Birthing the Owl; Short Fiction by Darek Benesh
Birthing the Owl
Short fiction by Darek Benesh
Photo by Velizar Ivanov on UnsplashThe ghost of celebrity of last spring’s graduates had dissipated, and new girls ascended into the roles of venerated upperclassmen. Freshmen arrived to campus with wide eyes and uncertain steps. The slant of late summer shadows fell heavily under the pointed arches and ornate stonework. Within the residence halls, across the tables of the dining centers, and within the ordered and numbered rows of classrooms, the intractable buzz of tradition could already be heard: “Who will birth the owl?”
The first Saturday evening, the priests, including those from nearby parishes, made the rounds through the residence halls to hear the confessions of the girls, so that each girl, and the college, could be assured to start the new school year with a clean slate and a disciplined mind. It crossed the minds of a few of the priests that the girls would, at the very least, have a confession of lust, in wanting to secretly venture off campus in the middle of the night and visit the boys’ college. But the priests found they were wrong, that no girls confessed such a thing, and this made the priests see the girls as unconfessed liars. An hour past curfew, when the priests had left, five girls proclaimed that the youngest priest, a Guatemalan with a mustache, was a thief: the owl trinkets those girls had had on their dressers were missing when they opened their eyes from prayer.
***
The next rounds of mass confessions were to be at midterm and then again before Christmas, and the girls with missing trinkets, as well as dozens of other girls of all classes made it their mission to carve owl emblems into doorway moldings and into their dresser tops. “Who did that?” they would ask one another. “Who, who?” they responded. Emily, one of the freshmen, got the idea to each day apply a slightly darker ring of eyeshadow and wear her hair styled slightly higher until one of the professors or administrators would say something. When she was called to attest her motivations, she mustered a tear which ran black down her cheek and proclaimed that the owl was near, and it was making her crazy that none of the professors or administrators were saying anything about it at all.
There were whispered rumors, always with one girl saying she heard it from another girl, that boys were sneaking into dorm rooms, invited by promiscuous freshmen, or promiscuous seniors, and “didn’t they know that everyone can see and hear everything?” But none or the girls themselves could seem to say honestly that they had seen any boys in the residence halls or elsewhere on campus, except for the men professors or administrators or priests. “There are boys here,” Lilian said in the dining center line, breaking the silence among her peers, “and that’s how it starts.” Jamie answered back that she heard it was the absence of boys that started it all. That evening, a group of girls returning from the library just before curfew said they saw a light on in the residence hall attic and the figure of a human-sized owl swoop across the inside of the window.
Kirsten, one of two girls from California, stated that the owls carved into woodwork would cause it to happen. Other upperclassmen said it was the carvings that prevented it. Girls were either in the process of covering up the carvings they had made or finding the owls in the doorframes that had been painted over in previous years and chipping the white paint off. “The seniors can’t be trusted,” Maribel screamed in the hallway. “The seniors are keeping us safe,” Annette countered just as loudly.
***
It was the end of October and the seniors started it just as in years past. They took folded bath towels and pillows and stuffed animals and put them up under their sweatshirts and just proceeded about their days as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The freshmen looked on in disbelief. There was further disbelief that the professors and administrators seemed not to recognize that something very strange was happening as well. Girls would come to class, take off their coats, and just sit rubbing their large tummies. Within a week, the freshmen, too, did the same. “Careful on the ice,” the girls said to each other. They walked normally around campus, but when two girls met on the sidewalk, they would start waddling. Some girls found this behavior humorous. Other girls looked out at the world in terror.
On the midterm day of confession, the priests, wrapped in tight black coats, made their rounds among the girls’ dormitory rooms. “I have arrived to hear your confession,” they said. This time they were more morose. “If there is something you know will happen in May, then you know it has already been put into motion by two months. This is the time to confess it.” Some girls reported that as the priests left their rooms they lingered their fingers over the carved owls. Again the priests seemed occupied by the notion that the girls must want to sneak off campus to visit the boys’ college. In fact, the priests seemed convinced that many of the girls had already escaped in the darkness many times. The girls noticed that the priests seemed oblivious to the enlarged sweatshirt tummies of the girls. The mustached Guatemalan priest left several of the girls with statues of the Virgin Mary clearly with child, hands clasped in prayer. On All Saints Day, a freshman walking across the courtyard saw the attic light flicker in bright yellow to reveal the silhouette of owl wings.
***
By the time Christmas came, the campus was covered in snow. In the courtyard, however, there was a pathway of sorts that still had bare ground, and, “This,” the upperclassmen told the freshmen, “is where there is an underground tunnel with steam pipes that heat the buildings.” The freshmen looked at the pathways of no snow and traced where they entered or left buildings and where access doorways must be in the basements of those buildings. “This,” the upperclassmen emphasized, “is where you go to find the secret of birthing the owl.” The freshmen had heard these tales murmured among themselves since they arrived, but this was the first time, at Christmas, that they heard this tale voiced authoritatively.
When classes started again in January, the girls noticed that Maria from Albuquerque and Tammy from Brooklyn were no longer among their ranks. One day after class, their roommates came back to find all their belongings gone, and when they asked the administration, they were told that Maria and Tammy couldn’t handle the pressure of high-caliber college work. This did make sense to the girls, since Maria had been losing her hair from stress and lack of sleep, and Tammy had started carving owls into her forearm with a safety pin. “It’s for the best, really,” they all agreed. Some girls wondered if either of them had been the one.
On the last Sunday in February, Emily, who had again started applying slightly larger rings of eye shadow each day, ran up the basement stairs of the residence hall and into her room, slamming the door. Beth happened to also be in the basement at the time and saw a maintenance door slowly close in the hallway Emily had come from, but when she tried to open it, she found the metal door locked. Emily wouldn’t talk for days about what she had done or what she had seen until one day when she blurted out to her roommate in the middle of the night, “He has large eyes!” The next day, Emily left for home with all of her belongings, and the roommate began sleeping only after she had pushed her dresser in front of the door each night. “Being successful in college means handling a certain amount of academic stress,” the administration said in an announcement.
Elsie, a sophomore who often talked about her four cats, made owl-eye necklaces out of leather cords and colored clay and began distributing them to several of the girls. By April, half the students wore the necklaces. There were girls who claimed to have followed the steam tunnels to get to other buildings, and even to a vent that came out directly outside the chancellor’s office which was right across the street from a gas station. Other girls said that every time they tried any locked door in the basement it was never able to be opened. Most girls believed that the tunnel stories were lies and distractions. Lucy asked her history professor about the tunnels, and the professor asked her to come to the back of the room where he proceeded to show her the vent in the floor, that the room was heated with a forced air system and not with steam radiators. “I can’t say anything about the other buildings on campus, though,” he said, “I only ever teach in this room.”
***
May came, and it was time for graduation in just over a week. The weather had become reliably warm, and the girls had switched from sweatshirts to blouses or T-shirts to stuff their towels and pillows under. By this time, no one had spoken about steam tunnels or owls for a month. The girls’ focus was on finishing their studies and dreaming of summer plans back home with their families. There were dozens of girls in the courtyard at noon that day when it started. Many girls were reclined on the grass eating lunch or reading. Many girls had just gotten out of class and were standing and talking. “She’s birthing the owl,” someone started very quietly, “did you hear?” Another girl: “Who is it?” Another: “Is that the girl who sat at the back of the room in biology?” “Whose roommate is she?” The girls started moving in a commotion. They started pulling the pillows out from under their shirts and throwing them in the air. “It’s not me!” Another: “Look! My stomach is as flat as a chalk board!” Another: “I almost started believing it was me. But it’s not! Can you believe it?” Girls held hands and danced and jumped. Then, through the portcullis archway, a girl entered the courtyard. The girl, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide, held a swaddled bundle in her hands. She had an appearance of holiness about her. The rest of the girls settled into a quiet hush, all of them looking on in awe, all of them happy, deeply happy to be part of the moment.
Darek Benesh is proud to live in what is left of unincorporated College Township, Linn County, Iowa, with his family. He earned a master's degree in English Language and Literature, with a Creative Writing Emphasis, from the University of Northern Iowa, and he has more than 20 years of experience working with students from K-12 through college. Darek views creative writing as a necessary and freeing challenge of asking questions and then going on a journey in an attempt to answer them.
Inquiry
Thoughts on Birthing the Owl, provided by the author:
Our experience with the world is a boat floating on narratives mostly not of our own creation or choosing. The boat is jostled to and fro by trends, outrage, anxiety, and fear sometimes. Cultures are multi-wave narratives all moving us, seemingly with perfect sense, in a common direction. Conformity is a peaceful cruise. Paranoia is a fleeting epiphany that we are actually adrift and not on terra firma.