Hush, Little Bird

by Nicole Trope

  Heather cooks dinner tonight. We have spaghetti. The sauce is weak and watery and the meat tastes like a cheap cut. There’s no parmesan but there is a giant block of bright yellow cheddar.

  ‘We have to make this last,’ says Sal, cutting me a small piece. In my fridge at home I have left brie and gruyere and a crumbly aged gouda. I hope Rosalind takes it all before Portia throws it out. She isn’t fond of cheese. Portia has volunteered to stay in the house for a couple of nights a week just to keep an eye on things.

  I nod at Sal and obediently cut my cheese into tiny squares to throw on my spaghetti. There isn’t much conversation while we eat. I can’t think of anything to say. I’m afraid I’ll ask a question that they don’t want to answer. I’m sure they have no idea what to say to me either.

  After dinner we all clean up together. ‘From tomorrow, we’ll roster you on for different days for cooking and stuff,’ says Sal.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, because she seems to want a reply.

  Heather turns on the television and we watch the news together until my face flashes up on the screen. I’m heartily sick of my own image. When pictures of me first began appearing on television and the internet I would scrutinise each one, trying to place where it was from and when it had been snapped, noting the sag of my chin and the wrinkles around my eyes. But eventually I grew bored with that and I simply stopped caring. The aim of every photographer has been to capture my face at the height of emotion—anger and grief are favourites. I don’t look good in any of them.

  Heather and Sal stare straight ahead at the television, deliberately refusing to acknowledge what we’re looking at.

  ‘Isn’t that . . .?’ says Linda.

  ‘Shut it,’ says Sal.

  I have to swallow a lump in my throat at her compassion.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I say quietly, and I leave to go and lie on my bed. It’s only seven o’clock and I know we’re counted again at nine so I can’t even go to sleep.

  On this first night I’m not sure how I will even make it through the next day or week or month. When I’m finally in bed for the night I pray that Eric will get the appeal through, and then I close my eyes and try to feel Simon lying next to me.

  My body feels his absence more than my mind does. I know he’s gone but I find myself reaching for him in my sleep. When I was at home alone I used to turn my head to look at something and see him walking past the room. Or the wind would rattle a window and I would look up and he would be standing there. At first these sightings shocked me deeply. I thought his ghost was back to punish me for what I had done, but then I found out that both Portia and Rosalind had experienced the same thing. It is, apparently, perfectly natural to see someone you loved everywhere once they are gone.

  Before I came here I spoke to him all the time. When I was alone his presence was palpable. For months I laid the table for two. I apologised, of course. I apologised over and over again. Some nights I would yell at him. I would scream abuse at his spectre, ranting about the horror of what he had hidden from me, yelling questions about his true nature. My house is big enough that I could get away with that. One night I went down into the wine cellar where the walls are thick and the air is always cool and yelled for so long that I lost my voice. That night I felt him sit down on the edge of the bed. When I felt the dip of the mattress I struggled up from sleep and switched on the bedside lamp, hoping to catch him there, but he was already gone.

  I was angry with him; it made a change from being angry at myself. I was furious about the lies and the deceit, but I also despaired at what had been lost.

  We had been planning for this time in our lives for years. We were in the process of booking an extravagant five-week cruise around Europe; we were going to buy a small cottage in the mountains—far enough away so we would feel we had left the city behind but close enough to have Lottie and Sam come and visit. I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could while they were still young. Simon was going to devote one room in the house to model trains so he and Sam could build sets and learn together. And now everything he worked for, everything we dreamed of, is simply gone. Portia, Rosalind and I, in fact everyone in our family and I’m sure our friends as well, have been fundamentally changed by what has happened. Even food tastes different now.

  He had been keeping such dreadful things from me.

  I want to hate him. I understand that I should hate him, but no matter how hard I try I don’t seem to be able to.

  For years I sat beside my husband on the couch watching the news and shaking my head at women who stand next to their men supporting the unsupportable. I comfortably assured myself that I would fling the adulterer or the rapist or the fraudster to the kerb without a second thought. It is easy to sit on the couch in smug judgement of the choices made by others.

  But when it did happen to me, when the allegations about him began, I could not see him off so easily. He was my husband, my lover, my friend. I knew everything about him, except for the one thing that made him into a completely different person.

  How could he have kept that from me? How could I have missed it?

  And now because he is gone only I know the truth about him. The allegations have gone with him, and his obituary in the newspaper chose not to mention anything but his achievements. It was all only rumours and speculation, after all. He had not been charged with anything. Lucky him.

  I stood beside him and I supported him, and even though I now know what he did I have still allowed him to leave the world a cherished man, famous throughout the country. He is tarnished by how he died, of course he is, but in a few years all anyone will remember is the fact that he was an icon of Australian television. ‘What was it he was supposed to have done?’ they will say when his name comes up. ‘How did he die again?’

  His daughters can choose to forget the things they have heard about him and instead mourn a wonderful father, and the world will believe it has lost a star.

  I have been, I suppose, the perfect wife all the way to the very end. And now, rather than speak the truth I have allowed myself to be locked up. Perhaps the truth would have made no difference anyway. But it might have helped. If the jury knew what I know, if they could have seen what I have seen, they might have gone a different way. And yet I have kept it to myself, hiding the man he was, if only to avoid confronting the woman I was.

  When Robert explained to the jury the circumstances surrounding his death, he droned on and on about how stressful it had all been, how depressed Simon was, how hard it was for both of us to cope with the press and the vile things being said about him. But he didn’t say if any of it was true or not.

  He didn’t say that, because despite everything I told my lawyer and my barrister I did not tell them that, and I was clever enough to hide the evidence that would have gone a long way towards proving his guilt. There is a drawer in my closet that comes out and underneath it there is a space where I used to occasionally hide jewellery when I went away. Now it holds . . . them, I suppose. It holds them. All of them.

  I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know why, after I understood exactly what he had done; I didn’t want to expose him to the world for condemnation and disgust. We had been together too long, perhaps. It was difficult for me to see where he ended and I began. So perhaps I was only protecting myself.

  What kind of a woman stays married to a man like this? asked one journalist in a scathing article on the internet. What kind of a woman?

  I don’t know. What kind of a woman am I?

  Chapter Five

  ‘So tell me how this week has been, Birdy,’ says Henrietta.

  Henrietta is tall and has smooth chocolate-coloured skin. She doesn’t just walk into a room, she glides into it. She is like a swan moving on a lake. Today she is wearing a tight grey skirt and a white blouse. Even in flat shoes she is much taller than me. I hold my back straight when I walk into the office to see her.

  ‘Did you used to be a model?’ I asked her when I saw her for the fi
rst time. She looks like the models in the magazines Mum and Lila read. I never liked magazines because the words are too small and the sentences are too long, but sometimes I liked to look at the pictures.

  ‘I did model to help pay my way through university,’ she said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you have just stayed a model? It must be much easier than doing this.’

  ‘I wanted to help people, I guess. But we aren’t here to discuss me. We’re here to talk about you. Now, from your file I can see that your real name is—’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ I said. ‘Don’t say it at all. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Okay, I’m happy to call you Birdy. Why Birdy?’

  ‘It’s silly,’ I said.

  ‘That’s okay, I’d like to know.’

  ‘Jess gave me the nickname. I take care of the finches in the aviary. I have done ever since I got here. They like me.’

  ‘Does Jess know your real name?’

  ‘Jess knows everything about me, well, most things, and I guess I know the same about her.’

  ‘So she’s a good friend.’

  ‘Yes, she’s a good friend.’

  I have to see Henrietta every week. It’s part of the deal. I don’t think therapy helps me at all. Therapy is talking about your feelings and then being told how to feel another way. ‘Forgive your mum, forgive your dad, forgive yourself, forgive everyone,’ said Emily at the other place. When I told her, ‘My dad went away and never came back and never called and I don’t even know what he looks like,’ she said, ‘You need to forgive him for not being a perfect parent. You need to forgive him so you can move on with your life.’

  I told Emily that I forgive everyone, but I don’t. I’m still bubbling with anger and hate. ‘Henrietta doesn’t talk about forgiveness. She talks about feelings. ‘How did you feel when your father left? How do you feel today? How did you feel yesterday?’

  Sometimes when I leave, my stomach is twisting and I have a headache. Not because Henrietta has found out my secrets, but because I’m afraid that she will. I think Henrietta is smarter than Emily. I think her brown eyes can look inside me, and when I see her I sit on the couch with my arms over my chest just in case she sees into the bubbling anger inside me.

  ‘Birdy?’ says Henrietta, and I realise that I’ve been staring out of the window at the aviary. I like that I can see it from the room where we meet. I like to be able to keep an eye on the little birds. They’re so small, so . . . so . . . vulnerable. That’s a word Lila taught me—vulnerable. After I was Frank’s best girl she said to me, ‘You have to keep yourself safe. Because some things are harder for you it makes you vulnerable to creeps like him.’

  ‘What does vulnerable mean?’

  ‘It means that you’re in danger of someone making you do something you don’t want to do. You can get hurt.’

  I wanted to explain to Lila that I wasn’t vulnerable. Not anymore. Frank only did things I wanted him to do. He would ask nicely. He would say, ‘Is it okay if I touch here?’, and I could say yes or no. Not everyone asks nicely.

  I’m glad I’m here to protect the birds. Finches are vulnerable. They shouldn’t get cold and they get sick easily. If you frighten them too much their hearts can stop working. They are always in danger of dying.

  If it hadn’t been for Jess I would have landed up working in the toolshed making badges that say ‘Smile’ or in the cooking school or with the stinking cows. When I first got here I was sent to work in the gardens and I was very bad at it. I didn’t know Jess well then and all she did was shout at me that I was digging up the wrong things or overwatering or underwatering or planting too close or too far away. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy looking at the aviary filled with finches. It is a very big cage. I can get inside it and stand up and turn around. I love finches. I love Gouldian finches the most. The ones here are beautiful colours. Red and green and blue and purple and yellow.

  I know a lot about finches. The aviary here has a mixture of zebra and Gouldian finches. Zebra finches can be pushy but Gouldian finches are sweet and polite. I know more about finches than anything else. Finches don’t like to be friends with humans and they don’t make much noise. They need to have shell grit in the cage so they can digest their seeds. They eat the grit with the seeds. They like to eat fruit—and if you mix some of their seed with a little bit of honey, they love that. I have heard all about finches over and over again. Over and over again. Everything about finches is stuck in my head.

  On my first two days I kept wandering over to the cages and Jess had to keep calling me back. At the end of the second day she came to get me again. ‘Hey, you,’ she said, but I didn’t answer. I was watching them search for fresh seed. They were not very well taken care of. I could see that they had to look very hard to find seeds that hadn’t been eaten yet. Also their water was dirty and there was just a little bit of shell grit in a bowl on the floor. They don’t like things to be on the floor.

  ‘Hey, you,’ said Jess again. ‘You, bird woman, bird woman, birdy, birdy . . .’

  I turned around then. I wanted to hit her but I knew better than that. I’d only hit one person in my whole life and that had landed me in prison. ‘They’re not being cared for,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m doing my best, but they freak me out, especially the way they flap like crazy things every time I go near them. I don’t know much about them. The woman who used to take care of them left last month. It was stupid for them to even start an aviary if you ask me, but some guy who owns a pet shop in town built it. He thought it would do the prisoners good to have to take care of the birds. Everyone’s always got to be a bloody hero.’

  ‘I could do it.’

  ‘Know about them, do you?’

  ‘I know everything about them,’ I said. ‘I used to help someone take care of theirs.’

  Jess nodded and I knew she wanted to ask me who I was talking about, but in prison you don’t ask questions. You wait until someone wants to give you the answers. ‘Okay, I guess that can be your job then. I’ll clear it with Allison, but I’m sure she won’t mind. They wanted to be able to sell them but I can’t get the little buggers to breed.’

  ‘I could get them to breed,’ I said. ‘And I’ll clean up the cage and keep them in good condition.’

  ‘Well then, Birdy, they’re all yours.’

  This time I didn’t mind being called Birdy. I was happy to leave my real name behind. Jess is a leader in here. She’s been in prison for two years already, and she’s been here for six months. Once she started calling me Birdy, everyone else did as well.

  I stand at the window in the office Henrietta uses when she comes here and I watch the finches in their cage, trapped like me but happy because they have just enough space and freedom that they don’t go mad. I didn’t have enough space at the other place.

  ‘This week’s been okay,’ I say to Henrietta when I finally sit down.

  Henrietta is very patient. Her full name is Henrietta Whine. Jess thinks that’s funny but I don’t know why.

  ‘Have you heard from Lila?’

  ‘Lila emails me every Wednesday night. She never forgets.’

  ‘That must make Wednesday nights quite special.’

  I nod. ‘She sent me some pictures of Isabel. She’s grown again. Lila had to buy her new shoes. She chose pink ones that have butterflies on them.’ Lila makes sure that her emails are filled with things Isabel is doing. She even scans in pictures she has drawn so I can see them.

  ‘I’m sure Wednesday nights must be a little bittersweet.’

  ‘Bittersweet?’ I say.

  ‘Like happy and sad at the same time.’

  ‘That’s a good word,’ I say, because that’s exactly how I feel when I read Lila’s email. I’m happy that Lila is so nice to Isabel, that she loves her so much, but I’m Isabel’s mum. I want to buy her pink butterfly shoes.

  Still, I love Lila for keeping me up to date with everything that Isabel is doing. If she hadn’t
agreed to take her when I was sent to prison she would have landed up in the foster system. Some other women here have children in the foster system. Heather has two children living with ‘a complete bitch’. I wouldn’t have wanted that to happen to Isabel.

  ‘When you’re in the system, your kids are in the system too,’ said Jess when she told me about her daughters. ‘You’re bloody lucky your sister can take care of Isabel. I haven’t got a soul in the world that my kids could have gone to, especially not their piece-of-crap father.’

  There was no way I was letting my mother take care of Isabel, and I don’t think she wanted to do it either. Lila has had to stop working so hard so that she can be there for Isabel, but she hasn’t complained about that at all. She loves Isabel. Isabel is smart like Lila. They have the same blonde hair and blue eyes even though Isabel is my baby.

  I don’t think Lila will ever have kids. She’s too important to her company. They fly her all over the world to open new shopping centres and they pay her lots and lots of money. She lives in a unit but it has three bedrooms and a pool downstairs. Isabel loves the pool because it is always warm.

  Lila paid for Lucy when I had to go to court. Lucy worked very hard to get me out of the other place and to the Farm. She called the other place nearly every day. Allison told me that when I came here. ‘Don’t mess this up,’ Allison said. ‘You don’t want all that work your lawyer did to go to waste. It’s a privilege to be allowed to serve your last few months at the Farm—remember that.’

  That’s what we call it, the Farm, like that might make us forget what it really is. Still, it’s better than real prison. And the best thing about it, the very best thing, is that once a month Isabel is allowed to come up and spend the weekend with me. I cross the days off on my calendar every night until the day she comes. The calendar is one I got free from the newspaper. It has pictures of baby animals on it. Isabel has named them all. Last month’s baby animal was a tiger. She named it Billy.

  In just one week I get to see Isabel for two whole nights and nearly two days. When she wraps her little arms around me we could be at the top of the Eiffel Tower or we could be on the beach. We could be anywhere. Lila has been to France and Mexico and Rio and England. She brings back lots of pictures for me and Isabel to look at, and one day she will take us both with her.