Flash Fiction, Joanna Theiss

When You Get Old, You Become a Silly Goose

On the Singer your grandmother left you, you sew the bodice, tack a thousand white feathers to the paunch, and carve breathing holes into the black leather beak. Zip until you feel metal on the base of your neck, then flex your arms in their wire-and-mesh wings. On a lark, you honk until your granddaughter joins you in front of your full-length mirror. She anoints you Silly Goose with her plastic princess wand.

Wearing the costume out of the house – ducking through the doggie door, waddling across the cul-de-sac – brings you attention you forgot you missed. Men step into gutters when your painted orange flippers slap the pavement. Packs of teenagers intent on their phones clear the way after you honk with the bicycle horn sewn into your dewlap. Nice to be noticed, to be seen, to be invited to the Halloween parade, in step beside your granddaughter, who is wearing your old lace coronation gown, your tiara pinned in her hair.

You’re on top of the world until you’re not, until you totter past your granddaughter’s room and hear her asking a Magic 8 Ball if Grandma will ever come back. Outlook not so good. Until her little friends visit and your goosey excretions stain the trains of their taffeta dresses. Until you remember that geese aren’t made for company. 

When frost encrusts the lawn, the clover loses its flavor, and you decide you’ve had it with this disguise. You reach behind your back, but your wingtips can’t manage the zipper’s pull. You have no thumbs to unshod the flippers, no voice beyond your beak. You honk for rescue, for transformation, for your granddaughter to put on a sweater and help you out. You honk until the neighbor bangs on the fence and threatens you with cookery.

In this suburban backyard, it’s getting colder, and your granddaughter has pulled her curtains closed. You understand. You did the same to your grandmother. Your world was bright pink, and hers had turned downy white, her face an embarrassing reminder of the shortness of one’s reign. 

Settling your wings back into place, you hunker down in the crook of the fence, seeking the earth’s last bit of warmth before your end. A flock flies overhead, a rollicking V of Canada geese. Their honks are frivolous, reviews of golf courses and grubby inland lakes, but they stir something, nonetheless. In pining for what you’ve lost – satin slippers, petal-soft cheeks, golden thrones – you’ve forgotten what you’ve gained.

The backyard is just long enough for a runway. Once you begin, nature takes over. Air balloons under your feathers, feet flatten against your paunch. The higher you rise, the richer the winter smells. This is the world, this sky: bigger and stronger and wider and more permanent than princessy fixations. You may be a silly goose, but you, you have learned to fly.