Catherine and Augusta were twins, born with just one heart between them. That one, tiny pulsing life itself may have been wrenched from their mother, who never made it out of the room into which they were born.
Their father was an obstetrician and a bird watcher. He was neither a cardiologist nor an ornithologist. Still, he was a desperate, decisive, divisive man.
He gave the heart to Catherine, and he found a way to keep Augusta alive. She lived to be a beautiful if frail young woman. Unlike her father, Augusta grew up to be inconsistent, indecisive, flighty.
Her father often found himself frustrated, comparing the twins’ opposite temperments. But he knew he was lucky they were both alive.
Her secret lay beneath her gown, beneath her corset, where her ribcage was hinged.
Each morning she went to her father’s aviary. Grown now, she had more choices and no longer needed his help. She stripped to the waist, peeled back her skin, and opened the cage of her ribs.
It was a mourning dove on days she felt slow and stupid. A mocking bird when she’d no mind of her own. A hawk chick when she felt a flash of boldness. A baby barn owl when she dared feel wise.
Most days she chose a pair of yellow canaries, hovering side by side. They were twins in a womb. They were her early warning system.
These birds knew her father’s voice, and would sing joyfully in response long before Augusta could hear it. They knew the scent of Catherine. It quieted them.
She captured the birds from wherever they happened to be perched in one of the wide open areas or cages of the aviary. (Of course the raptors must be incarcerated, even the babies.)
They were tame to her, all of them. They lived days in her chest, after all. She would grasp, as today, a canary, in one long white hand, and push it into the opening.
Her ribs clicked shut with the soft sound of wet wood, not the metal of an ordinary birdcage.
Once in a very great while, a lover, ear pressed to her naked breast, in the aftermath of some brutal act of trust, might hear within Augusta, the gentle machinations of birdsong.
He might mistake it for love.
