Skyward

by Mary Alice Monroe

  He seemed appeased and dropped his hand on the table. “I’ll go to her.”

  “No, let me,” Fannie said, rising from her chair. “I’m the one who screwed up. I’ll explain to her that I was wrong. And that Ella was right. Okay?” She looked at Harris, then at Ella, smiling sweetly.

  After she left for Marion’s room, Harris looked at Ella, exhausted.

  Ella, ashamed for the tears building in her eyes, looked down at the plate of dinner that had gone cold.

  That night, Marion pitched her first temper tantrum in months. Ella knew that emotions were running high and all of the child’s pent-up frustrations were exploding. She’d mentally prepared for it, but though she was strong, it took every ounce of her strength to bring Marion, kicking and screaming, downstairs to the bathroom for her insulin shot. Her arms and legs were bruised from where Marion’s fists and heels met muscle and she wondered, as she sat the child down on the toilet lid, if this wasn’t her punishment for being too proud to ask Harris to help her. She’d wanted to prove her competence to Fannie, but instead the woman was hanging on the bathroom door watching the fiasco and making the matter worse.

  “Marion, honey, stop kicking me,” she said, breathless. “You know we have to do this.”

  “No!” she screamed, still kicking. “I don’t have to do what you say. I want my mama!”

  “What are you doing to her?” Fannie cried from the hall. She clutched the door frame, leaning in. “Stop it, you’re hurting her.”

  Ella held firm to Marion’s shoulders and swung around to face Fannie.

  “Get out,” she said through tight lips. “You’re not making this easier for me or her.”

  Hearing that, Marion went ballistic and held out her arms. “Don’t go. Don’t go! I want my mama to do it!”

  “Marion, she can’t. She doesn’t know how. Now stop it, this instant. We’ve done this hundreds of times. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come on, honey, be good.”

  “I don’t want to be good. I don’t want you to do anything. I want my mama,” she cried piteously, arms reaching out for Fannie.

  Ella took a deep breath and swiped a lock of hair from her perspiring face. She hated to ask but she had to get Marion under control. “Fannie, will you help?”

  “Me?” she asked, straightening, her eyes wide. “Oh, God. What can I do?”

  “You can hold her. Calm her down.” She took a breath. “She wants you.”

  Fannie released the door frame with reluctance. “Well, sure. I guess,” she said, and entered the bathroom half smiling, half grimacing, with her arms held out to her daughter. She clumsily gathered Marion into her lap on the toilet seat. Marion clung to her like a drowning child, gasping for breath while Fannie stroked her head, crooning and rocking.

  Ella had to turn away. When it seemed Marion was calmer, Ella took a deep breath, straightened her back and gathered her resolve. She brought the test kit to Marion with a nurse’s cool efficiency. Though the child stiffened and whined, she had calmed down considerably in her mother’s arms. Fannie followed instructions and Ella was able to get a quick reading. Marion’s insulin levels were high, as expected. Still, Ella sighed with relief that they weren’t worse, and after adjusting the insulin dose, she gave Marion the injection with out any further hysteria.

  Her medical treatments done, Ella put away her equipment and left the cramped bathroom. Neither Fannie nor Marion seemed to notice. Outside the door she leaned against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut and listening to the mother-child banter in the next room. She felt as pitiful as some dog under the table, waiting for fallen crumbs.

  “It’s too bad you have diabetes,” she heard Fannie tell Marion. “I wish it were me, honey pie. I’d take those mean ol’ nasty shots for you. It’s just too horrible.”

  “I hate the shots.”

  “So do I.”

  Marion sniffed. “Mama, did you go away because I have ’betes?”

  “Oh, no, precious!” she replied quickly. “Don’t you ever think that, my darling girl. Mama didn’t even know you had diabetes!”

  “Then why, Mama? Why did you go?”

  Fannie rocked Marion, holding her tight. “Oh, I don’t know, honey. It’s complicated grown-up stuff. But it has nothing at all to do with you. I’m so sorry I left you. Really I am.”

  “Don’t go away again, Mama. Please…”

  “Hush now, baby.”

  Ella put her hand to her mouth and hurried from the confined house. She couldn’t bear to listen any longer. Marion was like a baby bird, chirping with an insatiable hunger for love. And Ella had an endless supply of love to give her. What was breaking her heart—what Ella had to face, no matter how hard—was that the love Marion craved was not hers, but her mother’s.

  She hurried down the porch stairs into the yard. She didn’t know where she was headed, and it didn’t matter. Ella just had to get away from the house that was suddenly too small. She paused at the edge of the parking lot to lean against the sedan that had carried her from north to south. She’d carried such hope with her from the mountains to the shore.

  She wiped a tangle of hair and sweat from her brow as she gathered her breath. The humidity had to break. The air was so thick she could hardly breathe. Beyond, in the darkness, she could hear the vocalizing of the restless birds as a storm approached.

  She looked back at the Cape Cod house nestled between the pines. Only days earlier the three of them had seemed to fit so cozily in those cheery walls. Now one more person had entered the space and suddenly it was like an overcrowded nest at the end of a breeding season. Harris had taught her how, in nature, the strongest nestlings pecked at the weakest one, the misfit who couldn’t compete. They viciously, mercilessly, drove the runt from the nest to teeter at the edge until it fell to its death. It seemed so heartless, even murderous, and for a flash she’d hated the birds and the cruelty that always clung to things wild.

  She’d learned since those early first days here—they seemed like years ago to her now—to stop looking at things wild through human eyes. Those tame eyes filtered everything with conscience and ego. Humans always had to balance good with evil; right had to triumph over wrong. But there was no right or wrong in nature. No good or evil. What was, simply was. Harris had gone on to explain how, when food was scarce, the likelihood of survival for two nestlings was far greater than three. The nestlings were merely acting out an instinct developed over eons of time. In biology, it was all about the survival of the species. She couldn’t pretend to understand it all but she did try to open her mind, as well as her senses, to all that surrounded her. To heed nature’s lessons.

  Ella walked back toward the house. Even in the dim light she could see her flowers that she’d planted with Marion en circling the porch. Climbing the stairs, she saw her mud boots lined up by the door beside Harris’s and Marion’s. Sitting down on the bent twig rocking chair, she recalled the many nights she’d sat here with Marion in her lap while they’d told stories or looked at the stars.

  This had been her home. Her nest! Everywhere she looked she could see her mark, some proof that she lived here. She couldn’t deny that she longed to always sleep in her down-covered bed with her smooth skin nestled against Harris’s hard bone, to listen to the melancholy music of the owls outside her window, to wash dishes and Marion’s gold-spun hair in the large porcelain kitchen sink.

  Yet tonight she wondered if these had all been stolen moments. If she was the extra body in the nest. The runt in sparse times.

  Ella curled in the twig chair, tucking one leg beneath her. She propelled the chair’s rocking motion with steady, rhythmic pushes from her arched foot. A storm was rolling toward them from the northwest, a long line of black, menacing thunderclouds that had wreaked tornadoes and dumped rain on the prairie states then plowed southward. Oh, it was coming, all right. She could already feel the gusts of cooler wind cut through the thick, humid air. She tightened her arms as a rumble of thunder rolled across the wetlands. I
t sounded to her like the rattling of sabers.

  She closed her eyes and thought of her mother and how she used to gather Ella up in her arms in a rocking chair and rock her back and forth like this. It comforted her to remember the way she could hear her mother’s heartbeat if she laid her head against the pillowy softness of her breasts. Wrapped in her mother’s arms she was safe, her lids would droop and she could fall into a sweet sleep, no matter what storm or bogeyman had frightened her.

  Ella ceased her rocking and stared bleakly out at the night. Of course Marion wanted her mother. It was only natural that she should. This was not something Ella could debate or argue. The bond Fannie and Marion shared was marrow deep. They clung to each other now, safely ensconced high up in that cozy gabled room filled with yellow light.

  And she sat shivering alone in the darkness, afraid of the thunder and wishing for the comfort of her own mother’s arms. The wind gusted again, bringing with it the first drops of rain. She sniffed the air and could almost taste its cool sweetness as she swallowed hard, her heart fluttering madly, feeling as though she were teetering at the edge, waiting for the fall.

  A bolt of lightning seared the sky, crackling, heralding the thunder that followed.

  “Storm’s coming,” Fannie said, stepping out onto the porch.

  Ella ceased her rocking.

  “Marion’s asleep. Hope that thunder don’t wake her up. I had a devil of a time getting her settled.”

  Ella pushed against her foot, setting the rocker moving. “I know what you’re doing,” she said in a flat tone of voice.

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’ve made me the bad guy.”

  “Oh, please…”

  “The mean person who takes her candy away and gives her shots and doesn’t let her watch television.”

  Fannie rolled her eyes. “I just told her she couldn’t have any more candy. Like you wanted me to.”

  “No matter what you say to Marion now, we both know that you’ve set it up so that in her eyes you’re the victim. Just like her. That I won’t let you give her candy. That I’m making you help give her shots. And I’ve seen you sneak to turn the TV on when I leave for the clinic, like it’s some kind of game. You’re acting like her playmate, not her mother.”

  Fannie put her hands on her hips and moved to stand in front of Ella, towering over her. The two women stared at each other as thunder rolled in.

  “We both know that’s not what you’re really mad about,” Fannie said, her eyes sparking like the lightning overhead. “You’re pissed that I left Marion in the first place. And now you’re mad that I came back. That I’m moving in on this little love nest you’ve got going for yourself.”

  Ella’s foot blocked the pendulous rocking and she abruptly turned away.

  “But what really rocks your boat is that Marion wants me, not you. She wants me.”

  “Of course I’m upset!” Ella cried, unable to stop the burst of feeling. “I’m hurt and angry. God, I’m so hurt! I love that child. I want what’s best for her. You’ve put me in the position of destroying all that I’ve built with her. I want to have fun with Marion, too. We used to do everything together and now I’m completely cut out of the picture, except to be the wicked witch. You’ve forced me into that role and I resent it.”

  “So what? You’re not her mother.”

  Ella felt slapped and sucked in her breath. When she could speak she said with a pained defeat, “I know.”

  Fannie took a step closer and leaned forward, tilting her shoulder and saying in a lowered voice, “And Harris is my husband.”

  Ella raised her eyes to meet Fannie’s. “I know.”

  Lightning cracked so close now it lit the sky, illuminating the treetops that waved and trembled in the increasing wind. Drops of rain splattered against them as the first rumblings of another clap of thunder began.

  Fannie took a few steps back and angrily swiped at her hair. She seemed electrified and began pacing in the corner of the porch.

  “You know something?” Fannie asked, stopping once more in front of Ella. “I’m mad, too. Not at you, but at me. Because I screwed up. Screwed up good. I hurt the two people I love most in this world. And I hurt myself, too. I’ve done some pretty horrible things. Things I’m not proud of. But I want to change.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “I do,” she repeated. “That’s why I came back, see? I haven’t used in months. I’m clean. Really I am. And I want a chance to make it up to Marion. I don’t know about Harris. He may never forgive me. But Marion… She has so much room for me.”

  The sky opened up and the rain began coming down in earnest. It hammered the porch roof with a deafening roar and flowed from the roof in sheets. Ella rose from the rocker and headed for the door. Fannie reached out to grasp her arm and hold her back. Ella turned on her heel to glare at her, but Fannie’s eyes were burning with intent and her grip was iron hard.

  “I want to be a good mother,” Fannie said to her, shouting to be heard over the storm.

  “Then be one.”

  “The fact is, I can’t do it alone.” She released Ella’s arm, crossing her own. “I…I need to learn to take care of her. I need to learn about this diabetes stuff, her diet and her shots. There’s so much I don’t know. I’ve seen you with her. You’re good at it. So sure of yourself. Look, I know I’m the last person you want to help, but I have to ask. If not for me, for Marion. Please, Ella, teach me how to take care of my child.”

  Ella lay limp in the hot, soapy water of the claw-footed bathtub. From time to time she’d run a cloth over skin that held the memory of being thoroughly caressed. This was not the same body of the woman who had arrived at this strange sanctuary months earlier. The seasons had changed. The weather had gone from cold to warm, the trees from bare to lush with foliage. She had changed.

  Her eyes slowly closed and she let the water settle around the curves of her breasts and kneecaps, white islands above the water. Her dilemma floated in her mind, repeating over and over again the decision she could not refute.

  How many times over the years had she bitterly complained to anyone who would listen about all the mothers who had refused to participate in their child’s illness? Or about those who didn’t even bother to show up for the training classes, or simply turned a deaf ear to the instructions Ella had tried to offer? She used to pray that just one mother would come to her and say, “Please, teach me to take care of my child.”

  Ironically, the only woman who had asked was the only one Ella wished had not.

  Ella was a nurse. That’s who she was. And as a nurse she was committed to helping children thrive.

  And so, she would help Fannie.

  Ella closed her eyes, seeing the argument to its logical conclusion even as the last of her hopes and dreams drained from her. She would teach Fannie how to care for Marion and her diabetes. It was what she was trained to do. It was the right thing to do. And thus, by doing this, she knew she was opening the door for her own departure.

  The Cleanup Committee. The common name “buzzard” is the in correct, slang term for vultures today. “Buzzard” is derived from the French word busard, or hawk, and correctly refers to buteos. Early settlers in North America, however, incorrectly used the name for vultures. Vultures provide a natural cleaning service for the world.

  21

  THE TWO YOUNG VULTURES WERE WREAKING havoc. They’d picked a hole through the roof and were plucking out bits of insulation. They followed the volunteers around whenever they carried trays of food to the pens until some one relented and fed them. And now that they knew where their next meal was coming from, they were permanently roosting in the shade of a large oak by the weighing room. They sat there now, shoulder to shoulder, watching Harris labor with the heavy chain-link fencing. Harris didn’t know what he was going to do with them.

  They were imprinted on humans and clearly had chosen to live among them rather than with the other vultures. Yet he didn�
�t want to give up hope of reunification. He was moving the dog pen from The Restaurant to the shaded area near the clinic so that he could keep an eye on them until they got a little older. Then they’d try once more to release them.

  Inside the clinic he could see Ella’s profile as she worked in the treatment room. For the past week, Ella had been teaching Fannie how to take care of Marion and her diabetes. She was a good teacher, slow, careful and patient with Fannie’s endless questions and fears. Ella had used Marion’s teddy bear to show the best spots for the shots and to let Fannie practice giving injections. Ella had naturally been hesitant to give Fannie any syringes at all, given her drug history, but Fannie swore on a stack of Bibles that she was clean. In the end, Ella moved forward with the instructions. Each day got a little better, at least as far as the training went.

  Harris looked over at the house in the distance and no longer experienced that swell of comfort he had in the past several months. Once more, his house was a place of stress.

  Their routine was their lifeline. Each morning they awoke to breakfast. He grabbed a bite and went to the clinic. Then he came back and they endured the clink and clatter of the silverware as they wordlessly cut and chewed their meals. Afterward, they escaped again to their chores. One day became two, then a week, then two weeks, and still they maintained this absurd civility. When Ella decided to spend more hours at the clinic, they altered the routine a bit and kept on going.

  But the joy was gone. Ella was withdrawing. They barely spoke anymore, and when they did, it was only about business of one sort or another. She was loath to touch him. Even a brush of shoulders caused her to skitter away. The situation was like it had been at the beginning, only much worse because now they were going backward in their relationship. The strain showed in the brittleness of her voice and the pale color of her skin. When their eyes met she always dropped her gaze, but not before he caught a look of pain.