Flight

To my tiny, chubby, syrup-greased hands, it was irresistible. Beads of golden sunlight clung to its varnished exterior like water, always jumping and pooling. At least, that’s how it appeared to me. Pa had quipped that if I’d just settled down, the light would stop moving too. But, being the remarkable two-year-old that I was, at no point that morning did I settle down.

It didn’t matter what they sat on the table in front of me. Platters were heaped with rolling dunes of cinnamon sugar. Pannekoeken – thin, soft pancakes – crisped to a caramel brown in places – were swept through the valleys. There were glasses of milk, their tops glazed with fresh cream. There was honey, maple syrup, and sugar-coated contempt.

‘She’s unbelievable,’ my mother said.

She’d laughed the words, according to Ma. But, when it came to my mother, laughter was a tricky thing.

‘She’s curious,’ Ma chuckled, watching my frantic dance as she rolled a pannekoek in her plate.

Pa cleared his throat, eyeing the two women from behind a copy of the Mogo Paper.

‘She’s two,’ he said.

Nevertheless, the fact remained that it was a white, vitrified clay bird that mesmerized my tiny mind. And it was my little arms, grasping at it, ‘waving about like those dancing balloon men,’ that mesmerized Ma.

***

Now, Ma lifted the porcelain object out from beneath her white bed sheets.

‘Aunty Pat was after this one,’ she whispered, passing it to me, ‘told her I left the front window open. That it must’ve flown out.’

I smiled, lifting the memento from her trembling, pencil-thin fingers. The glassy bird, once an artwork of symmetry, now embodied the notion that, while all doves can fly, not all should. Although fractured, its glossy surface stole the sharp white from the hospital light overhead.

‘I know you didn’t want to come back here,’ Ma said.

‘Of course I did.’ My smile faltered.

‘Maya.’

I looked down at the dove, its uneven bulges resting uncomfortably in my hands. Finding the scar, I pressed my thumb to the crack of Stük Super Glue lining its neck.

‘I saw mum.’

Ma was silent.

‘She thinks I’m just coming back to take what I need. And leave. Because it’s me.’

‘To hell with that!’ Ma chuckled, clapping her knee, ‘I’m scratching you lot right out of the will.’

‘Ma!’

Slightly horrified, and then a little amused, I gave in with a smile. It felt loose on my lips, and I realized how stiff the others had been.

Ma grinned widely.

‘Either way,’ she continued, ‘you got a pretty good deal, didn’t you?’

I followed her eyes to the misshapen sculpture in my lap, to where the dove’s 24-carat beak glistened under the sterile light.

Aunt Pat would be furious.

That’s twenty grand right there, she’d say, could just about pay off the rest of the Mercedes with that.

I imagined walking out of the Palliative care room with it. Watching her upturned nose twitch, and her penciled-on eyebrows rise in disbelief.

Beside her, my mother would be standing. She’d be smiling. Stiffly. Her dead eyes would track the fateful object in my arms, and she’d remember the moment she decided she hated me.

‘Maya.’

I was crying.

Ma took my hand, gently enclosing it in hers.

As I lifted my other hand to cover my watery eyes and scrunched up face, Ma swiped it from me, all too keenly anticipating that maneuver.

‘You know what you and that mess of a bird taught me?’

‘That Aunt Pat’s a gold-digger,’ I sniffled, now burying my face in the shoulder of Ma’s cardigan.

Ma laughed. ‘I think we all already knew that.’

The metal bedframe creaked beneath what little weight it bore as Ma leaned in and spoke.

‘Some things are perfect,’ she began, squeezing my fingers, ‘and some need work. Other things are better left in a million pieces on the floor.’ Ma pressed my hand to the ceramic dove in my lap. ‘But the light moves when we do, and so, we move.’

***

MESSAGE 2 Minutes Ago

+61 402 247 548

Your grandmother passed away 15 mins ago. Safe trip back to Sydney x – Mum

‘What is it?’

The taxi driver’s brittle voice impaled the silence. The smell of aftershave came first, musty and pungent. Then the humid air, sticky, but cold. Shifting in a dress so wet that it clung to my legs like plaster, I felt a damp car seat press warmly against my back.

‘That… white…’ the driver continued.

Tucking a sling of wet hair behind my ear, I followed the man’s gaze to the amorphous thing in my lap.

The bird.

As the yellow streetlights swept past us, washing across its fractured skin, I wondered if Ma knew how much I hated it.

‘What is it?’ the driver asked again.

I sighed.

It was a gift, at the very least, from my mother to my grandmother, and now, from my grandmother to me. What more it was, I was uncertain, but I knew it was more.

‘My Ma’s – grandmother’s – sixtieth birthday present.’

I eyed the bird wearily, regretting my decision to sit in front.

‘Aah,’ the man breathed, his eyes shifting hesitantly back to the road, ‘I’m sure she’ll like it.’

I grinned.

She did like it. Very much. Not necessarily at the time it was gifted, but at least several times after. My mother had me to thank for that. Mine was a simple obsession, but it was the stuff of legends.

But, like all events so elusively buried in the past, there were multiple interpretations.

Watching the taxi’s golden headlights lance through the night fog, crystalizing each sheet of rain that fell through the light, I remembered my mother’s: a sharp and articulate analysis, that fell like glass on the dining room table, following the shattering events of July fourteen.

***

‘Absolutely unbelievable!”

I froze as the thundering voice punctured the front door of Ma and Pa’s home. A metallic click sounded and the door swung open, its ancient hinges screaming.

‘Why for Christ’s sake can’t you just be normal!’

Tears scratched at the back of my eyes as my mother’s approaching footsteps rattled the silverware.

A surprisingly agile Ma emerged from the kitchen, her Care Bear oven mitts scrunched tightly around a frying pan.

My mother appeared in the opposite doorway, tossing a small, black notebook on the dining room table in front of me.

‘If Dr Kleine had seen you, he’d have given you the Ritalin!’

I sheepishly eyed the journal.

Any time I did anything less than desirable, my mother would jot it down in that little black book. The wriggles I got before weekends at Ma’s, the ‘absurd’ way I sat at the dining room table, my lifelong love of birds: the moment any part of me touched that book, it became a symptom.

‘She’s just curious, Pen,’ Ma retorted, squinting playfully at me, ‘it was an accident.’

Had Pa been alive, perhaps he would have reminded my mother that I was five.

‘Curious?’ My mother laughed, pressing her fingers to her forehead. It was a strange laughter, the curves thick with derision, and the ends sharp. Acidic, almost. ‘What on earth is there to be curious about? It’s a piece of clay for God’s sake.’

‘Well for one thing,’ Ma began, peering wryly over her glasses, ‘the fact that you forked up thirty grand for it.’

Come evening, I found myself sitting alone on the ledge of the front porch.

However, just as the sun blinked behind the prickly pear tree, a pink galah soared through the sky. It didn’t land among the miners, as I had so desperately hoped for, but instead it swerved between Ma’s magnolias, before stretching out its majestic wings and disappearing from view.

There was no doubt in my mind that it had just found Ma’s waratah bush. Bushes clearly visible from the kitchen window.

I stormed inside and sprinted down the corridor, past the obnoxiously large huntsman that never seemed to move. Arriving at the kitchen door, I placed my fingers to the frigid metal handle and peered through the crack.

There it was.

It arched its back and ruffled its pink feathers, fanning the stark white crest on its head. Clawing onto the bush stem, it tucked its beak into the bud of a bright red waratah flower.

‘She’s unbearable!’ My mother’s voice.

‘No she’s not.’ Ma’s.

‘She is.’

‘She’s a child, Pen.’

I pressed my hand gently to the door and the kitchen unfolded in front of me. Ma stood with her back leaning against the fridge. My mother stood across from her, clenching the black book in her hands.

‘That’s not what children do.’

‘Of course it is, Penelope. That’s exactly what they do.’

‘Maya is ill.’

‘No, she isn’t. Dr Beck says she isn’t. Richard says she isn’t.’

‘And who the hell raised her? Dr Beck? Richard?’

It was at that moment that Ma spotted the pink galah in the window, and she knew I was watching.

‘Maya.’

The air fell still.

I stepped out from behind the doorway.

‘I’ll be better,’ I whispered, my timid voice poking at the wall of silence.

I flinched as my mother sighed sharply, her cold eyes pinning me to the door.

‘No, Maya. You won’t.’

Ma stepped forward.

‘Careful, Pen.’

‘That’s the thing,’ my mother laughed, gripping the journal tightly between her clenched fingers, ‘You won’t get better. You never do.’

Ma swiped the book from my mother’s hand.

‘Penelope. Not another word.’

My mother ignored her.

‘No matter how much I scream – what medication I put you on - because it’s YOU Maya. It’s you.’

***

‘…and no matter how much I pray that you’ll be anyone else, you’ll always just be you.’

Now, the words rolled around on my tongue as I pressed my head to the taxi windscreen. After fifteen years, I could still remember every word. Every lingering syllable. Every crack in my mother’s voice.

According to Ma, my mother made quite the percussive exit from the house that morning. An exit that would have been truly impressive, if not for the thickly carpeted floor.

And as for my mother’s little black book, I never saw it again.

***

That night, Ma and I had found ourselves at the crime scene, wrapped tightly in a woolly blanket beside the fireplace. A timid flame ate away at a pile of scrunched up paper, throwing our shadows across the wall and lighting up our corner of the room like a pocket of gold in the middle of space.

And in the far beyond, shards of vitrified clay lay shattered on the carpet, catching the light like stars.

‘Can we put it back together?’

‘If you want,’ Ma smiled, ‘but it will still be broken.’

***

As miles of grey tar soared beneath us, I watched glistening beads of water drizzle across the taxi windscreen.

‘The light moves when we do, and so, we move.’

All at once, I understood.

‘Could we pull over?’

‘Here?’

I nodded.

Uneasily biting his bottom lip, the taxi driver pulled the car into a muddy gravel lane beside the highway.

I shoved the passenger door open and stepped out onto the wet dirt.

Holding the glass bird tightly against my chest, I eyed the tire tracks that had been squelched into the road, each one brimming with little puddles.

‘Yep, this’ll do.’

Taking an uneasy breath, I threw the glass bird into the air and watched it plummet to the ground.

As it shattered into a million piece, splintering the dirt with moonlight and glass, a little black book tumbled from the wreckage.

I froze.

For several moments, I simply stood there, watching it.

Then, taking a reluctant step forward, I lifted the book from the mud. Though several pages had been torn out, a single one remained, inked with Ma’s cursive:

‘It always looked better on the floor anyway.'