why I'll never go native

Yesterday a golondrina flew into my classroom. A golondrina is a swallow; as so often happens with birds its name is much more lyrical in Spanish and better fits a tiny, airborne feathered thing. I had only ever seen them soaring and swooping, the sun glinting blue-black off their sleek backs, a flash of red belly during a particularly daring dive. I used to go to a bridge over the dwindling river to watch them flit back and forth whenever I felt homesick.

In Mexico it’s good luck to have a golondrina. People plant nests for them hoping they will fill them, and the birds will roost, then disappear, then return again and again. The golondrina, in Mexican folklore anyway, is thus a precious, restless little creature who, despite its wanderlust, never forgets its home.

(Perhaps you begin to understand why I have one tattooed on my arm.)

This one I didn’t recognize at first. Cowering on the floor of a dark room, its feathers dulled to gray. It seemed injured or paralyzed by fear, far from evoking the lyrical acrobatics I associate with the word -- and the bird -- golondrina. I stood dumb, not knowing what to do but unable to leave the little bird trapped in a corner under a table.

Luisa, one of the student assistants, came in. O, she said, una golondrina. Pobrecita, está atrapada. Levántala. Pick her up. It won’t bite me? I said. Luisa glanced at me, quizzically but too kindly to say anything, and stooped. She cradled the tiny bird in her hands and carried it out to the terrace, where she knelt down and opened her palms.

The bird rested there, closing its eyes, stretching over these two shiny black seeds a pale gray veil of the most delicate tissue. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to take it in my own hands and feel its diminutive heart palpitating against my fingers. For several seconds it seemed lulled by the fresh air and light. No vuela, Luisa said, disappointed. No, I said, it can fly. Gently I stroked its belly and it shuddered awake, took two tentative steps across Luisa’s hand and traced a graceful arc over the lip of the terrace and across the courtyard out of sight.

This morning on the bus, while I was abstracted and thinking about the golondrina, a tiny person perched on the seat next to mine. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman; he, or she, wore a black stocking cap and a white fleece jacket several sizes too big, in spite of the heat that already pressed in on us at nine in the morning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a brown and leathery face, cured by sun and wind, and the broad, angular nose that betrays the indigenous here. After a moment this person spoke to me in a quiet tenor that further failed to resolve itself into male or female. ¿No hace como friyito? the voice said. No, I replied, I didn’t feel cold. Other passengers turned to look, perhaps wondering why someone would confide in me, a stranger, a foreigner. I mentally checked the location of my passport, my backpack, my camera, my wallet.

It was when a tiny, icy hand rested on top of mine where they lay in my lap that I realized she was a woman. I looked up into her face. Why are you so cold? I asked her. I don’t know, she said. Sometimes I think I don’t have any blood anymore. You must have some, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, I said and smiled, not really knowing what else to say.

She regarded me blankly. I studied her back. A life spent smiling had carved crow’s feet around her eyes, but they were ringed with a watery film as if she had recently been crying or indeed very ill. She told me she supposed it was natural for her to have no blood, since they took hers little by little each day in a hospital, four o’clock in the afternoon, four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t sure to have understood her, so I made some general sympathetic comment and fell back into silence. A moment later, she announced bueno, aquí me bajo and shambled out of her seat. When she turned her back to walk down the aisle of the bus I realized the stocking cap concealed a bald head, and out of the top of the fleece jacket protruded the bones of an undernourished spine. Cancer, I thought. And she had tried to tell me, had given me chances to ask, and I had failed to hear.

I felt ashamed. How hard would it have been for me to trust such a small and defenseless person? How hard would it have been for me to take those cold, misshapen little hands and hold them in my warm ones for the duration of a bus ride? How hard could a tiny golondrina have bitten me before I set it free? What is it in me that flees this contact, this encounter? I know what to do and I yearn to do it, so why do I mistrust when I should love, and only realize it after?

My hands on my keyboard feel scalding hot, cursed. They are full of warmth and life if I could figure out how to share them.