Hush, Little Bird

by Nicole Trope

  I thought she would just stand in the shade for a bit and then go away, but after watching me refill the seed tray, she said, ‘How did you know how to take care of the finches?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t want to speak to her at all. I wasn’t ready. I need to think about what I’m going to say, but not what I’m going to do. I know what I’m going to do.

  People’s voices don’t change. She looks different but she sounds the same, and when she talks her voice makes me feel hot all over.

  ‘My husband used to have finches,’ she said.

  ‘I know, you said so before.’

  ‘Did I? I must have forgotten. How many kinds have you got in here?’

  ‘Just Gouldian and zebra finches,’ I said. I really wanted her to go away.

  ‘My husband used to have so many books on them. You wouldn’t think such a small bird could have so much written about it. Have you read any books or anything? Or did someone teach you what to do?’

  I emptied a basin of water that the birds had filled with poo and opened the cage to go and refill it. ‘Someone taught me,’ I said, and I looked straight at her.

  ‘You remind me of someone,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who,’ and then she laughed a funny little laugh. ‘I should get back to work.’

  I was holding the water dish, so I couldn’t use my hand to cover my mouth and I had to bite down hard on my lip instead. I nodded at her and kept my mouth closed. Speak no evil, I thought, but the words wanted to come out. Right there and then I knew that I could say something and she would realise who I was. Speak no evil, I repeated to myself, and she went back to her gardening.

  When she’d gone, I was surprised to find my breath going in and out and in and out like I had been running, and my ears were ringing. It’s not like I’m afraid of her. She’s not the one to be afraid of in here. I’m the one she should be afraid of in here, so I don’t know why I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘You’re real quiet tonight,’ says Jess before dinner. We’re sitting out on the veranda waiting for muster.

  I lift my shoulders up and down so she knows that I don’t have anything to say.

  ‘Always hard after the kids go home, isn’t it?’ Jess thinks I’m sad because I miss Isabel. I don’t tell her what I’m really thinking about because it’s my secret and my agenda. But I know she’s waiting for me to say something, so I tell her I am sad about Isabel going home. It isn’t a lie. I’m always sad about Isabel going home.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I miss her so much it’s like my chest has something on top of it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ says Jess. ‘But we had a good time, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I did have a good time but it was too short. It’s always too short. I watch the hands on the clock and I wish that I could hold them back and stop time going forward.

  Lila brought Isabel up on Friday afternoon and came to fetch her on Sunday afternoon. At three o’clock on Friday afternoon I was allowed to stop work and go and pack my bag so I could stay in the mother and child unit. It’s bigger than my unit. It has five big bedrooms and two bathrooms and each bedroom has three beds in it. Allison makes sure that there’s always food in the unit so we don’t have to buy any from the canteen—unless we want junk food, and we all want junk food. Jess and I put our money together and bought chocolate and sweets to give to our girls.

  I only get to see Isabel once a month. ‘Everyone needs a turn, Birdy,’ said Allison when I asked her if I could see Isabel more.

  ‘But Isabel is so little,’ I said.

  ‘And Jess’s kids are big and Heather’s kids are unhappy and so on and so on,’ said Allison.

  This weekend me and Jess were in the house together, and that made it fun. Suresh is coming next week. Also in the house were Anna and her baby boy, Liz and her daughters, and Esther and her son. I don’t know the others very well. I hoped the baby would sleep through the night. Babies like to stay up at night. When Isabel was born she liked to wake up every two hours. Sometimes I would be so tired I wouldn’t hear her, and then Mum would get up and bring her to me and she would be angry. ‘I told your sister this would happen. I’m too old for this. I deserve to have some peace in my old age.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ I would say. I didn’t like waking up to feed Isabel, but when I was holding her and she was drinking from me I would feel my filled-with-joy feeling. Her little fingers liked to hold my hand. I wasn’t very good at changing nappies at first, but Mum showed me and Lila showed me and the nurse who came to visit showed me and then I was good at it.

  Jess and I waited and waited for our kids to arrive and finally they were there.

  Lila isn’t allowed to come into the Farm. She’s only allowed to drop Isabel off and then leave. The first time she came Isabel cried and cried until she saw me. Now she knows about our weekend and she doesn’t cry. She’s really smart and she doesn’t need to be shown things again and again.

  ‘Mum, Mum, Mum,’ said Isabel when she saw me. She jumped up and down because she was so excited, and I jumped up and down as well.

  First we had to unpack her suitcase and make sure she had everything she needs, and then we sat on the veranda together watching the sun go down and Isabel told me all the things she was thinking about.

  ‘I sit next to Bao in school. She’s Chinese. Do you know how to spell Bao? It’s B then A then O. She’s my best friend and we play together at lunch. I can go across all the monkey bars and so can Bao. I can spell my name. I then S then A then B then E then L. My name is a long name. My teacher is Mrs Richards and she says I’m a good speller. I can spell Mum. M then U then M again.’ Isabel talks and talks and never runs out of words. I listen to everything she says and I try to remember how she looks so that I can think about her when she isn’t with me.

  We had hamburgers for dinner. Jess’s daughters are Chloe and Carla and they’re eleven and thirteen so they helped with the cooking. Carla has pimples on her chin and she looks unhappy all the time. She didn’t want to speak to Jess when she arrived, but after they made a cake together she was a bit happier and then she wanted to speak to Jess.

  ‘It sucks being a teenager, love, I remember that,’ I heard Jess say to her when they were sitting on the couch together.

  I had the best sleep in the world because I was in the bed next to Isabel and I could hear her sleep noises all night long. Sometimes she sounds like a puppy. She sighs and squeaks all night. She still sleeps with her special blanket and her rabbit. I’m glad she does. She’s still little and always happy to see me, and maybe when she’s thirteen like Carla she won’t remember about seeing me at the Farm. Before she went to sleep she said, ‘It’s time for “Isabel”, Mum,’ and I said the Isabel poem for her. Lila says it for her every night and I say it to myself every night as well, even though she isn’t with me. I don’t want the words to go out of the door in my brain.

  Allison came to get all the children on Sunday afternoon, and Isabel and I had to have five hugs because she’s five. When she went with Allison to meet Lila, I had to clean up and go back to my unit. I was crying when I came back, and Jess was sad as well.

  Maya and Mina are always kind to us after we’ve been at the mother and child unit. ‘Why don’t you girls watch some television and we’ll get dinner ready soon,’ said Maya.

  Mina saw that I was trying to hold in my tears, and she said, ‘Go on, Birdy, have a cry, get it all out, and then you can start to cross off the days until next time.’

  I lay in bed before lights out and I counted how many days until I could see Isabel again, and then I counted how many days until I could go home.

  Once a month we all have a meeting with Allison in the common room so we can talk about the Farm and all the things that are happening. When the meeting is over, we all stand up to pack away the chairs and Allison always says, ‘Now, ladies, remember how close to the end you are. Remember that it’s nearly over, and don’t do anything stupid.’ And then she leaves. She says the sa
me thing every time to remind us to behave.

  Lying in bed I counted the days till I could go home and I thought about what I wanted to do to Rose. Jess would say it was very stupid. She would be angry with me if I told her my agenda, but I can’t change it. The feeling that she has to pay for what she did is stuck inside me. He can’t pay because he’s gone, but she’s here, right here where I am.

  Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have my agenda, that it wasn’t stuck inside me, but if I try to pretend that nothing happened to me I feel like the girl covered in flames. My skin burns and I can’t breathe. I will never again be able to pretend that nothing happened. I was pretending for a very long time. I was happy to go on pretending forever. But on the day I hurt Mum I knew that I was done pretending.

  The first night in the other place, I thought, What if I’ve been pretending so long that I don’t know the truth? But the truth was there. It hadn’t slipped away through the door in my mind. The truth was waiting inside, just like Rose and Mr Winslow were, just waiting somewhere in a corner, waiting for me to stop pretending.

  When I was little I tried to tell the truth. I tried to say the words but they wouldn’t come out right.

  ‘Don’t make me go there,’ I said to Mum, but she didn’t listen.

  ‘Let me stay with you,’ I said to Rose, but she wouldn’t listen.

  Maybe they would have helped me if I’d said the right words, but maybe not. Mum was angry about Dad, and Rose was busy.

  When I was in the other place, Lila came to visit me and she told me about the stories in the newspaper. The stories were about Mr Winslow and all the things he had done. Lila didn’t bring Isabel to visit me at the other place, because we agreed that it was a bad place for a little girl to be. Lila only came once a month. It was a long way to drive and she had to find a babysitter for Isabel because I didn’t want Mum taking care of her. Lila would come and sit with me and tell me all about Isabel, and one day just before it was time for her to go and she had finished all her Isabel stories she said, ‘Oh, and you won’t believe what I read in the paper the other day.’

  She was wrong about that; I did believe it.

  I listened to Lila and watched as she smiled while she talked. ‘Can you imagine that?’ she said. ‘To think that we actually lived next door to them for a few years. I thought they were nice, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. My skin was hot and I had to take deep breaths.

  ‘But you used to play there all the time,’ she said.

  ‘I said I don’t remember,’ I said loudly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Lila. I didn’t answer her and she was quiet for a long time and then she said, ‘Fliss, is something wrong? Do you want to talk about something?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘Look, don’t worry about anything, okay? We’re going to get you out of here as soon as we can. Lucy is calling all the time, trying to find a way to get you transferred to somewhere better.’

  I started to cry then. Not because I wanted to be out of that awful place but because I wanted to tell Lila that I had stopped pretending about Mr Winslow and I knew the truth. But I couldn’t make the words come out. I was glad that the women in the newspaper had found a way to tell the truth.

  ‘Will he have to go to prison?’ I asked Lila when she was standing up to leave.

  ‘Who, Mr Winslow? I don’t know. The police aren’t involved yet. Some people are saying that it isn’t true and some people are saying that it is.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Lila, ‘Did he . . . did he ever do anything to you?’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t tell her and then Lila had to leave, visiting hours were over. When she came to visit me the next time she had forgotten all about Mr Winslow because Isabel had been sick and she was telling me about taking her to the doctor and getting her medicine to make her better.

  ‘Birdy, it’s your turn to make dinner,’ says Jess, and I stand up to go and do my job.

  ‘I wish we could make hamburgers again,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ says Jess. ‘They were good burgers.’

  ‘When I go home I’m going to make burgers all the time,’ I say.

  ‘When I go home I’m going to sit in a restaurant and get someone else to serve me.’

  ‘Will we see each other after we leave here?’ I say.

  ‘Of course we will,’ she says.

  I touch her on the shoulder because I want to give her a hug but Jess doesn’t like hugs from anyone but her kids. I want to tell her about Rose and about my agenda but I cover my mouth with my hand.

  ‘You right?’ says Jess.

  ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I’m great.’

  Chapter Ten

  It’s my turn to clean the bathroom in our unit today. I’ve been here for almost a month but have only just spotted my name assigned to this particular chore on the roster.

  Time passes so slowly here that I feel as though I can see the minute movements of the clock hands, and yet the weeks seem to have gone by quickly. Perhaps that perception is more self-preservation than anything else. There are calendars everywhere you look, cheap ones with pictures of animals or landscapes. On every one the days are crossed off with strong black or red marks, tearing through the paper, almost eliminating the date. I understand the need to only look forward. ‘How many months to go?’ is a frequent question, because most of the women are at the tail end of their sentences. How many months to go? I think sometimes, and then I turn away from that thought. There is no point in that for me right now.

  Very few of the women have been sent here straight from court. There is a woman named Julie who helped her husband die. He was suffering from cancer and in terrible pain and he begged her to end his suffering. ‘If you had seen his eyes,’ she says to everyone she meets. She doesn’t introduce herself or explain anything, she just says, ‘If you had seen his eyes,’ and then she walks away. ‘She’s okay once she’s told every new person that,’ said Sal when I asked her about it. ‘She just wants you to know.’

  Her stepchildren did not see what she did as an act of mercy, and they forced an investigation into their father’s death. Julie received a year’s sentence and was sent straight here. She helps to run the cooking school. She is the only person here who is older than me, although there is a look of peace in her sixty-year-old face that sometimes makes her appear younger. Once she has said what she needs to say she smiles. I envy her that peace, that certainty that she did the right thing.

  I’m aware that some of the women here view me as having been spared the time in a proper jail that I should have done. Each time I lose an hour here or there, involved in some task to the point where I forget where I am, I am grateful to Eric and his string-pulling. As the days go on I find it more rather than less bizarre that I’m still here, wearing my ill-fitting clothes, living with criminals. I feel as though in the latter half of my life I have become the actor in the family. I hope I’m putting in a good performance. I hope that I still know how to be Rose Winslow when I go home. I hope I still know how to be.

  ‘We’ve been giving you a bit of a break, Mrs Winslow,’ says Sal when she sees me looking at the roster of chores, and then she looks at Heather.

  ‘Please, ladies, as I’ve said before, call me Rose. And there’s no need to treat me any differently. I am here just like you and I will do what needs to be done.’

  ‘It’s just that you look a little tired, that’s all,’ says Heather.

  I had no idea anyone was watching me so closely. My nights here have become difficult. I fall asleep easily enough but wake after a couple of hours to lie in the dark paralysed by fear over my future. I think about Lottie and Sam, who both have birthdays coming up that I will miss, and I think about my and Simon’s anniversary next month. Families are tied together by celebrations, by the sharing of food and joy. I wonder what my daughters will think about on the day of my wedding anniversary. I worry tha
t I may have broken my family, that I’ve taken away their innocence and that they will be pulled apart by grief and tragedy.

  How will the grandchildren blow out their candles without Simon’s baritone voice singing ‘Happy Birthday’? One missing grandparent would have been terrible enough, but to be missing two seems a dreadful punishment. I have sent an email to Rosalind asking her to buy them gifts; she hasn’t replied, although I’m sure she will get each of them something and tell them it is from me. I know that Lottie likes My Little Pony and Sam is interested in anything electronic. If I stay here for three years they will both be very different by the time I see them again.

  I think about that as I lie in the dark. My heart rate speeds up and I cannot get back to sleep. If I eventually do, Simon is usually waiting for me. ‘But darling girl,’ he asks, ‘how could you have done such a thing?’ I find I miss him more as time goes on, not less. My loneliness makes his crimes recede and there is only my betrayal left.

  At first I managed to convince myself that I was only here for a short time, but as the appeals process drags on and on and Portia’s emails only say No news I’ve begun to feel quite marooned in this place. Yesterday we all had to line up in the hall while a dog sniffed us for drugs. It was beyond humiliating. I have no idea what the authorities think is being achieved by degrading human beings like this. The policeman handling the dog was very kind and professional, but it was hard not to imagine oneself guilty of something. We all stood straight-backed and silent, listening to the noises from the dog and I’m sure our own heartbeats. When it was over, there was some relieved laughter and then it was not discussed again.

  ‘I am finding all the physical work a bit of a challenge,’ I say to Heather. It seems to be the easiest explanation. ‘But I cannot shirk my responsibilities. It’s not as if I’ve never cleaned a bathroom before.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a maid?’

  ‘Not at the very beginning. Not when we were first married. When I had my first child, I had virtually no money. Simon was working as a waiter.’