Little Birdie!

This piece is the third assignment for the course The Craft of Plot, the fourth course out of five in Wesleyan University’s creative writing course aimed for NaNoWriMo participants on Coursera. The instruction:

As with the first assignment, you will create another scene where someone wants a concrete physical object more than anything else in the world. This time, instead of focusing on rising action entirely, consider the full story structure.

If you are considering participating in the capstone and have a larger story in mind, you can consider this an opportunity to write one scene from it, but remember your reader will not have any outside context.

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“Everything is slipping apart from me, as the precious word wraps itself around my heart. The park, the trees, everything seems to be illuminated.”

For the first time in years, I had the dream again. The one where I’m running away. As I grab a suitcase and fill it with clothing, it is so vivid that I can feel my heart thumping out of time. I open the door and I step out. I am filled with hope by the fresh scent of air, and I begin to step into golden sunlight. I don’t know where I’m going, but it doesn’t matter because I’m free.

At the end of the road, heavy rain is falling and dense clouds are forming. Invisible arms are pulling me and I’m struggling against my throat, something formless.

I wake up tired, I sense confusion and from the living room I hear an accident. I trip downstairs, blundering from bed.

Robert ‘s money tree bought from the garden center lies on its side and there is water all over the surface. The field has smoothed to create a coating of clay. As a reptile, Alana rolls around in the mess.

Tears well up, but I’m not able to stop smiling. ‘Oh, darling.’ She wears her sunglasses and looks like a bug and she beams with inexplicable happiness.

‘If she were a dog you wouldn’t give her space in the home,’ Mum once said, backed away from Alana. Autism was another name for bad behavior in her book. ‘When you were young, no such thing existed.’

She’s been afraid, I guess, but we all were.

She hasn’t called around for ages.

“Come out of the way, sweetie.” I step over the sludge. “You might be hurting yourself. “

Yet she is lying on the back of the sofa, nude and filthy, purring softly.

“You ‘re going to fall down honey.”

Her eyes look grave, lost in a distant landscape.

I repeat, “You are going to fall!”, as if battling in a foreign language.

Marrying Robert gave me no cause for concern, with his slow smile and gentle hands. We were smugly complacent when I was pregnant. Despite the diagnosis, just after Alana ‘s second birthday, our only rocky moment came when Robert called the doctor a liar. It lay between us and, perhaps the wisest thing, we stopped talking for a moment. Perhaps we were tempted to blame each other.

“Let’s clear up and we go over to the park?”

I reach for the mop and begin sweeping. She must have clambered on top of the stairs over the doorway. I am shuddering at that new complication.

“We have a nice job on laminate,” I say loudly.

Alana stares, as if something had touched her about the shape of the words, then she slips past and starts slamming doors.

I quickly clean, but careful not to disturb her Barbies lined up to the wall with their faces, as if they were waiting for a firing squad.

Robert’s parents are hopeless.

“Not all the animals live in the woods,” his father said at a barbecue last year, pointing at Alana who was crouched like a refugee by the hedge.

I didn’t tell Robert. He was still in denial at the time.

I had a shower with my door open after bathing Alana, so that I could see her on the landing and remove her woolly pants. Any interference by me would send her spiraling, raging around the walls.

“Let’s get a hat on you .”

She’s sitting on the floor, drums her heels. When I try to pick her up, she limps her body and slithers away like an eel.

The walls are pressing in.

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m attempting to escape,” I blurted to an old friend I once met.

“No you couldn’t!” she bounced her twins, eyes wide and surprised. “You would feel so guilty, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“I know,” I muttered, feeling as guilty as if I had already done it.

The breath burns in the cold air outside but Alana appears relieved to be in her pushchair. She has her coat back to front and people are staring at her.

I’m relieved that the park is deserted because Alana hates sharing. I don’t want to explain all the time about her but I can’t stand people assuming I’m a bad parent.

“Perhaps I am,” I said to Robert recently. “We should get some aid from the groups again.”

“She doesn’t know that,” he said, sadly. “She ‘s happy in her little world, bless her, I ‘m sorry for us.”

Freed from her pushchair, Alana mounts the climbing frame, while enjoying the place I sit nearby. I’m trying not to think about next year, when she’s going to be tall enough to climb the wooden fence around the play area.

“Push you on the swing?” I yell, realizing she isn’t going to want me to. She doesn’t like swings, much as I never did. I am happy thinking we have something in common. “Slide?” But she’s there already, forcing herself down before I can brush the raindrops away.

The drizzle was over and I take out a letter from my pocket. The school we were applying for did not have a place for Alana. They’ve recommended one we don’t really have a full confidence in. A weight of anxiety settles on me.

Alana is tugging my jeans. She’s always getting dirt on her nails.

“What’s up, sweetie?”

Her face is sparkling as she points upward and I follow her gaze ‘s course. The sky lightened, infusing energy on the clouds. Alana is clapping her hands. A rainbow, gracefully curving like a painting of a child, has captured her eye. As we watch the pastel colors are deepened by a glimmer of sunlight and Alana’s sapphire eyes shine reflecting the light.

“Mummy,” she says, clapping her hands again.

Everything is slipping apart from me, as the precious word wraps itself around my heart. The park, the trees, everything seems to be illuminated.

“It’s a rainbow,” I say, stroking her silky hair.

She has said it a couple of times lately, she still doesn’t know what it means. She must have heard the other children as they poured out of playschool, arms outstretched.

Nevertheless. In contemplation, there’s happiness, in hearing all the words that could follow, one day.

I keep on smiling, thinking my dreams are going to be good tonight.

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