In the Land of Birdfishes by Rebecca Silver Slayter Page B
Authors: Rebecca Silver Slayter
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Again and again he asked me to tell him the story of what happened, and again and again it was the same story I told. Until my answer became his.
But there were the things he never asked. He worried one question like the ocean worries a stone until all that was left of the question was the answer I gave, which got harder and surer as the question itself dissolved. Eventually I could have said to him, “You are the story I am telling you,” because that was what he was and all he was and he was the only thing that was, that I had ever had for my own. “Tell me what happened to you,” he said, since he was only a child, and long after he knew every word I would answer. And he meant, “Tell me why you can’t see,” and so I told him what answered that, but what he came to mean later, and only I knew it then, was, “Tell me what the difference is between what happened to you and what you are.” And what he didn’t know to ask was what I never told him. How a story, like an answer, is a net made out of holes, and it’s in the holes that he should have gone looking.
FOUR
I DREAMT OF OUTER SPACE . I dreamt I was a child, paddling the darkness as I swam in a vast ocean of stars.
And then my dream collided with a sun-glared living room I didn’t recognize. I peeled my face from a rough wool blanket beneath me, squeezed my eyes shut again, and thought for several moments before I remembered where I was.
Dawson
, I thought at last. Oh hell. Then I opened my eyes and looked around.
It was a fussy, mismatched sort of room. All the furniture had flower patterns on it—the overstuffed cotton sofa beneath me, the sectional couch that faced it, and an armchair by the door—but none of the patterns matched, and the curtains were made of white eyelet lace that did not look entirely clean. I heard a floorboard squeak above me and stood up. She had told me I was cruel.
I knew the kind of look she’d given me. She was like people back home in Halifax, where people’s friendliness was a measure of how big a fool they thought you were. They liked the look of themselves doing favours and thought you might fall for thinking that was kindness. Annie’s eyes had said what she thought of her and what she thought of me. So I found mysuitcase where I’d set it down by the door and I left Annie’s house.
It was even hotter outside. The sun was so bright that, for a moment, as the door closed behind me, I couldn’t see anything at all. Then, when I squinted, I saw a street that seemed to have been peeled out of the Wild West. Elderly couples clung to each other and strolled down board sidewalks lining an unpaved road that shook brown dust into the air every time a car went past. The storefronts that faced me had signs painted in the sort of typeface usually reserved for phrases like “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” It was as if the entire town had at some point conceded that it would no longer be an actual town. Instead it had become a myth of itself: a museum harbouring its own memory of having once been a real place.
I followed the sidewalk I was on until its end, and then I got a glimpse of the river several blocks away and realized there was little more to the town than I had just walked and the distance between where I stood and the riverbank. Somehow it had looked bigger from far above.
I cut down to the next street below and saw a hotel sign. I pushed open the door underneath it and approached the desk inside, where a boy stood staring at something in his hands. He had hair combed over his eyes in stringy points and shoulders that poked through his T-shirt like sticks. “I need a room,” I told the boy.
“How many nights?” he asked, without looking at me.
“I don’t know.” I thought. “Maybe a while,” I said.
He shook his head. “No rooms,” he said, and I steppedcloser till I could see he had one of those little electronic games in his hand, and it was that he was staring at.
I put down my suitcase. “Where
But there were the things he never asked. He worried one question like the ocean worries a stone until all that was left of the question was the answer I gave, which got harder and surer as the question itself dissolved. Eventually I could have said to him, “You are the story I am telling you,” because that was what he was and all he was and he was the only thing that was, that I had ever had for my own. “Tell me what happened to you,” he said, since he was only a child, and long after he knew every word I would answer. And he meant, “Tell me why you can’t see,” and so I told him what answered that, but what he came to mean later, and only I knew it then, was, “Tell me what the difference is between what happened to you and what you are.” And what he didn’t know to ask was what I never told him. How a story, like an answer, is a net made out of holes, and it’s in the holes that he should have gone looking.
FOUR
I DREAMT OF OUTER SPACE . I dreamt I was a child, paddling the darkness as I swam in a vast ocean of stars.
And then my dream collided with a sun-glared living room I didn’t recognize. I peeled my face from a rough wool blanket beneath me, squeezed my eyes shut again, and thought for several moments before I remembered where I was.
Dawson
, I thought at last. Oh hell. Then I opened my eyes and looked around.
It was a fussy, mismatched sort of room. All the furniture had flower patterns on it—the overstuffed cotton sofa beneath me, the sectional couch that faced it, and an armchair by the door—but none of the patterns matched, and the curtains were made of white eyelet lace that did not look entirely clean. I heard a floorboard squeak above me and stood up. She had told me I was cruel.
I knew the kind of look she’d given me. She was like people back home in Halifax, where people’s friendliness was a measure of how big a fool they thought you were. They liked the look of themselves doing favours and thought you might fall for thinking that was kindness. Annie’s eyes had said what she thought of her and what she thought of me. So I found mysuitcase where I’d set it down by the door and I left Annie’s house.
It was even hotter outside. The sun was so bright that, for a moment, as the door closed behind me, I couldn’t see anything at all. Then, when I squinted, I saw a street that seemed to have been peeled out of the Wild West. Elderly couples clung to each other and strolled down board sidewalks lining an unpaved road that shook brown dust into the air every time a car went past. The storefronts that faced me had signs painted in the sort of typeface usually reserved for phrases like “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” It was as if the entire town had at some point conceded that it would no longer be an actual town. Instead it had become a myth of itself: a museum harbouring its own memory of having once been a real place.
I followed the sidewalk I was on until its end, and then I got a glimpse of the river several blocks away and realized there was little more to the town than I had just walked and the distance between where I stood and the riverbank. Somehow it had looked bigger from far above.
I cut down to the next street below and saw a hotel sign. I pushed open the door underneath it and approached the desk inside, where a boy stood staring at something in his hands. He had hair combed over his eyes in stringy points and shoulders that poked through his T-shirt like sticks. “I need a room,” I told the boy.
“How many nights?” he asked, without looking at me.
“I don’t know.” I thought. “Maybe a while,” I said.
He shook his head. “No rooms,” he said, and I steppedcloser till I could see he had one of those little electronic games in his hand, and it was that he was staring at.
I put down my suitcase. “Where
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