All the Dancing Birds (3 page)

In those days, I would throw open the drapes, letting light flood every corner of the room to fall upon Ivan’s papers like a glorious benediction. He would look up‌—‌appreciative. I never understood what he meant by that look, but I certainly understood the nuance of light and shadow. I studied it. I wrote of it, quizzed my students about it and made up rhymes for Bryan and Allison regarding it. We were a family enamored with light.

I keep the bedroom drapes tightly closed now. The rest of the house can fend for itself against the sun and clouds, but the bedroom has become mine alone and, without Ivan, it has no right to claim any light for itself. It’s now a room of dark and shadow and I want it that way. I think, in fact, the room remembers Ivan as much as I do. It took me months before I could bring myself to vacuum away the outline of his footprints or clean his side of the bathroom vanity, and even longer before I could angrily pack away his clothing for charity, cursing every shirt and pair of pants for no longer wrapping themselves over his body. I hated his ties. The scent of his cologne made me cry until I threw up into the toilet. I recall one day sliding my bare feet into his leather lace-up shoes and walking through every room of the house before finally hugging them to my chest and then sending them off to the Goodwill. Perhaps there was another Ivan out there who needed his mostly beige slacks and ties to become a successful statistician and economist. Perhaps the world needed another settled and sedate financial man who played a guitar and sang and held his wife until the cows came home.

Two years after Ivan’s death, I began stacking my books and papers on his side of the bed. It was like I was screaming to the Universe that if it had to take my beautiful fair-haired Ivan away, then the only proper person for that side of the bed was a man I called Mr. Literature. Of course, he would be dark and filled with the essence of Stephen King, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and the very woeful Poe. It seemed only fitting.

I’ve since placed my books and papers where they belong. My days with Ivan are long past and I’ve grown to that acceptance. But, even now, I still spend several minutes a day recalling my husband’s husky whisper in my ear, the scent of his morning hair, his hands pressed on my body.

Oh, God, those hands.

My memory of Ivan is most likely either larger or smaller than he was in his true life, but it doesn’t matter. This is a widow’s perfect memory and, whether any of it is true or not, it’s a daily thing that helps get me standing on my morning feet. One day, I’ll tell my children that for the past ten years, I’ve missed my husband, their father, and hated myself for not saving him from his suddenly failed heart. Not today, though.

Not today.

The backs of my hands are threaded through with bluish veins like small streams and tributaries across a crêpe paper landscape; light brown dots here and there mark me a woman who spent too much youthful time lolling in the sun. I turn my hands over and ponder the criss-crossed lines on each palm, the life lines, the heart paths. I think of the many times I ran my fingers across Ivan’s palms, tracing every crease and marveling at the warmth radiating back at me. By the time he died, I had nearly memorized the placement of every line, every swirl and loop across the tip of each finger, the length and breadth of them.

Now I don’t remember one detail of Ivan’s hands and I hate myself for it.

I know what to do.

I go to my closet and pull down a cedar letter box from the upper shelf. It’s where I keep my favorite poems and letters, all of which I’ve written and each of which is addressed to my children. I don’t know why I keep them secreted away in my father’s handcrafted box, when I could as easily share these dear little writings as they occur.

Still, I continue to add new letters and little scraps of thought. At least once a week, I sit at a small secretary’s desk tucked into a corner in the living room. I select a piece of stationery‌—‌usually something flowered, occasionally a slip of gold-edged creamy paper I keep for special occasions. The paper is important because it’s the first impression and sets the tone for the words I’ll place on it. Many of the older notes are undated, but since I’ve noticed little memory dings creeping along the edge of my thoughts, I’ve started adding the date (provided I can figure it out, of course).

I started writing when it occurred to me that children never really know their mothers: first they’re too young; then they’re so busy dividing and branching out into the person they will soon become, their ears are closed to any wisdom a mother might offer.

Then they leave.

And thus I write.

The thought that my children will find these poems and letters after I’m gone is somehow pleasant to me. I picture the mouths of my very grown-up babies (surely saddened by my death) slowly tilting upward as they read my letters, my poems.
Look at this,
one will say to the other.
This is so lovely,
the other will say.
I didn’t know this about Mom. Here, read this one.
On they will go, together, like when they were children and we would take discovery walks through the arboretum or the zoo, our hands twined together like slender twisted cords, little
oohs
escaping our lips because we were seeing the world’s wonderment. They will discover me. I won’t be lost.

I will be the day’s wonderment.

I open the box and pull out an early letter, hoping it can help me remember my Ivan’s hands. I unfold the paper like one would open the wings of an origami bird, careful to retain the paper’s memory of each crease, every fold.

The closet is unusually large for a mid-century house‌—‌a walk-in, actually, that may have served initially as a baby’s cradle nook or a small reading corner. It was Ivan who transformed the nook into a closet; I can still see a slight ridge where his hammer missed its mark, hitting the wall. It looked like a smile to me and I told Ivan to leave it. It’s been this way since.

The size of the closet allows me plenty of room to stand in its center with all my blouses and skirts and slacks hanging loosely on three sides, like narrow, wrinkled people. There’s floor-to-ceiling shelving for shoes and folded items on each side of the entry door, a naked bulb light overhead with a pull chain instead of a wall switch.

I begin to read; it takes a while until I fall into the rhythm of my words. I follow the words until the end, and then I read the letter twice more, until its meaning, its memory, soaks deeply into my skin and remembrance falls over my head like soft rain.

My dear children:

I wish you could have seen this morning’s sun as I saw it. I love the way it comes into my room in the early mornings, sliding up over my body and into my sleeping mouth like it’s the first meal of my day. Then it opens my eyes and lets me love it or curse it, depending on how well I slept the night before. This morning I loved the light, because it woke me to thoughts of you, my dear children.

You’re now so grown and adult, it hardly seems fitting to call you children; still, I’ll always see the child in you each, in spite of your well-grown bodies and faces. As odd as it sounds, I wish you could know me, as well, for the child I once was. Maybe someday we can travel to the house where I grew up with my Ma and Pa (your MeeMaw and PaaPaw).

I could show you North Carolina‌—‌my cradle of green‌—‌and how its trees are tall and straight and slim like me. I could show you how I walked, swinging a bucket of frogs at the end of my young arm. You would laugh, of course. We could sway within the languid rhythm of the local dialect, slow and dreamy like a sultry summer’s day, every word thick with sweet tea and milk biscuits. We could eat grits and eggs for breakfast and pop fried okra into our lunchtime mouths. For our evening meal, we’d have Southern fried chicken with collard greens cooked up on the side, biscuits with cream gravy, and another side of corn, fresh from the cob. A berry pie would wait for us on the sideboard and a thin dog would skitter around the edge of the table, wagging its tail to the rhythm of our conversation.

Then we could walk across the yard, with its clay soil, deep and rich like the layers of one’s soul. I’d have you dig your fingers into that hard Carolina clay, textured and striated with history, so you could hold it in your hands. I’d show you how I’m filled with layer upon layer of pine dust, folk music, and ancient yarns, all evoked from atop a porch on a Sunday afternoon.

I could show you the precise spot where the blood of our people soaked into the earth. I know where it is because one day, your PaaPaw dug a deep hole in the yard, just beyond the house and back of Ma’s clothesline. He wanted me to see the colors that lay deep within the Carolina clay. He told me how the ground carried deep within its folded layers the hardened gray of its soldiers’ uniforms, the red of the blood shed on its land in battles you will never understand for things that are now long different.

Yes. I’d especially show you the dirt. We’d dig our own hole so you could see for yourselves the colors and lessons of history and Southern courtesy far beneath the surface of what you see. You could scuff your feet over the place where our family lived and drop your spittle onto it. You could stand over the wetness and watch it slowly seep in to mix with the fluid of our people. Your people.

There is mystery in watching how the earth accepts the gift of moisture from someone’s spit.

I wish I could show you, but we’re probably too old for spitting now.

With all my love,

Your Mother

When I’m finished, when I’m tenderly turned within the melancholy of this memory, I refold the letter to its original crease and return it to the cedar box. I didn’t find what I was looking for (something about Ivan’s hands, I think). I think again about the moment of discovery when one of my children‌—‌probably Allison who is always rather snoopy‌—‌will pull down her PaaPaw’s cedar box from the shelf and find my poems and letters tucked dearly inside.

And now, lifting the box back to its place on the shelf, I realize I’ve found another and even more ingenious use for my letters, a present and highly purposeful use: I shall learn once again of myself.

I know I’m the one who sat at my little writing desk, the one who selected a piece of stationery, flowered or plain, depending on my mood or the light falling across my desk. I know I’m the one who then wrote thoughts and poems and little stories across each page, all in my scrawling hand. Still, it seems now that someone else captured my essence‌—‌a stranger, someone with perfect memory and an organized mind.

An apologist for my side of things.

I smile. Tomorrow I’ll look for something about Ivan’s hands, if only I remember.

“Do try to remember what you’re doing, you silly, silly woman,” I say, softly closing the closet door behind me.

Chapter Three

I
wake this morning, as always, with the sun hugging my body, but once again I’m visited by the thought that something is terribly wrong with me. Again, I’m puzzled.

I peel away my tangled blankets, unclasping the sun from my arms, my legs, my rumpled face. I feel my mind disengage from the night and move into another agonizing wakefulness. I suppose if someone lived with me, they wouldn’t notice any difference at all. Still, I notice. I’m moody. I try to think my way to my feet, but a new fractured sense leaves me befuddled with the distance between my feet and the floor.

The floor doesn’t look right.

“Come on, Lillie Claire,” I say into the quiet of the morning house. “Let’s get on with the… the‌—‌”

I’m suddenly at odds with a word that should be familiar; a word that should easily spring to mind, but now makes me search for it like I’m a common beggar. There are blank spots and spreading holes where once my mind was seamless and fluid; the movement from thought to thought now comes only with effort, in spurts and spasms.

“Program,” I say at last. “Let’s get on with the
program
.”

In spite of locating my missing word, I nevertheless seem to have allowed my memory gene to slip from my hand, letting it clatter in noisy shards across the floor. The proof is in unexpected moments when my mind turns suddenly dark and empty, like the momentary blank television screen between the end of a commercial and the start of the next program. Sometimes it’s only a fleeting space, but other times the black screen in my mind makes me wonder if I’ve gone off the air for good. Sometimes I roll my eyes upward toward a surprisingly flaccid brain, waiting and waiting for whatever I’m trying to recall. I increasingly find myself in little arguments with books, repeatedly reading even small passages because I get lost in loops of thought that refuse to leave me alone. I forget a new person’s name as soon as it’s given to me and‌—‌just yesterday‌—‌I turned my car again the wrong direction on a familiar road.

I find daily regret and annoyance for every narrow misstep, every teensy moment of omission. I often lose my way. I forget where I parked my car only to fight tears while I wander up and down the parking aisles, clicking my remote every few seconds, hoping I’ll hear a friendly answering chirp. Everyday things feel shifted from their normal place.

I’m now even befuddled by my cell phone, which coincidentally went missing yesterday, adding to my growing list of daily mysteries. All day I wondered where it could be, with its dead battery and its increasingly confusing buttons and mechanisms. I found it only by accident, stuffed into one of my socks at the back of the sock drawer.

Naturally, I hide these small forgetful moments, but today, even the behavior of hiding deficiencies serves to disorient me.

My skin chafes against the morning and I don’t know what to do to make it better.

I shuffle through the process of making coffee, all the while wildly calling some semblance of happiness to me like one would whistle over a lively little dog. The kitchen is silent except for the gurgling of the coffeemaker. At last, I decide I like the familiar hug of the sun as it slides through the kitchen curtains to wrap itself around my shoulders.