gibraltar

She had a parrot named Gibraltar that rode on her shoulder around the shop. She never used a nickname for him. Never Gibby. Or G-bird. Or ‘Tar. And she corrected those who tried. His name is Gibraltar, she would say. Gibraltar was three shades of green, with blue highlights and some flashes of orange. She didn’t know which type of parrot he was, only knew that he’d been smuggled in through Mexico (she was told) and that she’d bought him off the side of the road from a friendly man named Cochito, who also was selling pit bull puppies. Fifty dollars. One day, the old lady who worked for her in the shop, Junie, left the door open and Gibraltar flew out and away. Junie soothed herself by telling herself and anyone who asked that Gibraltar had been waiting for that moment and that now he was free. The next day, a small child named Rooney found a dead green bird with orange flashes in a backyard, about four blocks from the shop. Gibraltar’s owner was Magdalena. She’d graduated from Brown. She went on thinking, as Junie’d advised, that Gibraltar had flown to his liberty.