by Nette Hilton
She whooshed out of the kitchen with Roly. Dad followed her.
‘But what about my wings?’ I yelled after him. ‘You said you were going to make some for me.’
They didn’t even answer.
I could hear them talking to Roly and then tiptoeing back up the hallway.
‘Mum?’ I yelled again, a little more quietly. ‘We have to have the dress by next week.’
I walked into the lounge room. They were not even there. There was no one to listen to a word I said.
‘Will this do?’ Mum was holding something on a hanger. It was covered with a green garbage bag. And Dad appeared with something else.
‘And these?’
I could see what they were straightaway. He was holding them by two fingers to show me how light they were.
Wings.
Long cardboard wings covered in little fluffy feathers that must have taken ages to collect. And then longer feathers that trailed, one over the other, to finally end in glossy gold tips. Dad had even painted gold on the inside of the wings so they’d shine when I lifted my arms.
‘Where did you get them?’ I was almost whispering, as if it might frighten the feathers and they’d all disappear if I spoke too loudly. I wanted to touch them but they were so carefully glued I was afraid to disturb them.
‘Over at old Mr Lucas’s farm,’ Dad said.
I reached over and gently touched a soft grey feather that swooned down to the deepest tip.
‘There’s a couple of bare-chested geese wandering around over there, but Mr Lucas said it was for a good cause. He’s even coming to the concert to make sure you don’t take off!’
I touched another feather. It guided my finger from its tip to its tail.
‘I collected as many white ones as I could,’ Dad was saying. I was looking at the small, pale blue star woven with silver thread that formed the centre of the wings. It looked familiar.
I leaned closer and I knew exactly where it had come from.
I heard the rustle of green plastic beside me and looked across. There, hanging in deep folds, was my angel dress.
It was beautiful. Even more beautiful than it had been when it was a sari.
‘You cut up your sari dress,’ I said.
‘Do you like it?’
They were both standing there looking at me like kindy kids on show-and-tell day.
Mum was so proud she held the skirt wide and then let it fall to show me how she’d matched up all the little silver threads.
‘See,’ she said and held it closer to me, ‘I’ve put all the little star designs across the top and I found some silver thread in the supermarket and twisted it to make straps. And here’—she pointed to the little tie in the centre of the front—‘that ties across so it will fall in long folds right down across your feet. And look at the arms …’
The cuffs were cut into long points that draped down over my wrists and caught, with another silver thread, around my middle finger. ‘Just like a true medieval angel,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure what a medieval angel was. It didn’t really matter. I just knew that my angel dress and wings were perfect.
‘And we can pull your hair down flat onto your head, like this.’ Mum had hold of a handful of my hair. ‘Hold up the painting, Dave.’
Dad opened the book that had been on the table. He held it in front of me. There, hovering above Baby Jesus and Mary, was an angel in a dress with sleeves like mine. Her face looked a bit odd and I didn’t much like her nose. Mary’s eyes didn’t look quite right either. They seemed to be looking in the wrong direction and poor Baby Jesus looked too old to be a baby.
‘Do you think I could have some curls?’ I said.
‘Do you really want curls?’ Mum stood back. She was still holding my hair. My head went with her. ‘Curls are pretty … cutsey, don’t you think?’
I decided not to say that I liked cutsey.
I looked at the painting. The angel could do with a curl or two as well. And so could Mary.
‘Don’t you like it?’
The blue angel dress shone across at me and the wings were so soft they quivered at their centre when Mum lifted them.
‘Here. Let’s try it all on and then we can see about your hair.’
The sari drifted over my head and folded over my feet like foam on top of a wave. It was so soft it almost melted as I picked it up to walk.
Dad tied my wings around my chest and shoulders and I felt feathers warming my back.
‘Do you think they need more gold paint on their tips?’ Dad said when I finally stood in front of them.
I craned around to see. ‘I’ll go and look in the mirror,’ I said.
I wanted to stand by myself all alone in front of the long mirror in Mum and Dad’s room. I wanted to turn one way then another to see how the wings looked from the side and from the front and from the back. I wanted to point my toes. I wanted to spread my arms and see how the sleeves clung in blue folds against my skin. I wanted to tilt my head and twirl around and around and around.
‘You go and look while we make a cup of coffee,’ Mum said.
As I walked up the hall I was so happy I thought I might actually take off. I tried one little skipping step but my wings became nervous and wobbled so much I had to stop.
Angels on clouds weren’t supposed to thump along skipping.
I opened the door into Mum’s room and the mirror caught me in its reflection.
An angel.
I stood perfectly still. I could almost hear the cameras rolling as I stepped one long pointed toe step closer.
I lifted my chin then had to put it down again so I could watch.
I lifted my arms and my wings shone, their gold tips like tiny exclamation points behind me.
I glanced behind me to make sure nobody was watching, then I bowed, long and deep, with my arms stretched out to the sides.
I was taking my bow.
The angel who was the star of the show.
My dress and wings hung on the outside of my cupboard door all weekend and Monday and Tuesday. They were the first things I saw in the morning when I woke up and the last things I saw at night when I curled up to go to sleep.
Roly screamed the first time he saw my wings and ran around the house saying ‘bird, bird, bird’ for about an hour, but then he was okay. He didn’t come back into my room though and that suited me fine.
On Wednesday morning Mum slipped the green garbage bag over my dress and another over my wings to protect them so I could get them to school without them jamming in the car door or something.
She drove me all the way in so I wouldn’t have to go on the bus, but I let the wings droop out the bottom of their bag so the kindy kids who hung around the gate could admire them.
Their gold tips glittered in the sun.
‘Bye,’ I called as Mum drove away. I waved and pretended not to notice the little kids looking at the feathers that bloomed out of the bag.
I could hear them whispering and one little kid was jabbing her friend and pointing.
I smiled as I swooshed past them through the school gate.
‘Why are taking a chook to school?’ said one little kid who wouldn’t know an angel if it landed on her head.
‘It’s not a chook.’ Another one bent over and tried to lift the bag. I moved it out of reach.
‘Chooks don’t have gold paint on them.’
‘She could’ve put that there!’
‘It’s not a chook anyway. It’s a goose.’ She jabbed the wing tips with a grubby little finger. ‘Ew! You’ve got a dead goose in your bag!’
A couple of other little kids were hanging around waiting to see the dead goose. They were even sniffing the air trying to find its pong. I swung the bag up over my shoulder and managed to bump a couple of them.
‘We had a dead goose once,’ a little boy told me. He paddled along beside me with a dinosaur puppet in his hand. It looked like it had been dead for a while as well. ‘Our dog dug it up.’<
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‘Nice,’ I said and hurried a bit.
He kept up. ‘How come you brought yours to school? Did your dog dig it up?’
‘Did your dog dig what up?’ Serena Sweetmay had arrived. She’d swanned over with Angela and Katie and they craned over the others to see what I was carrying.
‘Oh, they’re your wings,’ she crooned. ‘Let me see.’
Before I could stop her she lifted the green plastic and held the cardboard backing so the wings fanned themselves out in the sunlight. The white feathers gleamed and their gold tips glittered so beautifully that another six kindy kids came over for a closer inspection.
‘Oh, look,’ one said. ‘She’s got wings.’
‘Put ’em on,’ said the dinosaur boy. ‘Let’s see if they fly.’
‘Yes,’ crooned Serena. ‘Why don’t you put them on?’
I didn’t want to put them on out in the playground with everyone looking. I started to slide their bag back on.
‘They’re so sweet,’ sang Angela. ‘Aren’t they?’
Serena and Angela nodded slowly and looked at each other.
‘Touch them, Katie,’ said Serena, smiling.
Katie didn’t.
But Angela did. She stretched out her middle finger and let the very tip of it touch the longest goose feather. ‘They’re real!’ she shrieked.
‘They’re goose feathers,’ I said. As if she didn’t know. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a goose feather before?’
‘Only on a goose,’ said Serena.
Angela covered her mouth. She smiled, but her eyes were looking at Serena and then at Katie. I hoped goose germs rushed into her mouth and down her throat to make her vomit.
They didn’t.
Serena pointed to our classroom. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You have to put them away. I’m sure Miss Everest will love them.’
They led the way.
I stumbled along behind them. Two plastic bags full of goose feathers and cardboard and a dress on a padded coathanger and a school bag full of lunch and a couple of weeks of old notes were pretty heavy and I was puffing so much by the time we arrived I could hardly speak.
It was just as well. Otherwise I might have reminded Serena and Angela and Katie how rude it is to walk along in front of someone and have very private conversations as you went.
Especially if the someone that you were talking about was walking along behind you.
Miss Everest was already inside. She was busy with a couple of mums who’d brought in their little kids to be the sheep. They were testing out bath mats to see which ones were the fluffiest. The little kids just stood there while white towelling rugs and soft fluffy blankets were wrapped one way then another. They looked more like bleached chickens than sheep.
Jimmy was standing beside her.
‘It’d be great, Jimmy,’ she was saying. ‘You can be the leading ram and these little lambs will have to follow you.’
One mum held up a bigger bathmat with a foot print on it. ‘You won’t even see it,’ she was saying. ‘Honestly.’
Jimmy wasn’t listening. ‘I really want to be the cow’s head,’ he said.
I knew how he felt.
I just wanted to be an angel and there was no way I wanted to change. Not even to help him out.
‘I’ll be a cow’s bum with you in another play Jimmy,’ I said.
‘There won’t be another play,’ he said and sat down in the middle of the rug with the cow’s head on his lap. It looked a bit lonely without its other half but not as lonely as Jimmy.
‘We could make one up,’ I said as I unloaded my lovely dress. ‘Couldn’t we, Miss Everest.’
‘We could,’ she said and patted Jimmy on the head as she went back to make sure her little sheep were sorted. The mums kissed them goodbye and left and Miss Everest slipped off her shoes so she could sit on her chair and admire our clothes.
‘Let me see,’ she said. She looked at all the clothes hanging from the window frames.
‘My word.’
I looked around too.
The shepherds had old sheets and towels draped about and the innkeeper and his wife had wonderful striped outfits with cut-off pillowcases to drape over one of their shoulders. And then there was the angel’s corner.
First I saw the wings.
A forest of swan’s down floated on every breath of every whisper in our classroom. Tiny sparkles winked out and about from each tiny feather. Invisible, beautiful dragon’s wing colours that were quick to catch your eye and then gone in a blink. Wicked little flashes of red, then green then aqua and then the white of a summer sky at midday. Every colour of every ocean floor, of every star, of every living thing shone out of those wings.
And then I saw the dresses.
Long wisps of fabric that didn’t look too happy to be dangled onto a classroom carpet. Long folds that turned from snowiest white to clotted cream. Necklines of satin that gleamed as softly as spaniel ears. Coat hangers decorated with lavender bags.
And above them, just loosely hung around the bent wire of the hanger, were halos made of invisible wire so they hovered in holograms of purples.
Beside them my goose wings sprang proudly out of their green garbage bag and my pale blue dress swung merrily, flapping its silver stars in the breeze.
‘It doesn’t match the others,’ I said to Miss Everest. ‘But it’ll be all right. See, it’s got a matching silver star on the wings. My dad put it there especially.’
‘I like it,’ Carol said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to help in the restaurant. I’d get Mum to make me a blue dress, too.’
Miss Everest held my dress up to the light. ‘It’ll be perfect,’ she said.
And she tried really hard not to look at the other dresses floating on the breeze while they waited to be noticed.
She didn’t quite manage it though.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said again.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘You’ll be wonderful.’
But I couldn’t help thinking that my dress looked as lonely as the cow’s head that lay in Jimmy’s lap.
We all stood in our costumes.
It had been a long walk from our classroom down to the hall and we had to stop a couple of times because bits of costumes kept falling off. George’s tea-towel kept slipping one way when his face was going another and twice he trod on Madi’s mum’s best sheet which was attached around Madi’s neck and she almost choked.
Miss Everest said that people don’t choke as loudly as that and she should try to keep her sheet off the ground. She stopped us all while she tied George’s tea-towel in place with another piece of cord. George complained that his brain was being squashed because she tied it so tight, but Miss Everest said there was absolutely no chance of that.
We all laughed, but by the time we found the hall keys and got the hall unlocked and filed in we were feeling quite tired.
‘Now,’ said Miss Everest, ‘let me look at you.’
We stood perfectly still in one long line.
‘Pretty good,’ she said.
I could see our reflection in the hall doors. I thought we looked pretty good too.
The shepherds looked all shepherdy in old towels and sheets, and the wise men looked very colourful in their mum’s old evening dresses. Simone had on her grandma’s brocade jacket that she had bought in China. It’s an actual Chinese jacket, so I told her that my angel’s dress had been a sari.
‘Have a look,’ I said and held it out so she could see how the stars changed from being little clusters to long twists of flowers as they stretched higher. ‘She bought it in India.’
‘And it smells because it lived in the bottom of her cupboard,’ said Serena. ‘I saw it when my dad had to visit with Dan.’
I didn’t much like Serena calling my dad ‘Dan’.
I was going to say it was a pity that dumb old Dave didn’t know enough about drawing to do his own stupid art work on his own stupid surfboard, but Simone was so busy dragging my skirt out to show Kel
ly that I couldn’t.
Miss Everest was tying her sarong around Javin who said he wouldn’t wear a dress even if he had a mum to get one from and had turned up in his dad’s old surf-shirt. He said it was okay to wear a sarong because he’d been to Bali and all the best surfers wore them.
The kindy sheep looked fine and their bath mats and rugs and blankets covered them exactly as they should have. Miss Everest had stuffed their feet into woolly bedsocks and added some extra wadding to make them look more sheepish. They were busy skating around on the polished wood and I thought they looked more like washing in a wind-storm than actual sheep, but I didn’t say so.
Jimmy was standing on the end of the line with the cow’s head over him and the bum end and tail dragging along behind. He said the cow was really tired from standing around in the manger for so long, so it’d be all right.
Miss Everest said she thought it looked like it had been run over by the farm tractor but perhaps we could sort it out later.
Mr Henderson arrived with the non-sheep group and sat them against the back wall. They sat down so quietly with their backs straight and their hands in their laps waiting for the concert to begin that I almost felt like doing a little dance so they wouldn’t be too disappointed.
‘Right, everyone,’ Miss Everest said. ‘Go to your beginning places.’
This time we had a proper bench to stand on. The four angels clambered up. I stood on one end and then there was Serena and Angela and Katie. My wings battered Serena and tangled in her swan’s down so she pinched me, but it didn’t hurt much. I stepped on her toe and I think that hurt her a bit more, because she bounced right off the bench.
She was going to punch me but Miss Everest said angels never punched anybody and to cut it out RIGHT NOW.
I beamed out into the empty hall. The non-sheep seemed far away, sitting down there against the back wall, but I could see their little faces gazing up at me. They weren’t poking or jabbing or wriggling. They were just sitting ready and waiting like it was a theatre and the curtain was about to go up.
I could almost feel them holding their breath.
I tried to imagine the hall full of people, all of them gazing up at me, gasping at the quick little glitters of silver from my dress and groaning at the splendour of my wings.