In the space between dreams (part two)

Photo by Samuel Marksville, "General Striker's Cottages c. 1887"

[Note: This is Part Two, Part One can be found here.]

When he opened his eyes again, the little bird was gone. Harry realized that he had fallen asleep. It was getting harder and harder for him to stay awake it seemed. Sometimes he didn't even hear his grandmother come in to bring him his lunch or supper. He was sad at those times because she always had something funny to tell him that one of the neighbor kids had done, or something silly that Landie had said. Harry would ask about his friends, Tom and Walter. They used to call up to him and throw things through his open window when he first got sick. Back then everyone expected that he would be better in  few days. Now he listened to the voices that passed by in the street and tried to pick out those people he knew.

It was strange to think that he would never see his friends again. They didn't call up to him anymore and it seemed like everyone had forgotten him already. But in his frequent dreams, Harry still played with Tom, and Walter, and Frank and even Landie's youngest daughter, Nellie, who was a real pain but could throw a ball better than anyone else he knew. In his dreams, he could run again and sometimes he  was even faster than Frank, which never happened in real life. In his dreams, he was a great tree climber and instead of watching Walter's older brother climb the tree up to Mrs. Keghill's roof to get her fierce but frightened white cat down, he did it himself and Mrs. Keghill thanked him by baking him a rhubarb pie.

Now as he lay in his bed, Harry thought that aside from his visits with Charlotte, the most exciting thing was dreaming. He was sorry to wake up sometimes, his dreams were so vivid. But when Charlotte hopped onto his bed to eat the bread he saved for her, he didn't want to be anywhere else.

She seemed to be coming to visit him more often these days. Sometimes she would sit on the windowsill, neither inside nor outside, as she trilled and chirped to the birds in the trees. Harry imagined that she was inviting them to come visit, but the other birds were content to stay outside.

She would hop about his head too, if he kept very still. Sometimes she pulled at his brown hair that  was longer than he ever remembered it had been before. Her little tugs made him giggle and he thought that she was trying to put his hair into her nest. And as it became harder to stay awake during her visits he found that he was dreaming about her too.

At first, he dreamt that Charlotte perched on his shoulder as he walked through the neighborhood.  His friends took turns holding her on their fingers. Now he dreamt of walking without pain and breathing deeply. In dreams anything is possible. Even flying.

Charlotte was sitting in her now familiar spot on the windowsill and beckoning to the birds outside, except that she was looking a Harry as she trilled her welcoming song. He sat up and went slowly over to the window and reached out his hand to her. She chirped again and flew out to the tree that was swaying slightly in the yard outside. As he stood watching her, Charlotte came back to the window, turned at the last minute and flew towards the tree. Over and over she repeated this maneuver, towards the window and then the tree as if she was trying to wear a path between the two in the air.

Harry watched, silently and felt himself become giddy with the flapping of wings and the freedom of his little bird. He heard his grandmother call loudly from downstairs and turned to see if she was coming. She would be angry to see him out of bed. As he turned back, he realized that he was no longer in his room but now in the tree, somehow transported by his tiny companion.

There she sat now, just above his head on another branch. Her small chest was moving rapidly with her recent exertion. She looked down at him and sang a song that he had never heard before, but its sound made him close his eyes so he could hear it better. As he listened, he remembered the kites he had seen once in the park. He had loved the way they fluttered and dipped, flying high in the wind but so unlike a bird.

With his eyes closed he felt a bit dizzy. It seemed that the edges of his head were getting fuzzy. He opened his eyes and saw that  the tree he was sitting in had grown to an enormous height. From where he sat, still serenaded by the little bird, he could see his whole neighborhood, and beyond. He could even see the park, and the river. He had never been so high in all his life, and it was thrilling, even if it did make him a bit woozy.

He heard his grandmother call out again. It seemed as though she was calling for him, like she used to do at supper-time before he was sick. He could be playing anywhere in the neighborhood and he was able to hear her call him. They liked to play a game, back then, Grandmother and Harry. She would call him home and then watch the clock until he arrived. If he was home in less than three minutes, she would give him an extra helping of dessert after supper. Harry loved that game and was famous with the other kids for stopping whatever he was doing – even mid sentence- and running straight home. Everyone knew why he left so fast, and sometimes they would cheer him on chanting, “Faster, Harry, faster! I heard she made a pie tonight!”

But his grandmother hadn't called for him like that since he got sick. Why would she need to? He took advantage of his great height in the tree and looked down to see if his grandmother was visible. It looked as though she was standing outside of the cottage, but he was so high up that he couldn't be sure if it was really her. Someone was approaching her, could it be Landie? And now another person came of of the cottage and seemed to put a hand on her back.

Harry's eyes felt quite tired from trying to make out all those small figures. He turned his attention back to Charlotte, who eagerly hopped onto his finger when he offered it to her. Her song was finished and she was mostly silent now, except for a few soft warbling chirps every now and then.

With the brown bird perched comfortably on his small finger, Harry breathed deeply. The afternoon was beginning to turn to evening and he smelled the deep, warm scent of rhubarb wafting up to him as he watched the beginning of the sunset in the far horizon.

 

She keened softly and was comforted by the arms of the neighbors who had come running when they heard her cry out her grandson's name. In the close confines of the neighborhood of small cottages, everyone had been expecting this day. They knew it would be hard for her to let the small boy go, after all he was the spitting image of his father, her son, whose name he also shared, and who had died several years earlier when influenza was indiscriminately taking members of everyone's families. It had been hard for her then, and she did not get over his death easily. But as her grandson had grown she found that their shared grief had brought them together in a way that was even closer than the bond she had had with her son. The women in the neighborhood knew that his death might just be more than she could handle this time.

She had taken up the habit of sitting by Harry's window. The room comforted her and she felt closer to him as she sat there looking out on the large tree in the yard. She was often serenaded by a dun-colored bird as she sat, and the unusual melody took her out of her grief momentarily. Listening to the bird she found herself daydreaming and remembering her grandson running towards her at supper-time with a huge grin on his face, shouting as he got closer, “Did I make it? I did, didn't I? You'd better get a big plate for me tonight because I was extra fast, wasn't I?” She remembered how she'd told him he had beaten his record, even though she hadn't been looking at the clock at all.

In the space between dreams

Photo by Samuel Marksville, "General Striker's Cottages c. 1887"

[Note: This is Part One of Two.]

Inside, the light was dim, but through the shutters Harry could hear the birds chirping and chattering on the fence that ran in front of the cottage. The windows were thrown open to “let in the air” his grandmother said, but he was under orders to keep the shutters closed so that no filthy birds came into the room.

Harry listened to the sounds coming from downstairs. Landie, the neighbor two doors over, called to his grandmother. He heard her shout back to Landie that she would be out in a minute. Harry lay still until he heard the click of the back door as his grandmother went outside to chat. As soon as he was sure that his grandmother had gone, he tiptoed out of the bed and over to the window.

Peeking carefully through the grimy slats of the shutters he checked to make sure no one was watching. Slowly, he opened the shutters just enough to be able to look out and see the sky from his bed. All he needed was a rectangle of sky.

He skittered back to his bed and got under the covers. It would be quite a while before his grandmother came to check on him. Surely his friend would visit before then. Just in case, he took a piece of the bread his grandmother had left for him on the tray and held it in his hand. He was already feeling tired from his short journey out of bed. It would be good to close his eyes for a moment.

The nipping and pecking at the bread in his hand woke him up, but he remembered to open his eyes slowly so as not to startle the little bird. There she sat on the blanket pulled up over his chest. She cocked her head and peered in all directions before every tiny bite. He held his hand very still as he quietly stared at her. She hopped about a bit between nibbles and he could see that she still favored her right leg.

It had only been a week or so since he had managed to grab her and remove the bent wire that had pierced her leg. He couldn't tell yet if she was ever going to fully recover. When Harry had first seen the little drab bird she was struggling to hop on his bedclothes with that wire making her unbalanced and catching on the blanket.

The first  time he tried to catch her, he moved too fast and she flew away quickly, circling his room once as she sought the open window. Harry had thought that she would never come back after that, but two days later, as he awoke from a nap after lunch, there she was on the tray that his grandmother always set on the wooden box by his bed. She especially liked the hard roll that his grandmother always said would put “meat on his bones”. Harry had never cared for the day-old crusty bread and was more than happy to share it with his new friend.

It was several days later that he saw his chance to help the little bird. He had been holding a broken roll in his hand while he was napping, just as he had done today, and when he awoke there was the  little bird. But on that day his grandmother had placed the coverlet from her own bed over Harry's blanket because he had been feverish. The coverlet was rather lacy and the wire that pierced her leg had gotten caught in the loosely woven yarn. The small bird jerked herself about in a startling manner in an effort to get free and Harry seized the opportunity to grab her struggling body. He thought she would bite him, but she only pecked his fingers half-heartedly. Harry tilted his hand and looked at her leg. It was swollen and it looked painful where the wire poked through. He wished Dr. Jorgan was there. He would know what to do. He wondered if it was better to pull the wire out or cut the ends off. He had seen men kill wounded animals in the alleyway behind the cottages “to put them out of their misery”. They said that it had to be done, but the look on their faces belied a kind of pleasure in that dirty task. He couldn't risk that happening to his bird. After all, she had chosen him and he felt a certain responsibility for her.

He would have to figure this out himself. It was best not to let anyone else know. He closed his eyes and relaxed his grip on the small bird slightly as he took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes he held onto one end of the twisted wire and spoke softly to the bird.

“It will be all over in a minute. Just think of something nice – like flying.”

Then he pulled as hard as he dared on the wire. The bird's leg bent in an unnatural way and he stopped quickly. Then he braced the leg with his pinkie as he methodically guided the wire out. The bird had screamed loudly at first but by the time the wire was out she was quiet.

Amazingly, the bird's leg did not bleed after Harry removed the wire. He relaxed his grip on her again, for he had been holding her quite tightly while he concentrated on his task. Gingerly, he touched the warm brown feathers on her back. He gently placed her on his bed and she hopped unsteadily before flying away.

But today he just watched her as she ate the bread in his hand. It was enough that she kept coming back. He was so lonely in that room all day. No one but his grandmother and the doctor were allowed to visit him and even though they were cheerful enough when they were with him, he had heard the neighbors talking outside the windows.

 

“What a shame.”

“Did you hear? They say that there's no hope.”

“How does she do it? Day after day, just waiting for the boy to die.”

“If you ask me, I think she'll be relieved when it's over. Imagine having to take care of the boy all by herself, and at her age.”

 

At first Harry didn't know who they were talking about, but as the days went by and Dr. Jorgan came less regularly, he began to understand that he wasn't going to get better. He didn't exactly mind, he was so tired all the time anyway. But he wished someone would talk to him about it. Whenever he asked his grandmother or the doctor how he was doing and when he could go out and visit his friends, they got that faraway look in their eyes and said noncommittally “Soon, soon.” Eventually, he just stopped asking.

In his head he had begun to call the small brown bird, Charlotte. He never said it aloud, not even in a whisper for fear that his small claim of ownership would scare her away. He looked forward to her visits, however short and made sure that he always had something to feed her when she came.

One day, he placed his finger near the piece of bread in such a way that she hopped onto it as she was eating her fill. The warmth from her small feet made his heart race and he could feel the strength in her left foot as compared to the weaker grasp of her right. He closed his eyes and imagined what it would be like to have a pet that would stay with him all day long.

Between and alone

Here's a little vignette of fiction for you:

Behind the sofa,
under the stairs,
in the old wood shed,
in the rotten attic.

These were the places he sought refuge. Sometimes sleeping, often reading, or making up his own stories. At nine years old he was good at finding places to be "out of the way". It didn't take much to entertain him, and besides he loved reading best of all anyway. His bark-brown hair often had cobwebs stuck in it from the hiding places he chose to do his reading in.

Honestly, he would have enjoyed doing his reading and pretending in the living room just as well, but whenever he tried he was met with instructions like these:

"Go play." One of them would say to him.

"Leave us alone, can't you see we're talking?", was another familiar refrain.

And yet once gone to one of his many hiding places, they would invariably call him back with questions of:

"What were you doing?"

"Where did you go off to?"

And of course, the nonsensical, "Don't go off like that."

It seemed at times like these that he was a yo-yo and his mother and aunt held the string. He understood that his role was set. He couldn't please them.

He lived in the house his mother and aunt had grown up in. Scarcely one year apart in age the two adults in the house were more like twins than simply sisters.  When he would watch them from the kitchen table at breakfast-time it seemed to him that they were two people sharing a common mind. They were so perfectly in sync with each other that their movements appeared to have been choreographed. His mother worked at the stove and his aunt worked at the counter and they always seemed to come together at just the right moment in the center of the kitchen. It was always his aunt who held out the plate while his mother spooned oatmeal or eggs from the pan in her hand. When she finished serving, his mother would take the plate from his aunt with one hand while placing the pan back on the stove with the other and then she would lay the plate down in front of him while patting his head. The routine never changed and perhaps that was why it took on the spectre of an elaborate dance.

In the house he was clearly a foreign species. The only male, he realized that his mother and aunt were an inseparable unit. They had always been together and he would always be the fly in the ointment. They never mentioned the existence of his father, at least not in his presence. Truthfully, it was only when he started school and the other children were talking about their fathers, that he even noticed that his family was different. And yet the fact that his father had never been mentioned convinced him that it was a topic not to be brought up. Instead he would make-up stories about why his father wasn't around to placate the curiosity of the school children. And although he would have given his eye-teeth to have some knowledge of the man who had fathered him, he also knew in his heart that he would never ask the questions he wanted the answers to most of all.

And so they danced. They sent him out and they called him back. He always obliged although it was true that sometimes he pretended that he didn't hear them.

When the weather was cold or when he was in an inquisitive mood, he tried to make himself invisible in their midst. He would climb down between the heavy green armchair and the wall and make himself a little nest there with his book and a pillow from his bed. He knew that when his mother and aunt did not think he was around they would talk more freely. He had to be careful during those times to turn the pages of his book very carefully so as to not make any noise. If they discovered him hiding so close by, it would be many months before they would let their guard down again.

It made him feel strange to hear them talk at these times. It was clear to him even at his young age that they enjoyed each other's company much more than his.  He could hear the animation in their voices and the excited gasps when they shared bits of gossip. They tended to finish each others sentences and then laugh like the girls in his class afterward.

It was in this way that he learned of the unplanned and unwanted pregnancy of the woman who worked at the corner store. He learned of the woman's plight with her lazy husband who was good for nothing but making babies, and how her last child who was still an infant seemed to be just a little wrong in the head. He heard about her pleas to his mother to stop the pregnancy and end the growing creature inside her that she was sure would kill her. He wondered what his mother could do to help this woman, but of course he could never ask. So he listened some more but it didn't help him understand.

His mother and aunt had no other siblings. His grandmother had died, he was told, when she heard the news of his birth. His aunt had told him once of her father, who had left the family when she and her sister were still very young. She had never seen him again and what memories she had of him were dim. She listened patiently to the questions he launched at her about his grandfather, but all she was able to supply him with in return were the vague impressions that remained from the memory of her four year old self. Tall, with big hands, never yelled and smelled like pine pitch and the gingersnap cookies that his mom still made at Christmas. Her recollections did little to satisfy his desire to know the only other male that had lived in the house as far as he knew. But when he asked more questions his aunt replied that she was tired she would tell him more later. Each time he asked, on different days and at different times he was met with another excuse, until finally he understood that she was not going to tell him any more. His mother was unable to confirm the details from his aunt or add anything to the image of his grandfather in his head. She had been three to her sister's four years when he left and as she put it, "All my memories of him swept out the door with him." He would have to be content to eat her gingersnaps at Christmas and imagine his grandfather doing the same.

It was a lonely life he had, and between school and home he had perfected the stance of the outsider. The loner who does not wish to have friends or be approached. It wasn't true, of course, but it helped to have a rigid framework for who you are. The structure of his outsider persona allowed him to move through school with little difficulty. And at home it just reflected his role in the family.

And yet his mother and aunt indulged him. They didn't complain about torn and dirty clothes. They accepted the turtle he brought home from the pond and his mother even took him to the pet store to buy a tank and the equipment that the pet store manager had said was necessary for a turtle. Sure they  put up a fuss when frogs were found in the bathtub, but wasn't that his point? It had taken him all morning to catch fifteen frogs from the pond down the hill, and he had been laughing to himself the whole time thinking of their reaction when his mother went to take her usual afternoon bath. They didn't punish him though. He had never been grounded. In fact his aunt held the bucket with the cookie tin on top, as he collected the slippery frogs from the tub, and his mother gave him soapy water and a sponge to clean up the mess when he was through. They were laughing as he cleaned, but they warned him through their laughter that he was never to do that again.

He was loved, he knew that. But he was still an outsider, unable to penetrate their love for each other, or to viewed as more than a diversion.

Photo by jimfrazier.