Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  ‘Eat your breakfast, Elodie,’ Ingrid pours more coffee, and looks pointedly at Elodie’s bowl of cereal.

  ‘Yes. Who is that?’

  ‘That is my son, Elodie. Our son, Anton. When he was a little boy.’

  Elodie continues to spoon Cheerios into her mouth. ‘Anton. Where is Anton?’

  Ingrid doesn’t answer for a moment. In the silence Elodie stretches across the table to trail her fingers along the sharp lines of the silver eagle, its gleaming half-raised wings. She hums a tune she has learnt from a television advertisement for detergent.

  Ingrid’s voice, when she speaks, is very quiet. ‘He lives in England, Elodie, in something called a boarding school.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Elodie, mulling this over. ‘Why?’

  It’s the sound of creaking floorboards that alerts them to Robert’s presence. In the forest there had been a stagnant pond in which the water had sat dank and green beneath a layer of rotten leaves. Once, she had broken the stillness with the end of a stick and had recoiled in shock when a large, slime-covered toad had suddenly sprung out at her. This is what she thinks of when she sees the look that slithers between Ingrid and Robert at that moment.

  Ingrid breaks the silence first. ‘Was there something you wanted, Robert?’

  A second, and then another, drips icily by, before Robert drops his eyes and turns away. ‘No,’ he says, quietly. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Go and get dressed, now, Elodie,’ Ingrid tells her. ‘You have an appointment with Doctor Schultz at nine.’

  Later, she will be able to recall this incident vividly, because it happens on the morning that the blood comes, an event that would render every detail of that day unforgettable. Ingrid had already prepared her for her first period. Only a few months before, soon after she had turned fourteen, she had sat Elodie down and carefully explained what would soon be happening to her. She had used unfamiliar words and though Elodie had nodded and said she understood, the subject had fallen from her mind in the time it had taken to turn the TV on again.

  She is about to get into the shower when it happens. It’s not until she’s removed her pyjamas and is about to turn the tap on when she looks down and notices the smears of blood. ‘Ingrid!’ Her cry is so loud and panic-stricken that she hears her footsteps on the stairs almost immediately.

  In the few seconds that it takes Ingrid to grasp the situation, she stands in the doorway, her startled face looking in at Elodie as she shivers, naked on the bath mat. Within moments she has fetched sanitary napkins and clean underwear, turning on the shower and gently pushing Elodie beneath the water. Afterwards, wrapping her in a towel she patiently explains what has happened to her. Soon, Elodie is back in her bedroom, dressed and reassured, a mug of coco in her hands.

  But later that evening, alone in bed, something from the incident lingers in her mind, something quite separate from the shock of her first bleeding. In the moment that Ingrid had opened the door and gazed in at her, something had passed between the two of them that had reached Elodie even through her confusion and panic. She had been undressed in front of Ingrid before, but this was the first time that she had been conscious of her nakedness. In the few seconds before Ingrid had grasped the situation, Elodie had become acutely aware of her new, small breasts and the soft down of hair that had recently begun to sprout between her legs. And as she’d stood there, shivering on the bath mat, she had felt Ingrid’s gaze linger on her body for a moment. She wasn’t sure what she had seen there, in the other woman’s eyes. Like a black crow landing briefly before quickly taking flight again. The moment passed, and almost immediately Ingrid had dropped her gaze and begun to busy herself with helping her.

  Soon, Elodie grows accustomed to her monthly bleeding, but the strangeness that passed between them in the bathroom that morning stays with her, and for reasons she cannot even begin to explain to herself, she takes to locking the door now, whenever she undresses.

  It’s a few months later when Anton arrives. It’s winter, Christmas time, and recently Elodie has been woken more frequently by the sound of angry, raised voices and the slamming of doors. One afternoon, not long after Yaya and Colin have left for the day and Elodie is sitting in the schoolroom finishing her lessons, Ingrid leaves her desk and comes to sit beside her.

  ‘Elodie, do you remember I told you about my son, Anton?’

  She nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he’s coming to stay with us for a little while.’

  ‘Oh. Is he nice?’

  ‘Elodie. He’ll only be here for two weeks, but you will notice certain changes. You will eat your meals up here, that sort of thing. Things will be a bit different for a short time, just while Anton’s here. Do you understand?’

  ‘OK.’

  The first change is the locked door. Although she’s never been allowed to leave the house by herself, she’s always had free range of all the rooms. Now, however, the door at the end of the landing which separates her top-floor quarters from the stairs to the rest of the house remains locked. Yaya and Colin are on vacation, and so her days are spent alone with Ingrid.

  With each day, Ingrid seems to grow more distracted and unhappy, and Elodie notices that the flaky, raw patches on her arms have begun to flare again, sometimes into angry, red welts. One afternoon she looks up from her books and sees her absently scratching at herself, seemingly unaware of the tiny specks of blood that have begun to appear beneath her nails. Quietly, Elodie gets up from her seat and goes to her, gently taking the slim white hand in her own, while Ingrid looks up, startled, blinking in surprise at what she’s done.

  But often during the few weeks of Anton’s visit, Elodie is left alone. In Ingrid’s absence she whiles away the time staring out of the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the stranger who’s so mysteriously kept apart from her in the house below. Mostly she watches the little TV set that Ingrid has recently allowed her to have in the corner of the schoolroom. Through endless cop shows and soap operas, romantic comedies and late-night thrillers, Elodie stares unblinking at a world beyond High Barn that she can barely comprehend. Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey, The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Letterman and Larry Sanders, Hill Street Blues and America’s Most Wanted. With no Ingrid to monitor what she sees, two or three hours will pass without her stirring, and she’ll watch an infomercial for skin cleanser with the same open-mouthed incredulity that she’ll watch a report from Death Row. There she sits, night after night, while love and death, sex and betrayal, murder and redemption in all their myriad variations are played out before her in a billion pixellated images upon a nine-inch screen.

  Later, in bed, beneath the silent darkness, her fingers caress and stroke her new, changing body. And day by day, a nameless hunger grows.

  Only twice does she catch a glimpse of Anton during his stay. The first time, she is standing at her bedroom window when Ingrid, Robert and a tall, slim teenage boy emerge from the house onto the drive. The boy has long messy hair that hides most of his face and a tense, tight way of holding himself, his fists clenched by his side. It’s strange, watching the three of them without their knowledge; they seem small and far away somehow, like characters in a movie. She sees Ingrid speak to Anton, her pink, anxious eyes fixed nervously on her son’s face. And though she can’t hear them she sees that the words that escape the boy’s barely open lips in reply make Ingrid flinch as if he’d struck her. She sees, also, the quick flash of enjoyment that momentarily lights up Robert’s face, even as he puts a remonstrative hand on Anton’s shoulder.

  The second time, she spies him standing alone at the very end of the garden, between the two cherry trees. And although he has his back to her, something strikes her about his bearing; the droop in his shoulders, the still, somehow defeated way he remains at the edge of the lawn as if reluctant to return to the house. Silently she wills him to turn, desperate suddenly to see his face. But just at that moment Ingrid returns to the schoolroom with her supper and Elodie obediently takes her seat, i
nstinctively keeping quiet about what she’s seen.

  It’s a few days later that the police come. She’s woken in the night by Ingrid and Robert arguing more loudly and more passionately than usual. She is lying there in bed waiting for them to stop when the red and blue lights start flashing across the ceiling and she hears the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel outside. Going to her window she watches as a police officer leads Anton from the back seat up to the house. It’s too dark to see clearly but she notices that he puts up no resistance and waits silently next to the policeman while his parents come to the door.

  Elodie sits and waits in the dark, unable to hear anything but a low rumble of voices from the kitchen below. When after half an hour the policeman leaves, the shouting starts immediately. Elodie can’t make out Anton’s voice, only Ingrid’s shrill pleading and Robert’s exasperated bellow. But at last she hears the front door slam and from her window sees the boy running across the lawn. At the end of the drive he pauses and looks back at the house. For a split second his gaze falls upon her bedroom window and she retreats quickly back into the shadows.

  She had fallen back to sleep and has no idea what time it is when she wakes again with a start to see through the darkness a figure standing at her door. ‘Ingrid,’ she says, sitting up, her heart thumping. Wordlessly Ingrid comes to her and takes a seat at the end of her bed. Her eyes gleam in the moonlight. ‘Ingrid?’ says Elodie nervously. ‘What is it?’

  When at last she replies her voice is strange and tight. ‘I knew he shouldn’t have come,’ she says. ‘I knew it would be a mistake.’

  Elodie stares at her and after a while Ingrid gets up and goes to the window. The moon bathes her face in its cool, pale glow and her voice is so quiet now it’s almost as if she were talking to herself. ‘Nothing I did was good enough,’ she murmurs. ‘By the time we sent him away he’d made our lives a misery.’ She pauses and then in a small, dull little voice adds, ‘He even hit me once.’

  She returns to the bed and stares at Elodie imploringly. ‘I did my best,’ she says. ‘I sent him to school in England because I have relatives there. And Robert agreed! He agreed!’

  Elodie nods. ‘Yes,’ she whispers.

  Ingrid swipes angrily at her tears. ‘I’ve failed him, I know I have. But it was my idea to have him here for the holidays, even though I’m so busy. And now this! Picked up by the police for stealing a car.’ She shakes her head bitterly. ‘He does it just to punish me.’

  Tentatively Elodie reaches over and touches her on the shoulder and almost instantly she finds herself in Ingrid’s arms, wrapped in an embrace so tight she could hardly breathe. Eventually she’s released and Ingrid picks up one of her hands between her own, thin white fingers. Elodie shrinks a little beneath the intensity of her gaze. At last Ingrid whispers, ‘I haven’t failed you though, have I, Elodie?’

  Elodie opens her mouth to answer and feels the fingers tighten their hold. ‘No,’ she says quickly.

  ‘I love you, Elodie,’ Ingrid says then, with a final squeeze of her hand. At last she gets to her feet. Moments later the door closes softly behind her and, left alone, Elodie lies awake for a long time, staring up at the ceiling.

  A week later, when she returns with Yaya from a day of examinations and tests at the hospital, she finds Ingrid in the schoolroom, staring out of the window. ‘He’s gone,’ is all she says, not shifting her gaze from the garden below. ‘It’s for the best.’ They do not mention him again. She finds the door to the rest of the house remains open now, whenever Ingrid leaves her by herself.

  She isn’t sure exactly when it is that the conference begins to take over their lives, only that from the moment Ingrid mentions it, it slowly begins to dominate everything they do. Some weeks after her fifteenth birthday, she’s in the schoolroom with Yaya and Colin when Ingrid makes her announcement. She stands behind her desk, her white-blonde hair fastened tightly back from her face as usual, the paleness of her skin and eyes in stark contrast to the severe, black, high-necked blouse she wears.

  ‘There’ll be many important people there,’ she tells them, twin red patches of excitement high on her cheeks. ‘Scientists and doctors from all over the world.’ She smiles at Elodie, ‘And you, of course, will be the guest of honour.’

  It’s not the prospect of the event itself that alarms Elodie – soon, Ingrid has explained so many times what will be expected of her that she only feels mildly nervous about her part in it. Rather it’s the change she detects in Ingrid that begins to breed the small flutters of anxiety in her chest. Their lessons take on a renewed zeal and as the conference draws closer, the hours they spend preparing for it increase. Sometimes the two of them remain at their desks long after Yaya and Colin have left for the day and their outings, their trips to the beach or to the park all but stop. There’s a subdued, anxious edge to the schoolroom now.

  For months the little carved wooden bird has sat untouched on her bedside table. But now Elodie finds herself reaching for it more and more frequently, holding it in her hand during lessons, her finger stroking it in comforting circles whenever her mistakes provoke Ingrid’s displeasure.

  During these long, tense days, only one shines out from the others. ‘Today we’re going to do something a little different,’ says Yaya, turning from the window from where she’d been watching Ingrid’s car disappear down the drive. ‘Put your book down, Elodie,’ she tells her.

  Outside, the afternoon sun hangs heavy in the sky. Fallen cherry blossoms drift over the freshly mown lawn and the air smells of cut grass, new buds and damp earth. The three of them stand beneath the pear tree, while far above them an aeroplane trails a silent line of white.

  ‘You ever played baseball before?’ Yaya asks her. Her eyes sparkle and Elodie’s heart skips at the flicker of rebellion in the air.

  ‘No,’ she says, staring down with curiosity at the bag at their feet. ‘But I’ve seen it on the television.’

  Yaya laughs dryly. ‘There anything you haven’t seen on television, honey?’ She bends down and takes out a leather mitt, a wooden bat and a red ball. ‘OK, you can bat, I’ll pitch, and Colin can field. Let’s go!’

  After a few wild swings of the bat, with Colin’s guidance Elodie eventually gets the hang of it and soon the three of them are running and shouting excitedly, entirely caught up in their makeshift game for three. Elodie kicks off her shoes and as she feels the satisfying crack of the bat against the ball and the damp grass beneath her feet, the conference, the long, frustrating hours in the schoolroom, the pressure of trying and trying to please Ingrid, all entirely melt away.

  An hour or so later the three of them throw themselves, panting and laughing, to the grass. After a while, Elodie rolls onto her back and stares up at the sky. From the corner of her eye she can see Colin’s pale, thin wrist and the sleeve of his favourite brown cardigan, a few blades of grass in his open palm. A feeling of total peace drifts over her.

  ‘Come here, sweetie,’ Yaya calls to her after a while.

  Obediently Elodie goes to her and sits patiently while Yaya braids her hair. In the silence Elodie leans against her shoulder and looks out across the lawn. The thought strikes her that soon, Colin and Yaya will pack up their things and go home, leaving her at High Barn alone. She closes her eyes tight against the thought, wishing that the afternoon could last forever.

  ‘Let’s have a look at you.’ Yaya pulls Elodie round to face her and, holding her chin in her hand says thoughtfully, ‘Gorgeous.’ She smiles. ‘You really are such a pretty girl.’

  They are interrupted by the sound of Robert’s car approaching up the drive and the three of them jump instantly to their feet, glancing nervously at each other.

  ‘Hi,’ he calls to them. ‘Having yourselves a little field trip, I see.’ His smile is friendly, and she feels the others relax a little.

  ‘Hello, Mr Klein,’ Yaya calls back. ‘Just a game of baseball.’

  ‘Good for you.’ He nods and smiles again, then turns towards th
e house. But then, at the door he stops. ‘Used to be pretty good at baseball in high school,’ he says, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sinking sun.

  ‘Would you like to join us?’ Colin asks politely, after a pause.

  And to Elodie’s delight Robert shrugs, grins, takes off his jacket and makes his way across the lawn towards them.

  The four of them play for nearly an hour, until the sun has almost dropped below the hill. While Elodie fields she watches Robert run around the lawn, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his face flushed with exertion. She shrieks with pleasure when they both hurtle toward a base and collide in a heap on the grass. They lie there for a second or two, laughing, before Robert gets up and reaching for her, pulls Elodie to her feet.

  At that moment they hear Ingrid’s car returning up the hill. The four of them freeze and look towards the bottom gate.

  ‘Well,’ says Robert, his smile fading instantly. ‘Guess we should …’

  Yaya nods and begins packing up their things. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Come on Elodie. Time to go in now.’

  That night in bed Elodie smiles in the darkness as she relives each moment of that afternoon. Just before she goes to sleep she thinks about Robert, of how his body had slammed into hers, of how his arms had briefly circled her waist as they fell.

  And then, a few weeks later, something terrible. It’s not long before the conference and she, Yaya, Colin and Ingrid have spent the morning working without pause on a particularly difficult exercise, when Ingrid leaves the room to start lunch, nodding at Yaya to continue.

  ‘Elodie,’ Yaya says, picking up the book. ‘What is the man in this picture doing?’

  Elodie tells her, but stumbles over her grammar.

  ‘No, Elodie,’ says Yaya gently. ‘Try again.’