Bird

by Sophie Cunningham

  ‘I am not a child, Robert, please don’t talk to me like I’m a child.’ He stepped back and dropped his hand. ‘My boss knows he’d be mad to lose me. But he hasn’t told me yet what he plans to do with my position.’

  ‘Okay,’ Robert sighed. ‘I am sorry. I am just nervous you might leave me for ever if you have no reason to come back. Would you like me to look after Minx for you? And also, I love you. In case you were wondering.’

  I had been wondering, but didn’t reply. Instead I began to prepare a paella. Just the kind of complicated dish you don’t need to be cooking when you plan to have a difficult conversation. Finally Robert spoke again. ‘What is it you are looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘Proof,’ I replied.

  ‘Of what?’

  It was a good question. What could I tell him? Of a cheek held lightly against my newborn skin? Of butterfly kisses? Of a heart full of love for me?

  I walked to the fridge and pulled out bags of fish, mussels and shrimp to clean. ‘Did you know I have a grandfather?’ I said, raising my voice over the sound of the running water. ‘Or at least, I had one…he only died four years ago—we could never talk to each other. He was crazy with grief for most of his life. All of mine. There is so much talk, these days, about keeping people alive, that sometimes, before his death, I wanted to ring up his doctors and scream at them: “Do you think you’re doing him a favour, keeping him alive like this? So many years after those who loved him have died?”’

  ‘Let me help,’ Robert came and stood beside me and started scrubbing at the mussels. I moved away from him to another section of the bench, started cutting onions, and kept on talking.

  ‘Whenever I asked him something the answer was like a car spinning out of control and it was like I was hanging onto the wheel, trying to get it back on the road. He would lurch from one subject to another—from what he’d done that morning, to the woman who ran the grocer shop at the local mall, to Stalinist purges, to girls cracked open like walnuts, whatever he meant by that. The older he got, the more haunted he became. The war was like an old movie running on a permanent loop in his head.’

  I was getting so worked up as I spoke that I stopped concentrating on what I was doing. The knife slipped and grazed my finger. I stopped talking for a moment and stared blankly at it, trying to figure out how close I’d come to seriously cutting myself.

  ‘Once when we were watching Platoon on TV together, I got up to get a glass of water. When I returned I found him with his hand over his head, crouching under his shrine-table, flinching at the sounds of gunfire. “He was so young,” he was saying. “So young.” I said to him, “Everyone had to kill then, Grandpa,” but he’d already done a U-turn by then. “That boy…”’ I waved my hand querulously to indicate my grandfather’s disintegrating style. ‘“Liquor store on Vine…no respect…crazy junkie.”’

  ‘How old was he when he died?’ Robert asked.

  ‘In his late nineties, I think. Close to a hundred. I asked him once why he thought he had lived so long and he said Anna had told him it was his karma. Then he pulled out a volume of poetry that was so dog-eared, yellowed and damp that it took me a while to make out the line he was pointing at: The souls of all my dears have fled to the stars. He said to me, “It is you who carries on for us. The child makes it all worthwhile. All worthwhile.”’

  I drifted into silence, much as André did when he ran out of things to say.

  ‘That is sad—but what has it to do with India?’ Robert was confused.

  ‘My grandfather missed people so much he went crazy,’ I said.

  ‘But you don’t miss her, do you? She was never there for you.’

  It was a stupid thing for him to say. What child doesn’t miss their mother? And if you’ve never had her in the first place, isn’t the loss all the greater?

  ‘Her not being here affects every aspect of my life,’ I said, trying not to sound angry. Telling him, instead, that my friends paraded macramé pot holders, strange quilted items and lacquer lampshades before me as a way of indicating that I was better off without a mother. And they told me their stories. A writer I knew, recently short-listed for the Booker Prize, was still asked by his mother when he planned to get a real job. A colleague turned up on her mother’s doorstep with two black eyes and, instead of hugging her, my friend’s mother says, ‘You really need to choose better.’ My assistant Mike used to beg to be allowed to work through the winter break just so he had an excuse not to fly down to warm and sunny Santa Fe for the family Christmas. There was constant talk of aging parents in homes. Of demented mothers recognising their sons but not the daughters who nursed them in their years of decay, and it was true that when I heard those kind of stories I was relieved my mother’s death was swift. (Eleanor, if you were ill I’d come to you, you know that don’t you? I would sit by you no matter how long your dying took. I would sit by you as I sat by Ian.)

  I told Robert this too: that some days I woke to the memory of Anna singing to me as a child; something she did often when I was tiny, less as I got older, and the last time I saw her she put her arms around me and be-bopped in a low voice for a moment or two—she needed to warm up, her voice was rusty—then began: I can’t give you anything but love / Baby / That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of / Baby…I told him that I was full of gratitude for the dreams and schemes she wished for me. That her bequest to me was one of magic as well as abandonment.

  ‘Let me tell you,’ I tried to explain, ‘about the time my mother slept in the open, high in the mountains, curled up next to a snow leopard for warmth. They spooned, my mother and the leopard, its pale, spotty tail so long that it inscribed a circle around Anna’s entire body.’ Robert listened though what I was saying was implausible. I described a clear sky and a milky way heavy as mercury; its silvery mists as thick as a blanket hung so low that Anna could reach out to touch the stars with her fingertips, tracing them east to Russia, to a battlefield where a young man lay on his back basking in the silver-light of white nights thinking of: home.

  Robert seemed unmoved. ‘You keep describing your mother’s experiences,’ he said. ‘What of your own? What is your first memory? Of India?’

  I shrugged. ‘That’s the problem,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember.’ It wasn’t really true of course, but I felt unable to put into words what was driving me and Robert wasn’t proving to be the sympathetic ear I’d hoped for. I returned to my elaborate preparations for dinner.

  Despite the awkwardness between us, Robert stayed, but, for the first time since we had begun seeing each other we didn’t have sex before we slept. I had expected more on the first night he said he loved me, but all he did was kiss me on the cheek then fall into a heavy sleep. He rolled onto his back and began to snore, so loudly that I couldn’t sleep. I lay there and considered his question. What was my first memory of India?

  This was it: holding my mother’s hair back from her beautiful face as she vomited into the hole in the floor of the train that was meant to be the toilet. The plains of India clack-a-clacked beneath us. It smelled of shit. Anna was so ill that we’d been locked in the toilet for over an hour. People came and went. Some banged on the door. When my mother finally stumbled out of the cubicle there was piss all over the floor. She picked me up and carried me out.

  I was only three and the images that come to me are unstable. They shift in place and time; I see flashes of wooden benches, endless plains and barred train windows that have no glass. I sit on Ian’s knee while my mother lies on the wooden benches with a shirt over her eyes. The carriages are crowded but the locals always make way for Anna and give her the space to lie down. She has that effect on people.

  Ian and I look out the window, watch the plains slip by, our lives slip by and then there we are, still together, twenty years later, in New York, not far from where I am lying now. I am twenty-three, and it is the day he turns forty-five. We are going to Gay Pride together.

  ‘I want you there this year, Az,’ Ian says. ‘It�
�s important to me.’ It is a beautiful summer day. The sky is clear. Ian is dressed conservatively in jeans and a white T-shirt. ‘Nothing worse,’ he says as we walk to where the march starts, ‘than a blonde who doesn’t know when she’s had her day.’ Steve—who looks far more flamboyant in leather chaps—laughs. I look at Ian and notice how thin he is looking.

  The rumour is that Alicia Bridges will be appearing at the after-parade party. Steve dances off through the crowd singing ‘I Love the Nightlife’. Ian and I take things more slowly. We walk and chant, ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.’ People stand and watch us as we walk by. Some of them cheer. One guy mimes throwing up. A group of Christians wave placards that say ‘Die Faggots!’ and yell that we are the spawn of Satan. A gorgeous young teenage boy walking along beside us calls back: ‘Satan can fuck me right up the ass, girlfriend.’

  ‘Things are looking up,’ Ian laughs, but his laughter becomes a cough. As we walk past the Whitehorse he reaches out and takes my hand. ‘Az,’ he says. ‘I need to rest.’

  And that, really, was the moment I knew.

  We join the queue for a seat out the front of the hotel, but the waiter waves us through the crowd to a small table set aside for staff. ‘You look beat, Ian,’ he says. ‘Now what can I get you?’ And there is something in the waiter’s manner, a solicitousness, which makes me realise everyone knows. Everyone has it figured but me.

  ‘Two beers,’ Ian says, then sits down to face me. A tear runs down his face.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’ I ask.

  ‘As soon as I sera-converted,’ he tries to smile. ‘And now I have. Happy Birthday, huh?’ He’d cancelled dinner last week; told me he was in bed with the flu.

  ‘I promised your mother I would take care of you, and now…’ Ian sits for a moment, trying to compose himself before going on. ‘But there’s this new drug. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe I’ll have a few more years.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I say, unconvincingly. ‘I’m a grown-up.’

  ‘Not to me, you’re not.’

  That is why I loved Ian so. He let me behave like a needy child. I never had to be sensible, or brave, or anything I wasn’t around him.

  ‘Steve?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s positive too, though he’s still healthy,’ Ian says, his voice breaking. ‘This disease…sometimes I think it won’t stop until its killed every fucking one of us.’

  The train that carries Ian, my mother and me across India takes us to Calcutta. That is where Ian and Anna marry. I can remember the bunch of marigolds I hold in my hand as they say their vows. After that we go to Darjeeling. I look through the bus window at the Ganges, which is no longer a snake curving through the dry plains of India but a bird, spreading great wings of water out through the land. The bus moves slowly because it is raining, then stops altogether. Anna carries me across a bridge and I look down through the gaps in the planks, to the gorge and roaring river below, while my mother grips me tightly and curses under her breath. She is wet, covered in mud and has no way of changing. The locals are laughing at her. Blonde, tall, her clothes clinging transparently to her body. They’ve never seen anything like her.

  Later Ian told me that a journey that should’ve taken twelve hours took twenty. For part of it I am perched on bags of rice in the aisle; I remember the rock and the sway. Then I am on a lap and when I open my eyes we are at a roadside stall. Ian is squatting, watching the bubbling marsala chai in the large tin container. When they serve the tea they pour a cupful from glass to glass several times, plying the streaming hot liquid, stretching its fall into an arc, catching it.

  Before the bus takes off again Anna washes herself and me as best she can, then we all climb up to the roof rack where I sit between her legs. ‘Hold tight, darling,’ Anna says, before we wind up the mountains towards the wet and cold and green. I hear the chatter of monkeys. Or I think I do: is that possible over the roar of the engine? Soon enough we break through big fat cumulus clouds; we rise above them, into a town where mist snakes through the air and everything smells of coal smoke.

  The next thing I remember is going to the town square. A brass band is playing and children are clutching balloons and having pony rides. Ponies. I want to ride on a pony. Anna calls a man over and helps me onto the back of one. After I recover my balance I wave at Mom and that is when I see that she is gone. It is an hour or more later—though it seems like an eternity—when she steps out of the bookshop onto the square, clutching something wrapped in brown paper. The pony man has bought me an ice-cream in an attempt to stop me crying. When he sees Anna he runs to her (I do too, I bury my head in her belly) and says, ‘You must pay me now. You must pay me extra.’

  Anna looks confused. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, to me. ‘I got distracted.’

  On another day Anna and Ian carry me down the mountain on which Darjeeling is perched. We walk to a monastery—it looks as if it is miles below us but really it isn’t so far. Streamers and flags billow in the wind and the sound of young monks chanting—pic-nic, pic-nic—echo up the mountain. When we get there all the monks are watching a pantomime. A big shaggy white lion with red baubles on its face flops and trots, prances and rears back. It lifts up both its left legs then both its right. It does a little dance. When the dance is over Anna approaches an old monk and asks him what the dance is. He can’t speak English but gestures to another monk who can.

  ‘It is a snow lion, miss. Special symbol of Tibet.’

  ‘Is Lama Govinda here?’ she asks. Lama Govinda is an Italian Tibetan monk who lives near Darjeeling. Anna has decided he will be her guru and Ian’s. She discovered him in the bookshop on the day she left me with the pony man, in a book called The Way of the White Clouds. (I have read it since. His tales of the red and white temples of Tsaparang in Western Tibet, of the valley of Toshang, are part of what draws me to the Himalaya. Like my mother I desire to be transported to other worlds and other ways of seeing. Unlike her I don’t know where to begin.)

  ‘No,’ the young monk shakes his head. ‘No Lama Govinda here. But, please look.’ He gestures to us to follow him.

  The monastery is square and squat; it crouches low against the long winters. It is painted dark green and red and has a large prayer wheel to the right of the main entrance. The monk opens double wooden doors and through them we see a dark room dimly lit by butter lamps. I am frightened of the dark, I tug at Anna’s hand. She disentangles herself from me and pushes me towards Ian. She steps ahead of us both to get inside before us. In the dull golden light we make out soot-blackened murals on the walls. ‘Story of Buddha life,’ the monk points at one. ‘The six realms,’ he points at another. ‘Titans and god, animal realm, hell realm, hungry ghosts, god realm, like that.’ He shows us different sections of the circular painting. ‘Some good. Some bad.’ He takes us to the altar and a Buddha is revealed; it is painted gold, with long lobes and blue curls piled on top of his head. Despite the thick smoke we see he is magnificent. There are glass bookcases on either side of him, filled with books made of wood. The monk slides a door across and pulls one out. It looks ancient. Later Anna tells me she was terrified it would turn to dust if the monk touched it, if she breathed on it, but the monk is gentle: he holds the book as tentatively as you would a newborn child.

  ‘Instructions on how to die, and bardo. Original copy. Very old,’ he says. ‘The most important thing. Bardo Thodal.’ The three of us look at him, not understanding. ‘The Book of the Dead,’ he says.

  I had become used to waking up slowly as Robert held me in his arms. It had quickly become impossible to remember how I lived, for so many years, without such tenderness in my life. But that morning Robert got up abruptly. I lay in bed trying not to see that as portentous, and listened to him grind the coffee. I was sitting up preparing myself for the worst when he brought the coffee in and sat down beside me on the bed.

  ‘I have been thinking,’ he announced, ‘that this isn’t working out.’

&nbs
p; ‘And last night’s declaration of love?’ I tried to sound firm but my voice wavered.

  ‘I do love you,’ he said. ‘But I have also been dating someone else. She is less complicated. She is, to be frank, more interested in being in a relationship.’

  ‘What do you mean you’re seeing someone else? I thought I was the first woman you’d fucked,’ I knew he hated it when I used that word so bluntly, ‘in three years. I thought we were going to move in together.’

  ‘Well so did I,’ he said. ‘It seems you have other plans. I have not, as you so delicately put it, fucked this other woman. Yet. But being with you has helped me get into the swing of things. So I must thank you for that.’ It was such a cruel thing to say that I thought, for a moment, that he was joking. He wasn’t.

  ‘I will still feed Minx for you, though, if that would be useful.’ He was being charming, but he was angry. He wanted to punish me.

  I slapped him full across the face. ‘Steve,’ I said, ‘can feed the cat.’

  Eleanor

  I tickle the Bodhisattva and salute the new sunset, home

  riding home to old city on ocean

  Almost eighteen years to the day after I first met Anna, Marilyn and I stood in Delhi airport, waiting for her to emerge from the crowd. We’d never left America before and I had not expected the combination of heat and humidity that soaked us in sweat the moment we stepped out of the plane. Men surrounded us then grabbed, in an effort to get our bags and take us off to whichever hotel would give them a pay-off. I thought I might freak out. Marilyn, on the other hand, stood calmly and looked intensely interested in everything that was going on around her.

  In retrospect, I must have looked ridiculous. I was wearing a full-length long-sleeved dress I’d made from ribbons and a chenille bedspread. The outfit was a combination of fashion—it was 1966—and necessity: ever since the attack I’d chosen to cover my legs to hide the scars Patrowski’s knife had left. Marilyn wore a long dress too, but at least hers was made of light cotton: bright purple. She looked much more like Col than me, with her wild mop of black curls and the light freckles sprinkling her face, freckles that would turn black in the sun over the three months of our stay in Asia. My hair fell to the middle of my back and I suddenly felt very hot. I was beginning to twist it away from my neck when two hands came up behind me, took my hair and pinned it. ‘Hello, darling.’ It was Anna.