Las Paredes Oyen
/Michelle Donahue
Because the walls listen, she holds her lighter to the wall and waits.
Because she likes the feeling of flame. She likes the light, to be light
and golden. To glisten.
Eleanor writes stories, but she understands the difference
between stories and not-stories. Between her character’s
life and her own. Her character lives in one time, one space.
And Eleanor another. She understands, or so she thinks.
In class, they listen. In class, a college creative writing class, Eleanor
and Delilah listen to stories read aloud from pages. They listen to the
professor, a young, vibrant and buzzing thing, who speaks of plot and
pacing. They write stories. Eleanor writes stories, but she understands the difference
between stories and not-stories. Between her character’s
life and her own. Her character lives in one time, one space.
And Eleanor another. She understands, or so she thinks.
Eleanor begins a story about a woman, who is her age. And this woman,
like Eleanor, has a secret. Unlike Eleanor’s, the woman’s secret is strange.
No one would suspect. When this woman closes her eyes, she grows
hummingbird wings, iridescent, too green to believe. At the end of this
story, the woman will hold her lighter to the wall and wait. But that’s the
end, and it isn’t the end yet.
Eleanor thought Delilah knew. In their dorm lounge, she thought she
heard Delilah whisper, The walls listen.
Revision: she used to love him. She loves no one now.
Eleanor never wanted to be the sort of person who would cheat. She
loves Carl. Revision: she used to love him. She loves no one now. No
one but herself. Revision: Certainly not herself, but her hummingbird
woman. That fearless woman with wings. Eleanor tries to think only of
hummingbirds, so that she might ignore her life.
Eleanor’s life story goes something like this. Eleanor was
California-born, dredged from the womb with eyes blinking
from that coastal, southern sun.
Hummingbirds are all eyes. Their most important sense. They see all
the colors that we do, but more. Eyes detecting UV-light, unraveling
something beyond us.
In California, Eleanor was a woman of light, too bright, her skin thrumming
with sea salt and mountains. She grew so very bored of that. Bored of her
happiness, her home. So at the ancient age of eighteen—she felt so mature,
so old!—she flew inland.
Hummingbirds have clear eyelids to protect their eyes during flight. Eyes
covered with two sets of lids, one opaque like ours, the other a transparent
nictitating membrane—she loved this strange word, scientific incantation.
A spell that allows a hummingbird to see through closed eyes.
In the university library, Delilah whispered, I see you. Or maybe Eleanor imagined
it. Delilah said, Do you know what las paredes oyen means?
Eleanor made a home in a coast-less land. Iowa. A name she once confused with
Idaho, Ohio, Indiana. The mundane thrum of flat land felt thrilling and exciting, until
it didn’t.
Excitement: Freshman year, during an intro biology class, she spotted Carl,
hole in the elbow of his plaid shirt, hair a little ruffled. Definitely from around
here. Definitely a farmer.
She had boyfriends in high school, but they were wannabe surfers,
too young and self-consumed. Carl was something else entirely.
Timid and sincere, quiet and deep.
Like any young romance in a rom-com or YA novel, they caught eyes and
smiled. Even then she knew it was cliché, but in Iowa that felt okay, felt new
and still thrilling. Then a little flirting, Eleanor sitting next to him each class,
her laughing a little too loudly at his jokes. Predictable. She had boyfriends
in high school, but they were wannabe surfers, too young and self-consumed.
Carl was something else entirely. Timid and sincere, quiet and deep.
She liked Carl and she liked Carl’s group of friends: his best friend, Pete, his
brother, Bill, Bill’s girlfriend, Delilah. She liked Delilah because she was
unknowable. Delilah grew up in California too, but wouldn’t talk about it.
She had beautiful olive skin. Eleanor thought that she looked so enviably ethnic.
People in Iowa were so white and Eleanor was ashamed by how well she blended in.
Delilah always stuck out. There was something in her grin, something sly, like she
had secrets she would tell no one.
Her wings appear only when it’s quiet. Only when she can concentrate
and locate that shard of light deep within her. She pulls the wings from
her heart and she becomes part-bird. At night she takes flight and
learns the pure freedom of weightlessness. But it isn’t enough. It
never is, is it?
In the library with Delilah, Eleanor said, Las paredes oyen. The walls listen?
She knows basic Spanish.
Delilah said, It’s from a Spanish telenovela I watched as a child.
On their second date, Carl took her to a prairie remnant. The first date was
predictable—dinner and a movie and a sloppy make out session in his dorm
room. Carl understood that on the second date he’d have to do something
different. He understood others better than he understood himself, and knew
that the darkness of a movie theatre or an unlit dorm room wouldn’t satisfy
Eleanor for long.
It was the sort of perfect day that’s rare in Iowa. Slightly warm, the leaves
living up to fall’s warm colors, but not yet fulfilling the verb. To fall, to turn
to winter and that bitter Iowan cold.
Carl said, “This is one of the largest prairie remnants around.” He explained
that there were only a few such remnants around, bright squares of untouched,
or almost untouched, or not quite as disturbed prairie, with hints of the color
and biodiversity of the past, before agriculture touched almost all of Iowa.
This is what the land once was before it was burned and
cleared.
They could quickly walk its dimensions. Eleanor felt the ghosts of its clear-cut
edges, but this made it special and precious. It felt almost as if it were a secret—
a secret of the land’s former brilliance, or else a secret humans chose to keep
from themselves. This is what the land once was before it was burned and
cleared. Replaced with fields and fields of corn and soy, soy and corn.
In places, the grass came up to her waist. She coveted the strangeness
of the goldenrod and black-eyed susans. She thought of hummingbirds,
how they remember every flower they visit. Their brains are 4.2% of their
total body weight. A human’s is only 2%. What a lexicon of flowers they
must have, what a memory for beauty.
“I love it,” she said. And she loved his plaid shirt and his Carhartt jacket,
the red, not quite tan tinge of his skin. Red: the color that most strongly
allures hummingbirds.
Her wings are a secret that makes her distinct. That makes her have trouble
with the mundane, with the ritual of routine. She has no friends. Revision: she
had friends sometimes, but never kept them for long. She’d forget their
birthdays, the times and days they were supposed to meet. Instead she flew.
Delilah said, Because telenovelas are like dreams.
Anything can happen.
In the library, Eleanor asked Delilah, Why are you quoting phrases
from a telenovela? Delilah said, Because telenovelas are like dreams.
Anything can happen. Delilah tilted her head to the ceiling, closed
her eyes. And they always end badly.
A new relationship is like a dream. Eleanor felt so fully herself, so alive.
Each time she touched Carl, she felt such pleasure, such a thrill to be
right here and now in the present. Of course, she can tell no one about
her wings. That is one of the best parts about them. There’s such energy
in a secret. In having an inner life that is all your own.
Eleanor had never had sex, but wouldn’t admit to it. She was California
beach-wild, of course she’d had sex. Carl had never had sex either, and
told her that freely. He was ashamed, but he wasn’t a liar. Not yet anyway.
He would learn to lie, but only after Eleanor left him. He was beginning to
love her, and he felt fiercely that you don’t lie to those you love.
“It’s okay,” Eleanor said. “It’ll make it more special.” Not a lie.
Although hummingbirds spend most of their lives in the air, they can’t fly
during mating. It’s one of the few moments in their lives when their wings
are still, when their body slows and quiets.
He doesn’t have that secret-holding glint in his
eyes. It is good and good, then boring.
The hummingbird woman meets a man and she likes that he is different. By
different she means normal. He doesn’t have that secret-holding glint in his
eyes. It is good and good, then boring.
Eleanor wanted to be a romantic, but she was also a scientist. Revision: she
wanted to be a scientist, to be that analytical and cold. Carl was boring. Carl
was the sort who followed what he was told. He wanted to be an artist, and he
had the skill, but his father owned an industrial farm in a nearby town. He would
be a farmer and that was that.
First Iowa was exciting because it was new. It seemed dangerous
with its polluted waters, pesticide-covered feed corn, and patchy
prairie remnants. Then, two and a half years later, she looked at
the tall grass and it looked so sad and boring to her. Nothing like
the landscape back home. Manzanitas or redwoods. Trees that can
withstand flames. Trees that need to burn to live. How could the
prairie compare? How could Carl? Pathetic.
In their dorm room lounge, Delilah said, I used to watch the telenovela,
Corazones de Fuego. All I remember is that everyone was always
cheating on each other and killing each other because of it. Delilah
isn’t known for subtlety.
She has hummingbird wings and a hummingbird heart. This meant:
she is always in motion. Wings beating so fast they become a blur.
As if they were made of more than matter, as if they were more than
normal existence. Her heart a flurry of beats, aortic compression,
pulmonary activity. Her heart defies anatomy, is more than
chambers and ventricles. Her heart withstands more pressure
than any other human’s. Over 1,200 beats per minute. To support
the rapid beat of her wings. It is the only way to maintain her fire,
that motion. Like a shark. Stop moving and it can’t breathe.
Hummingbird motion comes at a cost. Their bodies burn through
fuel. They need to eat every ten minutes, their existence tied to
food, their metabolism always in high gear.
Carl was nothing but nice to her and that made her hate him more.
He drew her small, but exquisite sketches that he slipped into her textbooks.
She’d open her ecology book and find sketches of a hummingbird, wings
blurred in motion. She couldn’t remember telling him that she loved them,
but she must have. He surprised her with red roses when it was her birthday.
He told her he loved her. Should she say it back?
They sit in a white room. Hers or his, she’s forgotten.
“I love you,” she tries again. This time with more emphasis
on that all-important word.
“I love you,” she says to her normal man. They sit in a white room.
Hers or his, she’s forgotten. “I love you,” she tries again. This time
with more emphasis on that all-important word. She wants to feel it.
Instead she imagines what love would be like. Imagines the way it
should feel.
The first time she had too much vodka, she finally regained some
excitement. Bill was hosting a party, small and intimate, only ten or
so bodies. Delilah made her a drink, poured it strong. Masked the
strength with cranberry. Delilah’s own was just as strong, but her
vision didn’t start to swim as Eleanor’s did.
“It’s so sweet,” Delilah said, “that Bill and Carl are so close.”
“They’re good people,” Eleanor slurred. She spotted Pete, Carl’s
best friend. There was something about him that night—lean and
alluring.
Delilah handed her another drink. “Do you love him? Do you really?”
He knows nothing of her secret, but he suspects
something.
“Do you really?” the normal man asks. He doubts she loves him.
Revision: he knows she doesn’t. He knows nothing of her secret,
but he suspects something.
Sometimes her heart feels like fire. Sometimes her
body ignites, threatens to burst.
Eleanor and Carl held hands as they walked to a frat party. Eleanor
was so cold her skin burned. Although it was mid-winter, many girls
walked without coats. Walked with heels, through the ice, the
ankle-deep mounds of snow. Eleanor was one such girl. She
wore a black halter-top, plunging in the front. Goosebumps prickled
her breasts. Her feet already ached in too-high heels.
Eleanor eyed the other females. How silly, how stupid they all looked
in the snow. She wondered if they walked coat-less because it made
them feel sexy or because it made them feel invincible.
The cold made Eleanor feel close to death. Made her skin buzz with
that recklessness.
They walked—Eleanor and Carl, and Delilah and Bill. Hand in hand,
perfect picture of romantic bliss. Delilah wore skinny jeans, boots, a
thick pea coat.
They arrived. They all found red plastic cups, full of some virulent
green concoction, and they drank. What else was there to do?
But he is normal and she is a hummingbird.
What can she do but break up with him? But break his heart?
Because she knows he loves her. But he is normal and she is a
hummingbird. She has hollow bones. Bird bones are hollow but
still heavy. Everyone thinks bird bones are lighter than others,
but this simply isn’t true. The heaviness makes them strong, best
able to withstand the hard flap of wings. To fly for hours. She feels
hollow and heavy when she breaks his heart.
This won’t break his heart, she thought, because he would never know.
The story goes like this. At the frat party, many green vodka drinks into
the night, Bill and Delilah gone already, when Pete joined them. Pete is
long and lanky, almost fragile looking in his thinness. Different than Carl.
Strong and sturdy and reliable Carl. Good boyfriend Carl.
Something different: all she needed. Carl was drunk too, so it was easy
to slip away from him, for a while. To grab Pete’s hand and stumble up
the stairs, find a bathroom.
So predictable, what happened next.
A hummingbird heart makes up 2.5% of its body. Relative to body size,
they have the largest hearts in the animal kingdom. Imagine what it would
feel like for that large heart to beat 1,200 beats per minute. Like having a
bomb in your chest, twenty ticks per second. Can’t waist time with a heart
like that. Can’t linger. Because a heart only has so many beats left in it.
Delilah sat on Eleanor’s bed. Delilah was painting her nails red. I heard you
through the walls, she said. Their rooms are next door to one another. The
walls are thin.
Eleanor’s heart felt too fast and hot. She thought she had been quiet.
But I remember, when a woman discovered someone
was cheating on her brother, she calmly held a knife to
her throat.
I tried finding old episodes of Corazones de Fuego online, but couldn’t.
Like it never existed. Delilah ran the nail polish brush from the base of
her nail to the tip. But I remember, when a woman discovered someone
was cheating on her brother, she calmly held a knife to her throat. She
said, you tell him or I will.
Delilah thinks cheating is one of the worst things. People you love should
always be there for you. Should always love you.
The knife was all show, I think. But then, who knows?
Hummingbirds plunge their thin beaks through spider webs, breaking
those immaculate threads. They pilfer webs, eat the captured insects and
if they’re lucky, the spiders. If hummingbirds need protein, they know where
to go.
Think if a hummingbird ate a black widow. A woman who has
thoroughly digested so many men. A temptress who has lured
men to her lair, has birthed so many babies, and then has devoured
their fathers. Incredible. She wants to be like that. A woman-eater.
An eater of women who eat men.
It goes like this. She befriends attractive women and then acts as their
wingman. Revision: wingwoman. Lures attractive men their way. Waits
for them to hook up, to never call the men back. Or else to string them
along for a little longer. Wait until they think they fall in love. Then they
end things. This is always how these things end.
And then. She invites her friends over. She demands quiet and pulls her
wings from within her. She has a beak now too. Long and metal-sharp.
She opens her beak and eats the woman whole. She needs the protein.
She hated herself, because she only picked Pete because he
was Carl’s best friend and that would hurt him the most.
She knew she had to tell him. She hated herself, because she only picked
Pete because he was Carl’s best friend and that would hurt him the most.
Because she was bored.
It’s worse: she thought she loved Pete. She thought one day, she would
break Pete’s heart too. How boring she was in her rebellion. She couldn’t
escape.
She always devours the women inside her house. The walls are white and
clean. But she doesn’t know the walls have eyes, have ears. The walls of
her house are women. Women who, when it is quiet, pull a clean, white
expanse from their inner selves and become walls. They listen. They
undo wrongs.
They take her beak, her wings. They know this is the worst thing. They
know where this will lead.
She is only a woman now. No one will even look at her. She is pale and
mousy. She is small, a fly on the wall. She is secret-less, found out, normal.
Once she found a hummingbird’s burnt body. She was hiking in California,
in the chaparral, home to Manzanita trees, which are fire-resistant, and
hummingbirds, which are not. She picked up its body, small, so very small.
All gray except a violent purple plume around its neck. Like a vibrant noose.
Hard to tell the species, because the crisped feathers, just color turned
cinders. She found it at the edge of burnt land. Where the brush
accidentally caught fire. And though hummingbirds have hearts and
wings that beat as fast as fire, they cannot escape it. They have frantic
hearts and bodies that easily burn.
She was going to tell him that she was cheating, but he beat her to it.
She wondered if Delilah got to him first, wondered to what length she’d
go to protect him.
He asked, “Have you slept with Pete?”
Her teeth sandwiched her lower lip. She tried to bite hard enough to
taste blood, but she failed even at this.
“I love Pete.” Even as she said it, she felt its truth slipping from her. She
knew she was already tired of Pete. The sweetness was the secret.
She begins this story for creative writing class, but this
is no mere assignment. This is consuming.
Eleanor begins a story about a woman, who is her age. She begins this
story for creative writing class, but this is no mere assignment. This is
consuming. In class, she sits and listens. In class, Delilah doesn’t speak
to her, but they stare at each other, from the sides of their eyes, watching.
She hates herself. She is bored. She is bored of hating herself. What’s
worse?
She hates the walls. The women who become walls. Envies their ability to
transform. Knows she’ll never transform again. She’ll always be this: herself.
She has a hummingbird heart, is incapable of stopping. And here
she is: still. She wants to be like fire. Revision: to be on fire. What
other end is there?
She hates those walls that listened, those women in the walls, the single
woman who stilled her. Revision: a woman who will burn her.
Because the walls listen, she holds her lighter to the wall and waits. Revision:
there’s no lighter, only her body, but still there’s fire.
Because she is who she is, she thinks of flame and only. Thinks of eating
bodies and boredom.
Because she wants to be a tree that can withstand
flame. More than a hummingbird, more than a body
captured by heat.
Revision: She holds her lighter to the wall and waits. Because she likes
the feeling of flame. Because she wants to be a tree that can withstand
flame. More than a hummingbird, more than a body captured by heat.
Revision: she cannot remember why there are flames.
Because she has no wings. Because she likes the light, to be light and
golden. To glisten. Revision: this is an accident. Revision: it isn’t.
Because the walls have eyes, she begins to burn. Because her lungs
fill from smoke, her body collapses.
She dies.
Revision: the walls have eyes. Revision: the walls have caused this.
Revision: A woman has ears. A nose. A sense for burning.
A woman drags her body from the room. Smoke fills their lungs.
They become ash and cinder.
Revision: they both escape.
Their bodies free from the room, from flame—for now
Author Commentary: This story emerges from an obsession with hummingbirds. In my work, I often integrate vivid and scientific details about the natural world, and so I wanted to find a strange way to have a story that's very much about hummingbirds, but is also so much more than that. This piece is part of a longer project, a novel-in-stories that (mostly) follows the character, Delilah, who flits in and out of this story. The larger projects investigates the power of story-telling and lies on our lives, and so I wanted that to be a central component here too. Plus I knew I wanted there to be a fire--real or imagined--because the story felt like it needed a good conflagration, an (almost!) inescapable wave of emotion and heat.
Michelle Donahue is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Utah where she is a Steffensen Cannon fellow. Her work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, CutBank, Sycamore Review, and others. She is Prose Editor for Quarterly West.
