Women and Wantu

Women found him endearing--the soft mustache, the fuzzed sideburns--like a boy dressed up in his father's clothes, adorable. It was difficult for a woman not to reach out and pet his black hair, or stroke his tea cup hand, or pinch his rounded shoulder. Wantu permitted it all.

It was the pigeon who gave women pause. Every woman knew this was a bird of the streets, a tramp, a garbage picker. All associations with pigeons were unclean, causing even the maternal to shudder and suspect something tawdry, even sinister, about a small man befriending such a vagrant bird.