Baby Bird

Hollow bird bones, gathered in cloth. That’s all she is. 

The other mothers spoke of magic, of newborn scrunches and tiny toes. Of a slow, warm bubble that swaddles mother and child alike, hazy and sweet as milk-breath.

There is no bubble. The world is sharp, and she is soft, and I am all that’s between them. It’s not enough.

A sliver of night peeks through the end of the curtain, whipped by branches of the silver birch outside. A shade darker than black, their movements frenzied by wind and rain.

They steal my eyes from her. I should draw the curtains all the way, but I’m counting. 

The thin arm strikes twelve.

Fifty-three.

I thought moving to this wall would help. New shapes, strange shadows. Secrets, tucked into lesser-seen corners. Hangnails of paint peeling from the radiator on this side, rust along the braided trim of the bronze outlet beside it.

Wherever I go, sleep hangs from me in chains.

I can still see my body in the bed, in the sagging dips that no longer rise back. I spent too long in it. The crack in the dresser haunts my eyelids, forking into three where it strikes the tapered leg. Printed over time, the way sun bleaches stone. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, over there.

Fifty-six.

She’s breathing faster than usual. There’s no rest. Sometimes, she rests. Five seconds or so, before her chest starts pumping again. Periodic breathing, the midwife said. Normal. Is fifty-six normal?

I don’t trust my counts. My heartbeats ripple through my vision, drops on still water. Her breaths hide in them.

The house knows. I’m sure of it. Pipes clang, doors rattle in their casings, harder when my chin meets my chest. It keeps me in the twilight zone. Floating beneath the surface, the room dappled above me, the yawning pit of sleep sucking at me from the depths. 

Stay awake.

She should keep me tethered. But she is warm, and her breaths stroke my shoulder, warmer.

It would be so easy. My chest, slumped over her. Her button mouth, sealed perfectly by the skin. Her cheeks puckered, as she fights to draw in air against the fleshy blanket.

It’s always easy. She was two days old, the first time. Swaddled in a scratchy yellow blanket from the hospital, my failure to finish knitting her one prickling at my skin. Her weight left me at the top of the stairs, my arms pulled by strings as they grasped at the air. They found only a cotton corner. She unspooled, her body a small bag of flour as it thumped against the hardwood floor at the bottom.

I brought the steriliser upstairs that same day. The Moses basket. The first-aid box. The room is a bunker, downstairs a foreign city. 

Jordan worried. They all do, for me. No one worries for her. 

No one sees what I see. 

I’ve lost count, the shadows clawing my face, breaking my focus.

I should close the curtains.

***

It must have snared me. A winch, dragging me all the way to the midnight zone, too far from the surface to see the room.

But I’m buoyant. I snap back, reaching for her before I’d fully breached.

She’s breathing.

How long did I leave her? 

It only takes a second. As long as reaching for a towel, or a sponge, the pillar of my hand gone from her back in the bath, her form slipping beneath the water like a slick-coated mammal from a riverbank. 

I haven’t bathed her since Jordan left. The spit-up has dried on her cheeks, taut, cracked. So many broken promises.

Forty-one. Raspier now.

The shape of the thicker clock arms doesn’t register, only the thinnest, as it sweeps the face. Minute-long pockets, suspended in a timeless night. 

I don’t want to know. Legs tire of treading more quickly when they know how long they’re in the water. 

I haven’t looked at my phone since Jordan messaged yesterday morning. Flight delays, emergency meetings, something. I didn’t take it in. It didn’t matter. There would be no second pair of eyes, no relief for the shift.

I won’t make it. The thoughts circle like vultures, swooping when I falter, stripping me to the bone. There’s nothing left. 

I’m so tired.

Forty-two.

There’s dampness at my crown, where it rests against the wall. I slide the back of my hand up the paper. It can’t be damp. She can’t breathe damp air. 

Dry. 

It’s me, my sweat. The clammy kind, that coats you in fits of stolen sleep, that sucks your clothes into your skin. It’s too warm, the room muggy despite the lively sky outside.

She will overheat. I should open a window.

I fight against the floor's clutches, my body wavering when it finally rises. I’m not a tall woman, but the drop from my arms seems longer since she’s been in them.

The latch is stiff, difficult to open with one hand. 

I don’t want to put her down.

As I fling my weight against the window, something outside catches my eye. 

A patch of night, darker than the rest. There, in the centre of the lawn. I strain my eyes, but it’s distorted, dissected by the rivulets of rain that worm down the panes.

I push harder. The window breaks from its casing with a crack, the opening clear.

I peer through the rain, my eyes tracing the outline, unbroken now.

Tall, motionless. A black line, extending from the core.

My body puts it together before I do, my heart seizing in my chest. 

Someone’s out there.

They’re pointing at the window. 

At us.

***

The floor sinks beneath me, my body plummeting. Weightless. Endless.

The strings snap. They rip me from the window, slam me against the back wall. My body flattens against it, trying to burrow into it, to crawl into its hollow. 

I can’t. 

She’s crying, her wails pouring through the gap in the curtains, wider now.

Can they see us?

My breath comes in pieces, my thoughts scattering like birds.

I fold, the drop to the floor shaking loose more of her cries. Out of sight. 

Shh, I say, but my throat spasms, the sound spluttered. Broken. Her cries swell, swept across the room in the new breeze.

I squeeze my eyes shut, the bolt-like silhouette of the dresser crack erupting behind them. It morphs, a hand outstretched. A finger, pointing straight at me. 

At us.

There’s logic, somewhere in the swarm. I snatch for it, fragments of thoughts slipping through my fingers, my mind. 

Maybe if it was daytime.

Maybe if it wasn’t pointing straight at us.

I can’t breathe.

The night sucks at the room, the void tugging through the open window. I need to close it.

The floorboards grind into my knees as I scurry, back stooped, one arm clamping her to my chest. Too tight, but my body is stone. Her cries shatter into rapid breaths as I lunge, snatching for the handle. I slam the window so hard the glass nearly jumps out, the vibrations ringing through my hand long after I release it.

I stuff the curtain behind my shoulder, clamp it against the wall. A screen. 

They can’t see us. 

My breath comes in buckets.

She’s stiff now, heaving her cries into me. Shh. Shhh. Shhhh. They come out smoother. Shhhhhh. Hushing, soothing. She’s okay. But the wall at my back feels like paper.

I need to look.

They might be gone. Might have never been there at all. When did I last sleep?

The curtain peels from the wall as I lean forward, the shushes still streaming from me. Choppy, again. I keep my head close to the wall, turning my face slowly until the lawn falls into the small parting.

Still there.

Still pointing.

The arm seems to reach through the gap, gripping me by the throat. 

She’s screaming now, the hammer of my heart drumming through her small body where we meet. 

It doesn’t move. 

The house seems to fall around me, bursting at the seams, spilling itself through open windows and unlocked doors until there’s nothing between us.

I need to lock them. I can’t lose sight of it. If I can’t see it, then it’s everywhere, and we’re floating, senseless. 

My hand reaches blindly behind me, stretching for the phone I know is on the nightstand.

Empty air.

I can’t hear her screams anymore. Can’t see, my vision narrowed to a slit. Nothing but the gap. The figure. 

The finger.

I skewer it with my gaze, backing away an inch at a time. 

Polished pine kisses my fingers, and I follow the moulding up to the surface until they meet the cold glass screen.

I don’t need to look away to know. There’s no light. No soft click.

I mash the buttons harder.

Dead. 

It throttles me now, that arm. That weapon, pointed at my baby.

I sweep the floor between the nightstand and me, my arm a searchlight. It takes me too long to accept that there’s no wire. 

I moved it. Yesterday afternoon, when I saw it coil around her neck, tightening as she writhed. I threw it downstairs, to no-man's land. 

It’s still there.

I had to go down. But the route to the stairwell was blind, windowless. Enough time for it to move, to slip into the unknown.

It’s completely still. It’s hard to tell which way its face is turned, but I can’t feel its eyes. Only the finger, a cold blade against my throat.

I need to leave eyes behind, somehow. 

I need to run.

The monitor.

It’s across the hall—the nursery. A relic of the motherhood I thought I would live. Jordan set it up weeks before she left me, before she was ripped, too small, unready, away from the safety of my body. I couldn’t have known, then, that it would be useless. That my eyes could never leave her. Hadn’t seen what would happen if they did. 

I wish I could put her back.

My lungs threaten to tear, the air flooding them too quickly. 

I need to be fast.

The curtain billows in my wake, my feet devouring the floor. The landing is dark. There’s no time. I wrap my arms around her, missing the doorframe by inches as I skid into the room, more broken promises tumbling from boxes as I smash through them.

The birch covers the window entirely, dozens of hands swiping at the panes, at her.

There, next to the cot. Two small cones of pale blue light pulsing onto the rug, blinking at me. I swipe them, barely turning my body fully before hurtling back.

It shocked the cries from her, the final one gurgling out as the door swung shut.

Back to the floor, careful not to crush the plastic casing against the boards as I drag myself back to the window.

They fire up in one click, the lights steady, unblinking. 

I slip the child unit through the gap. The plastic clatters against the sill as I place it, my hands trembling. I get the angle perfect first time.

Still there. 

I sink back to the wall, emptying the air I’d been holding in long streams. She’s whinging, now, her lungs purged, raw.

What does it want?

But I know what it wants. The answer rests against my chest, fussing as I stand again. I pull her tighter into me. 

The world is sharp.

She is soft.

I need to lock the door.

Lowering the parent unit enough that I can see the room in my upper vision, I plead with my shaking legs to carry us.

The finger finds the camera near dead-on. It still doesn’t move, however much I stare.

I do.

Slowly, my feet brushing for obstacles between steps, my eyes never leaving the screen. I press the light switch on with the back of my hand, the darkness plucked away. It can’t see through here, anyway.

Behind the monitor, down the landing. The stairs. I haven’t been down them since Jordan forgot to bring the

formula up before work last week. I took them two at a time, then.

I get to the floor long before we reach them, scooting myself an inch at a time until I feel the first, rounded edge.

My feet grip the treads, my bum sliding slowly over the risers as I descend, careful not to jolt her.

The figure stays.

I rest between each one, small breaths so as not to fan the embers. I can see the front door now, cresting the monitor. We’re inching closer to it. To the person outside.

Still no moveme—

The finger.

It’s dipped below the camera now, the arm lower. 

The embers flare, a terrifying thought sliding into my spine like a hot rod.

No.

It can’t see us, not from here.

I line my fingernail up with the dark projection, marking it. My breaths aren’t small, anymore. Neither is the fire.

It takes a few more steps for me to see it. For me to be sure.

The arm has dropped lower.

It’s following us.

***

Morning is a horizon, pulling away from time. Always ahead. Never here.

I see the figure when I blink. It hasn’t moved for hours. 

Neither have we.

The chains are back, their weight dripping from my chin. Hands. Eyes. The pit is deeper now, burrowed out by hours of fear. Of bracing.

I must have crawled a dozen times, two dozen, between the nursery and the bedroom. Always, the finger followed, a perfectly mirrored pendulum. So many swings, each one driving the stakes of terror deeper.

The charger is still a tangle at the bottom of the stairs. I can’t retrieve it. Can’t bring myself to move towards the door, to see its dangling latch. To know that it’s unlocked.

It wants us. 

Wants her.

I know it, and I don’t, and the vultures pick away. 

She’s sleeping. I can’t count. Can’t look away from the screen.

When the wind sleeps I swear the image is frozen. I find myself back at the window, eyes darting between sliver and screen.

When the wind blows it looks stiller. A scarecrow, unmoving beneath the combing gales. 

I don’t know what’s worse.

She’s resting between breaths again. 

I want to put her back. For there to be no her to point at. Only us. Me.

My fingers claw the skirting, my nails tight with paint. The grooves are deep. Worn smooth, now.

There’s tacks near the window, jutting from the floorboards like teeth. I need to make them flush. She could snag her skin on them. Her tiny wrists. 

Why does it want her?

Does it want her?

It gnaws at me, the grooves bone-deep.

***

I don’t think it's real, anymore.

Too still. 

This is what they warned me about. Why they worried for me. I’ve made myself sick, starved myself of sleep until dreams found their way to me awake. 

I’m a danger. 

I could be smothering her right now, the truth tucked behind the story my eyes are telling me. 

Maybe I've willed it. A break from a broken mind. A puppet, pulled by my strings, a threat that doesn’t bear my own face. 

The floor pulls away without my knowing, the monitor tumbling back to it, replaced by the cold handle.

She isn’t safe with me. 

I cross the landing, my eyes pinned to the cot across the hall. Bars, to keep me away.

The rim finds my stomach quickly, the wood cold without weeks of soft-gripped palms and warm-breathed lullabies.

The air stings my skin, the seal breaking as her weight leaves me for the first time in days. My chest is a cavern. She doesn’t fuss as she meets the cot roll. Only a stretch, a celebration of her release. It rocks gently with the new weight.

Bird bones, scattered in a cot.

The picture shrinks, the strings pulling me back into the landing. Into the bedroom. 

Breath won’t come, my torso collapsed without the pull of her. 

My knees hit the bed, my body falling to it. A patch of carpet, bathed in blue at my feet. The monitor is still warm, tacky in my palms, my grip numb to its shape.

I don’t look straight away. Don’t face the finger I know will be stretched towards the nursery, towards her. But I have to.

I see it, at first. The ghost of it, bleached into my vision.

Then I blink.

It’s gone. 

The dawning sky unbroken, nothing but the trees against it. I move to the window, needing to see it with my own eyes.

Nothing.

My head swims, the relief netted by fear before it can break. 

It wasn’t real.

He will be home soon. He will know what to do, how to put my mind back together again. Make me safe again. I should get the charg—

The blow shakes the walls. The smattering of glass as it hits the floor.

The front door.

Ice spears me to the floor, strings my body taut.

No.

The doorway pulls away from me, the space between us unspooling in my vision. The nursery a postcard, shrinking.

I lunge. Too slow. 

The door closes first, swallowing the landing. Her. 

The steps come next.

My shoulders rip at the seams as I heave against the handle, foot to the wall.

I know they were fast. Impossibly fast.

But I felt every one of those steps through my core.

Up the stairs. 

My vision bursts to white, my body buckling as I throw myself into the door. Again. 

Again.

Down the landing.

My scream is gravel in my throat, the shards splitting the flesh, the air. The steps pause outside the door, in the space between us. And I know.

I know which way it is facing.

To the nursery.

To her.