THE SPARROWS

Her hand shook or her mind went blank—whatever the reason, she dropped another cup of tea. Her heart broke too, smashing with the cup on the sparkling floor. It was sweet tea that she had spilled again.

Her mother’s scowling face appeared in the hall. When her mother was angry, her face could strike fear into the stoutest heart.

Her mother wore this terrifying expression when she appeared in her dreams. Only the whites of her eyes visible, her mother would sweep over her like a storm, her steps heavy as lead. Night seemed to fall beneath her mother’s enormous shadow and she would be left all alone in the pitch darkness. Her trembling heart would be no more than a tiny drop of water. Then her mother would step over it with her big heavy feet and walk away. She would beat her black and blue and drag her across the floor and walk away. She would try to call for help in a feeble voice, thousands of drops of water sprinkled over the floor.

She yearned for her grandmother, longing to rest her head on her grandmother’s chest and curl into a ball and hide in her grandmother’s belly. She thought if she could only do this she would never come out. She would stay there, doing her homework, writing, sleeping and waking. Grandmother’s belly was as huge and deep as the ocean. If she wanted to, she could even ride a bike there.

...Her mother was still watching her from the other side of the entrance hall. She seemed to be grinding her teeth, clenching her fists, her dishevelled hair standing on end.

As she put the broken pieces of the cup in her apron, a pointed shard cut into her fingertips, drawing blood. Her mother watched from a distance, breathing heavily. Though she seemed furious, she didn’t have the strength to shout at her any more. Her mother must have been tired, or had the sight of her daughter’s blood cooled her anger?

‘Have you hurt your hand?’ Her mother’s voice was as hard and cold as usual.

She stood up, trembling, and carefully walked to the kitchen, carrying the pieces of china in her skirt. As she walked she could feel her mother’s gaze boring into her back like an arrow.

Her mother would fire those arrows at her from her own room too. She would shoot at her from the other side of the wall, as her hands bashed furiously at the black typewriter.

Her mother would even shoot her in her dreams. She would climb into the black typewriter and roll over her as though in a thundering tank. As she pressed the keys of the typewriter, she would riddle her body with bullets, leaving her as full of holes as a colander. Then she would look at her body and realize she had not been pierced by bullets but by letters as pitch black as the typewriter itself. Covered from head to toe in coal black letters, her heart racing, she would drag her aching body to hide from her mother. Suddenly, she spotted a long forgotten hiding place—it was a letter, a capital ‘Ü’.

She shook the pieces of china out of her skirt into the bin. Listening out, she cleaned the hallway thoroughly. She patiently picked the tiniest fragments from her skirt and tipped them from her hand into the washbasin.

Her mother was still standing there, her angry breath writhing through the hall like a snake and pouring into the kitchen in waves of venom.

Once she had a particularly horrible dream about her mother. It began with her creeping into her mother’s room and tiptoeing up to her from behind. In the dream her mother was gazing out of the window, her back to the door, and didn’t hear her come in. Although she went and stood in front of her, her mother didn’t see her. She remained seated, her hands on her knees, gazing out of the window into the distance. ‘Mother!’ she cried, but her mother ignored her. She reached out and touched her mother’s shoulder. Her mother wobbled like a hollow dummy and fell onto her side on the floor. She gave a long squeak like a headless doll. Scared witless and in tears, she fell on her mother. She took her arm and tried to lift her up, but her mother’s arm came off. Then her head fell off and rolled across the room. She gathered up the pieces of her mother and took them to her own room. Gasping in fear, her hands shaking, she tried to put her mother back together again, but it didn’t work.

The door to her mother’s room slammed, and it wasn’t long before the angry clack of the typewriter filled the house.

She sighed and sat down on a stool, wondering what it was that her mother was writing. Once she had sneaked into her mother’s room, rummaged through her papers and read what she had written. But she hadn’t understood a word. Her mother had been writing something about sparrows.

She wondered if her mother loved sparrows. Or maybe her mother was a sparrow herself, and that’s why her mother didn’t love her. Or maybe she didn’t love her because she wasn’t a sparrow. Or maybe her mother did love her.

Yes, it sometimes seemed that she did, usually when she was ill and especially when she had a temperature. For a while anyway, her mother wouldn’t go near her typewriter; she wouldn’t shout at her or barge around the flat like a madwoman. She would sit by her bedside, her eyes focused thoughtfully on one spot. She would be quiet and look lovingly at her. From time to time she would touch her cold lips to her forehead to check her temperature, then turn her tired gaze into the distance. When her mother’s lips touched her forehead, she would feel no warmth from them. With those same cold lips, her mother would check the heat of the iron and the dryness of the laundry brought in from the clothes line.

She thought that if she died, her mother would love her. Then she imagined how she would die; how she would be put into a coffin, how her mother would throw herself on the coffin, sobbing loudly. Her mother would throw her whole weight onto the coffin. She would feel the weight and warmth and smell of her mother’s body, and with that comfortable feeling would fall asleep. She had been imagining this a lot recently. It felt good. If she weren’t afraid of death, and if she knew she would come back to life, she would die. Yes, she would certainly die.

She hugged her knees to her stomach and thought about death for a long time. Strangely enough death wasn’t black. It was cold and white, like a foggy spring morning. As such a small creature, what would she do there in that thick fog, she wondered. Would she sit or lie down or open her wings and fly like a sparrow? She didn’t know. And how would she get from this bright room to that foggy place? She didn’t know. Would she hurt or find it hard to breathe or would parts of her body be crushed in the cogs of a machine and come out as mince? That was a frightening thought.

As she was lost in these thoughts, night seemed to fall, or was it the bulb failing in the room? She got up and tiptoed to switch on the light. She thought that, yes, if she died, her mother would cry for her. She would sob and howl like a madwoman, because she had seen her mother crying like this when her grandmother died. She had clung onto the coffin and shouted in a voice hoarse from crying, ‘Mo-o-o-ther.’

Then she pictured her mother’s death. Her mother would lie in her coffin, her complexionpale, eyes made up and the same angry look on her face. She would sit next to the coffin and stroke her mother’s pale cheeks as much as she liked. When she got to this point in the story, she could never control herself and the tears would flow.

Her mother went quietly into the kitchen from the hall. She made herself a cup of coffee and took it back to her room, but the typewriter could no longer be heard.

Strange, she thought—it was as though her mother wasn’t alone, despite the silence in her room. Sitting in her room for hours, or crossing the hall lost in thought, or standing in front of her, her mother wasn’t alone. That must be why she never felt the slow passage of time or the suffocating silence of the house.

She listened for sounds in the hall. The suffocating silence poured like boiling water from her mother’s room into the whole house. She wondered what her mother was doing there in that silence. Was she sitting all alone in that closed room for hours, doing nothing but look at the walls?

Maybe her mother was hiding from someone in her room. But from whom? From her or her father? She couldn’t tell. But once she heard her mother have a heated argument with her father and scream wildly, eyes wide, ‘Get your hands off me! Let me die!’ She heard it with her own ears. She remembers she buried her face in her pillow and wept.

She wondered if her mother meant what she said. She went into her room to die and maybe that’s what she was doing there. Yes, her mother wanted to die. One hundred per cent. This thought made her heart race and she wondered why her mother wanted to die.

Maybe what was killing her mother, draining the colour from her with every passing day, what made her hate her child and husband, was what she was writing so frantically day and night. Her father hated that wretched writing too—he had said so once. He had gone to her mother’s room in the middle of the night and said, ‘I hate your writing!’

She wondered what her mother had done to make her father so angry. It was as if her mother were doing something to him with her writing. Maybe her mother was shooting at her father too, shooting at him with her black typewriter from the other side of the wall.

Recently her father had been looking at her mother as though he had toothache. Then he couldn’t help catching a fever as well. He would collapse into bed and look pleadingly at her mother. ‘Don’t you feel sorry for me?’ he would say.

Her mother didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t feel sorry for him when he was ill, not even...

When she reached this point, she felt sad.

... not even if he died, would her mother feel sorry for her father. He said once, ‘If I died, you would be rid of me.’ Expressionless as usual, her mother said, ‘But you’re not dying, are you?’ That was when she realized that her mother wasn’t sorry for her father at all.

The room became oddly cold as well as silent.

She remembered there had been the same cold silence when she had taken it into her head to go and see her mother. She had opened the door just wide enough and tiptoed into the room. She had been rooted to the spot by what she saw...

Her mother hadn’t been sitting at her desk; she had been looking at her face in the mirror and weeping silently...

She heard hiccups from the other room. Her heart raced. She got up and tiptoed out into the hall, crept to her mother’s room and opened the door ajar.

Her mother was standing by the window, her arms crossed over her chest, and looking out into the distance. She turned when she heard the door creak, and said in a voice cold as steel, ‘What is it?’

‘I thought you were crying.’

‘I’m not crying,’ her mother said. ‘Stop spying on me.’

The window ledge was full of sparrows.

She went out of the room and closed the door. She looked at herself in the hall mirror. She thought that really her mother should kiss her once a day or every other day at least. All mothers kiss their children. She thought her mother must be sick of kissing her. OK, so she was sick of kissing her—she could at least sit down and talk to her!

She only sat down with her mother at breakfast. This was more or less how the conversation went: ‘You’ve got a long face again,’ her mother would say. She would smile and shrug her shoulders.

‘Why aren’t you eating?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Did you get any marks yesterday?’

‘I got top marks in literature.’

Her mother’s expression wouldn’t change, but she would say, ‘Well done.’

With the same expression her mother would put on her coat and go to work.

In the evenings, her mother would be in a very bad mood. She would get changed and lie down for a nap in the bedroom. Then she would bolt down some food, go to her room and not come out again.She would be back at the black typewriter and the barrage would start again.

She thought her mother had been like this for some time. What was bothering her?

Something like warm water poured through her small soul. She would lean back on the sofa and have a rest. Her mother would soon be back at the black typewriter, this time shooting at someone else.

Her mother seemed to forget everything when she was at the typewriter. Her eyes changed, her hair became dishevelled, her fingertips turned into pens, and she had the face of a wild bird—no, not a bird, a lion. Yes, that’s it—when her mother wrote, she looked like a lion.

She got up and walked over to the window. It was getting dark. Her mother would soon open her door and say in a robotic voice, ‘Time for bed.’ Then she would close the door and disappear again. In the gloomy room, she would lie down on the uncomfortable sofa, which resembled a grey crocodile. She would toss and turn and gaze at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come. Then her mother would come to her in her dreams.

Sometimes her mother was kind in her dreams. She would work away on a sewing machine rather than a typewriter, making pink and orange dresses for her. Then she would dress her in one of these outfits, sit her on her knee and stroke her hair. As she stroked, her hair would start to fall out. It would fall onto her knees and the floor, and remain in her mother’s hand. But it didn’t trouble her; quite the reverse, she would feel relaxed and sleepy.

The door creaked open. A pool of light spilled in from the hall. Her mother was coming. First she put her head round the door, then came in and walked quietly over. She bent down, looking intently at her. Her heart raced and she didn’t dare open her eyes. Her mother stayed like that for a few minutes, as though waiting for something. Then she leaned over and whispered in her ear, ‘Are you spying on me again?’

Too frightened to open her her eyes, she shook her head. Then her mother grabbed her mouth and nose in a cold vice-like grip. Her mother’s grip was so hard she couldn’t breathe...

She sat bolt upright, sending the textbook from her lap to the floor. Had she been asleep? She hugged herself, shivering.

A thought struck her and she jumped up from the sofa. She hurried into the hallway, opened the door to her mother’s room and looked inside. Her mother was once more writing like a woman possessed. She walked carefully into the room and stood before her mother.

‘What is it?’ Her mother stopped typing, pushed her glasses onto her hair and looked dully into her face.

‘I think I’m not well,’ she said, then she hugged herself, shivering as before.

Her mother sighed, as she did when she was in a bad mood, and put her cold hand on her forehead.

‘You don’t have a temperature,’ she said, looking at her with a world-weary face.

‘Shall I take my temperature?’

‘There’s no need.’

‘It might go up.’

‘If it does, we’ll think about it,’ her mother said through gritted teeth.

She bowed her head and walked to the door, but turned on the threshold: ‘I don’t feel well. I feel cold and sick.’

‘Have some lemon and wrap up warm,’ her mother said, or to be more accurate, chirped.

She left the room, closing the door behind her. She clenched her small fists, then went back to her room and opened the window wide. As the window ledge was full of sparrows, she made a noise and they flew off. Although spring had come, it was still cold. She stood at the window for a while, shivering in her thin dress, the wind ruffling her hair. Let the cold get into my bones and make me ill! So ill that the mercury cracks the glass of the thermometer and spurts out in a fountain!

Or perhaps she should throw herself from the building. She imagined what it would be like; how she would climb onto the windowsill and jump. She would fly down, head first, her hair and skirt billowing in the wind. Her mother would hear the noise down below. She would get up slowly, then come running down the stairs, crying.

She was choked with sorrow, tears welled in her eyes. Then she wondered if her mother would come down at all. She would get up from her typewriter, look down at the noise below, sigh, close the window with that world-weary expression, put her glasses back in place and carry on writing like a madwoman.

She stoop up on tiptoe and looked down. Her head spun so much, she staggered, almost falling out of the window head first. She managed to hang on. Then she closed the window, her heart pounding, and went back to the sofa and curled up.

The window ledge was full of sparrows again. They came every morning to eat the crumbs her mother put out. As they pecked at the crumbs, they would cheerfully turn their heads this way and that, jumping over one another as though they were playing leapfrog. Sometimes they would turn their beady eyes on her, staring silently through the glass and fixing her with a strange, sly smile.

Every morning her mother would get up and go straight to the kitchen for some bread. She would scatter it on the windowsill. Then she would rest her head against the glass and watch the birds pecking at the breadcrumbs.

The tapping of the sparrows’ beaks mingled with the clatter of the typewriter.

She couldn’t breathe, so she got up and moved carefully to the window, as though stalking her prey. She slowly unlatched the window and opened it. The sparrows were very close, hopping about and chirping. She stretched out her hand. The sparrows turned and flew away. But her hand wasn’t empty. She had managed to catch one of the birds.

The sparrow’s warm body tickled her hand. Like a toy, its pea-size head was turning this way and that, staring at her with its small black eyes. The sparrow seemed to be smiling again.

The black, venomous fury coursing through her body poured out into the hand holding the sparrow. Her hand squeezed the bird until its little head fell back, lifeless and weightless. She flipped the dead sparrow over in her hand and looked at it. It still had the smile on its face. With two fingers she took the sparrow’s head and twisted it like a key, snapping it from its body. She took it to the kitchen and threw it in the rubbish bin.

As she returned to her room, she felt her knees shaking. She sat on the sofa and looked at her hands. They were shaking too.

Not long afterwards her father came home. He was in a bad mood again and looked as though he’d been drinking. He kissed her, his face unshaven, then staggered to his usual place—his armchair in front of the television. She sat down next to her father and put her head on his chest. Her father’s shirt felt wet.

‘It’s really cold in this house,’ her father said, then kissed her on the head.

She could smell her father’s sweat.

In the morning there was no banging on the typewriter. There was no sound from the television either, as though no one was at home. She got up, put on her shoes, and stretched as she went into the hall. She was surprised to see her mother’s door open, so she looked inside.

The room looked different. The typewriter wasn’t there. The desk where the typewriter had been was pushed into a corner like an unwanted piece of furniture. The mirror in which her mother would contemplate her face for hours wasn’t there either. There was nothing of her mother in the room. Her mother’s chair was in the middle of the room, and her father was sitting in it. He was smoking a cigarette, hiding his unshaven face with his hand. Sensing her presence, he looked up. She noticed her father’s eyes were red.

‘Where’s she gone?’

Her father shrugged, looking miserably at her.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. Then father and daughter hugged, clinging on to one another.

It was quiet outside the window with no sound of the sparrows. As she turned and looked at the window, she understood. Her eyes filled with tears. Her mother had gone away with the sparrows.

1983