Stillbird

by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

After James died, Tatum told Mary she was free to go, as if he was doing her a favor, but even Mary could see it was because she was useless to him now James was gone. She told him she had nowhere to go, a fact he was well aware of, and begged him to let her stay a while so she could look for work. What work he wondered, and she came up with the idea of housekeeper, because all she knew how to do was take care of a child and cook and clean up. Well that and the sewing she’d done for the performers sometimes…she could sew too. But Mary had no idea where to go looking for work and in the end it was Tatum himself who found her a position, because he knew even he couldn’t put her out on the street with nowhere to go, and her just a child when she’d come to him in the first place.

  Roger Adkins had married himself a city girl and when it come time for him to go off to war, she didn’t want to stay on the farm with his mother and sisters, but insisted she’d go back to Covington and live with her own mother until he was back home, and she thought she’d like to get herself a job because she read where some factories were hiring women now with the men all off to war. So she was wanting a girl to stay with them; to look after her son and her mother, who was old now and sickly, while she was away at her job. They couldn’t afford to pay Mary a wage, but she’d have a roof over her head and three meals a day and be doing what she’d always done. Mary was happy to be caring for a little boy again, different as he was from her own sweet James. So Mary went to live in the city until the war was over and she stayed pretty much to the house and the garden, as her employer always brought the groceries home with her when she came in from work, and Mary was fine with that, being afraid of the city anyway.

  Roxy, short for Roxanne, was bold like the carnival women, and Mary was used to that, so they got along real well until Roxy noticed she was doing all the talking and that she didn’t really know a thing about the woman who lived under their roof and cared for her son. But Mary couldn’t be brought out in conversation, answering specific questions simply and directly and offering nothing further, no train of thought to follow to one subject after another the way Roxy was used to with her friends at the factory, all of them high on the new freedom and financial independence they felt, having so many things in common: men off to war and the worry of it and the children growing up so fast, ailing parents, times a changing, the weather if all else failed them in their brief moments of camaraderie at break time and after work walking to the streetcar. They all had sisters, or aunts, or grandparents at home looking after the children, and Roxy never did tell anyone that Mary wasn’t a relative, not wanting to he others to think she was too high and mighty, having her a housekeeper, a stranger to do the chores at home. There’d come a time soon enough, after the war, when the family moved to Denver to follow an opportunity that proved profitable, when Roxy would insist that folks use her full name and she’d hold her nose in the air with the best of them. Then she’d treat Mary with more distance, more authority, but for now she just wanted to get to know her and resented it slightly that Mary didn’t seem to reciprocate her friendliness.

  Mary was good with little Roger, though, taking him with her into the garden and teaching him the plants, teaching him some songs she knew. Roger loved her and she loved him. Sometimes they danced to music on the radio, but that was their secret, for Roger’s mother would not approve of a little boy like that dancing like a girl, or so she’d think, because that’s what Roger’s father would think. Roxy herself liked to talk tough like a man and didn’t care for women who were “prissy.” Mary was afraid if she talked too much to Roxy, her employer would think her prissy in spite of her interesting life with the carnival. Roxy always asked Mary questions about the carnival, as if she thought it were all just as much fun for the people who worked in it as it was for the folks who paid their admission to escape their own daily lives of work, work, work and bills to pay and people to argue with about one thing or another.

  Mary and little Roger never got caught because the news would come on just about the time Roxy came home and they would sit still and listen like they just lived to hear the nightly news about the war. Roxy joined them and it seemed she really did live to hear the news, like she was expecting to hear about her husband right there on the national news, and she imagined him getting some medal for heroism, but she never imagined him getting killed. If her mind started to work in that direction, she would stop herself with a prayer. Once she did imagine he came home without his legs and she was his loving wife and nurse but when she caught herself feeling righteous at his expense, she stopped and told herself to settle down and pray for his safe return. She saw too many movies and sometimes took them too seriously. No, certainly if she wanted to know what real people did in those kinds of terrible circumstances, she had only to look around her at her own neighbors and listen to their stories. Just up the street was a WWI veteran who had lost his legs, and his wife had left him not long after he came back from France, and he was a mean and bitter human being. She knew when she thought about it that life wasn’t going to be like the movies. She knew when she thought about it that for her, life would never be as good as she dreamed about, but at least it would never be as bad as she sometimes feared. Roxy’s problem was she had too much imagination. As a girl people were always telling her how good looking she was and that she should be in he movies, and they said it like it wasn’t really her dream, just some nice thing to say, a meaningless compliment because no one they knew really did that. Roxy longed to go out to California and be a movie star and even started saving money for the train, but then Roger came along and she married him, she wasn’t sure why now she thought about it, but she did and there she was.

  Being a working woman was exciting for Roxy and she enjoyed sharing her excitement with Mary, who listened and smiled and sometimes encouraged her. There were flirtations at work, and then Roxy started coming home later and later and one night not at all, and Mary was afraid to say anything to her about it, but she stopped smiling and listening, and finally Roxy broached the subject herself, asking Mary if she disapproved, as if Mary’s opinion was important. Mary didn’t know how to react, so she changed the subject and for the first time began telling Roxy a little about herself. “I had a son once myself but he died. He was only 13. Would you like to see a picture of him?” She didn’t ever volunteer to show anyone her photos of James, because the first and last time she had done so, the woman had gasped upon seeing that he had no arms, but when she showed Roxy the first photo, Roxy just said he was a cute baby and asked what happened to his arms, as if it were not so uncommon, and Mary explained he had been born that way, and Roxy didn’t apologize, just repeated that he was a cute baby, so Mary showed her the rest of the photos, one for each of his thirteen years, and Roxy said it was a shame he died so young an asked what he died of, and Mary explained he’d always been sickly and had chronic bronchial problems and finally got pneumonia so bad it killed him, and Roxy said again what a shame it was, and neither one said anything after that, but just sat a while, and then Roxy told Mary that her lover had dumped her and she’d be coming home to see her and Roger every night and they’d all eat dinner together like they used to, and she’d learned her lesson not to let no fool of a man use her and dump her, and what did she need a man for anyway, with her dear little son waiting for her every night? It took one more fool of a man to teach her good and proper in the fall of the year when the colors of the trees and the brilliance of the skies filled young hearts with passion and a heightened sense of the tragedy of life, but by Christmas, all was well again, which was handy, because Roger senior came home then for a visit, bringing cowboy shirts for everyone and little boy sized chaps for his son and stories about the wild west, where he’d been stationed a while in Denver, Colorado. He was on his way then to England, from where he would fly bombing missions over France, and he was all excited about ending the war once and for all, never dreaming it would be yet another two years before it ended. He promised them all, as if
they’d been dreaming of it all their lives, that they were going to move out to Denver when the war was over, that he’d make some friends out there and had a job already lined up selling luggage around the country. Roxy wasn’t all that impressed, but he kept talking about an up and coming company and getting in at the ground floor, and later he’d turn out to be right and of course everyone was hyped-up with hope and ambition in those days. Mary thought about the people who came to see her give birth to James, needing to escape from the world they knew and then the revelers at the carnival, still escaping, and now here were all these folks who wanted to jump right into the world and make something of their lives, as if they had the power to do that all by themselves. No one thought about God anymore. Mary didn’t know if that was good or bad and of course, no one asked her anyway. Only Roxy sometimes asked her, “Do you believe in God, Mary?”…“Do you think God will forgive me, Mary?”

  During the four years that Mary lived with Roxy and Roger in Covington, she hardly spoke at all to Roxy’s mother, who was not only sickly, but seemed a little gone in the head. There’d been a companion for her before Roxy came home with Mary and she was sent back to the farm that she’d come from and seemed glad enough to go. She told Mary on her way out that the woman was impossible, never knew what she wanted, but would wear a person out asking. Maybe having her daughter and grandson back home was what she wanted, because she rarely asked Mary for anything. In the winter when it was cold and wet, she’d stay in bed most of the time listening to the radio and eating like a bird from a tray that Mary would bring her. But in the spring, she would want to go out to the garden and plant a few beans and potatoes. She’d been a farm girl herself as were most of the citizens of that town, coming in only to get the jobs at the paper mills when they couldn’t make it anymore on the farms. Many of them still owned their land and would leave their jobs at 5 o’clock, only to drive out to the country and harvest their hay in the long summer evenings. Mary would follow the old mother, Hester, her name was, and help her dig and sow and later to weed. Once when Roger pulled up some tiny tomato plants, Mary had to teach him to pinch the little leaves and smell his fingers, so he could tell which were the weeds that smelled generically of the earth and which were the fruits and flowers they desired to cultivate and smelled sweet and desirable. “That’s right,” said Hester, who smiled at Mary and loved her ever after because she appreciated the scents of the garden. It didn’t take much to please an old farm mother. It was Mary who reminded Roxy when they moved out to Denver after the war that they’d need to find a place with a garden for the old mother. Every winter Hester would fade away almost to death but be reborn and sprightly again come spring, so Mary understood that without the garden, Hester would fade away forever. And Hester confided in Mary that she thought her daughter talked too much, so she didn’t have a chance to listen and understand anything, but she didn’t care now because she had Mary. Hester herself hardly ever talked but hummed most of the time some music she made up in her head, and when she did that she moved eloquently almost like dancing, but timid and subtle. Roxy called her senile, but Hester didn’t care, because she knew Mary understood her and would look after her needs.

  By the time they moved to Denver, Roger was old enough to go to school all day every day and Mary’s work was mostly to clean the house, which was large and full of the fancy furniture Roxy bought like there was no tomorrow. And she cooked the dinner too, but she didn’t eat with the family anymore in the fancy dining room. She had her dinner alone in the kitchen, or in Hester’s bedroom when she was invited. Sometimes Hester slept through dinner. When the weather was mild Mary would take Hester on the bus to the City Park, and they would walk slowly around the lake there. Sometimes there were band concerts in the evenings and the whole family would go in the new car that Roger bought for them, a Cadillac, he reminded them and was very proud. But in the winter the days were as long and lonely as the nights until Roger brought home the television set, and then Hester and Mary both would watch in fascination westerns and mysteries and comedies. Every Saturday a man with an English accent introduced different programs of theater, opera and ballet, and Mary saw for the first time the ballet. Maria Tallchief, she would never forget that name, performed a dance from Swan Lake, and Mary wanted to dance like Maria Tallchief. She was already in her mid-thirties but knowing nothing about ballet, she thought she could still learn. She already knew some of the stately movements from watching the carnival performers in their leotards, but of course they had never danced like Maria Tallchief to such exquisite music.

  Mary asked Roxy about it and Roxy made some phone calls and told her where she could go to take ballet lessons and how to get there on the bus and when she could take time off to do it. Roxy still didn’t pay Mary any wages, but she gave her money for ballet lessons, and Mary took the written directions and told the driver where she had to go so he could tell her when to get off and where to catch the bus to come home again. But all the ballet students were children and already knew more than she did, so Mary never even talked to the teacher about lessons but came home again crying and then Roxy laughed at her, gently enough but Mary was confused. Mary got confused so easily about almost anything, Roxy had noticed but it never occurred to her to teach Mary confidence. Mary blushed deep red and hot whenever she thought of the harsh old woman at the ballet school who had seen her hovering at the door and asked her in a fuzzy, angry sounding accent what she wanted, and all Mary could think of to do was turn and run down the three flights of stairs, crying all the way, crying as she gave the bus driver her fare and crying all the way home in front of all the passengers. She was embarrassed to ride that bus again and would walk several blocks out of her way to avoid it, not just because the driver had seen her cry, but because he knew she had gone to the ballet school and probably knew that only children went there. But Mary still watched. She watched The Red Shoes on the television and cried and cried when the dancer threw herself under the train, feeling as if she knew exactly how she felt, for she would like to have danced herself to death if she only could. And when the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo came to Denver, she got the money and permission to go to the Sunday matinee. The ballet teacher was there and so were many of the little girls, but Mary hid and hoped they didn’t see her. Mary looked for Maria Tallchief’s name in the program, but she didn’t see it. Ruthana Boris was the leading ballerina and she was lovely, but Mary would always prefer Maria Tallchief, because she was the first.

  Mary wanted to dance in the basement of the house where there was room to move across the floor, but the only time she had the house to herself was when she skipped church, so now she stopped going to church altogether, which worried Roxy, who thought that Mary was growing sick and depressed, but Mary insisted she was alright and said she liked to pray alone and indeed her dancing was like a prayer, for she put into it all of her hope and all of her joy. She imitated the steps she saw on TV and the steps she saw at the auditorium when the Ballet Ruse came to Denver to perform, and she made up some movements of her own to the music on the record player. She had asked Roxy to buy her records of Liszt and Chopin and Tchaikovsky, names she saw in the ballet programs, and Roxy was impressed and tried to tease her, but Mary became so red and confused that even Roxy had to pay attention and stop. Mary would dance until she heard the family come back from church, and then she would run over to the sofa in the corner and sit very still, pretending to be listening to the music, quietly. Once little Roger thought he knew what she was up to and asked “Dancing again, Mary?” and she just glared at him in a way she had never done before, not an angry glare but a look of desperate fear that puzzled him.

  Big Roger, as they called him, put a basketball hoop up on the side of the garage, and he and little Roger played basketball on the driveway in the summer evenings after work and school and on the weekends. Mary watched from her window in the house and missed James, and sometimes she dreamed of her son grown wi
th arms that he wrapped around her. Sometimes she dreamed of her father and woke up in a sweat, with her heart beating too hard and too fast.

  They meant well but just didn’t understand, like Hester always said: Roxy and her husband and son all talked too much and didn’t really listen or pay attention. What they did was spy on her, making her think they’d left for church and then coming down as quiet as mice after the music began playing, watching silently while she danced until the music ended and they all applauded like she was some ballet dancer on the stage and shouting bravo Mary. What could have possessed them to think that a 39-year-old woman would be proud to perform for them? Mary was deeply mortified and was too shocked to even cry or blush, but retired to her room with as much dignity as she had in her and remained there until Hester herself hobbled down to ask her to come out and eat dinner. Mary resumed her chores around the house without a word to anyone and continued silent for weeks. None of them could find the words to apologize to Mary, for none of them truly understood the depth of the offense, so they continued in silence until Hester talked her out of her humiliation, and they all tried to act as if nothing had happened and soon things settled back to normal for the family, except, of course, for Mary, who never danced again, but once.

  When little Roger, who by now towered over his father, packed an old car to drive up to Boulder for college, Mary stayed in her room and wouldn’t help. She heard Roxy tell Roger to go find her and say good-bye and Roger tell his mother that he didn’t think Mary cared for him anymore, and it irritated her that they didn’t even whisper, knowing she could hear everything that went on in that driveway, but then when he did come down and looked at her with eyes full of love and chagrin, she forgave him for not being her son, and hugged him long and hard and cried, thinking of her James, who never grew up. “It isn’t that far, Mary, and I’ll be coming home on weekends,” he told her, thinking that her tears were all for him.

  Roger was busy with a fraternity and parties and friends and did not in fact come home on weekends until the weekend of his grandmother’s funeral. Hester finally died at the age of 90, even though she had been happily pruning and mulching her rosebushes for the winter that very morning. She had once told Mary that as long as she had a garden, she would live, forever maybe, that gardening was the key to long life, and Mary had wondered why Hester told her that, because Mary didn’t really want a long life, not since her child had died. Life had been a slow business for Mary even before that, ever since her moment of ruined glory on the mountaintop in West Virginia, when James was born and she’d been abandoned first by all the zealous followers and then by John Banks himself, who had saved her life and for what, she often wondered. But lately things had started speeding up again with little Roger leaving home and then Hester dying. She hadn’t expected it, but something made her tell Hester just the night before, that her real name was Mary Queen of Scots, because she wanted someone to know her full name, and Hester had responded that her full name was Hester Elizabeth, but she didn’t expect anyone would remember that until her funeral. And then, there it was, Hester Elizabeth’s funeral, and indeed they did remember, and the name was carved in all its lengthy glory on the tombstone, over the dates 1868 to 1958.

  Mary missed Hester, but even more than missing her, she envied her, for she dreaded a long sojourn in other people’s lives. She had been with little Roger longer than she had been with her own son, and yet she didn’t feel like she belonged, sleeping in the basement, eating in the kitchen. She began to pray every night that God would take her in her sleep, peacefully and painlessly like he had taken Hester, but then she would dream of dying violent deaths, usually by drowning, sometimes being buried alive, and then she would throw off the covers and gasp for air, afraid to fall back asleep. She would get out of bed before dawn and go walking in the park, and Roxy would warn her not to do that, there were drunks in the park, she could be raped, Roxy said. But Mary, sick of life and wanting to die, felt invincible and continued her dawn walks to calm her soul and soothe her pounding heart after her nights of terror.

  On a crisp morning in April, when snow still glistened on the grass and flowers that had sprung forth during the warm weeks of March and the distant peaks were blue and white, Mary heard the birds, and they sounded like summer to her. She always paid attention to the birds now, as they heralded the seasons and woke her in the mornings with news of sun or storm, and it seemed to Mary that a sleek magpie that hopped down on the grass near her, anticipating bread crumbs, looked straight at her and talked to her, and she tried to understand what the bird was telling her. As the sun melted the remains of the last snowstorm and the day grew sweet and warm, the park filled with people, and some men in colorful, flowing shirts played drums and flutes and some women, dressed in leotards and long skirts, danced on the grass in the sun to the music, and they must have noticed the longing in Mary’s face, because one woman stopped and approached Mary and invited her to join them, but they were so young and seemed so strange to Mary that she just shook her head and went away. But she decided that the bird must have been telling her that it was okay to dance, and certainly her arms and legs seemed about to move whether she willed it or not. Mary walked fast, nearly ran home and realized that it must be Sunday, because Roxy and Roger were gone, to church it must have been, and Mary locked all the doors and even barricaded them with chairs, and then she put on her favorite recording that played the music of Swan Lake and she began to dance all over the house. She imagined that James danced with her, that he had arms and he encircled her with his arms, his arms laying lightly on her arms, so that when she opened her arms, she opened his as well, and when she closed her arms around herself, his arms held her close. His hands gracefully curved around hers and together they reached as high as they could and together they whirled their arms around, forcing their bodies to follow in a dizzying twirl to the ground and up again to reach, the way she had seen on the television. Mary could feel her shoulders begin to move her arms with a strength that felt beautiful, and then each muscle down to her hands that curved to sculpt the air, that turned to wind around her as she moved faster and faster until she fluttered as the music fluttered, slowing to a graceful stop and then moving again, and all the while she could feel her son’s arms lie upon her own in the endless dance that was delicate and fluid as a breeze. When the record ended, Mary heard the music in her head and danced and danced until she twirled one last time into a heap on the floor and stayed there quietly humming, or so it seemed to Mary.

  When the family was finally able to break into the house, they found Mary dead on the rec room floor, huddled in a ball, her arms wrapped around herself. The doctor speculated that she’d died of an aneurism, a blood vessel burst in her brain. But of course it was too much joy killed Mary Queen of Scots. All that dancing had filled her with more joy than a body could bear.

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  a note about the writer

  Sandra Shwayder Sanchez earned a BA in Behavioral Sciences at University of Maryland and a Juris Doctor degree from Denver University Law School. Her law practice involved the representation of indigent clients in the Denver criminal, family and mental health courts. In the early seventies she built a house and farmed in rural West Virginia. She now lives in a small mountain town in Colorado with her husband Ed Sanchez. The short stories and novellas of Sandra Shwayder Sanchez have appeared in The Long Story,  Zone 3, The Healing Muse, Storyglossia, The Dublin Quarterly, and Cantaraville. Her first novel, The Nun, was published in 1992 by Plain ViewPress, and a forthcoming novel, The Road Home will be forthcoming this year.