When I was a little girl I was told of the birds that flocked to our town deep in the middle of nowhere. I was told the birds are evil, that a dark spirit controlled them. I was told to stay away from them, and to hope they would stay away from me. Usually they didn’t cry. Usually I would walk to school and they would hop alongside me and chirp. The birds loved me, and for some inexplicable reason, I loved the birds.

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The birds in my eyes were just that—birds. But to the rest of the town they were omens. Big, black, beady eyed omens. People would steer clear of them. If Papa encountered any on the street on the way to work, he would take a different route. He was late on multiple occasions and always excused. The birds were in his way, so he could be as late as he wanted.

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Despite the entire town staring at me, I continued to love the birds as a child. I would go down to the beach, a beautiful place lined with rocks and trees pointing toward a small lake on the edge of town, and sit with the birds. The birds grouped there at sunset, and migrated to the trees at midnight. Unless they were crying.

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On one particular day I remember being at the beach throwing bread crumbs to the birds—Papa had made bread but Mama was too sick to eat it—when Papa ran down. Sweat streamed down his tomato red face as he took his hat off and hugged it to his chest. The birds were crying and circling, their beady eyes were somehow less black than before. Some took flight in the direction Papa ran from, some stared at me and Papa. It was a sight to behold, dozens of birds hopping and cawing and fluttering.

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“Gracie, you gotta come home now,” he said. Papa had never looked so distraught in my entire ten years of life. He was a calm man, usually the rock in a storm. I could hold onto him for anything. But as I followed him home, I remember hearing him cry softly, as quiet as he could so he didn’t worry me. I remember him squeezing my hand, I was his rock that day.

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When Papa and I got home, the doctor greeted us at the door.

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I’d seen a lot of the doctor over the past couple years. He was basically the only doctor in this tiny town and Mama was real sick. For two years Mama battled a sickness the doc had no cure for, and that day when the birds cried was Mama finally giving up.

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Mama looked gaunt on the bed she occupied for almost two years straight. She had stopped eating enough to fill her up about six months ago. She told me she only took enough to make the hunger go away, never anything more. Watching her deteriorate was the second hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.

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As they wheeled her away, Papa and I cried with the birds. They flew in and out of the house, they followed the van that Mama left in, they flew around me and Papa outside as we watched the van disappear. They didn’t sound menacing, nothing like a bad omen. Simply distraught at Mama dying. They shared my grief. But Papa didn’t see it that way.

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“Shut up!” Papa yelled, “Shut up, shut up, shut up you stupid birds. Go away and shut up!” And then Papa fell to the ground and sobbed.

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I found out that day everyone blamed the birds for every death in the town. Old age, sickness, it didn’t matter. It was always the birds delivering death. I had finally learned why everyone hated the birds so much, and it didn’t make any sense to me. Even Papa blamed them for Mama’s death.

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Mama had surely died of her sickness, not because the birds came and killed her. It was a long time coming. But the townspeople jeered at me. They thought I was insane. The loss of a parent could do that to a child, according to my therapist. But I refused to believe the birds could do such a thing.

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A darkness followed me that I couldn’t quite explain. It was grief, but more than that, it was curiosity. An odd mixture of the two that boiled in the pit of my stomach and caused thoughts I didn’t want to have. I thought of what life would be like if Mama had beat her sickness, if Papa hadn’t been swallowed by the hole of depression left after Mama’s death. But those things never concerned me as much as one other.

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How could I prove the birds’ innocence?

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I spent years devising a fool-proof way to figure out the deal with the birds. Call it a science project. I tried interviewing the families of the deceased and they refused to talk about “those cursed birds.” I tried rushing to the houses whenever the birds would start crying, but it was always too late.

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Curiosity plagued me, the once childlike feeling of hope and the desire for new knowledge riddled me night and day. I knew something had to be done.

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I could only think of one way to prove the birds’ innocence. One terrible, foolproof way.

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The town newspaper thudded against my door one foggy morning, waking me up with a startle. I was much too jumpy. I couldn’t see too far outside. Something about the fog was unsettling. I picked the newspaper up and started brewing coffee.

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I was on the edge of conflicted and satisfied. I had proven my theory right. The birds do not murder townspeople. They cry when we die. In a way, I found it beautiful. These birds, these so-called bad omens, cry when they see loss and suffering. They project what we feel, and yet they’re hated for it.

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I unrolled the newspaper and read the headline. Man Found Dead In Home: Birds To Blame. My stomach lurched. The birds blamed yet again. But I knew the truth, it couldn’t have been the birds.

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I poured my morning coffee and looked out the window. The birds stared at me questioningly. Their eyes asked the question I couldn’t help but ask, and even to this day I don’t know the answer.

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Years went by since the morning the newspaper landed on my doorstep. I am 86 years old now and the birds still look at me as they did that morning. They don’t let me feed them bread, they don’t come close to my house, and they don’t walk with me on the streets anymore.

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I can deal with this loss. After all, that man was a small price to pay for my curiosity.