by Nicole Trope
‘I don’t understand it myself. All they do is eat and fly around and shit everywhere, but Birdy likes them.’
‘Is that her real name?’
‘No, but don’t call her anything but Birdy. She’s pretty firm about that.’
I walk over with Jess to the large rectangular cages at the back near the shed. There are three of them butting up against one another to create one long cage. Jess and I walk in silence, listening to the gentle clink of the keys hooked onto her jeans. Everything here is locked up tight. I had to sign out a small hand spade. It feels like I’m back at school.
‘Birdy, can you come and meet Mrs Winslow,’ says Jess into the cage.
I can’t see anyone at first, but then I tilt my hat forward and make out a large woman in the shadows. Her top is dotted with bird droppings but she doesn’t seem to mind that. She angles herself out of the cage, still watching the little finches, who fly around hysterically as soon as she moves.
‘Hello, Birdy,’ I say, and the woman nods at me. Her thick black hair is tied up and is also dotted with the white leavings of the small birds. She should be wearing a hat, I think. The woman doesn’t say anything once she is out of the cage. ‘You have such lovely eyes,’ I say, staring at the dark chocolate colour with flecks of green. I made a decision after breakfast that I would try to get on the good side of the women that I am to be spending I don’t know how long with. I’ve been handing out compliments left and right.
‘You have such beautiful nails,’ to Jess.
‘I like your hair colour,’ to Sal.
‘You’re being so kind,’ to Heather.
I didn’t have to think when I looked at Birdy.
‘So you take care of the finches,’ I say when she doesn’t reply. ‘My husband had finches.’
‘He did,’ she says. ‘I mean, did he?’
‘Yes, he liked to watch them for hours. I didn’t see much of them. They were in a large cage at the back of the garden, almost around a corner, behind the shed.’ I stop talking. Birdy is watching me with her beautiful eyes. I shut my mouth firmly. I have a habit of speaking too much when I’m nervous. At every party Simon and I went to I would spend half the night in complete silence and the other half talking someone’s ear off about my garden or my children. I always felt so unaccomplished when I was with other people in the entertainment industry. The women were so flawless that they looked plastic, and the men would quickly look me up and down, decide I wasn’t worth talking to and simply ignore me.
‘You mustn’t let them upset you, darling girl,’ Simon said whenever I told him what a horrible time I’d had. ‘They don’t know how wonderful you are, how special you are. You’re my secret and I’m happy to keep it so. I wouldn’t want you running off with someone from a rival network.’
‘As if that could ever happen,’ I said.
‘What kind of finches do you have in here?’ I ask Birdy. She’s staring at me as though waiting for me to say something.
‘Zebra and Gouldian,’ she says.
I want to say something about the birds, but despite Simon going on and on about them I don’t seem to have retained any information at all. He had shelves full of books on how to raise them and breed them. I couldn’t fathom his interest in them.
‘They are part of nature, my dear—they do not ruminate on their lives, they live them. All they care about is that they have enough food and clean water. It’s peaceful to watch them moving happily from place to place, concerned only with a dip in the birdbath on a hot day.’
‘I have lots of books on finches,’ I say to Birdy.
‘Enough chatting,’ says Jess. ‘Mrs Winslow, can you—’
‘Call me Rose, please. Everyone should call me Rose.’
‘Rose, can you help Mina with the weeding for a bit?’
‘Of course.’ I’m grateful to leave Birdy with her finches. Her silence is disconcerting.
Jess walks me over to Mina. ‘Birdy’s a bit special, Rose,’ she says.
‘Special?’
‘She’s not stupid,’ Jess adds defensively. ‘She’s just not as quick as most people.’
‘I’ll remember that when I speak to her,’ I say, and Jess nods and leaves me to get on with the weeding.
‘You work over there,’ says Mina, and I obligingly move a little further away from her. I can see that Mina isn’t interested in having a conversation.
Jess uses the word ‘special’ to describe Birdy. Portia and Rosalind use the word as well when discussing some of the children Portia works with. Simon always said ‘retarded’, but people don’t like that word anymore. I dig into the soil and try to remember if I’ve ever known anyone to whom the term ‘special’ applies. I think not.
Chapter Seven
She doesn’t know me at all. That’s okay. That suits me. I wouldn’t want her to recognise me anyway. Not until it’s time. Not until it’s the end.
She looks the same even after all these years. Her hands are wrinkled but she is still the same. I’m the one who’s different. He made me different and then I made me different. Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if I had never met him, but that’s a funny thing to think. It’s like thinking about who I would be if I didn’t have Isabel or if I was clever like Lila. I can’t think about that, because things are the way they are.
I watch her walk back to the vegetables with Jess and I put my hands in my pockets so that I won’t do anything to let her know what my agenda is. She used to make toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch and put pickles and salty chips on the side. She would cut the sandwiches into perfect triangles. It was like being in a restaurant. Sometimes she would pour a glass of Coke and add a straw and an umbrella.
They moved in next door to us when I was four. Mum told me that. I was four and Rosalind was six and she liked to play with me because she thought I was cute. She didn’t care if I was smart or not, because I was smart enough to do everything she wanted me to do. She was the mummy and I was the baby and I would listen to her when she read me a story. Sometimes she was the teacher and I had to write the letter A, but I wasn’t very good at that. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Rosalind would ask.
‘My mum says that,’ I told her.
‘Hello there,’ he said the first time he saw me. Mum took me next door so we could introduce ourselves. Lila was asleep and Dad was in charge of taking care of her. Mum baked a chocolate cake and she put it on a pretty glass plate. I didn’t want to go and say hello. I didn’t like strangers, but I wanted a piece of the chocolate cake.
I was holding onto Mum’s leg when he opened the door. He crouched down and looked at me. ‘Hello there,’ he said. I had never met a stranger who crouched down to talk to me. I didn’t know what to say. I was shy. His eyes looked at me. They were dark, dark blue. I liked him right away.
‘Your eyes look like my blue paint,’ I said.
‘Oh, Felicity, don’t be silly,’ said Mum.
‘I don’t think that’s silly. Hello, Felicity, I’m Simon Winslow, nice to meet you.’
‘Say hello to Mr Winslow, Fliss,’ said Mum.
‘Hello,’ I said, because I knew how to be polite. Mum had told me over and over again how to be polite.
‘Rose darling, the new neighbours have come to say hello,’ he said, standing up.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ we heard someone say, and then she was there.
Mum and Rose had tea in the kitchen and Rosalind took me to show me her room. ‘You’re a baby,’ she said to me. ‘Don’t touch anything.’ I put my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t touch. ‘Sit down,’ said Rosalind, pointing to a small pink chair. I sat down. ‘Hold this,’ she said, handing me a doll to hold. I held the doll. Rosalind smiled.
‘Looks like you two will be great friends,’ he said. I turned around. I didn’t know he was standing at the door to her room. I didn’t know he was watching us. I didn’t know.
Mum liked me to go over there. If Lila had her nap and Mum wanted to nap too she would say, ‘Go
next door and see if Rosalind is home.’ Or if she was cooking and I wanted to help and she wanted me to go out of the kitchen, she would say, ‘Go and play with Rosalind.’
I liked playing with Rosalind but I didn’t always like it. Rosalind was very bossy. Sometimes I said no and I didn’t go. Sometimes I hid under the stairs and stroked Mum’s lonely pet coat. But when I was five I always went when she told me to go.
Five was a bad year. When I was five I wanted to run away from everything, but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t allowed to cross the street. Five was a sad year. It was the year everything went wrong. Everything changed. Everyone changed.
It’s funny the stuff that gets stuck in your brain even when you don’t want it to. I remember the way my dad smelled. I remember the way he used to light a cigarette and breathe deep and then say, ‘This will kill me one day,’ and then cough. He made burnt scrambled eggs on cold toast on Sundays.
He didn’t care about how smart I was. ‘I will read to you for the rest of your life,’ he told me. He used to lie on my bed at night and read me a story. Then he would say, ‘Mum’s turn,’ and Mum would come in to say the poem. The poem was called ‘Adventures of Isabel’ by Ogden Nash. It’s my favourite poem in the whole world. It’s also Isabel’s favourite poem. It’s about Isabel, who is not afraid. She’s not afraid of a bear, she’s not afraid of a witch, she’s not afraid of a giant, and she’s not afraid of a doctor. Isabel is brave and she doesn’t worry. I wanted to be Isabel. I wanted to be brave.
‘What about something different?’ Mum would say every night, but I needed to hear the poem over and over again. I needed to hear it so that it wouldn’t escape out of the open door in my brain. I needed to remember it. I knew that if I could remember the poem then I could be brave like Isabel and then it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t tie my shoes or sing the alphabet song or make the scissors cut along the line, because I would be brave. Being brave was better than colouring inside the lines or drawing a circle.
‘No, I want “Isabel”,’ I would say.
‘All right then,’ Mum would say, and her voice was tired but she always smiled.
Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry.
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.
‘More, more,’ I would say, and Mum would go to the end of the poem. I was always afraid for Isabel. I knew she would be safe but each time she met a horrible thing I would feel my arms get bumps and I would feel cold. I was excited and scared for Isabel, but she always won in the end. I would go to sleep and dream about being brave and strong even though I didn’t always know my colours. But then I turned five and Dad left and Mum wouldn’t tuck me in or read to me or say ‘Isabel’. That was when I needed ‘Isabel’ the most, and I would go over the words I could remember but I kept forgetting them and it wasn’t the same.
‘Please, Mum,’ I said every night, ‘please do “Isabel”,’ but she wouldn’t.
‘Leave me alone,’ she would say, ‘just leave me alone.’ I didn’t know why she wanted to be left alone. She wasn’t busy. She just sat on the couch and stared at the television. Stared and stared. Sometimes she didn’t even have the sound on.
‘Your mother had a difficult time when your father left,’ said Emily the therapist. ‘You need to forgive her and move on with your life.’
‘I had a bad time too,’ I said, but then I said, ‘I forgive her.’ I wanted to come to the Farm. Forgive your mum, forgive your dad, forgive yourself and you can go to the Farm. But I’m done with forgiving now.
When I learned to read at my new school when I was eight I found ‘Isabel’ in the school library and I stole the book to keep behind my chest of drawers with my special things in case the bloody bank came again, even though we lived in the shitbox.
When we still lived in the big house and Dad went away, Mum wasn’t Mum anymore. She was mean. ‘Just get out of my hair!’ she would shout, and I would run away next door where there were toasted cheese triangles and music played all day.
Rose always smelled sweet like a flower. She let me watch her cooking in the kitchen. I wanted to ask if I could help, but Mum didn’t like me to help so I thought maybe Rose wouldn’t like me to help either.
‘I think I might need more salt,’ she would say when she was tasting the soup and then she would look at me, but I didn’t know if she needed more salt so I didn’t say anything.
‘Maybe it’s time to go back to Mum,’ she said when I didn’t know if the soup needed more salt.
‘Mum says that I must get out of her hair,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Oh, sweetheart, Mum is just having a bad day. You can come over here when your mum has a bad day. Even if Rosalind isn’t here you can always come over here.’ Sometimes Rosalind wasn’t there. She went to visit a friend or to ballet or to piano lessons.
I remember how her hands moved in the kitchen, quick, quick. I remember her voice and her smell, but she doesn’t remember me.
Maybe Rosalind will visit her here and she will recognise me. Rosalind looked like she did. They were both pretty with brown hair and brown eyes. I didn’t play with Rosalind’s older sister Portia. She was nearly eight when they moved in. ‘Get out of my room, babies,’ she would say to me and Rosalind, and then she would shout, ‘Mum, they’re in my room again!’, and Rosalind and I would run and hide from mean Portia.
In the beginning Rosalind would also come to my house. The whole family came over for dinner and everyone listened when he talked because he was famous.
Rosalind told me that her dad was famous and then she told me that famous meant that everyone knew who he was, not just the people who lived next door but everyone in the whole country. It was because he was on the television. Mum liked to watch him on the television. ‘She’s a lucky woman, that Rose Winslow,’ Mum said every time she saw him on the TV.
Mum smiled at him all the time when he came to dinner, but Dad didn’t like him at all. ‘Completely up himself with that fake English accent, like he wasn’t born here,’ he said to Mum after they were gone.
‘How do you know where he was born?’ Mum said.
‘I just know. My bullshit detector was beeping all night.’ Dad talked about his bullshit detector a lot. When I was little I thought it sat behind his ear, but I could never find it. Now I know it was just something he felt.
‘You’re just jealous,’ Mum said, and then there was talking and shouting and Lila woke up from the noise.
Portia doesn’t look like her sister. Portia was always tall and beautiful like a princess. She looked like nothing could touch her or hurt her. Sometimes I wished I was her. Portia had blonde hair and blue eyes—deep blue like her dad’s eyes. She is the most beautiful of them all. Or she was. She might not be anymore. Maybe she is fat like I am now. Maybe she has changed the colour of her hair.
I wonder if he changed who they were as well. I haven’t seen them for so long that they could both be different. But Mrs Winslow is still the same even though she’s older now. ‘Rose’ is still the same, even if her face has wrinkles. She said that we must call her Rose, but when I was little I always called her Mrs Winslow. I called him Mr Winslow.
‘Hello, Mr Winslow,’ I said when I came to their house. ‘Goodbye, Mr Winslow,’ I said when I went home again. But I couldn’t say, ‘Don’t do that, Mr Winslow.’ I couldn’t say that.
Now I watch her working in the garden. She wears gloves and an old hat without flowers and she laughs at jokes that Jess and Mina make and she talks about silly things like recipes for cakes and how to clean a rug.
‘Oh, Ellie
, you’re a wonderful baker,’ she said whenever she had some cake that my Mum had made. Mum didn’t like to bake cakes after Dad left. She didn’t like to do anything.
I think that she has not changed at all. I can see her pretending that she is anywhere but here. She is good at pretending, good at ignoring things that are right in front of her.
A few times in the day she looks up from her digging and weeding and catches me looking at her and she smiles and gives me a little wave. Stupid woman. Stupid, stupid woman. I have to swallow and swallow to keep the bubbling anger down. Mina is using a big spade to dig in the garden. I close my eyes and see my hands grab the spade and I hit and hit and hit.
I used to wish she was my mother.
One morning I woke up and Dad was gone and Mum said, ‘Your father has decided to live somewhere else.’ I was five and I didn’t understand but I didn’t know how to ask the right questions. ‘Where is he living?’ I should have asked, but I couldn’t think of how to say the words.
‘He has decided that taking care of two little girls is too much for him.’
‘I’m getting big,’ I said.
‘Oh, please just go away and leave me alone,’ she said, and she lay on her bed and only got up to make peanut butter sandwiches. ‘I want toasted cheese,’ I said.
‘Then make it yourself,’ said Mum, but I didn’t know how to do that.
Mum was angry and crying about Dad and she was angry and crying about me and then she was angry and crying about selling our big house and I didn’t feel like I had a mother anymore. Quick as a strike of lightning everything changed at my house.
I went next door. Rosalind was playing with her own friends and she didn’t want to see me, and Mrs Winslow was in the front garden. ‘You can help me dig if you like, or you can go and ask Mr Winslow for something to drink.’
He was the only one inside the house. He was often home when I went there. He went to the TV studio in the morning but he came home in the afternoon. Sometimes he was home for the whole day. He didn’t go to work like my dad went to work. My dad used to leave early in the morning and come home late, late at night. Sometimes I didn’t see him for days and days, so he couldn’t read me a story.
