Free Gifted by H. A. Swain Page B

ago. Or maybe my mother wants to make sure the rest of us never forget.
    When I was a little kid, I believed that Alouette could hear me. I was sure my words were seeping in and the songs she sang back had meaning if only I could decode them, but I never could. Instead, I developed all kinds of rituals to trigger her miraculous recovery. If I did everything in the right order, if I didn’t make Dad mad (an impossible task), if I could get Mom to laugh (equally difficult at the time), if I brought all the exact right things—a bird’s feather, a smooth piece of sea glass, a perfect snail shell—and if I touched the doorframe, but not the wall and only stepped on the green tiles and if I saw three birds on the way over and at least two of them were singing, then maybe, just maybe she’d emerge out of her dream state.
    But no. Of course not. That was the magical thinking of a doofus six-year-old. Now, nearly a decade later, I’m clear. This is it for Alouette—a bed in a long-term MediPlex surrounded by Mom’s songbird fetish. Songbird sheets. Songbird pillows. A songbird clock that plays different calls every fifteen minutes. And scattered on every surface, more flightless figurines. Like my father, the woman knows no subtlety. Yes, Mother, yes, your prized songbird is forever caged.
    The clock strikes the hour with the persistent name-chanting song of the whippoorwill which Alouette repeats, “Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!” Although her hearing wasn’t affected, the doctors say her brain can no longer process meaning, only echo back what she hears as songs. Over the years, she’s become an expert at reproducing the birdcalls—the slurry song of a summer tanager, the metallic trills of the veery, the lazy whistles of a meadowlark. I sing the three whippoorwill notes back to her so it feels as if I’m part of her conversation, until she changes the subject and hums the chorus to the new Geoff Joffrey tune called “Your Eyes.” It’s been near constant on the Stream this week, which Al gets through her EarBug, an amenity my father happily pays for since the least he can do is make sure she’s well cared for now and in the future.
    Mom arrives a few minutes later in a long, flowing Japanese kimono embroidered with tiny dragonflies that she used to wear as a robe but has reworked into some kind of wrap dress. And of course, she looks stunning. My mother is still beautiful—tall and lanky with big eyes, a sharp nose, and a long elegant neck. She looks like a large wading bird as she walks through the door with open arms, her ornate sleeves fluttering out behind her.
    â€œOrphie, baby,” she croons and pulls me into a long, perfumed hug. “How lovely to see you!” She lets go of me and plants a firm kiss on my sister’s forehead, then fusses with Al’s hair before dropping down in a new easy chair that wasn’t here last week. “Can you believe someone would get rid of this?” She runs her hand over the soft brown fabric and pats a bright blue speckled pillow.
    â€œWhere’d you find it?” I eye the thing, wondering if she and her behemoth boy toy Chester dragged it off some street corner, which is how she furnishes her apartment since she left my dad.
    â€œRajesh’s mother gave it to me,” she says lightly.
    â€œSeriously?” I ask, not sure which is worse, my friend’s mom feeling sorry for my mother for walking away from our life or my mother dumpster diving like a Plebe.
    â€œI re-covered it and made the pillows from fabric I got for a song at a thrift shop.” She smiles, very proud. “I thought I’d forgotten how to sew, but it came right back to me. Made me think of all the crazy outfits I created when I first started out.”
    â€œYou could be a stylist.” I sit at the end of Al’s bed.
    She props her stocking feet up beside me and says, “No thank you,”