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Issue 4: July 2006.
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Home > Issue 4: July 2006 > Fiction

Songs Like Madness
by Maura Conley

Mother had a way of making crying into music and music like madness. And occasionally when they could sing along the children did and it was passionate and lovely and heartbreaking. Like dirges or bagpipes, reminiscent of funerals, celebrations. Her music was that of a sad songbird, and Mother perched herself in various places around the house: the dusty living room, the leaky bathtubs, the space right outside the children’s bedroom doors. And the children all thought that this beautiful songbird could perhaps fly away someday—soar right up and out of this house, out of her unhappiness. Night after night after night the children wished and hoped and prayed to Mary the Mother of God to give Mother wings enough just to fly off.

The first fall the children heard their mother’s singing, they tiptoed around the house, unsure of what this could mean. There were sounds lodging in her throat that they had never heard before. It was melodic and lilting. She sang scales with such beautiful dexterity,

Like a tin whistle, Jonathan said, thin and light.

But why, why? Lori wanted to know.

Perhaps because she’s a bird, Emily played, and that’s just what birds do.

And so Mother was a bird. A singing bird.

Having run away with the image, the idea of a bird-mother scared the children. And so, to make further sense of this, Emily pored over books of folklore and ancient drawings. In books whose pages were brown and curling with age, the children saw their mother on cave walls and Pharaoh’s caskets. Emily read the words as Lori and Jonathan looked over the pictures ; women with expansive white wings and beaks instead of noses flying through the night sky to bring a message.

This is it! Emily decided for the children. Mother is bringing a message!

In these days of singing, Mother glided across the hardwood floors of the house. A hum was on her lips. It seemed that Mother, and her song, was just out of reach of the children. She’d sneak around the dusty corners of the house avoiding the children completely. Mother would stop her singing short if she thought anyone was listening from the next room, keeping the children from fully being able to place the melody. Mother would sing words in the shower that seemed to be in another language, or maybe not even words at all, just feelings or howling. Deep and throaty. But the children continued to listen hard, hoping to place the message in some greater context than what they knew now, which was close to nothing but wonder. The notes and buzzes came from Mother’s lips in sounds that were too soft and too vague for their ears, like muted colors are to eyes.

That fall the children all worked hard to form a picture in their minds of what this bird-mother looked like and what types of things Mother could do now that she had changed herself into a bird. Jonathan liked to picture Mother’s wings coming naturally from her back. White feathers like those that came from the molted fur of baby chicks, soft enough to nuzzle up against, although it had probably been years since he actually felt the consistency of Mother’s skin. He thought of her flying at night, white wings blaring against the black of the autumn sky, wondered if her sweaters would suit her any more. He crawled into Mother’s closet, took her cardigans from their hangers, and measured two ten-inch slits to run in parallel lines from collar to waist. In the dark of her half-lit closet, Jonathan cut through her knits with an old pair of lefty scissors he stole from a third grade classroom. It will be easier for her to fly off this way, Jonathan thought, as he shredded the fabric between flesh and metal. He was happy enough to help her.

She will be warm, he said aloud.

There was one question on Lori’s mind as she sat at the windowsill looking into the sky: If Mother really is a bird, then when will she begin flying south? It was the beginning of fall, just the time of year where you could hear the flocks of birds flapping through the sky, ready to leave the thought of winter behind. Lori imagined her mother begging from the window for her bird friends to wait for her—she just wasn’t ready yet—too many things needed to be done to get ready for winter and she just couldn’t leave. But Lori knew Mother would jump at the chance to leave if only she had an excuse.

Because there was no doubt in Emily’s mind that these songs were passion, or at least passion put into sounds, Mother’s songs were messages; ones that said, this is a dangerous place, people can be so beautiful, and always eat your vegetables. Since Emily believed life and passion were so closely united—one being fueled by the other—she knew Mother was teaching them the ways of the world. And in the lines and bars of her mother’s humming Emily searched, as if deciphering tarot cards or memorizing poetry, for the meanings that were specifically for her. Though it made her head throb, Emily listened intently, waiting for the message to strike her one day, a knee-slapping moment where she could say,

Yes! That must be what she means!

Emily waited. Holding her face above the steam that came from the crack in the bathroom door, Emily lingered outside while Mother sang in the shower; she listened to the light snoring that came from Mother’s bedroom at night—she even kept track of her dreams in case Mother tried to communicate in some half-conscious way—but no message came to Emily.

Jonathan sat cross-legged just outside Mother’s bedroom door. He had circle shaped patches of sweater on his arms—red cable knit, white cashmere, and moss green wool. Gripping the scissors in his left hand, his fingers began to cramp. Against his bare legs, Jonathan could feel the breeze from the windows in Mother’s bedroom sliding out from the crack where the door didn’t quite meet the floor. His shins were cool while the rest of his body was warm. The wind whistled and gushed at him in a high-pitched whine that hurt Jonathan’s ears. For a second he couldn’t tell if it was the wind or his mother. There was something that sounded like a whisper and as it glided past his ears with a tickle Jonathan imagined one solitary feather floating out from under the door. He imagined Mother, in hopes of retrieving her feather, opening the door to find him there, sitting, holding bits of her sweaters in his hands. She would open the door, her wings flapping gracefully behind her, and upon finding him, she’d carry him into her room to tell him exactly what it was like to now be a bird, to feel the feathers and their sticky cuticles growing from your skin, and then molting. She’d talk all about molting. But instead of a feather floating towards him or the door ever opening, Jonathan just sat, and eventually fell asleep, waiting for his mother to come out of her room.

That first fall of singing, after the initial wonder of music had faded into the background of other household noises, such as dishwashing, the hum of electricity, and the echo of disappointment, Lori found herself with a special gift. She was able to tune things out in such a way that it made the other children jealous. At the height of their Mother’s volume, at the most obviously unbearable points of Mother’s crooning, Jonathan and Emily would place themselves in front of their sister and stare her in the face.

She has a gift, Emily and Jonathan would whisper to one another.

Because, of course, it was like Lori didn’t have to pay attention at all. Lori could do that. She could choose. She could shrug her shoulders and act like Mother’s noise didn’t faze her in the least, while her brother and sister were in agony over its sad and curious nature. And not that Lori wasn’t interested in what Mother was up to now that Mother had turned into a bird, but Lori possessed this special knack for handling boredom and chaos that made the others envious—she could ignore it.

But the most special thing that Lori did, that neither of her siblings knew about, was that she made associations. And when it came to determining the specifics concerning Mother’s new condition, Lori thought, With wings come claws; I just know it.

At times during Mother’s first spell of singing, Lori found herself on her knees, running her spread-open hands lightly over the rug of the living room. She came up empty each time, but Lori was looking for clippings from her Mother’s bird claws. And so, to get a little piece of her mother, something she could keep in her pocket to finger throughout the day, she searched the rugs of the house whenever she remembered.

During Mother’s first spell, Jonathan couldn’t sleep in his bed. He wandered through the house late at night to see what it was like with no people. Although it sounded much the same—quiet and suffocating—it looked different at night. There were ways in which the walls bent inwards during the day, hugging the children and their mother close. And while Jonathan walked through the house after the sun had set, after dinner had been eaten and cleaned, and after everyone had started dreaming upstairs in their beds, the walls seemed to have straightened themselves out. Jonathan, not finding the escape he wanted for his mother from the old plaster walls of the house, looked to the windows. Jonathan slipped into his mother’s bedroom, opened wide one side of each window. He looked at Mother, wondered how it was that she could sleep on top of those wings of hers as big as they must be, and shut the door behind him.

As she listened to Mother’s songs, Emily learned to hate whistling. She thought of it as sneaky and underhanded, a way of almost singing without actually singing, in the way that blowing on a kazoo was like humming but not really. Because of Emily’s want for a strong hold on reality and tangibility, Mother’s distortion of sound was such a jump that the girl could not make it alone, and there was no one willing to hold her hand. She always had to be first. And everything that came with being first was difficult. This was something Emily had come to learn about her life, not unlike learning that she gives too much to people who are willing to just take. If she could simplify it, like thinking she had the best view on a rollercoaster, then maybe it would be an easier thing to go through life knowing. But as it stood, Emily did not see being first as a benefit. The view was not better here, in front. And the most difficult thing about it was looking back at the others with a straight face. A straight face was something Emily was not good at keeping, especially when it came to matters involving Mother.

All the children had known in their lives was a Mother that seemed constricted, but that fall, while she sang, there was a looseness about Mother that they were unfamiliar with. Her body was unchained and strange and each child liked to think of a certain part of their mother changing—her nails turning to clear talons, wings breathing out from the muscles in her shoulders, the cords in her voice box growing more limber to provide her with better songs. They liked to pretend that they could enjoy this, flow with it and just take the ride. But it was bumpy and unpredictable, something the children couldn’t quite wrap their brains around. It was scary to them, just as upsetting as Mother’s happier times because they didn’t know what do with her. Could it be that it was easier for them to live oblivious to their mother, like strangers? There was danger somewhere in this sorrow and it threatened the children, draped over them like the sadness of the onset of winter.

And when the cats finally came, the children were excited. They watched from the front porch as the cats trilled, twined their tails around the rusted iron hand rail, whined their ways on the windowsills of the old house, and at that very moment they knew, these cats were wanting. They ached and longed to get into the house where Mother was upstairs bathing and singing, perhaps even preening the beautiful feathers of her wings. And not unlike the cats, the children wanted to see this too. During the time her songs rang through the house, no child had actually seen Mother in her new form. They hadn’t had the chance to see her graceful wings open and wide or hear her beautiful sad songs as they came from her lips. Emily’s heart broke as she thought of her mother’s music; Lori smiled to think of how beautiful her mother’s wings must be; and Jonathan’s arms itched with their wanting just to hug Mother. Each one dreamed of their mother in the bath, dipping the tips of her wings into the water as she perched on the ledge, and she would do that thing that birds do, the fast twitch and shiver of their bodies that made them amazing and endearing and wonderful at the same time. And each one heard, from upstairs in the bathroom, Mother singing another song that seemed so familiar to them all, a lighter song, a bathing song, like a sun shower.

They grew in number by the hour so that by sundown there were families and families of cats on the front steps of their house. They mewed in waves, the ebb and flow of which seemed somehow a response to Mother’s own singing upstairs in the bathtub. It was exciting for all but Jonathan who worried about Mother’s safety. He feared that the cats might want to ruin her wings, scratch them to bleeding, or pluck her beautiful feathers to eat. But after an evening of porch sitting and cat studying, all the children’s curiosities grew. Would this stop, would the cats leave, or how long might Mother stay locked up in that bathroom?

What would happen? Jonathan asked.

We’ll never find out if you, Lori warned.

Don’t try it, Emily finished.

The mix of signals confused him so much that when Jonathan finally reached for the screen door to the porch he didn’t think of how fast things could actually happen. Everything that fall had been soaked in a sap that made time and people move slowly. So when the cats of the neighborhood rushed past him it was like that sap had been washed away, no longer tinting things the way it had. Movements were fresh, if not sharp, and in real color now. And because the curiosity of it all drew them in, the children ran up the stairs right after the cats, tripping and falling over the chaos. There was the thudding of paws and feet, claws and shoes scraping and clutching at the wooden stairs. The walls of the house were at their closest now, bending and molding to the movements of all the energy bounding through the house.

Lori quickly opened the door to the bathroom, like pulling off a band-aid just to stare at the red blotch beneath. Jonathan gasped. The darkness of the evening threw shadows across the tile and porcelain that made the children squint to see what was really there. There was the radio on the side of the sink, the towel resting on the toilet, and Mother in the bathtub. There were no feathers, no wings, no cats, no beautiful songs after all.

It’s like crying, Lori said.

It is crying, Emily said.

She’s crying, Jonathan said.

And in that moment, while the children stood in the doorway and watched Mother weeping into her lukewarm bathwater, it made sense to them—her distance, her groaning, her sadness. It was what was right with the world, and it made them all forget how shallow she could be; how truly absent, but so beautiful, Mother was. And when it was all over, her crying, the family would sink deeper. The children had seen a glimpse of what life could be with release. They had breathed fresh, rather than stagnant, air. And when all they had was stale again, it somehow seemed worse. A shade darker. Or sadder.