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I was born into the ocean and that was the first time I died. Mama had a dream that morning: a giant bird carved itself into the planes of the sky and dripped flaming feathers into her eyes. The bird belonged above the sea, see, my mama listened and when she woke in the morning her eyes were blistered from the heat. When I started hurting her she clawed her way to the beach and, lips to the ground, ate sand until pressure built enough that one breath would split her from me. She rolled onto her back and the waves lapped at her feet and then swallowed her whole. Blinking, and I appeared there in the water and glowed lantern-like and looked up to see a giant bird over me in a sky I could not breathe and then I died. 

Then I was alive and woke to find gray gulls placing flowers and seeds between my toes. They pinched me with their beaks while Mama was gathering air for me beneath my nose and clicked her tongue, 2, 3. Tears fell red on my cheeks and grated ears. She shook her head and said, “For what now do you need to make a fuss,” then she sang me a song and we jerked home on an angry bus. 

Home was small and so fit me very well, but mama hunched and stuck her head through the ceiling. “Oh Baby, you’re going to cause me a bit of trouble.” She yawned and seashells tumbled from her hair into her teeth. It only took me one week to grow tall and develop a nose that looked like no one’s at all. Tall people get work to do and mama said if I didn’t start then I’d turn into a circus clown and so the tasks began. Her arm came down. Mama went to a lot of trouble to keep me alive. Every morning she walked back to the sea to collect the weeds and sand and brew a dark brown tea that steamed and made twinkle lights while I belched the fumes away from me. In her glance, flamingbird hovered still above our peace. 

She brought me with her on the routes, picking flowers and green things from the side of the road so that the teas would have “some grit to them.” These are the plants that survived, they will make others survive just the same. She taught me how to follow foxes to find the trees with fruit in them, and to give a man oranges when he is frozen from fear. She sang as she moved, but still those days of my first steps reek of dread, of knowing a bad thing and having to give it a home anyways. 

When I took my first fumbling step, I burned my footprint into the ground beneath. Mama clicked her tongue and nodded, see, “A dead thing is still in you. Grass stands no chance, no, no, your step’s a million years of drought and red eye.” My foot never felt heat, no fires ran in my blood to cause such disaster, and the ground wouldn’t smoke after my retreat. “A dead thing spreads itself, it's plain and simple little lady.” Mama taught me all these things. On our walks I would stumble onto her feet and she never winced or turned to ash, but underneath her boot her skin and bones were dying away. Seven walks together, before her feet too much resembled stumps, and so she taught me the word “retired” and would spend the days knitting woolen mountains of grief.

I struggled to breathe deep. She patted my cheek and clicked her tongue to laugh at me. “It’s alright, you see, I do the same thing to you. It’s a felt thing and so doesn’t need to be painted.” She always spoke that way, in overcomplications. 

I went outside one morning to see a purple box nailed to the house. It was stuffed with papers and pictures and made me confused for some hours. 

The papers were all written on, and the words were upset. The townspeople, the whole town, each one signed their name, all. Welcome cards I think. They said they know I’m in town now, that they’d seen me. They said that I should clean up my mess--my footsteps marked everywhere, scorched into the ground, that I should be ashamed. There were photos too, of my fossils. I sat and held those pages for a long time. All the words were pressed so hard - grooves, dents, pressure points. There were holes too, pencils and pens that ripped the surface. I imagined a small caterpillar had eaten its lunch. 

I didn’t understand what all of those upset words meant so well and then I thought, since everyone has said hello, that I should go and greet them. I walked into town, away from the house, away from the ocean. I walked until I forgot all of my confusion and then I saw a scene. Three people stood in a semicircle and observed the ground. I wanted to see it, too. 

They did not look up at me when I stood next to them. They were speaking in low whispers and teasing fingers twirled rough whiskers. My prints were being discussed and there was some excitement in their voices turning and tossing plans for removal. Then they bent down to the dirt and scratched the mark and I shuddered. Three faces turned and six orbs made me scream. They didn’t know, it's just that when I saw their eyes my ears were shot by the ocean. I heard six waves crash and I was scared. They were scared of me too and all took turns spitting at me until I was cooled off. 

I didn’t move away and this is what happened. The three took turns gouging the ground and I was surprised to find that my prints were sunken miles deep. They shoveled with their bare hands and I saw their nails tear and bleed. They dug for hours and spasms ran through their arms and knuckles became static. The dirt was thrown on top of me and I did not move except to sit once boulders were added to the pile. They were building me a mountain and the spit helped it all stick. 

Second death was painless. I woke up a few days later to worms curling up with teeth and nostrils full of sprouts. A salamander ate my right eye and my toes were all lit up blue. It was silent in the mountain. 

I ate my way out. I ate boulders and bugs and little germinating seeds and then I was home. Mama was there all tangled up in wool. I told her how my walk went and couldn’t stop laughing when I saw myself in the mirror. I told her about the spitting, and asked why she had never done that to me. She said simply that she could not spray me down herself, that there were droughts, a shortage of water, and she wanted to keep every drop to herself. Her hands were wrung up, teasing her thumbnails from the dry peeling skin beneath them. Dry thumbs held me still, worked through the hairs plastered to the cold skin of my forehead, and plucked up the saliva left on me from angry men. She stuck her thumbs in her mouth, stretching out the corners of her lips up to the ends of her cavern slit eyes. Her teeth, lying so far back she struggled to eat, glowed like opals and gave me immense pleasure. I laughed until I fell asleep. 

In the middle of the night I was shaken. Momma had something to tell me. 

“You came here, you chose to come again. This is your seventh day. Don’t forget.” She shook and no light bounced in her eyes. She curled up on the floor and I found warm dreams in her woolen stomach. 

Morning came for the last time, choking me with darkness. The carpet was a dancer, fibers passed red sparks to friends, dark gray feathers rose, nodded and stretched to every corner of the room. Mama stood and me and she wrote a simple eulogy for the flaming piles of clothes, coughing out to the safe trees away. The purple box that held angry letters burned to a deep brown and drifted into the sky. 

We watched until there was nothing left to see. Mama sighed. 

It was time to walk and so we drifted into town, me scorching the ground and Mama sounding blunt rhythms of stumps. But everywhere was only mountains. All of my steps were dug out. There were shadows hunched and gnarled all around us, the welcoming party at work. Fingers made of knots, spines curled into permanent resistance, soil and rocks and lava spurted from deep holes where my steps once lived. 

I breathed and glowing eyes turned in time to view two magic makers. 

The eyes came closer, circling Mama and I. All together they fell, backs to the ground, and started their final number. A low rumble found my feet. There were sounds of laughter and music filled the air. A thousand voices rang into the day and the spiraling chimneys of upturned surface spun out, filling singing mouths with dust. Mountains crashed down from the weight of voices and Mama sang too. She was tired, and finally fell to the ground to join the rest of the eyes. Flaming feathers dripped from the sky and fell into her eyes. I did not look up at flamingbird, I did not say goodbye to Mama. 

I carved my way to the water and stood in the sand. An orange vein delivered fire to the soles of my feet. For the first time I wished for relief, and gathered my face into my shirt and watched as tiny pink crabs swarmed from the sands and pinched at skin I could not feel. Sequined in shells and claws I finally was strong enough to raise my eye to meet my first sun. Flamingbird was made up of Mama’s smile and stole the warmth from me. A deep blue swept towers crashing into light sparks and then I died.

Bridget Ashvil's short story "Everybody's Looking at Jude" won second prize in the Eighth Annual Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Writing Contest in 2021. Bridget is a Visual and Critical Studies major who graduated this spring. A multimedia artist with a focus on painting, metalsmithing, and writing, Bridget is a first-generation American who grew up surrounded by the ancient Georgian language. Bridget infuses and translates the physical and emotional qualities of her mother tongue into mythologies just out of the American reach. Please do read on and please, she begs of you, stand in prayer.