Parrots - Vesna McMaster

‘Amo, amare, amavi, amatus’

The TV screen is grainy. The school collars and accents starched and restrained. The colour absent. They watch the old new clip with ill-concealed shock.

‘See that, Lily? You could have had to learn Latin by rote. If you didn’t parrot everything out, you got the cane.’

Lily squints at the screen.

‘Where are the girls?’

‘Hmph. Good point. Anyway get your nutrition assignment done before dinner. Easier than Latin at least.’

Lily raises an eyebrow. ‘I’m not so sure. They seem to be saying the words over and over. They took a bit zombie, tbh.’

‘Go on.’

‘OK. Peach!’ Lily sticks her finger out to a corner of the room, and a flurry of pastel feathers appears and coalesces into the form of a lovebird on her hand. ‘We can do this together.’

She pops Peach onto her shoulder. But Peach is skittish.

‘Watcha doooin’? Mmmmwah!’

Peach’s kisses are delivered at a level of decibels far out of the capability of humans.

‘She’ll just distract you. Oh, hang on. There’s the school deputy calling. Next Geography outing budget.’ Lily’s mother takes the call to the other end of the living room.

The assignment is a doddle. Amare, amavi, amatus. Food pyramid. Carbs, veg, protein. Lily faithfully copies out the schematic, drawn up by governments in the 70s concerned with rising food costs, who couldn’t countenance the populace eating much protein. Comedo, Comedonis, Comedoni, Comedonim.

Peach is bored with the rote learning. She throws a pen off the coffee table, admires her reflection in the back of Lily’s laptop, and flies off in search of entertainment.

‘Yes, they’ve all signed the consent, of course. Yes, they’re bringing lunch, that’s not an issue. We do need the budget for the guide, though.’ Negotiations for the Geography trip continue on the phone.

Peach lands on Lily’s mother’s shoulder. Her reflection in the shiny phone case is even more handsome that in the back of the laptop. Her pupils narrow, her feathers fluff. Tap, tap, tap at the reflection.

‘Mmmmmwahhh!’

Lily’s mum freezes. A look of horror.

‘No! I’m sorry! That was the parrot. Sorry about that. Peach, not now!’

The negotiations close shortly after. For whatever reason, the Deputy Head simply said Yes to everything and hung up.