Songbird

Frankie wanted to be a bird, not a teenaged girl.  And she didn’t want to be called Frankie, either. 

Her name was Francina.  Her father called her Frankie because he drank beer.  That was her conclusion, at least.  He had dirt under his fingernails, too.

“I’m Francina,” she would remind her father.

“I know, Frankie,” he would say.

Frankie wanted to a be a songbird, specifically.  A meadowlark, preferably.   But any kind of songbird would do, providing she could sing a sharp song from inside a lilac bush and then fly away.

In the evenings, Frankie sketched herself as a bird.  She prepared dinner for her father and cleaned the house.

Frankie’s mother had been gone for as long as Frankie could remember. 

“Where is my mother,” Frankie asked her father long ago.

“She turned into a bird and flew away,” her father told her.

—Mitchell Hegman