How to Make a Bird
Martine Murray
In memory of Lise
and
For John
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
chapter twenty-eight
chapter twenty-nine
chapter thirty
chapter thirty-one
chapter thirty-two
chapter thirty-three
Acknowledgements
Copyright
chapter one
There are these wings and they’re in the sky. They’re pointing downward, like a pair of stiff old socks left on the line. If you were the kind of person who had dramatic tendencies, you’d think a nearby angel, who’d been hovering over Blackjack Road, had torn off her wings in despair and left them hanging in the sky as a warning.
But I knew the wings weren’t made of angel, or bird either. I knew they were only balsa wood, and I knew it was Mr. Nelson who had strung them up there, because I saw him do it. The wings once belonged to a balsa-wood eagle, fixed in the sky in a permanent swoop position to scare the birds off Mr. Nelson’s apples. It was a glorious Hollywood position for the wings, outstretched and looming above the world, lording it up, presiding. So, once the body went and the wings drooped, you couldn’t help feeling despair on behalf of the wings. You couldn’t help noticing they weren’t looking so exultant anymore. And you couldn’t help thinking that anyone else who saw those old wings might even laugh at them, or think they were just a fudged-up kids’ kite.
It was on account of those despairing wings that I didn’t make a clean getaway. It was dark when I left, so I couldn’t actually see them, but I knew they were there, flapping in a stricken, dying-fish way. I yanked my bike out of the garage and was just ready to ride off into the night when, in my mind, those wings started their death flap. I tried to be kind of tough about it, but there was no denying that the wings had put a sad feeling in me. I got so edgy I had to stand still and look about for a while. The moon was lying pale and quivery in the sky, like a bony finger mark on a black cloth. The houses were hushed and still and I was telling myself there was no reason to feel sad, not even for the wings, or the way the moon was fading, getting thin like tissue. There wasn’t even one piece of brightness to ache over. The fields were like crinkled-up gray blankets huddled over a sleeping earth. Harry Jacob’s house looked grim, all bitten by the blackness. During the day it was the color of a mint chew, and perched awkwardly on its bald grass slope as if it hadn’t quite settled. Now it had sunk smugly into the night’s shadows and it peered down at me as if it knew what I was doing, standing there alone in the darkness. In the midst of the bleating crickets and cracking thin limbs of trees, I could almost hear the house letting out a muffled sneery snort, like my mother used to when I said what I thought of one thing or another.
Well, don’t pretend, I felt like saying to Harry Jacob’s green house, don’t pretend that you belong now. Just because the night has made you the same color as all the other houses, don’t pretend to be serious, because as soon as the light comes up you’ll still be an old green house that doesn’t look right.
I turned away from Harry’s house and pulled up my dress so I could hitch my leg over the bike. Eddie would have been appalled if he’d seen me trying to ride a bike in this long dress. It was stupid, but I didn’t care. I was even glad it was stupid.
Our house was the kind that did look right. You didn’t need to feel embarrassed about our house, with its bullnose veranda and white weatherboards and some of my mother’s English roses frothing up the side. There were two identical windows at the front, which made it look balanced and polite, like a face that would never shriek or contort in pain. I felt funny, thinking about the way the house looked on the outside and the way it felt on the inside, how they didn’t match, how trying to match them up was like trying to wear a dress inside out and make it look right. I went all tight and elbowy just thinking about it. Anyone else would feel certain that this was a house with a piano in it, and someone sitting at a table with a napkin on their knee, and someone else humming or stitching up a hole in a faithful old jumper, or rising out of an armchair to make tea. I tried to fix this outside picture of the house in my mind, as if its calm, unshakable face were true. And with that picture in my mind I really would have ridden off, if it wasn’t for the thing I felt. It came over me with a huge overlapping quiet, coming right out of the darkness. Not from the house, but out of the pure dark air. It wasn’t the wings anymore, it was almost a noise…but not quite, more the sense that a noise was waiting, twitching like a long-eared animal in a burrow. I could tell that the noise, if it came, would not belong to the normal soft hum of leaves scraping the air.
I turned quickly and looked behind me.
Harry Jacob stood on the grass. He looked unnatural and dark and struck dead still, standing there in pale pajamas that quivered around his legs. His head tilted a little to one side.
“Hey, you scared me, Harry,” I called out in a loud whisper. “What the hell are you doing?”
Harry took a few steps toward me and leaned up against the fence post. He had that look he gets when he can’t understand something and all the thinking parts in his mind crash up against each other and break down. I didn’t like looking at his broken-down face; it made me mad.
“Well, what are you doing, Mannie? Where the hell are you going at this time? It’s five o’clock in the morning. And why are you wearing that dress?”
I looked down at the dress, in a purposefully weary and innocent way, as if to ascertain what dress I was wearing.
It was the red one. We both knew it was.
“It’s my mother’s dress.”
“Why are you wearing it?”
“’Cause I just am. I’m celebrating.” I could feel my bottom lip bloat up like a bullfrog.
“Celebrating what?” Harry looked down and kicked at the grass with his bare foot. There hadn’t been much to celebrate lately.
“Anything. The sound of a train coming. You’ve gotta find something to celebrate.” I pushed my hands in the air because I felt like throwing something away, only I had nothing to throw.
“Where you going? You can’t ride a bike in that dress.”
“Yeah? Watch me!” I twisted the long part of the dress up and held it over the handlebars, to show him how it was done. Harry came closer and stood in front of me.
“You can see your legs,” he said, and then he smiled, “right up to your undies.”
Hell, I liked that smile he had. Just half his mouth went up, and he looked lopsided and sweet. But I wasn’t going to smile back. I didn’t want the conversation to get soft.
“Who cares? Who’s gonna see anything out here at this time?” My head tipped back and I heard my own mean laugh empty into the night. I didn’t want to look at Harry. “I’m going to Melb
ourne. Not just to visit. I’ve got some business there, and then I’m just gonna see. Who knows? I may even go someplace else. Sydney. Or Paris even.”
He just stood there, nodding his head, with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes looking down. I had planned it so that there wouldn’t have to be any explanations or good-byes, and now Harry had stuffed up my plan by appearing, all struck and weird in the night, when he should have been sleeping.
“Were you spying on me, Harry?”
“Shit, Mannie, you know I wasn’t spying. I just wasn’t asleep and I heard your garage opening. I looked out—in case it was someone, you know, breaking in—and I saw you, just standing there in that dress, and I thought…Well, I don’t know what I thought.”
He ran his hand through his hair and it parted over his forehead. I almost stretched out my hand to smooth it back how I liked it best. Harry has brown curls in his hair, and when they sit right on his face he looks a certain way, like a lovely grown child, like someone who could never ever do an evil thing or think a mean thought. Now that he had pushed the hair off his face, it didn’t look as good, and I knew I was right to leave. Besides, Harry always wore the same old clothes.
“You know what? The problem is, we’re different. You’re slow and I’m fast. It’s like we’re in a different race, you and me.” I didn’t mean to say it like that. Sometimes sentences rushed out before I checked them over for holes or hidden weapons.
Harry took a step back, as if he was jolted by the force of the mean words I was saying. He turned and stared out over the fields, but you could tell he wasn’t seeing the view.
“The problem is, I’m not in any race.” He was shaking his head as if he was sort of disgusted, like the air smelled bad. “So you do what you like, Mannie?” He didn’t look at me. He just threw the words out, as if they were rotten inside him.
The night seemed to be fading around us. I sighed and fixed my eyes on the moon. It should just give up and go away and let the sun come, I thought. Then I adjusted my pack in the basket, not because it needed adjusting, but because something needed doing. After a while Harry spoke.
“Does your dad know?” His look was hard and it made me worry. Harry never looked hard. I shook my head.
“Course he doesn’t. That’s why I’m creeping out now. I’m going to ride to Castlemaine and catch the first train in the morning. Don’t make me feel bad about this, Harry.”
He was turning away, and just watching him turn away like that was making me feel bad. In fact everything he did was making me feel bad and I was angry about it. I was just about to charge at him when he looked back, with his arm raised as if in a final salute, so I could only see half his face, and that was clouded by darkness.
“Hope you win your race,” he called out. But you couldn’t tell if he really meant it or if he meant the exact opposite. And then he was walking away. Just like that: one, two, three.
If there was one thing that really annoyed me, it was someone walking away on me. I dropped my bike, but still he didn’t turn. I ran up to him and pulled at his wrist.
“Well, aren’t you even going to say good-bye? Harry?” My voice rose and stumbled out of me. He was looking down at my hand around his wrist, as if my hand was taking liberties and no longer had a right to be there. I dropped his wrist and frowned.
“Good-bye, Mannie.” His pajamas shivered around him.
“Bye, Harry.” I touched his arm, just slightly. Then I turned and went, and I didn’t think once about those old wings.
chapter two
It was a twenty-eight-minute bike ride to the train station, if you took the highway. Usually I went up Chanters Lane, and then along Specimen Gully Road, but at night it was too dark to see the potholes. Every day I walked up that thin snake of a road, so I knew the lane pretty well. I knew its turns and slopes, the rasping sound it made, the whipped-up long grass beside it, and the gullies all choked with bullrush and thistle. You could probably hear my hungry old thoughts still sifting through those thistles. Every day I’d trodden them in and then stirred them up; because of them, I’d heard my heart going thump thump thump like a wallaby bounding through the bush.
If you think about it, you can see your whole life worn into the slant and cut of the land. You’re part of what trod it into the shape it’s in; you and the cows and the wind, and the storm of your own longings too. So you’re in it: the line and the weight of you, the momentum you unrolled like a stone on the slope, the directions you chose or the paths that chose you. You’re in it and it’s in you.
You can tell the land has a hold on you when a pair of forgotten wings gets into your head and your mind starts yelping. I’d been up that road enough. It was my old way. Besides, it was a dirt lane and I didn’t want to ruin my dress. I wasn’t in a good mood anymore, not after seeing Harry. He’d made me feel bad, and I needed to concentrate on cleaning him out of my mind. So I rode along the highway, where it was flat.
I took my hands off the handlebars and stuck them behind my head for a minute, riding just like Eddie did when he was showing off around girls. If anyone had seen me they would have said, “Well, I never! There goes Mannie Clarkeson, on a deserted highway, riding no-hands in the dark, in a long red dress that’s blowing out behind her like a sail.” I was showing off to no one, except the moon. I was making myself feel like a champion, like a winner, like someone who was bursting through the finish line in a big stadium. I was swallowing the wind and the darkness around me, and all the unheard opinions too. It was a lot of work, and I wasn’t quite convinced. I guess that’s why I had the red dress on: to make me more convincing.
The red dress was my mother’s, made of satin or silk or something that shone. At the front there were three tiny black buttons, and from the waist it widened and floated down. It made me feel tremendously elegant and worthwhile. I wanted to keep that feeling. When Mum wore it she seemed to shine, not with light, but with some deep, dark color. It was a kind of blood glowing and it made you want to be near her, just as you want to be near shafts of winter sun, thinking they might warm you.
But those were the times when we had guests. Mum would have a glass of wine in her hand, and she’d be smiling and laughing just like a lady in a magazine advertising cigarettes or shoes.
Dad organized the parties, because he knew it cheered her up. He’d ask the Brixtons, old Ted Ballard, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob, and sometimes the Bartholomews or the Hill family or Travis Houghton. Dad would be handing out drinks and relaxing his smile and gazing over at his foreign wife, checking to make sure she was happy. She sat with one hand on the back of the couch and one foot poking out, playing with the edge of the red dress, making it billow and lap like a spilling wave. She spoke of Paris and the famous Théâtre Pigalle, where she had been an actress. Everyone watched her, because of the dress and the way her hands conducted the air. When she laughed, one hand went to her mouth as if to stop the laugh tumbling out, even though she wanted everyone to hear it. Her face lifted up, and she smiled afterward because she knew how she had drawn everyone toward her with that bubbling-out laugh.
At some point in those evenings, Mum would request music and call for Eddie.
“Eddie, Eddie, let’s dance. You and I.” She would hold her hand out and Eddie would frown and push his arms into the couch, as if he was digging himself into it. “Eddie,” she’d plead, “please dance with me. Come on. Just one dance? For your mother?”
Eddie would stare at the floor. I remember once how the room waited, how it seemed as if time couldn’t move at all but was trapped, wedged up in the space between Mum’s pleading hand and Eddie, sitting stiff and reluctant as a fence post. Everyone was watching. Our mother’s hand was the only thing that moved. Her wrist was limp and the hand fluttered at Eddie. It made you feel that Eddie had to take hold of the hand, had to.
I didn’t like it: the way Eddie and Mum together made this big tear in the night’s fabric, a gaping hole with everyone shifting and getting uncomfortable and
thinking bad thoughts. Mr. Bartholomew was rubbing his eyebrow, and Travis Houghton was grinning and sitting with his arms spread across the back of the old couch. Dad creased his body toward the record player, with one hand on the volume button, staring at Eddie and at Mum’s pleading hand with a great pain in his eyes. But then Mrs. Nelson, who had a big heaving bust, let out a breath as Eddie slowly pushed himself up and, with his head hung down, dragged his feet over and caught the flapping hand. And as he did, the music welled up and filled the room and poured over the stiffness, and there was a melting, a sinking, a swaying, as everyone watched the dancing pair. They swung in and out, and Eddie hardly tried. He didn’t make any little fancy movements, but he could do the steps. She’d taught him. Just so she could do all the fancy stuff. She was like a ribbon whirling around him. Eddie, her perfect dark center.
She was never happier. Her face was open and her eyes hovered like dark moths, as if for once she wasn’t aware of who was watching. She didn’t even toss a smile at Travis Houghton. She moved like an angel, weightless and soft. She always said that Dad had two left feet, but Eddie was just like her, a natural.
It was true. She and Eddie were both light on their feet. They drew people toward them, not because of how they looked or what they said, but because of the way they moved: that slow, easy slipping, both of them filling a space the way honey sinks into a bowl. And she spoke with a voice that unraveled over you. Eddie had that as well—a deep lovely voice. Only Eddie didn’t use his voice to make you do things for him, and he didn’t lie around in bed like she did.
I rode beside the train tracks and watched the sun glistening on them, and I would have been glistening too, if anyone cared to look. Sometimes you just have to be your own eyes. You have to see yourself shining and stop waiting for other eyes to see you.
The platform was empty. I lay down on the bench and waited, and for once I didn’t care about waiting. I was spread over the bench with my red silk dress covering me, and the sun, fat like an egg yolk, glowing all over the day. It was dramatic in an absolutely quiet and private way. I was the hero reclining, as they do in paintings, with the blaze of silk and sun, spilled and flowing, giving me a glorious feeling, a kind of feeling that needed trumpets to accompany it. Soon a guard came, but he didn’t play a trumpet. He just shuffled around and coughed.
How to Make a Bird Page 1