Volāre

She stood balanced on the edge of oblivion, a gaping expanse of nothing before her.  Swirling grey waves of nothing nothing nothing slamming against the bridge’s pilings, causing her to sway on her perch.  That’s what all this was—nothing nothing nothing.  And if it was nothing, then it couldn’t hurt her.  She tipped her head back and saw them, the seagulls, gliding up up overhead.  They seemed so effortless, so free.  Black-tipped wings cut smooth arcs through the fog.  Little dancers circling in a heavenly mobile, like the wooden one over the cradle so many many years ago. 

There, in the corner, it had hung.  The room had always been sparsely furnished, a creaking wooden rocking chair swung in a steady rhythm by the little wicker bassinet and the only decoration was a yellowed poster of a lighthouse on some windswept coast somewhere.  Then there was the mobile, that beautiful collection of wood and string, dangling from the sturdy rafters of the room.  Faded curtains fluttered at the window ushering in ribbons of dusty sunlight.

She remembered how much she had wanted to touch those wooden images, how much she had wanted to feel her fist close tight around one of those little birds.  She wanted to feel the firm pressure of a curved wing-tip pushing into the soft flesh of her tiny hand, to know without a doubt that she owned this, if only for a second; that for one moment, this was hers.

But no, they had found her on the rocking chair, balanced on the pitching platform, reaching, oh reaching, out towards what she wanted so much. Tiny fingers just a hairsbreadth away from grazing those beautiful grey wings. 

No, they had told her and, Don’t.  You’ll wake the baby, the baby, the baby.  And they had carried her away, a cry stuck in her throat, just moments away from tasting flight, from grasping freedom.  They closed her little fists around air, around nothing.  Shhhh.  The baby, the baby, the baby.   

They sat her down with glossy picture books and cheap plastic toys.  Toys with lights and blaring noises and bright grinning faces.  She didn’t like all that sound and blinding color.  The noises shrieked—too loud, too loud.  The colors merged into horrible blobs, filling her vision with leering faces.  Too much.  She stuffed her chubby hands against her ears and scrunched her eyes tight.  Too much, too much, too much.  Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.

They didn’t understand.  They offered her more plastic figurines, more garish color, more loud loud noises.  She just wanted that mobile—the graceful birds, the cool grey color, the cracked, splintering wood.  She longed for the old old feel of something genuine.

She grew a bit older.  The baby in the cradle was no longer a baby—she was a blond, blue-eyed little girl, Stella, they called her, Stella.  Stella laughed out loud, a pleasing giggle that made them smile and coo.  Stella loved the bright toys and the loud noises.  Stella was dressed in ruffles and ribbons, her little ringlets neatly arranged, her dimples ever on display. 

Slowly, they gave up trying to offer these things to her.  Instead, they gave them to Stella.  Stella, who responded the way she should.  Who loved being held and fawned over.  Who delighted in the noise and made so much of it herself.  Unlike her—she who shied from touch, and when things got to be too much, too much, would cover her ears and shut her eyes and rock.  Rock like she once rocked, balanced on that old wooden chair.  Rocked to rid herself of this loud, noisy world.  Rocked because only that way could she find a place where she felt safe.  Something that she could control.

She would sing to herself too.  A wordless song.  A deep, arching, soulful song.  She sang like she imagined the seagulls would sing, so free and so high above the world.  And yet a bit like crying.  Happy to be in the air, but a little sad to be off the earth, just the tiniest part of her regretful that she couldn’t be both in the sky and on land, that she couldn’t ever have both.   

More years passed and there was school.  Horrible horrible school where the other children were too noisy, always shouting, always yelling so that she had to keep her hands flat against her ears to try to block the noise.  And the other children were always touching, always putting their dirty hands all over her desk and her chair, always were pushing and shoving, and she just wanted to be left alone and go in a corner and stand with air surrounding her, with nothing surrounding her, so that she didn’t have to touch and feel their dirty, grimy bodies against her own. 

They quickly figured out that she was different.  And they were mean, as children are when faced with something they don’t understand.  They called her names and stole her lunch bag with the picture of seagulls on the front and dropped it in the mud.  And then she couldn’t get it because it was dirty, so dirty and defiled.  But she wasn’t hungry anyways so it didn’t matter to her, except that she was a teeny bit sad to see those beautiful seagulls all muddy and dirty, their beautiful open sky mixed up with the dust of the earth so that it was no longer sky and they were stuck, unable to fly. 

These things her mother didn’t understand.  Her mother didn’t understand why she didn’t pick up that lunch bag that was so dirty dirty and she couldn’t touch it, she just couldn’t touch.  Her mother yelled, but her mother often yelled.  It was not because she didn’t love her, no, not because of that, she always said.  It was just because, just because why did she always have to be so difficult all the time?  Couldn’t she be like Stella, couldn’t she be normal and make friends and not be so much trouble?  Couldn’t she just pick up the damn lunch bag, goddammit, this is really too much sometimes, why couldn’t she just be normal?  Her mom didn’t do anything wrong, why did she have to have a child who was so difficult, so much work?  But no, this didn’t mean she didn’t love her, sorry, sorry, mommy got mad, sorry it’s just too much sometimes, you know?  Just a lunch bag.

And then her mother would go off and talk on the phone for a long time with a person she always talked to when she was upset.  Her mother paid a lot of money to talk to this person.  She didn’t understand why anyone would want to pay to talk, because why would you want to talk at all if you didn’t have to? 

She noticed that as the days went on her father was away more and more and her mother was on the phone with that expensive person more and more and her mother also smoked more and more.  And she kind of worried for her mother, because she really did love her, and because she learned in school that cigarettes are really really bad for you.  They had shown pictures in school of horrible black things that they had said were lungs—could they really be lungs like the pink pork-chop shaped things in the picture books?  But those horrible black things were what your lungs looked like if you smoked a lot, and her mother smoked a lot, and she didn’t want her mother to die.  But when she tried to tell her mother that the cigarettes would kill her, her mother sighed and said, Honey, I need something to help me out.  Lord knows I love you, but you are a handful and mommy needs something to help her deal with you when you are difficult.  If you could stop being difficult, mommy could stop smoking. 

So she tried for a while to not be difficult.  She tried very hard but she just couldn’t deal because it was all too much and too fast paced and she needed something to control.  And then her mother caught her rocking and singing that song to herself and she was back to smoking.  The only good thing about it was that when she was smoking, her mother left her alone.

*****

She grew older and her parents fought a lot more and there was something about her father and another woman, not her mother.  So there was more yelling and her father moved out, and there were door slams and she sat in her room and rocked and sang and realized that she was crying.  And her mother said it wasn’t her fault but Stella said it was because she was such a freak and absolutely everyone in the whole entire world hated her.  And Stella would ignore her at school or would tell people how she thought she absolutely had to be adopted because she was such an absolute freak and god, there really was absolutely no way that they ever could have been sisters, god, not really.  But this didn’t bother her much because she was used to it and she would just go off and be by herself and watch the seagulls high above the confines of her concrete school.

Then her father was back and demanding to see his daughters.  The other woman had left him and he was yelling and pounding on the door and saying that he wanted to see his dawtels, his loverry dawtels because they were jus as mush his as they were theyl moverr’s and he had a ralight to see his own chilrren.  And her mother was yelling that he was drunk, and there was no way in hell that she was going to let him near her children when he was acting like a raving lunatic.  And Stella was putting on a concerned face and pouting on the phone with her friends, and she was just in her room alone with the wall paper she had picked out, with light houses and shorelines and tiny black m’s that were birds, her seagulls, trying to block it all out. 

Then came the day when her mother said, Girls, it’s time to see your father.  And there he was, all smiling and in a suit and acting all well mannered and calling them mademoiselles and Stella all pink and blushing and laughing, but she knew better, because she remembered, and how could her mother let them go home with a raving lunatic?  So while Stella chatted about school and her friends, and especially her absolutely wonderful new boyfriend and could they please go somewhere fancy tonight, daddy, Stella would absolutely love to go to a fancy restaurant, she just sat stony and silent in the back.  And she glared at her father because he was a liar and he had left and now here he was pretending to be their father again, but she knew better. 

They did go to a fancy restaurant, but she refused to order, and when her father ordered for her, she didn’t touch the food, she just looked out into the darkness outside of the window, and pictured the seagulls—where did they go at night?

Then there was the next day, after her father had dropped Stella off at the mall with her friends and a wad of cash, he came back home and smiled and said How’s my little girl?  She ignored him at first because, really, he had no right to be calling her that after everything he had done, though she really didn’t know what all that was, but her mother said it a lot, He’s got some nerve after everything he’s done, so it must have been very very bad. 

And then he said Oh, look, I got you something I thought you would like, and he handed her a flat package covered in messily-taped red tissue paper.  She looked at him because, since when did people just give you presents when it wasn’t even your birthday or anything?  But he said, Go on, open it, and he smiled but his eyes looked a tiny bit sad which confused her because, was he happy or sad?  She couldn’t tell but she felt bad for him because maybe he was sad, so she ripped open the paper and there was a large white book that said BIRDS in bright yellow writing, and even though she didn’t like yellow she smiled because she did like birds.  Then her father said, Your mother told me that you liked birds so I got this book for you, and his voice sounded kind of funny like maybe he was going to cry or something which confused her but she smiled a bit, at the book, because she was too confused looking at her father, but she guessed he saw it because he seemed happier.  And she almost thought that maybe they could go back to how it used to be, though it didn’t use to be that great, but it wasn’t that bad either. 

But then a tall older boy walked in the door, and her father looked excited and said, This is your stepbrother, Daniel.  And then she wondered how she could have thought of forgiving him since he had gone and left their family and started a new one while trying to still have the old one also.  So she refused to look at either of them, even though she did sneak one quick peek at Daniel who was tall with artfully messy brown hair and a blue polo-shirt and baggy pants.  He looked like the people Stella was friends with and his lips parted to reveal glaring white teeth.  Her father smiled and said, We-ell, I’d better go get Stella; I’ll leave you two to get to know each other. 

Daniel said, Hey, you’re nothing like your sister, are you?  But she ignored him because he was a fake sibling that her father had somehow connected with her, so she really felt no obligation to speak.  And then Daniel said, Your sister was right, you really are a freak.  And he reached out and grabbed her chin, C’mon, look at me freak. 

She didn’t like his fingers on her skin so she yanked herself away and ran upstairs to the bedroom she was staying in and began singing that wordless song to herself, hoping that this horrid boy who was somehow her brother would go away, just go away.  But he got angry and rushed up behind her and caught her on the stairs, and was yelling, Answer me freak!  What, are you mute too? 

And she didn’t like him touching her and she was singing louder now and thrashing about, trying to get away, trying to get back to something she could control.  But he got more angry and he hit her and shoved her against the wall.  And then he was all over her, touching her all over, and she didn’t like this, no, this couldn’t be happening, and she tried to close her eyes and make it go away but he was everywhere and he was yelling and grunting and she couldn’t get her hands up to her ears because he had them trapped and she was slammed up against a wall and couldn’t move and this was happening, no this could not be happening, no no, and she tried to sing her song but she wasn’t loud enough and he yelled SHUT UP, and put his dirty dirty hand over her mouth and he was everywhere and she couldn’t get rid of him, she couldn’t control this, why couldn’t she control this, no no, she wanted to fly away, but she couldn’t because she never learned how, never ever touched one of those birds and now she was trapped and this was too too horrible and no, why was this happening, she didn’t, she couldn’t, make it stop, make it go away, and she felt that song well up inside her, like that mournful song that the seagulls sing and they were mourning for her now, they were all crying for her because they were free up in the sky and they couldn’t take her with them, no they couldn’t do anything because she was stuck down on earth, oh god, she was stuck because she didn’t know how to fly.

When he finally let her go, she ran.  She didn’t think, she just ran and ran and ran.  And some people were yelling at her, Hey girl, are you alright?  And there were cars honking and it was all too much so she just ran and ran and ran until the noise was gone and it was all gone and she was alone.  Finally she stopped and looked around and found herself on a bridge somewhere, over a beautiful beautiful expanse of open water.  The sky was grey and the water was grey and if she squinted a bit the horizon blurred and then it was all grey—a whole world of grey grey nothing.  And she heard a familiar calling, like a calling from deep within and she looked up and saw them.

Without thinking, she stretched an arm out to them, grasping ineffectively at the graceful silhouettes, slowly circling out of view.  She looked at her empty fist in dismay, thwarted once again, unable to understand why she could not hold this, why she could not make it her own.

She climbed up higher, wanting to be closer to the sky, to at last be able to reach out and touch them, to finally learn how to fly.  She was almost high enough, her fingers almost grazing their wing tips, and she stretched on tiptoe but still she could not quite reach them. 

They cried, and sang, that beautiful haunting song, and she felt tears on her face because they were just out of reach and she would be stuck here forever, ripped away from what she wanted most as she had been torn away from that cradle all those years ago. 

They sang and she heard them calling to her to come fly, to come fly with them, because it is so much better up here where no one can touch you, where no one can hurt you ever again.  And she was reaching and reaching, balancing on the edge of the railing, and it was all so beautiful and just a bit too far, just a bit too much out of reach.  They were calling to her to let go, let go, you will be free with us, they will hurt you down there, come be where you can never be hurt again.  And she thought yes, yes, that is what I want.  She opened her mouth and the song came pouring out, drifting up to them.  Yes yes, this was the connection she wanted all her life, this was the control, and she lifted her arms up to them and stepped off into that vast grey expanse. 

And in that moment, she learned how to fly.