Summary

“The Bird Thing” is told in the present tense and the second person in the year 1993. The narrator addresses the reader as “you,” but it is clear that the “you” is focalized through the servant Angelina, first introduced in the story “Lucky.” The story begins with the “you” smoking “the first of your birthday cigarettes” (164) and trying not to think about the bird thing. Angelina checks on the bird thing by checking to see if “the banana [she] nailed to the trunk [of a lime tree] is still there” (165). The banana is there with a bite taken out of it. Angelina leaves a slice of orange from her apron, puts it on top of the banana, and goes inside. Angelina then remembers her time as a teenager when she would watch “men sitting on stools… hairy men, dark men” (166) outside her...