# Read the first page of A Cage Went in Search of a Bird by Tommy Orange Read the opening of A Cage Went in Search of a Bird by Tommy Orange free, no signup. Contemporary writers spin new short stories inspired by Franz Kafka. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/a-cage-went-in-search-of-a-bird-tommy-orange - Genre: Literary fiction - Year: 2024 - ISBN: 9781646222636 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781646222636&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781646222636 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781646222636 ## The opening My mother came down to the docking gate to say cheerio to us. For a moment I didn't recognise her. I thought she was just a woman working at the hotel. She had her hair scraped back off her face and tied in a ponytail and she was wearing clothes so unlike her and so not quite right for her shape that it took me a minute to work out they were her sister's work clothes, the uniform they made the women and girls here wear, white shirt, long black pinafore apron/skirt thing. The men and boys who worked here got to look more casual. Their uniform was designer jeans and white t-shirts made of stuff that was better than what ordinary T-shirts get made of. The women and girls weren’t allowed make-up or earrings or necklaces etc. and my mother looked smaller, duller, scrubbed clean and cloistery, like serving women from humbled countries look in films on TV. How is she doing today? Leif asked. How long will she be ill? my own sister asked. My mother gave my sister a look for being rude. Then she shrugged at Leif. Two weeks, Leif said, three? As long as till September? The faraway word September hung in the air round us in the weird tradespeople space and my sister looked at her feet. Leif looked at the walls, concrete and stone, the huge lit candles in the glass jars burning pointless against the daylight. Christ, he said. My mother shook her head, nodded her head, nodded from one to the other of the two statues the hotel had on either side of the docking entrance, shook her head again, then put her finger to her mouth as if to smooth the place beneath her nose, graceful, but really to quieten Leif and us. They were life-size, the statues, substantial white stone, shining. They looked churchy. They looked related but they were separate. One was of a sad-looking beautiful woman with a cloth round her head exactly like a Virgin Mary and with her arms cupped, open and empty, one hand upturned and her eyes downturned, either closed or gazing down at her own empty lap, at nothing but the folds in her clothes. The other was of the bent body of a man obviously meant to be dead, his head turned to one side, his arms and legs meant to look limp but at the angle he was at on the floor just stiff and awkward, sprawled but frozen, rigor mortis like he’d rock from side to side if you pushed him. Look at that. Talk about pity, Leif said. So this is what happens to art when you think you can make it a hotel. My mother looked panicked then. She told Leif in a formal-sounding voice, as if she didn’t know us, that she’d be in touch. She did a thing with her head to remind us about the cameras in the corners, she kissed us with her eyes, and then, like we were guests who’d been quite nice to her, she hugged each of us separately, polite, goodbye. We traced our way back through the crowds of tourists to where we’d left the campervan by using Google streetmap. It was easier to navigate by the shops than by the streets, the names of which were elusive, so we went towards Chanel instead, biggest thing on the map. Now Gucci. Celine. Strange when we finally found the far side where Alana’s flat was, a place not even registering on Google as a place, that Leif got in on the driving side, because it was my mother who always drove, she was good at the campervan which was notoriously tricky, he was going to be less good, less sure of it, which is maybe why he made us both sit in the back even though the passenger seat was empty. Maybe this was to stop us fighting over who got to sit up front. ## Books with a similar feel - [One World by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie](https://uncovered.ink/read/one-world-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.md) - [Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri](https://uncovered.ink/read/roman-stories-jhumpa-lahiri.md) - [Five-Carat Soul by James McBride](https://uncovered.ink/read/five-carat-soul-james-mcbride.md) - [A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano](https://uncovered.ink/read/a-good-hard-look-ann-napolitano.md) - [Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff](https://uncovered.ink/read/delicate-edible-birds-lauren-groff.md) - [The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-refugees-viet-thanh-nguyen.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.