Listen
by Janet Brown
- Ssh. I can hear him. Can you?
He’s not tucked up in his bed. I don’t have to check. I knew this would happen. Eventually.
- You go. Go quickly.
His sister beside me un-nestles from the quilt. Climbs from my bed. Grabs her green woolly dressing-gown from the hook behind the door. An orange scarf, a red beret. Autumn on two pale legs. Shuts the door carefully behind her. Walks lightly, hastens.
I don’t have to say, ‘Don’t frighten him.’ She wouldn’t.
I don’t have to say, ‘Don’t turn on the torch.’ She’ll know what to do.
She’s perfect. Perfectly her.
It’s two a.m. on one of those strange, light nights in the hinterland when the moon casts a pale glowing. Two a.m. Everyone knows that’s the witching hour. But there’s nothing at all magical here. It’s all perfectly natural. All the animals are sleeping. Even the crickets are silent.
The stillness is April. Every month has its metier, its job. April’s is stillness. What? You haven’t noticed. Now you will.
It’s all exquisitely quiet. Except for the song. His song. His beautiful, lyrical, seven note call. I could pick it out for you on the piano. But it wouldn’t do it justice. Wouldn’t do him justice. The way he breathes those seven notes.
A piano doesn’t breathe. Everyone knows that. Perhaps a melodica. I could play it on the melodica. It’s a breath instrument. That’s the difference. You can explain anything if you know what you’re talking about.
She crunches along the pathway. Everything is golden, orange, red and brittle. But at two a.m., this night, it’s all shades of silver grey. I keep watch from my bedroom window.
That boy. What will I do with him? The darling.
Ah. I see him now. Standing straight upright on the lowest branch of the lemon scented gum. The hems of his check pyjama pants are way above his ankles. His little bare white tummy glows. He’s three. Growing so fast. His arms hang parabolically, hands gently folded into each other. His head leans down. He’s asleep. Singing, crooning, whistling gently. It’s what he is. It’s what he does. Instinct.
What I’ve seen, helping women deliver their babies. Nothing surprises me. The unspoken stories we share are the most amazing. They bear their baby and I bear witness. My privilege. A little girl with three eyes. Twins with tails. A boy with gills and ears and golden scales. Wonderful things. Life. Nothing surprises me. Not really. Not any more. I’ve seen too much. Lucky me.
I know life. If you know it, it’s not scary. It just is. Is. Then you can get on with it.
When his mother birthed him, he had the veil across his face. That was the lucky part. The caul. The membrane. It’s good luck. Rare. That’s what some say. So I knew everything would be fine. For as long as it lasted. And she left him. She left him. She left him for me. It wasn’t the caul. It was the feathers. That’s what bothered her. Threw her completely.
- What is it?
I inhaled. Tricky, this one.
- It’s a dear little boy.
- Of course it’s a boy. You know I only have boys. But he’s different. What is it?
I rubbed his little body dry. Slowly. She doesn’t like surprises.
- It’s feathers. He’s just got some little feathers.
- No.
- Yes he has. Just there, across his shoulders.
- What?
- He’s perfect. Perfectly him.
I presented him to her. All tiny and beautiful and tired from the struggle. Damp downiness.
- What? A thing with feathers?
She told me, just in those few words, she revealed herself. She’d just birthed the baby into my arms, all primal and luscious and heaving and grunting and pushing, but it was those words that revealed her. After all, the rest is only physical. A woman’s body. A baby. It is what it is.
‘A thing with feathers?’ A certain tone, how she said it. A tone warning.
That punch of words bruised my heart. This one does not belong to her. Rejection. Some people worry about differences. Can’t cope. Little tiny fuzzy downy feathers, just across his shoulder blades. Soft. So what? She thought it was a metaphor, a story. A poem – Emily Dickinson? But it wasn’t the time or the place.
It was a beginning for him. It was an end for her. Flight and fright.
They were feathers. They were interesting. Maybe they were unique. So what.
I carried him home with love. We would have an adventure. That’s all I knew. I would kiss him and feed him and cuddle him and love him and share him with his sister, my daughter. She was old enough to keep a secret. How old is she? That’s irrelevant. She could be five and be trusted or ninety-five and never have been. Old enough to trust. It’s a gift, to be trusted. I give her gifts. That sort of gift, that’s what I give her.
Safe. We’d be safe. And we were. And we are.
They didn’t rub off. The downy feathers. I thought perhaps they may have. They grew. Very slowly. And they were dealt with. Little tiny nail clippers. Friday night was clipping night.
- It’s Friday night, my darling. We need to clip your bumps.
There’s a need for euphemisms once a child is old enough for kindergarten. Things can be Miss Con Strued.
There are no nerves in feathers, that’s why you can clip a bird’s wings and it won’t feel pain. Seems odd, that. Counter-intuitive. That’s the principle of the thing. But, granted, nobody’s ever heard the bird’s opinion. Six weeks ago he wasn’t himself.
- No. I don’t want to get the clippers.
- My darling?
- No. Please, Mumma. Leave my bumps.
- Leave them?
- I want to know…
- What?
- I want to know what it feels like, what I feel like.
- What?
- Something’s not right, Mumma.
- Are you sick, my darling? Come here. A fever?
- No. I feel… I feel… I don’t feel
He wore it on his face. So very… no, not sad. I don’t know the word, but it was written large on his face.
- Just let me be. Let me be. Let me be. Let me be me be me be me let me.
Under the circumstances, for a three-year-old, a beautiful boy, born with feathers, that’s a perfectly reasonable request. I complied.
- Come for a kiss and a love, my darling.
And he did.
His sister raised her eyebrows and took the clippers away.
Raising eyebrows is an amazing gesture. There’s honesty there. Quizzical, surprised. Just a gesture. A just gesture. His sister has a great sense of justice and beautiful arcs of spun gold above her eyes measure most of our conversations. As they should. She’s at that age of questioning certainty. Yet some never do.
All will be well. And it will. And it will be interesting.
This is the turning.
Have you ever watched feathers grow on the sweet cusp of a three-year-old boy’s shoulder blades? Probably not. It’s a privilege. It’s part of the adventure. When you stroke a thing with feathers, you run your hand up away from the quill. Whether it’s a magpie with a broken leg, a broody chook or a three-year-old boy. It’s the way you do it, that’s what makes it feel lovely. Lovely for the stroker and lovely for the stroked. His sister likes her feet tickled. He likes his feathers stroked. Same, same. Ah, there she is. Near the gum tree. This is the test. Just a funny little test. To get our bird boy down from the tree. Off his perch. Back into bed.
Gently does it. She speaks to him. I can’t hear her of course. But I know she says:
- My little honey, that’s a lovely song. But come down to me. It’s time for bed.
He hears her. Lifts his head. Now he’s back, a different consciousness. He lifts his chest.
With the natural grace of a three-year-old boy with wings, he takes flight, gently, down. Lands perfectly feet first on the ground. A dancer. A bird. My fledgling.
I could weep with pride behind my bedroom window. Much can happen in a few seconds at two am on a glowing silver night. I wish you could’ve seen it.
And the girl with the dressing gown, the hat and scarf who is wearing no socks? She holds his little hand, gently leads him back to the house, into his room and under the soft covers of his bed. And she plants a tender kiss on his forehead and wishes him sweet dreams.
Then she climbs into my bed beside me, presents her feet to be tickled, and her eyebrows re-calibrate as she drifts into the reverie of peaceful sleep.
© Janet Brown, 2020