The Anatomy of Wings

by Karen Foxlee

  “It won't be forever,” Monica said.

  “Promise it won't be forever,” said Philippa.

  “We won't be here forever,” said Monica.

  “Don't leave without me.”

  “I promise I won't leave without you.”

  The river came down. It swallowed up all the crossings. It dismantled fences and took them away on its brown rolling back. It wiped away river camps, it uprooted and took away gum trees, speared them over the crossings and jammed them into spillways so that giant fountains erupted into the air.

  It roared at its own might until it broke its banks.

  By the time dawn came Marshall Murray was a long way out of town heading inland.

  The storm without rain had broken up into a thousand little pieces. The new sun illuminated the broken clouds pink, the grasses golden, the hills in the distance a glistening gray. He stopped on the side of the road. He wound down his window. He heard the earth talking again.

  BEFORE EVERYTHING HAPPENED I WISHED I COULD SING LIKE A NIGHTINGALE, A BIRD WITH THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SONG IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. Nightingales aren't found here. The Merit Students Encyclopedia says they are found in Europe, mostly in forests and groves, and their song is heard most clearly in the still of night. Throughout history the nightingale has been captured and carried to all four corners of the world even though the world is round. They have been expected to sing inside of golden cages for kings and queens and princes and princesses. And even though they have been prisoners they have sung like they are free. Their voices are so beautiful that sometimes fingers have reached for keys and gilt doors have been accidentally left open because nothing that heavenly should be contained.

  But afterward people have wept when the nightingale has flown. They have lamented when they tried to remember her song. They have wanted her back. They have wept in the dead of night in quiet still gardens over the absence of her. It has driven them mad.

  We took The Book of Clues and walked to the dry river. We went to the place by the sand track.

  “We've done everything we can to get your singing voice back,” said Angela.

  We didn't bring a shovel but used our hands and a tin can to dig a shallow grave at the foot of the tallest of the white-hearted trees. Angela watched while I covered the book with dirt and placed a rock on top.

  It felt right. A good and final ending. When it was buried we scratched our initials into the trunk with Mr. Popovitch's penknife.

  I knew it would wither. The pages would turn in on themselves. Our childish words would fade with each season's rain until they vanished altogether.

  “Maybe now,” said Angela.

  But after everything that had happened I never expected to get my voice back.

  When Nanna came home from the hospital she said she most definitely did not need to stay with Aunty Cheryl in a spare room on an uncomfortable bed. She went home to her little flat. The sliding door and all the sliding windows were opened up to let out the smell of the dusty Blessed Virgins and Craven “A” cigarettes and some jamming fruit that she had left on the shelf. Uncle Paavo and his new lady friend, who we weren't allowed to stare at, came and dug up all the dead gerberas and the roses on their last legs and planted purple vincas, which Nanna whispered were really weeds, because they wouldn't need as much work.

  On weekends I was allowed to stay with her to help. She held my face in her crinkled hands and kissed me on the forehead each time. I got to put the camp stretcher beside her bed and we creaked backward and forward to each other all night. Sometimes she lay on the bed with her hand across her heart and I watched her chest carefully to make sure she was breathing. In the dark I could see tears shining in a pool on the surface of her eyes. When the pool overflowed one would slide in a well-worn path down into her hair. I recited the Litany of the Saints to her like a poem to make her feel better. She still did not come back to our house.

  She gave some of her Virgin Mary statuettes to Mum, her favorite ones, because one day Mum had opened up her jewelry box and put her necklace with the cross back on. She started doing Hobbytex again. The T-shirts didn't have words on them anymore. They were just pictures like a yellow star or green hills with a road leading somewhere or a giant rainbow. The pictures were stiff with color; she used whole tubes and they scratched our skin when we wore them. Some nights there was no sound in the house except a Hobbytex nib filling up a yellow ray of sunlight.

  Mum's voice remained hollow and fragile like a china teacup but we got used to it and knew that her old voice was never coming back. She packed up Beth's room. All the posters were taken down from the walls and all the running medals and dancing sashes. The tambourine bells tinkled as they were lowered into the box. The ballerina bedspread was folded up. All her brown-paper-covered exercise books were stacked in a pile. Danielle and I took the record player and all the records into our room. All that was left was the bed stripped bare and the empty desk and the geometric-print wallpaper. The door stayed open.

  Sometimes I went and sat on the bed and closed my eyes. I tried to communicate with her. I tried to think of interesting questions about heaven. But I never heard or felt anything in return. All I could hear was Mrs. Irwin watering the yard or a lawn mower or an Ansett jet crossing over, bringing people back into the heart of nowhere.

  Dad picked us up for lunch on Sundays. He called me chickadee and piggybacked me all the way from the car. Afterward we got small tins of Coke and packets of chips while he went into the public bar. Sometimes he let us walk the short distance to the highway to watch the trucks coming and going and the willy-willies spinning madly along the shoulder. Once a week he came to pick Mum up for dances. He combed his hair back into a very neat ducktail. Mum curled her hair.

  Danielle drew me a picture of a girl without sad eyes. Her perm was almost gone. All that was left was beautiful oak-colored waves cascading over her shoulders. They almost hid her Milwaukee back brace. Kylie's face filled out so she was not so spindly. Her hair grew thicker. Her skin grew clearer. She didn't have rages so often. She decided she wanted to be a marine biologist. Aunty Cheryl said she was blossoming and even Mum had to agree.

  My voice came back on grade 6 breakup day.

  It was after I had spread a very bad rumor about Mrs. Bridges-Lamb and I had been summoned to her classroom. The rumor was that every year before the end of grade 5 Mrs. Bridges-Lamb started fattening up one child by giving them extra treats from the good behavior lolly jar. On breakup day that child went missing. I said this had been happening for as long as anyone could remember. I don't know why I even made the story up. It scared a girl called Clarissa, who must have never read Hansel and Gretel or not been able to tell the difference between fact and fiction. She started to cry and told Mr. Barnes.

  Mrs. Bridges-Lamb said she couldn't let me finish grade 6 without first talking to me.

  “I know you have always been very good at making up stories,” she said, “but this one was particularly hurtful.”

  She said she didn't want me to go to grade 7 still doing such hurtful things as well as skipping school and throwing rocks and hanging around down the creek looking for wild horses and pretending to live in caves.

  “Grief is a terrible, terrible thing,” she said.

  I just shrugged.

  “But I probably don't need to tell you that, do I?” she said.

  “You are such a clever little thing,” she said. “I want you to look after yourself. You could be anything you wanted. What do you think you'd like to be?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I want to be nothing.”

  “I remember when you wanted to be an ornithologist,” she said. “And you did excellent morning talks on Elanus scriptus.”

  That made me feel sad. It made me think of all those hot still days when I watched the hawks through the louvers and tried to understand their behaviors while everything, everything was falling apart.

  “That was a long time ago,” I said, and it felt like years had passe
d.

  She wiped my nose with her hankie.

  “It feels like only yesterday,” she said.

  “Sorry for saying you eat small children,” I said.

  “That's all right, my dear,” she said.

  When I was leaving the classroom I noticed all the Icarus wings up along the back wall, only these were new wings, made by new children, and I remembered the day when mine had flown.

  At the doorway Mrs. Bridges-Lamb rubbed her hands together.

  “Grade-five breakup this afternoon and I'm feeling a little hungry,” she said.

  That really made me laugh and for the first time in a very long time I felt something loosen inside me but it had been so long I didn't know what it was.

  It was when I was walking home with Angela through the park that it happened. She was telling me about a book in the library that was about how to be a witch. She said she was going to get it out and start doing spells and stuff. There was one spell that made you highly beautiful and another that made you know who you were going to marry. She said I couldn't get married until I got underarm hairs. I was just listening and looking at the sky when I noticed something very small far in the distance.

  The small thing was flying very high. It was flying only as high as an eagle would fly. At first I didn't believe it. I thought it may have only been a whistling kite. I needed it to fly lower so I could see. I didn't want to get my hopes up because I was only just beginning to feel better.

  And as if it could sense my thoughts the tiny bird in the distance let itself roll over backward the way wedge-tailed eagles do. It fell down, freely, through the blue sky.

  “Are you listening to me?” said Angela.

  I stopped walking and just stood still. The bird fell down, down, down through the sky until it evened out and unfolded its wings and I saw the open finger-shaped edges. I saw its diamond-shaped tail.

  It soared in a large circle above me. I swear it on my whole life. It circled above me three times. It came closer each time. It came so close I could see its eye. Just the way that albatross looked at Nanna all of those years before. And then it beat its wings, one, two, three, and I could feel the wind of it on my face.

  Away it went. Over the trees in the park. Over the water tower. Over the mine. Over the lake. Over the desert. Over everything. Away from us.

  And I was not so filled with fear.

  Inside me something loosened further and before I even realized it a song was coming through. Standing right there in the park I sang a sudden song. I sang “Gloria in Excelsis.” I sang it so strong and clear the words hung in the air above us. Angela dropped her bag and jumped up and down.

  “You're singing, you're singing,” she screamed.

  All the way home I sang.

  Through the scrub side of Memorial Park I sang Good King Wenceslas went out on the feast of Stephen, all the snow lay round about deep and crisp and even. The rain trees crowded over us and shook their rattles with joy. All the way down the hill I sang By the rivers of Babylon, where we lay down. Through the turnstile gate I sang I got a girl called Boney Maroney, she's as skinny as a stick of macaroni. Angela put in some requests but all I could do was shake my head because the songs just kept coming.

  In Dardanelles Court I sang Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Mr. and Mrs. O'Malley came rushing to their patio and clapped and cheered.

  My voice was clear. Clear as a ringing bell.

  Frieda Schmidt stood in her front yard and smiled. I saw Philippa Irwin at her window. I sang her Hosanna, heysanna, sanna sanna ho. She waved at me. We were running, Angela and I, and Angela was ahead of me shouting through the front gate.

  “Mrs. Day, Mrs. Day, her voice is back.”

  I stopped at the front gate and I sang Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. I sang them slowly, ascending and descending, perfectly, like a bird with a double voice box.

  I saw Nanna's Datsun Sunny in the driveway and she came quickly to the front door. I was very glad to see her. And behind her was Mum with her arms held out for me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge the Queensland government for their ongoing commitment to and support of writers through the annual Premier's Literary Awards. I would like to thank Madonna Duffy and Rob Cullinan at the University of Queensland Press, Catherine Drayton at InkWell Management, and Erin Clarke at Knopf Books for Young Readers for their belief in this story. And of course more thanks than can be mentioned to my family, especially my mother, who often fed and watered me while I wrote, and my partner, Chris who carefully prized me away from the computer from time to time.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright (c) 2009 by Karen Foxlee

  All rights reserved.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89159-5

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