The dayroom of the sanitarium had a heavy smell of urine that day, and no matter how long I sat there, I couldn’t seem to get used to it. Clara, sitting across the table from me, didn’t seem to notice it.
I knew that as soon as I got home I would take a very long, very hot shower. But I knew it would do nothing to erase the stink from my nose. That would take a few days, I was sure.
“Albert’s been to visit me,” Clara said, eyes on a word scratched into the tabletop. She traced it with her fingers.
“He told me,” I said.
Her words came out slower than usual, her movements delayed. But at least she knew me.
“He reads to me.”
“What does he read?” I asked.
She met my eyes. “Something about a hobbit. I don’t like it, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that.”
Clara reached through the bars on the window, tracing a raindrop on the steamed glass.
“Birdie, do you still think about our mother?” she asked, not turning toward me.
“I do,” I said. “Probably every day.”
“I’ve forgotten so much about her,” she said, breathing in deeply.
“Maybe I can refresh your memory.” I leaned forward. “What do you want to know about her?”
“What color were her eyes?”
“They were blue,” I said. “And her hair was the same shade of blonde as yours.”
“How did she wear it?”
“Either braided down her back or twisted into a bun.” I crossed my arms against a chill I wouldn’t have expected on that warm day. “Sometimes she’d put a little rouge on her cheeks. Dad didn’t like it, though.”
“Why not?”
“He said she was prettier without makeup.”
“Was she a good mother to us?”
“I think she did her very best,” I answered. “She told us stories.”
“I do remember one of them,” she said. “At least part of it.”
“Which one?”
“There was a girl who turned into a bird.” Clara’s eyebrows rose, just the slightest bit. “It was because she was afraid of something.”
“The dark,” I said. “She wanted to follow the sun. Do you remember?”
“But she got tired.”
“And she needed to land.”
Clara put both hands on her cheeks, and I saw how ragged her fingernails were. “Where did the bird-girl land?”
“On a mountain . . .”
“So high it was in a cloud.” Clara nodded. “I remember that part.”
“What happens next?” I asked.
“She made a wish that she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.” She lowered her hands. “But the wish didn’t work.”
The rest of the dayroom blurred, out of focus. The sounds quieted. Even the stinging smells dulled. All I knew in that moment was Clara, her voice so much like Mother’s.
“It didn’t,” I whispered, remembering the way I’d told the story years before and how it had made Clara so angry. I’d changed it from the way my mother told it so it would have an easy ending. All I’d wanted was the happily-ever-after.
But that wasn’t the story. Not the true one.
I understood that it wasn’t the ending that Clara had needed.
“The bird was so scared.” Clara’s voice trembled and she sniffled. “But she knew she had to fly anyway.”
“But this time she couldn’t chase after the sun,” I added.
Clara shook her head. “She had to learn to live with the darkness even if it would never stop scaring her.”
Tears in my eyes, I nodded. “So she spread her wings,” I started.
“And flew home.”
Clara smiled.
And in that smile I saw the little girl who beat the rooster and the one who refused to let the men cut down her favorite tree. I saw my sister.
And she was beautiful.