The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  There was something tickling at the back of my mind. Some memory to do with the headache and feeling sick. What happened that day? I tried to remember, but the headache was making my mind fuzzy.

  I had gone up to the loft after Dad blew his top and ordered me to leave the breakfast table. I was hungry at first, because I hadn’t eaten, but then I felt sick. I went to sleep in the loft and when I woke up, the twins were looking for me. And that’s when I went up to the attic for the first time and heard Rose singing.

  Rose

  “It’s about Winnie,” I said. My voice was cracked and scratchy, as if I hadn’t used it before.

  “What did you say?” asked my father.

  “Winnie,” I said, louder this time. “I’ve got a message for you. From her.”

  There it was, right in front of me, all over his face, just as I’d expected. He thought I had lost it. His mouth fell open, his eyes popped and he looked wildly about the room, as if there was someone there who could help him understand. And all the time Winnie stood behind him, unseen and silent.

  “I’ve seen her,” I continued, a little more loudly still. “Your dead sister. I’ve seen her—her ghost.”

  He gaped at me.

  “I see ghosts, Dad,” I said, louder still. “I see them all the time. Just like Winnie did.”

  He started shaking his head back and forth.

  “No,” he whispered. “No!”

  “Yes!” I was almost yelling now. I had to get it out. No matter what he did after, I had to get it out. “I see ghosts. And Winnie needs me to give you this message, because you can’t see her, and I can.”

  He kept shaking his head.

  “No—Rosie—don’t—please.” His words came out in little jerks.

  “I have to. She can’t rest. And you can’t rest. And I can’t rest. And nobody can rest in this house until you let her go. She’s sorry. She’s sorry about everything. She’s sorry about the accident, she’s sorry she hurt you. But none of it was your fault and you have to let her go now.”

  My father just kept staring at me in horror, just as if—as if I were a ghost.

  FORGOTTEN

  Polly

  No. That’s not the way it happened. The twins weren’t there when I woke up.

  The white pool of light on the sidewalk seemed to be throbbing along with my headache. It grew bigger, then smaller. I closed my eyes.

  Nobody was home that morning. The house was empty, the way it was now. They’d all gone away. Mum had taken the kids to the St. Lawrence Market, the way she did every Saturday, everyone trailing after her with homemade striped cotton bags to carry all the groceries home. I would have gone too, if I hadn’t been in disgrace.

  Dad was probably at church, at some meeting or other.

  I was all alone. And I was really, really sick. I half fell, half climbed down the ladder from the loft and collapsed on my bed. I called out, but nobody was there. The room was spinning, my head was pounding, and I felt like throwing up.

  Why hadn’t I remembered this before? Why was I remembering it now?

  Rose

  “Dad!” I said sharply. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “No!” he said again, closing his eyes. He clutched his head and bent forward, as if he could block me out.

  “DAD!”

  He raised his head. His eyes were full of tears.

  “Kendrick told me—” he said in a broken voice. “I didn’t want to believe her. She said you were—acting strangely. Seeing things. I can’t bear it, Rosie, not again. Tell me it isn’t true.”

  If only I could.

  “It is true, Dad. I see ghosts. I see them all the time. I’ve seen them all my life.”

  He crumpled.

  “No,” he said, burying his head in his arms and curling into a ball. “I can’t lose you too. No.”

  I felt the ground dropping away beneath me. What had happened to my big strong father who never raised his voice and always kept his head? What had I done?

  WHISPERING

  Polly

  The room was dim. I got up to switch on the overhead light, but it didn’t work. Neither did the lamp in the corner. A power outage, maybe.

  But the circle of light under the streetlight was still there outside the window. Where was Rose? And where was my family? They should have been home by now.

  I felt very, very tired, and my head still hurt. I sank back into the chair and closed my eyes and went back to that day. The eggs day.

  I remembered lying on my bed for a long, long time. And nobody came.

  All I could think about was the pounding in my head. I kept thinking I couldn’t stand it for one more minute, but it kept on. Then I started to hear whispering in the walls, voices swirling around me, like a radio was on. I opened my eyes, but the room was empty, filled with white, burning light. The sun, shining in the window. I shut them again. I was floating, floating on a hard, bright sea, up and down, up and down.

  Then the twins came.

  Rose

  I glanced past my father at Winnie, who was still standing behind his chair, her eyes fixed on him. She didn’t move or look at me.

  Suddenly I was angry. Why was I doing this? Risking everything. Nothing but trouble was going to come of it. My father was collapsing into a little boy. I couldn’t help him. He was supposed to help me! That’s what fathers were supposed to do. This was all wrong. He was a mess.

  “Dad!” I almost shouted at him. “Stop it! Sit up and listen to me. Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister? Why didn’t you tell me she died? Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

  My father looked up, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands. His face was white.

  “Nobody knows,” he whispered. “Not even your mother.”

  He didn’t look like my father anymore. He was the little boy on the bridge, eyes big with horror.

  I persisted. “Why? How could you keep that a secret?”

  He looked up at me.

  “It was my fault she died. It was all my fault.”

  NONSENSE

  Polly

  I remembered hearing the twins whispering at my door. I’d tried to sit up, but my head was so heavy on the pillow I couldn’t raise it.

  “Tell Mum,” I croaked. “I’m sick.”

  “You’re not sick,” said Mark, coming over to the bed and looking down at me. “You’re pretending.”

  “No, I’m really sick. Tell Mum,” and then I sank back down into the white, white waves.

  A long time later I heard Mum come in. She plonked Susie down in her crib for a nap and talked to her for a minute, rubbing her back the way she always did to get her to go to sleep.

  I couldn’t open my eyes because the light was too bright. I tried to call out to her but I couldn’t get the word out.

  “Polly,” she said. “The boys tell me you’re pretending to be sick. That’s very childish. You can come down and join the family for lunch whenever you’re ready.”

  She left.

  Rose

  Winnie knelt down beside my father and put her hand on his arm.

  “Willie, it was an accident. You’ve got to believe me. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He just kept staring into space. He didn’t hear her.

  “Dad,” I said loudly. “She’s sorry. She says it was an accident.”

  Then his eyes focused on me, and suddenly the spell we were under broke with a snap and he was Dad again.

  “Rosie, we shouldn’t be talking about this. It happened a long time ago. It’s over. I don’t know how you found out about Winnie, but you need to put this out of your mind. It’s not healthy. I’ll take you to a psychiatrist. I’ll get you help.”

  “Dad, you’ve got to listen to me. Winnie is right beside you. I can see her as plain as day. She needs you to listen to me.”

  “No!” he yelled, pounding on the desk and standing up. “I will not allow you to go the way Winnie went. I will not allow it!”

  �
�It’s no use,” I said to Winnie. “He won’t listen. I told you what would happen. He thinks I’m crazy, just like I knew he would.”

  Winnie whipped around the desk and lunged towards me, her face dark, her eyes flashing, the black of her dress and hair starting to swirl into the form of the Door Jumper. “You have to make him understand,” she said, looming over me. “You have to!”

  I stood my ground. “I’m telling you, he won’t listen to me! He doesn’t listen to me any more than he listens to you! He doesn’t hear me and he doesn’t see me. He never has. I’m invisible, just like you.”

  Winnie began to spin like a top—or a tornado—and the room started to fill up with her black rage. I took a step back, but my father still didn’t see her or feel her. He rushed across the room, grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a shake.

  “Rosie!” he shouted. “Stop talking to ghosts. Talk to me! What do you mean, you’re invisible? I see you. Of course I see you.”

  That did it. With two of them attacking me I finally snapped. I didn’t care anymore if he thought I was nuts or if Winnie blew the house down. I shook off his grip and stamped my foot.

  “NO YOU DON’T!” I bellowed.

  My father blinked in surprise. He’d never heard me make that much noise before. The raging cloud that was Winnie hung suspended in the air for a moment, halted by the force of my voice.

  I stamped my foot again. “You don’t talk to me for weeks. Neither does Mother. I never know when you’ll be home or away. I thought you were in Montreal, and then I see you walking down the street! You never tell me what’s happening. You never tell me anything! You leave me alone all the time. Nobody talks to me. The teachers at school, the kids—I feel invisible all the time. I’m always by myself with nobody but ghosts.”

  “Rosie, that’s not true—” he began in a softer voice, trying to calm me down.

  “Tell me this! Tell me this one thing,” I shouted. “Tell me if I’m dead. I feel dead. There is no evidence that I’m not dead. Did I die last summer? When I was in the hospital? Did I die? Did I?”

  “Of course you didn’t die, Rose. What absolute nonsense!” said a voice behind me.

  My mother stood in the doorway, still in her coat, hat and gloves. Winnie was gone. A waft of Chanel #5 perfume drifted into the room.

  “What on earth is going on?” she asked, looking over my head at my father. “First you disappear from the office, leaving no word with anyone. Then I get a very strange phone call from the library about Rose.”

  Uh-oh.

  MOTHERS

  Polly

  Here’s the thing. I used to pretend I was sick sometimes. When I was younger. Well, up to last year. You see, when I was sick, I got to stay home from school, read books all day in bed, and Mum brought me glasses of orange juice and even ginger ale sometimes. I’d get her all to myself. She kept a box of “sick toys” in a cupboard in her room, and we were only allowed to play with them when we were sick. When I was little, I got pretty excited about those painted wooden blocks, puzzles and special books.

  So sometimes, if I didn’t feel like facing school, I’d pretend I was sick. It worked okay, as long as I didn’t do it too often. But Mum started catching on, and it got harder and harder to convince her, and then she kept telling me the story about the boy who cried “Wolf!” and how dangerous it was to lie all the time.

  I hadn’t pretended to be sick for months. But they hadn’t forgotten.

  Rose

  My father went over to my mother.

  “Mary, I’m sorry. I— Something came up. I had to leave … I need to talk to you.” He glanced over at me. It was obvious he didn’t want to say more in front of me.

  My mother took charge, the way she always did, as if we were difficult employees who needed handling.

  “Well, that’s fine, William, we can certainly talk about it. But first I need to hear about this nonsense with Rose. Just let me get my coat off.”

  As she disappeared into the hall, Father whispered to me, “Don’t mention Winnie!”

  He looked just like one of Polly’s little brothers when he said it. What was wrong with him?

  Mother came bustling back into the room, swept my cloak off my shoulders and guided me over to a footstool by the fire.

  “Let’s all just sit down quietly and discuss this rationally.”

  She sat down calmly in my grandfather’s big armchair and smoothed her skirts. My father pulled the desk chair over and sat on it. They towered over me.

  “Now, Rose,” she began, fixing me with a cool look. “What’s all this about being dead?”

  MENINGITIS

  Polly

  The day I was sick, I lay on my bed all afternoon, drifting in and out, up and down, my head pounding. When my mother came in to get Susie up for her nap she sat on the edge of my bed.

  “Polly, are you really sick?” she asked. “Or are you still sulking?”

  “My head hurts,” I said.

  She laid a cool hand on my forehead.

  “You are rather feverish,” she said. “Let me get you some aspirin.”

  She helped me drink some water and take the aspirin.

  “Maybe it’s flu,” she said. “Let’s get you into your PJs.”

  She helped me get undressed and into my soft flannel pajamas, then pulled back the sheets so I could get into bed. Then she took Susie downstairs and I was alone again.

  The sheets felt cool at first. But the room turned round and round, like I was on a merry-go-round. I closed my eyes, but I could still feel it spinning. Round and round, up and down.

  I must have gone to sleep. When I woke up it was very dark. My neck felt stiff. I was itchy, and the walls were still whispering at me.

  “Mum?” I called out, but I couldn’t make a noise loud enough for anyone to hear. There was another noise that was drowning it out. The pounding of my head. A drum. Why didn’t everyone in the house hear it? It went on and on. Thumping.

  Somehow I got myself out of bed and crawled through the hall to the stairs. I went down them on my bum, one at a time. I stopped a couple of times and called for my mother, but my voice was still too weak for anyone to hear. The stairs spun round and round.

  I crawled around the corner to my parents’ bedroom and pulled myself up by the door handle so I was standing in the open doorway and called out one more time.

  “MUM!”

  There was a murmur from the bed, and the covers heaved up and suddenly the room was filled with a flash of burning white light.

  “Mum!” I cried, again, the drum pounding in my ears. “Mum, I think I’m dying.”

  Rose

  Sitting on the footstool, I felt like I was two again, a very small person. My heart was thumping. I knew I was going to sound ridiculous. To make it worse, Winnie had reappeared (in human form rather than a tempest) and was standing behind my mother, staring at my father with that hungry look.

  “In the summer,” I began, “when I was so sick—”

  “When you had meningitis,” said my mother.

  “Is that what it was?” I asked.

  “Yes, you know it was,” she answered. “We told you, Dr. Wolf told you, many times, in the hospital. Meningitis.”

  “Dr. Wolf?” I said. “Is that really his name?”

  “Yes, of course it’s his name. Don’t be silly, Rose.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “I don’t remember anybody telling me. All I remember is the headache, and my neck hurt, and throwing up. And the Wolf Doctor—”

  “Dr. Wolf, not the Wolf Doctor,” interrupted my mother.

  My father looked sorrowfully at me, and Winnie laughed.

  “Dr. Wolf,” I said. “Dr. Wolf saying I should go to the hospital and you crying and then everything was so white and cold.”

  “You were very, very sick,” said my mother, her mouth tightening into a thin line. “It was an epidemic. Children all over the city were coming down with it, and many of them died. But you didn’t.
You got better. What on earth would make you say you were dead, Rose?”

  “Because I feel dead! I feel all drifty and foggy and invisible. Nobody ever talks to me at school. It’s like they don’t see me. You and Father are never home. You don’t talk to me! I can go for days and days and no one speaks one word to me. Not even Kendrick.”

  It felt good to finally say it out loud. I felt something unlocking inside my throat.

  My parents exchanged pained looks.

  “Rosie,” said my father. “That can’t be true. You must be exaggerating. We talk to you. We have breakfast with you nearly every morning.”

  “BUT NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING!” I said, jumping to my feet. “You read the newspaper and ask me to pass the marmalade, that’s all! Even the Breakfast Ghost pays more attention to me than you do. At least he sees me.”

  “Breakfast Ghost?” said my mother, frowning. “Rose, you are letting your imagination get out of hand. Of course we speak to you. I speak to you every day.”

  “But we don’t talk! You don’t tell me anything! And I heard you crying one night, Mother, crying about losing me. Saying your baby was dead. What am I supposed to think?”

  My mother’s hand flew to her mouth. “What do you know about the baby?” she whispered, then turned to my father. “William, did you—?”

  He shook his head.

  “What baby?” I asked.

  EVERYTHING HURTS

  Polly

  I don’t remember a lot after that. Voices, arms lifting me up. An ambulance siren and then the hospital. Everything hurt in the hospital. The lights were unbearably bright, the sheets were white and hard, they kept sticking needles into me and then … then … then everything began to fade. All I could feel was rocking, and all I could see was white, and there was nothing but white everywhere, and I couldn’t see my hands and I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t see my mother and—

  I sat up with a start. I was still sitting in the dark living room. Outside, the white circle of the streetlight was still empty. No Rose.