Lucy fell into a deep state of shock when she found her beloved grandmother crumpled, bloody, and dead at the bottom of the basement stairs. So strong was her emotional response, she didn’t speak for weeks. She had swallowed the horror of what she saw, and it stole her voice.
She was questioned by the police who thought the old woman might have been pushed. The young girl’s silence made them suspicious. Detectives believed Lucy may have had a motive. There was an inheritance she would receive when she turned eighteen. But it was all mum’s the word from Lucy. Eventually they left her alone deciding that her mute state was caused by deep psychological trauma.
When the dust settled and Lucy was still not speaking, her parents sent her to stay with an aunty who had a cottage in the country. The next sounds that came from Lucy’s mouth were shrieks and screams in the middle of the night when a large bird smashed through a window in the attic where she was sleeping. The bird landed on her head and got caught up in her hair. Lucy shook her head in whiplash motions while the bird managed to further entangle itself, tugging and wrenching at her curls. They could not escape each other. The wings of the bird slapped her twitching head, and sent wild animal screeches into her ear, jabbed her head with its beak.
The horrific shrill sounds brought aunty running equipped with her instrument of death, a pair of knitting needles. She poked at the feet of the bird while Lucy wailed, and the bird hissed and lunged at the spiky needles. Finally free, Lucy hid under a pillow while the bird flapped around the room smashing into the walls looking for an escape. Aunty managed to open a window and the bird flew into the darkness.
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The gruesome sight of her grandmother at the bottom of the basement stairs, and the attack of the bird – felt and heard, but never seen – were seared together in her psyche. Till the day she died she would howl at a robin on the lawn, a chickadee on a Hallmark card. My brothers taunted her at the beach throwing bits of sandwiches into the air above her head. They laughed. Seagulls swarmed. My mother ran screaming into the surf.
Yes, Lucy was my mother. She told me her dreams of the blood soaked basement floor, gouged attic wallpaper, and the gigantic screeching bird as black as night. I dreamed that she screamed a silent sound, and issuing from her gaping, voiceless mouth were molecules of black crows filling all the breathable space until the air was thick as pitch and black.
With great sympathy and hope that she would be free of her haunting, I dreamed that my mother’s head was a kind of bird house, and perched on top was the blackbird singing in the dead of night…both of them content in their relationship to each other.