The Woman Before Me by Ruth Dugdall Page A

know what ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ really meant, and my father shouting back, saying ‘shut up!’ and then calling her a mad woman and finally saying, ‘well, who could blame me?’ That was when she would cry. After these arguments she’d go to bed and Dad would go out. He never said where to, but he’d come back smelling of musk with pink lipstick on his cheek.
    After arguing with my father, Mum looked different, angry and sad. She’d hold herself as if she had a heavy weight to carry and her mouth would be pulled down at the sides, she wouldn’t laugh, like she did when she was well. I rode the roller coaster of her moods. She could be warm and loving, when we would do exciting things. But on her ‘loony’ days she’d look at me like I was a stranger.
    When Mum was ill, Peter and me would have to stay in the shop and not get under anyone’s feet. There were comics on sale and we would try to sneak a look but Dad would tell us not to touch, and we got bored. Peter would poke me, booming insults in his bass voice, nick my book away or tease me for being fat. Sometimes he would go with his mates to the beach, and I would be glad.
    I didn’t want to be in the shop. I wanted to be with Mum. I sneaked into her room and climbed onto the bed, snuggling under her duvet and playing at dens.
    The blackbirds were back, building their nests. In the rain.
    I could see them from my mother’s bed, flying in the grey-torn sky and darting to a bush. The slash of dark wings against lime and yellow, disappearing into the shrub, one going in, the other coming out, over and over. Wet feathers. Dripping leaves. The beaked grip on thin brown wood, the unlikely angle of the head as the twig slid into place. The black beady eye. A single jet feather lifted by the wind. I watched and shivered.
    The window shook, but I was safe from the weather in my duvet den.
    I cuddled close and Mum kissed my head. My nest, her bed. They wanted a home, those birds, a place for eggs, for chicks to hatch. “Oh my, just look,” she said, so soft, “how they keep on and on. They believe in their little nest … and it’s pouring now. How did they learn to be so determined?” She nestled in the downy pillow, and the exhaustion of speaking made her close her eyes.
    A shameful thought: not like her. She never had any determination, always so tired.
    Push it away.
    I kissed her hand, light as a feather, and so cold. “Oh, Rosie,” she said, her eyes still closed, “just to see them makes me so tired. Over and over, until the nest’s built, and then the waiting…”
    I knew about waiting. The sitting and being still and waiting until she was well again, until she was up and I was safe and could breathe again, and she was my mother.
    The rain didn’t stop.
    Elaeagnus. “El- ae – ag – nus” she said the next day, sounding it out for me. That tree. That shrub, so thick and wide, outside the window. Yellow and small, white flowers that smelled of lime even stronger after the rain. I knew – I’d been there, before school. If only she would open a window. Since the sky was dried out, all wrung. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was her nest. Days she stayed in there. Days and days.
    We watched, after school. Me in blue gingham and her in a white nightdress. She watched the blackbirds and I watched her for signs that she was ready to get up. To be well. More comings and goings from the blackbird nest, but only one this time, “The male. You can tell from the orange beak,” she whispered, as if he might hear and be disturbed, “and it’s bigger too.”
    What was bigger, when there was only one? Nothing to measure it against. How do you know what’s big, what’s right, what’s wrong, if you’ve nothing to compare it with? But its beak, sure enough, was orange. Full, too, not with twigs anymore, but with worms and grubs and I thought the chicks must be hatched. The bird was so quick, keeping on and on. “My chick,” she said, stroking my