Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Once upon a time there was a girl. She was small for her age, with skin the colour of pastry dough and frail limbs, which hung from her tiny frame. She had always been a sickly girl, although nobody really knew why. She spent most of her time in her rickety wooden single bed in the downstairs bedroom of her family home, wearing a cotton nightgown that her Aunt Beatrice had sewn by hand. She would sigh at all the appropriate times, and flutter her eyelids as her sister re-arranged her pillows or fetched her books to read.
The family members would take turns to attend to the girl, bringing her bowls of broth or taking her by her feeble elbow to guide her along the cold narrow hallway to the washroom so that she could relieve herself. Nobody was permitted to be too loudly-spoken or jovial inside the house for fear that it would upset the unfortunate bed-ridden girl.
Every day a tiny brown sparrow would land of the ledge outside the girl’s bedroom window, and nestle himself amongst the delicate purple violets that grew in the planter box. The girl’s father told the girl that the bird came just for her, to sing to her and brighten her spirits, and to check on her well being. The girl would smile warmly when her father told her this, feeling so special that a bird would come just for her, and she would ask her father every day, “Why is the bird here father?” just to hear him say the words.
Because of that the family were filled with hope that one day the girl would recover from her mystery ailment and be able to go outside and play with the other children, to hear all the birds of the nearby forest singing their melodic songs. They were a family of unwavering faith and they truly believed that the bird was an angel of God, sent to watch over their girl and bring her back to health. Her doctor, however, would have nothing of such notions. He was a man of science and found it preposterous to suggest that a bird could possibly be anything but a bird.
And because of that the family ordered the doctor to leave the house immediately. His services were no longer required, they said, as he had failed to diagnose the girl in all the years that he had been attending to her. It was true that he had never been able to find anything medically amiss with the girl, but the doctor knew that a man of no faith would not be tolerated under that roof and therein lie the precise reason for his abrupt dismissal.
The family were overcome with sadness. It spread through them all with a ferocious malignancy. What was making this poor girl so sick? Was she long for this world? And what would happen if the sparrow on the windowsill ceased coming to visit??
Until finally the father could stand it no more. One morning, just as the sun was beginning to peer over the hills in the east, the father secreted himself in the garden outside the girl’s bedroom window and waited.
A short time later the swallow landed in the planter box beneath the window and commenced his sweet tune. The father leaped swiftly from behind a nearby rose bush, capturing the bird with a net made of spidery, white string. The bird shrieked and fought against the net, his wings in a fluster and panic flooding his small black eyes.
Be still, the father commanded, I’m not going to hurt you. The bird became limp in an attempt to fool the father into thinking it was dead. The father raised his hand slowly and deliberately, bringing the bird within inches of his own face, looking straight into the beady eye, which was framed perfectly in the centre of a hole in the net.
Who are you?! The father demanded, fully aware of how ridiculous it was to attempt to converse with a bird. Despite his own commonsense he continued on, the questions spilling uncontrollably out of his mouth in desperation. Have you been sent from the heavens above to watch over our girl? What is it that makes her so unwell? Is she to live or die??
The sparrow looked deep into the father’s eyes. He saw the pleading, the fear, the sadness, swirling uncontrollably in the father’s dark gaze. He could feel the father’s pain, which had infected every part of his body, from those grief stricken eyes to the trembling of his hand as it clasped the bird’s fragile and feathered body.
At that moment the bird began to sing and the father could somehow understand him. Your girl is not sick. She is as well as you and I. Relief surged through the father and his grip on the bird loosened a little. The words repeated in his mind. Your girl is not sick.
The bird continued, and the father listened in amazement. I see how well you have cared for her, you and your family, but I see her when there is nobody with her. The bird paused and the father stood very still, fearful that any movement would break the spell and that the ability to understand the bird would be stripped from him at any moment.
Your girl is not sick but she is suffering.
The father slowly lifted the netting from around the bird with his free hand, discarding it in a heap on the grass beneath them and opening his hand wide so that the bird could perch on the flat his palm.
This doesn’t make any sense, the father whispered to the bird, she is barely able to get out of bed.
She is suffering with an insatiable desire for attention, a need to be loved, to be cared for, the bird watched the father’s eyes narrow slightly, become colder, as he listened to the words. When you leave the room she gets up and dances to my song, she cart-wheels across the floorboards, she climbs out the window and races over the lawn in her bare feet, picking berries from the bushes which line the neighbouring forest. And then she returns to her sick bed and closes her eyes before you enter the room. Your girl is not sick. Your girl is a fraud.
The father clasped his hand violently shut, suffocating the bird in his massive claw-like grip and crushing the small creature to his death. He marched inside the house and discarded the bird’s lifeless body into the open fireplace and stood watching it burn whilst staring into the flames and shaking his head at the absurdity of what had just transpired.
Then the father washed his hands, and made his way down the hallway towards the closed bedroom door, to perform his fatherly duty, to care for his poor sickly girl.