In memorium. Beauty has been with us for almost as long as we have been in Nigeria, nearly 30 years. She was sulky and fierce, grabbing our voices and laughter and echoing them back to us. She spoke Hausa and she spoke English with my Dad’s Louisiana accent.
She loved my mother and would coo at her and say ‘com’ere’ and then stick her head outside the cage for my mother to stroke. She’d try to seduce the rest of us and when we were foolish enough to try to pet her she’d lunge at us with her strong sharp beak and then settle back inside chortling like a wicked spirit.
She may have saved us once. Armed robbers were in the house and she sat outside chuckling eerily. We think it made the robbers nervous.
Two nights ago, my dad wrote us today, she got in a fight with a cat. She stuck her head out at him with her usual cussedness. If she hadn’t been in that cage maybe she would have gotten the best of him. It hurts me to think of how she must have hurt in the day before she died. Goodbye, dear Beauty.
I can’t imagine home without you. When I think of the creatures I have loved the most, there are 3. Our legendary dog Sarki. My grandmother’s glorious guardian angel cat, the only cat I’m not allergic to, and Beauty, who was always there to be fed on little scraps of fried plantain or avocado or groundnuts, to give us the evil eye, to squeak the door, gurgle the sound of water in her bowl, and then give a big belly laugh.
She didn’t always think highly of humans. We were the ones after all who kept her in a cage, but she was generous with her friends, the little birds who would slip through the bars to pay her a visit, and with whom she would share her food.
My dad told us how they buried her in a little Ankara bag today. He wrote “Jesus said, ‘But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it’ (Matt 10:29) Beauty was much bigger than a sparrow and much bigger in our lives than many things so I am sure the Lord noticed our little loss.”
And so I go to bed, a little lost knowing that Beauty, the guardian of door, the bird I’ve known since my childhood is no longer on this earth.
