The Bird Woman (12 page)

Robbie’s death changed things for both of us, but losing the baby just at that moment changed them again. Why? I don’t rightly
know, I suppose it shook Liam out of brooding about my past with Robbie and smacked him in the face with the truth: that I
might have been grieving for Robbie, but this baby was of the two of us and nothing to do with Robbie at all. Whatever it
was, it made him tender towards me, and once I felt him close again I lost all wish to leave.

A bare six weeks after the miscarriage we were married in the Registry Office in Dublin. Dublin had been Liam’s idea, he had
wanted to ask my family down and he thought it might be a sort of a halfway house.

I said not to waste the stamps.

He didn’t believe me; he thought the right letters would bring them, but he was wrong. My mother wrote. A brief, formal letter,
wishing us well, offering no gift or excuse.

Anne sent a set of boxed linen, a long red formal tablecloth with matching everything. There was a letter in with it, short
and embarrassed. She wrote that she was sorry, but they couldn’t come. I sat with the letter in my hands, the sticker on the
cellophane wrapping looking up at me: Ulster Weavers by appointment to Her Majesty, the Queen.

I put the whole lot on the fire. Not on account of the Queen—I was no Nationalist. On account of the insult, for that was
the way that I saw it. Liam came in as I was turning the blackened box with the fire tongs, letting the flames to the heart
of it,
watching them eat at it till it fell apart. He didn’t say anything, but after that he didn’t ask his family either. That was
for my sake, to even things up.

There’s another thing about Robbie’s death. That was the one and only time that she’s rung me in all the years I’ve been here.

Not long after our marriage, I started another baby. Liam watched me like a hawk, but he’d no need to, I left off mending
roofs and clambering about in the river and lifting stones for whatever wall we happened to be rebuilding. Losing two was
enough for me, I’d no wish for another Barbara Allen.

When Andrew was born I couldn’t get over his maleness, his genitals, his little spout of a penis. I had made this body inside
my body, yet mine was a female body and this, beyond doubt, was a male. It was pure strange. Stranger still to look into his
eyes and have no idea at all who it was lived in there.

We called him Andrew after my dead father, and Liam wanted his second name to be Daniel after his own. I was happy with that,
for his parents were good to me and it softened it for them that there was to be no christening. Just the same, I was glad
that Daniel came out of the Bible and wasn’t some saint’s name, like Eugene, though I kept that thought to myself. Prejudice
runs a whole lot deeper than logic. Feelings are feelings—they don’t always match with the things you tell yourself in your
head.

It wasn’t only on my account that there was to be no christening. Liam isn’t completely set against God as I am, it’s just
he has scant respect for the Church when it comes to the overwhelming sinfulness of sex. Yet for all his talk he’s every inch
a Catholic. Deep down, I’m certain sure he still thinks it’s the One True Faith. And he’s naturally religious in a way that
I never was,
nor could be—I don’t think it’s ever even crossed his mind to doubt.

The Church didn’t care for people like Liam in those days. A la carte Catholics, that’s what they were called—people who hung
in there yet wouldn’t buckle down. But that was back then, now is completely different, now you nearly have a search on to
find a Catholic who isn’t a la carte.

Everything blossomed for us after Andrew was born. There was all the usual: my body’s soreness, the broken nights, the problems
I had at the start with breast-feeding. I was always tired, though Liam helped and Andrew fed alright and he wasn’t that bad
when it came to sleeping. Tired, but oddly happy. It was a bit like those snowstorm-things we had when we were children: the
bubble of glass with Mary and Joseph and the donkey, or sometimes an Austrian-looking village, deep in the snow. You picked
up the bubble and shook it about, and the snowflakes danced in the crystal air and fell down quietly, quietly, covering the
earth.

For a while we lived like that, inside the bubble, though no one picked it up and shook it. May came and I carried him into
the fields and showed him the whitethorn blossom that lay on the trees like snow. Day followed day.

Suzanna was born almost two years later. This time there was no glass bubble, or if there was, I hardly noticed, for we were
still grieving for Liam’s mother, and anyway, two is a whole lot different from one.

T
here’d been nothing for ages and ages, and I was that busy with babies I’d hardly given it a thought. Then one summer afternoon
I was lying out in the orchard, Suzanna beside me, and I felt a spiralling movement start in my feet and move slowly up through
my body till it passed itself out through the top of my head. Useless to try to describe it in words. I can say it like that—so
matter of fact—but once it started there was nothing I could do to stop it, and it was definite to the point of violence in
its force. And I say “movement,” but it was more as though an autonomous entity had got inside me and was following its own
course—completely within the body yet moving the body as your sleeve will move if your outstretched arm traces circles onto
the air.

As soon as it passed I sat up and looked around me. In the whole of my life I had never felt anything like it, yet Suzanna
still lay there, gurgling beside me, Andrew still searched out snails in the grass, everything looked the same. I was so astonished
I nearly forgot to be frightened.

I got to my feet, brushed myself down, gathered my babies to me, and headed off to find Liam. I meant to tell him, truly I
did, but he wasn’t in the workshop, where I looked first, he was in the kitchen with Dermot, planning the show that was coming
up soon for them both in Cork. By then Suzanna was crying,
Andrew was wanting his tea, and Liam was that busy listening to Dermot he hardly noticed me at all He says now that I seemed
alright, and maybe I did, for I had Suzanna on one arm, sucking away, and Andrews mouth was open like a baby bird’s for the
egg I was spooning in with the other hand. Children don’t wait around for attention until you’re in the mood. Anyway, how
would Liam or Dermot have noticed anything? They were head-down-and-hard-at-it, sketching out plans on the backs of the unpaid
bills.

When Dermot left, Liam was hyper. It was Dermot this and Dermot that, and he’d eat now because he had to go off to see Tommy
Quinn about getting stands made for the work. He ate standing up, talking away, then put on his jacket and off he went out
the door.

After that something got stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t tell him at all.

I’d never heard of any such thing, nor read of it either, and whatever it was I knew that it wasn’t normal. Yet I didn’t think
I was mad this time, for it wasn’t to do with my mind, it was all in the body. I set myself to endure it until it went away.

But it didn’t go away, it came back and came back, though at first it wasn’t for long and it always chose a time when Liam
wasn’t there. It was always the same. It started in my feet then moved itself up through my body and on out through my head.
Often it came at night when I’d just gone up to bed and Liam would still be downstairs, reading or watching television or
talking with someone who’d called. As soon as he came up it stopped of its own accord.

Then it got more unpredictable in its timing. Sometimes I’d be in the kitchen, baking or cleaning, and something would move
in my feet and they’d start into flexing and stretching themselves before I’d rightly noticed in my mind what was going
on. The next thing I knew this energy-thing would come spiralling up with such force that I had to hold on to the table till
it passed. Sometimes Liam opened the door only seconds after, and I couldn’t believe he saw nothing, for its presence had
been so strong I’d have sworn it left stains on the air.

I feared it by then—I thought it must be some evil thing, too bad to be spoken of or written down.

The first time the Healing came it was for Whiskey, the golden retriever that Liam’s brother Tom had given us soon after Andrew
was born. She was six weeks old when Tom got her—a bundle of trembling fluff—and he’d trained her himself for hunting, which
meant months of patient work. By the end of it she was good, very good, but only when it suited her. That was the problem.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what he wanted her to do, she understood alright, and she might just do it, or she might
not. It drove Tom wild—right to the edge of mistreating her—so he caught himself on just in time and gave her to Liam, who
didn’t hunt and wouldn’t mind her ways.

She was a lovely creature, tall and elegant and the warm, deep-golden colour of sand. All the same, you could see what Tom
meant, for she did what she wanted when she wanted to, and no one was going to tell her otherwise. That was okay by me, for
she was good around the house and gentle with the children. Andrew loved her; he’d lie curled in beside her telling her his
secrets from the minute he learned to talk. Suzanna loved her too, but she was rougher. At eight months of age she grabbed
hold of a fistful of Whiskey’s fur, hauled herself onto her feet, and set off on her own personal walking frame.

Then Whiskey cut her paw, a long incision, deep between the pads, and no matter what we tried on it, it wouldn’t close. It
wasn’t only home remedies out of the first-aid box either. Liam was tired taking her to the vet, who was tired thinking up
new ways to strap it so she couldn’t lick off whatever he’d just put on. We even tried an upturned lampshade round her neck
so she couldn’t get at her paw in the night, but by morning she had it pulled off and torn into pieces and we never found
out how. The only thing left was to muzzle her, so Liam did, but she whimpered and fretted and got herself into such a state
that he had to take it off.

So I bathed her paw in a soda-bicarbonate solution, which was better than nothing at all, and then when I’d finished I knelt
on the floor and took the sore foot in my hand. That’s when it happened. A tingling started in my head, and the spiral-thing
began in my feet and my hand let go of the paw of its own accord. I was afraid; I thought I was going to see something, so
I stayed down there, waiting, this strange, empty feeling inside me. Then my hand moved, and I watched it as though it belonged
to someone else. It stiffened and spread itself out and held itself over the paw.

The next morning the cut had closed and was almost knitted together. Liam said maybe that vet wasn’t altogether useless, and
I said nothing. I’m close by nature, but this thing makes me worse—I’ll hug a secret like a coat wrapped tight against freezing
weather.

Two months after that Andrew fell on the path. He’d a stick in his hand, which drove into his mouth and ripped the soft gum
where the upper jaw joins the soft, fleshy skin of the lip. Liam carried him in. He was hysterical, his mouth streaming blood,
his eyes on me, desperate.

I don’t know what happened next, for the thing had started and this time it came from someplace where I’m not divided so there
was no one to stand around and watch.

Liam says that I took the child, laid him down on the couch, and held my hand, the fingers splayed out, a few inches over
his mouth. I didn’t speak, not even to comfort, but Andrew’s shrieks turned into sobs and then his eyes closed over and the
bleeding slowed and stopped.

Afterwards Liam still wanted to take him to the surgery, but at the word
doctor
Andrew opened his eyes and started to whinge. Liam said no more, and I sat holding Andrew’s hand till he fell deep asleep.
Then I picked him up and carried him to his bed. When I came down Liam wanted an explanation.

“Mouths are easy cut,” I told him. “Easy cut and easier healed—it’s the saliva.”

“What were you doing with your hand?”

“Nothing. Calming him, that’s all. Sometimes I do it with the children. It soothes them, I don’t know why.”

I turned away from him, for Liam knows me well and I was shaken. I started taking things out of the fridge, ready for making
the dinner. Liam sat with Suzanna on his knee, watching me, drawing his own conclusions.

The next day I had Andrew on the sofa in the kitchen. He was sorry for himself—his mouth was still very tender—but he wasn’t
feverish and he was hungry. The day after that he was running round.

Liam wanted to talk, but I wouldn’t have it. I closed the door in his face and shot home the bolts.

“Andrew always heals up well,” I told him. “It mustn’t have been as bad as it looked—we just panicked because of the blood.”