelled from the beaks, were the music and words of one of her songs. The song she happened to be most proud of, the one she felt most connected to, the words and notes entwined within her veins, alive and breathing beneath her skin.
With her attention focused and her physical being now connected with the birds, she began to sing along and it stirred a rustle of excitement within the birds. They danced feverishly to the sound of her words, her body and home a fluttering mass of ebony. Each room of the house was alive with the cheerful birds and Marta's voice entwined with their own, each room of the house danced in darkness. And Marta, entranced by the delight of her song and voice and the accompanying flaunt of the birds, kept singing straight into the night.
The idea came only days before the competition. She wanted to create a costume, something to give her and her music an identity, a visual for people to remember her by. She sketched out a few ideas and finally settled on a bizarre birdlike ensemble. The body of the costume was to be a black dress completely covered in large and glittery feathers that would absorb the light of the room and spit it back out in the audiences' faces. Wings would jut out from the back of the dress, constructed from a graceful material that would quiver and give the illusion that Marta was about to take flight. The final element to the idea was to don a mask with a large beak, much like a plague doctor.
She fashioned the costume herself and finished it the day of the performance. Before heading off to the club she practiced her songs with the costume on to make sure all her movements appeared elegant. Lost in the practice of her art she failed to recognize the fatigue in her bones, how her fingers whined for a break from the keys or how her throat craved a glass of water. She felt nothing but the floating wonder the songs rendered within her.
The club was packed when she arrived but she kept her confidence and composure by hiding behind the long beaked mask. She stood by the side of the stage and watched the acts prior to hers. The opening act was a young blonde in a skimpy outfit shaking her cleavage and serenading the crowd with a poppy tune in a soft voice. The second act was a mime that performed a routine to particular songs, showing his failure to pick up invisible women, driving invisible cars and for good measure ended it all by trapping himself within a ghostly glass box. The crowd laughed at his inability to escape the box. The third act was a pair of dancers who appeared more like lovers on the stage, touching one another with only the ends of their fingertips. The male dancer lifted his female partner as though she were weightless, twirling and throwing her up above his head. Marta admired the dancers' graceful movements but felt that, despite their raw and natural talent, their act was probably not what the judges were looking for. She noticed how handsome the male dancer was, clean shaven and young but undeniably masculine, and couldn't pull her eyes away from the intense power of his arms. The dancing act finished, the crowd applauded and the two dancers bowed. Marta took a deep breath and purposefully brushed against the male dancer as she walked past him towards the stage. The roar of the club dulled when she walked out in front of the crowd, the lights bright and blinding and her piano positioned exactly as she had specified.
She was only allotted enough time for two songs and though it was a hard decision to leave one out, she decided on the two that best represented what she wanted the audience to feel and experience. The lights dimmed to near blackness as she approached the piano. She sat and for a moment let her fingers hover above the keys. The second she began to play the lights once again burst to life, overly bright and engulfing. The faces in the crowd watched her intently, as though she actually were a bird and they were some greater beast in the food chain. She loosened up with each progressing second, more and more comfortable in her costume, becoming the bird, her body liquefied with the music. This act, her songs, was greater than her and she accepted her role in it, performed everything exactly as it should be.
Marta paused before starting the next song. There wasn't any time for any talking or introduction. She wanted to keep the audience lost in the mystery, keep their eyes examining as they disrobed her in their minds, wondering just who that girl was. She kept one hand on the piano and waved the other about in the air, giving the appearance of flight in conjunction with the music. The lights bounced all around her, she erupted in flames one second and the next she was illuminated by ice, then explosions of rainbow strobes. She was nearing the end of the song and on the last note she jumped from the chair and landed on top of the piano, where she bowed and the audience cheered. The lights diminished once more and she flew off the stage to become Marta once again.
It was then that she met Debra.
The house of birds frolicked to the sweet sound of Marta's voice, their wings fluttered so fast they were quick blurs of black. Here was the atmosphere she wanted to aid her songs, the perfect illustration to her words, the real birds adorning her body far better than the costume she had fashioned. Even the still ringing phone added a new texture to her music, something in the background only noticeable to listeners who take the time. She sang louder and louder, reaching new heights with her voice she never knew she could reach, higher scales, dashing soprano.
And then she reached the end of the song and closed her mouth. Immediately the house shut down, the liveliness drained; the musical spirit quieted. Only the phone remained constant and it seemed all the more suffocating with the bird's silenced beaks. Marta couldn't stand the intense and annoying ring; she couldn't bear the sudden stillness that had washed over the rooms of the house. She now craved the noise, was desperate for anything to cover the ringing of the phone.
“Sing!” she yelled. “Sing!”
The birds flew off her and her body lit up the kitchen, her skin pale against their black hue. She looked at herself in the mirror, realized how naked she truly was without their feathers covering her body, without their stick thin feet digging into her flesh. She never felt more vulnerable than now, here with the birds, silence and skin, white and black, unclothed, non-feathered. She'd built up her music to shield her and here she was in the kitchen, utterly bare, reduced to a simple girl on the brink of shattering. Ring, ring, ring went the phone.
Ring, ring, ring.
First there was a business card in her face. Marta was standing backstage, watching the other acts and comparing them to her own. The delicate hand shot of out of nowhere, shaking the small white business card in her face.
Marta took it without fully realizing what she was doing, reacting naturally to something flailing itself in front of her face. She started to read the text of the card as a voice began to speak. Marta knew the voice was speaking to her, but she wasn't concentrating on what was being said. She read the words ‘artist representative' over and over again, trying to match the meaning of it with the voice that poured over her. Finally Marta turned her gaze from the business card to the owner of the voice, a petite package of womanly perfection.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” she started. “My name is Debra Garner, artist representative from Star Cross Records. Yes, the Star Cross Records.”
Debra extended her hand and Marta shook it without saying a word.
“Listen doll, you have real potential. I really dug what I heard out there. I know what I'm talking about, been doing this for many years now. But you…I'm sorry, what's your name doll?”
“Uh, Marta.”
Debra put out her hand once more and Marta shook it again
“Marta, I like the bird thing you got going on here. I can work with it. I can make you into something. Would you like that? Would you want to become a star?”
Marta nodded slowly.
“I'm talking big time doll. I'm talking singles on the radio, magazine covers, worldwide tours and music videos. I'm talking your face on billboards, your face being the face every teen girl wishes she had, your face, those tits of your becoming what every guy will jerk off to. I'm talking about total domination. You get me?”
Unable to speak, Marta nodded again.
“You've hardly said a word doll! I know, I know. This must be a bit of a shock. You're dreaming, that's what you think. This is all just some crazy dream. Wake up doll, this is real! You keep that card, think it through and then you give me a call, okay?”
Then Debra was gone as soon as she had appeared. Marta looked back down at the business card and suddenly the competition seemed so far removed. She no longer noticed the other performers as they passed by her or the noise of approval from the crowd. Everything else was now an accessory, a background prop to this new dreamlike state that she couldn't rouse herself awake from. Marta stood in place, continually feeling the rough surface of the card, reassuring herself that it was legitimate, that Debra had been a real person and not some apparition of the club, until she was the last person remaining and the club owner asked her to leave. She didn't even remember walking home. The door to the club closed behind her and her body floated off into the night sky and eased itself through an open window and snug into her bed where she slept with the business card as though it were a cherished childhood toy.
In the morning she woke and immediately dialed the number on the card. She waited while the phone rang, still under the spell that she was making a call to a nonexistent woman.
Ring, ring, ring.
Amidst the birds and nude weakness, the phone ceased its ringing and in that moment of utter silence Marta shattered, fragile as an aged record hitting the floor. She hated the absolute quiet even more than she had the ringing of the phone. She crouched down and dug her nails into the kitchen tile, clawed and clawed in her desperate attempt to arouse some type of noise within the house. The birds watched her but kept their beaks shut. She wanted to be smothered in sounds, to be clothed again by feathers and shrieks.
There was a rustle. Something moved within the cluster of birds. Marta stood, trying to locate the source, peering into the black mass of birds but saw nothing. And then the phone appeared; her white phone being carried by one of the birds. Marta said nothing.
The bird hovered before Marta and then placed the phone into her hands. The birds stared as she slowly raised the phone to her ear. She said hello and heard a voice she had come to know quite well. “Doll, I'm afraid I have some bad news. I'll keep this brief and to the point. This isn't working out for us. There is too much at stake here, time is money, you know how it goes. There was something with you; there is something special about you doll. But, it's not going to happen with us and it's not going to happen with me. We've got our next queen diva, we've got the song and she's got that flair. Keep your chin up child; this is how the business works.”
The other line hung up, a dial tone filled the air, the wings stopped flapping and the phone fell from Marta's hands and disappeared within the birds. Marta wanted to cry but didn't know how. She couldn't feel, had forgotten what it was to feel. Her body was all instinct, starving for the birds to deliver their beautiful song, her song, her comfort.
The birds kept their eyes on her, watching intently as though they knew how the coming events would unfold and they were waiting for her to act upon them. She felt even more naked when she noticed their cold stare, reduced to nothing, and with her last bit of strength she opened her lips and began to softly sing the song that encompassed her entire being. The birds were enraptured by the faint hint of the song and broke out into a dance of haunting jubilee, broke the quiet of their beaks to add music to her voice.
Marta, fueled by song, gathered the pieces of her broken self from the floor and reassembled her body into something stronger. With each new word she was able to raise the volume of her voice, rise above a whisper until she was shouting and raving. An idea was forming in her head. She was going to give Debra exactly what she wanted: a different song.
Debra did in fact exist and for a moment, when she picked up the phone, Marta was unsure what to say. “Hello? Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Who is this?”
“It's, uh, Marta. You gave me your card last night…”
“Oh yes! So glad you decided to call me back. Tell me doll, can you meet me downtown? We have some things to discuss.”
Marta met Debra downtown at a small restaurant where they sat in a lonely booth in the far corner, isolated from the rest of the patrons. Debra had a stack of papers with her, papers filled with the tiny print comprising the guidelines of Marta's future. They discussed the details as Debra kept motioning for the waitress to bring over more martinis and together they drank and conversed and Marta's head spun, her martini tasted like fame and money, like album sales and sex appeal.
On the bottom of the stack was a piece of paper with blank lines and when they reached that page Debra slid a pen over towards Marta. Marta looked at the blank lines. All she had to do was sign and she would be on her way. She contemplated the entire situation, rested the pen at the start of the first blank line, ready whenever she was. The second she moved her hand and let the ink spill her name; her life would forever be changed.
“Well, how about it?” Debra asked.
And that was the push Marta needed. Her hand moved rapidly, scribbling her full name across the necessary lines. She had spent many hours as a young girl practicing her name in quick cursive scribbles, timing herself, perfecting it until it was one fluid motion. She couldn't wait to sign autographs and put all that long ago practice to good use.
Soon they were in the studio and the trouble over finding the right song began. Nothing was good enough for Debra. She stood on the other side of glass and watched Marta sing, listened to her voice and the accompanying music and said “no, no, no.” Marta would arrive at the studio early each morning and stay until late in the night, singing with very little breaks in between. Each new day brought a new song, a different song that Debra had arranged. It went like this for more than a month and even then Debra wasn't satisfied.
Marta sang and the birds jived. Some of them flew back up and covered her body again. She laughed as she sang, more maniacal than cheerful. She whipped open cabinets to find as many glass bottles as she could. She emptied whatever was inside of them, liquids, loose change and buttons and grouped them together on the kitchen table. She ran upstairs to rummage through her bedroom and the bathroom and managed to find five more bottles for her collection. In total she had seventeen empty bottles.
Marta then scampered outside to her car for the gas can she kept in her trunk, stowed away for emergencies. She grabbed it, shut the trunk and went back inside where she distributed the gas as evenly as she could between the bottles. As she poured, the excitement within the birds grew. The music in the house exploded with new levels of overabundance. Once the gas can was empty, Marta took the liquid dish soap from beneath the sink and added some to each bottle. She cackled as she did this, changing the tone of the song into something psychotic, something beyond the reaches of what she intended it to be.
A few of the birds flew into the kitchen carrying shirts from her wardrobe in their beaks. They dropped them on the table and a different set of birds pecked and ripped the shirts at the seams until they were in pieces and Marta slipped them down the necks of the bottles. Marta clapped and ended her song only to start it back up again as she grabbed a book of matches and began lighting the tops of the shirt scraps.
The birds on her body leapt off and grabbed the bottles with their feet. Marta no longer cared that she was nude, she no longer felt vulnerable now that she could hear her song and see her song; had given a new texture and warmth to her music. She opened her front door and the birds emptied out, carrying the flaming bottles towards the studio where Debra was now working with the new diva, the one with the flair.
Marta kept singing her song as she watched the birds fly higher and higher into the sky and she kept singing it long after they disappeared. Right now her song was traveling across the city, burning in the sky, ready to explode over Debra and the diva. For the first time in her life Debra would be able to feel the music as it blazed around her, the smoke of it choking and thick. Marta smiled at that thought and returned inside where she sat down on the couch and didn't mind if she ever wore clothes again.