Perhaps the strangest thing of all about that night, and the day which followed, was when I found sleep and woke the following morning – the pain in my shoulder rousing me once more. The biggest fear was not whether those men would come for me again, or whether Gen was alive or dead; in that moment, my fear was simply this: how angry would my parents be? I remembered my father’s face in the police station, drained of all colour; I had caught the tremble that had affected one of his wrists. I knew that spoke to something which, as a child, I couldn’t fully understand and yet was fundamentally real. That was the most terrible thing, I think; the fact that my father had been forced to reveal an aspect of himself which he had hitherto kept hidden from the world, which no one should have glimpsed.
In the days and weeks that followed my father was even more taciturn than usual, and in his silences and his glazed-eyed stare, I would catch a sense of recrimination and regret; regret, I felt, that he had a daughter like me. But the day after we had been detained, it was the reaction of my mother I most feared. Getting hauled up before the authorities would not only terrify her but also offend her notion of social status, the fact that respectable people like her were not criminals and it was a humiliation to be treated in such a way. Naturally, I anticipated a furious reaction on my mother’s part.
But the reality was different.
She came into my room the next day. As soon as my eyes had cleared of sleep, I flinched, maybe from the anticipation of a slap, maybe from the severity of the memory of the evening before. But instead her voice was soft. She beckoned me from the bed, her expression serious. I followed her as she led me to the bathroom.
Then she did something she hadn’t done in years. She took off my clothes. She had already run the bath. I got in. The water was a little hot and it seemed to sigh as my body slipped into it. I don’t think I have ever felt so fragile, and yet the touch of that water was blessed. I couldn’t stop trembling. My mother took a sponge to my body, gently, gradually, and eventually it found the place between my shoulder and my arm. There was a deep dark welt there – an ugly shadow set into the smooth fabric of myself. I had never seen my own body changed in that way. I’d never experienced myself so transformed and distorted. The throbbing pain was still there, but I couldn’t look away. I was hypnotised, almost, by the fact of what had been done to me.
When my mother’s fingers, gripping that sponge, found that place on my skin, I felt a single shudder run through her body. She touched the sponge to it once more, then gently laid it down. She looked at me briefly, and I saw that her eyes were filled with water. Then she turned away and left the bathroom.
In the days that followed, my family became themselves again. My mother was waspish and chatty, interrogating me, demanding I fulfil my duties; my father would nod at me when I entered the room before rustling his paper, and my brother would pull a silly face before giggling mischievously.
But I was not the same. It was summer, so there was no school. But when my mother tried to send me on an errand, to collect something from the local shop, I would at once clench up, and if she pushed me, I would retreat into a corner, bowing my head, closing my eyes. At which point she would mutter something along the lines of ‘silly, stubborn girl’, but she would leave me be, whereas before she would have dragged me out of the apartment and forced me to be on my way.
It was my grandmother who eventually came to me.
‘I need you to do something for me, Little One.’
I looked up. The wrinkles crossed her face like ravines, but her eyes and the glimpse of her smile were unchanging.
‘What?’ I managed to whisper. I think I already knew she was going to ask me to leave the apartment.
‘I want you to come with me, just a little way, outside. We won’t be gone for long. We’ll be back before you even know it.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I know you don’t. But the thing is this, Little One. I can’t protect you from the world. From all the things that will happen, come what may. No one can. But while I am with you, nothing bad is going to happen. Because I won’t let it. Do you understand?’
I looked into her face. She looked so old, yet somehow so strong. I wanted to cry, I wanted to throw myself into her arms. I wanted to run away from her, perhaps I even wanted her to go to hell.
But instead I felt the tears warm in my eyes. I looked away. I felt her hand on my shoulder. And I felt myself rise to my feet. She wasn’t pulling me, but guiding me, perhaps. She led me to the door of our apartment, unclicked the lock, opened it. As I stepped through, the noise from the other people on our corridor made me flinch, but I felt my grandmother’s hand. A couple of neighbours shouted playful greetings at me, but the sound seemed to blur in a malaise of abstract colour before the thudding of my own heart. My throat was dry and I was struggling for breath. But my grandmother’s hand was still on me, gentle but firm.
As I stepped out into that blinding light, the sun high in the sky, my eyes were burning. The old woman walked me to the place where I had followed her some time before, across the scraggy patch of land and into that small dilapidated shack. This time I was familiar with the setting, but I was still curious, still had that fascination children have before a living animal. I inched closer. I could feel my grandmother behind me, watching. I saw a movement from the pen she had fashioned, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw the chick from before, much larger now, strutting back and forth effortlessly, her walk no longer impeded by the damaged leg, her feathers no longer the yellowy-white of youth, but now flushed with the dappled copper of burgeoning maturity.
I looked back at my grandmother with surprise.
‘She has got so big!’
‘Yes. I told you before. Her leg got snapped at an early age. But that was what made her a fighter!’
I looked again at the bird. Her beady eyes glinted in the shadows. It was as though she was looking right into me, and that look wasn’t exactly nice. In fact, the creature looked positively vicious.
‘Hold out your hand.’
I held out my hand automatically. My grandmother deposited a scattering of grain into my open palm.
‘Feed her!’
‘I don’t want to, she’ll peck me.’
‘Feed her.’
‘I really don’t want to!’
I felt myself on the point of panic. More than anyone else in the family, I listened to my grandmother. I don’t know why exactly, it just always seemed to be that way. But at that moment I was ready to scream. I could feel my grandmother’s eyes on me in the gloom. She spoke, almost coldly.
‘You are right, Little One. She could well peck you. But if you are calm, and if you have courage, she won’t. Do you know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because although she can’t speak like you and me, she can sense your mood. She can feel your feelings. So, if you can calm yourself, and be gentle towards her, she will feel that too.’
Tentatively, slowly, I extended my hand towards the bobbing bird. Having looked at me for a few moments, she drew closer. My hand was trembling. I felt a peck, and then a more gentle motion, as the chick began to eat from my hand. I felt her breast, her feathers, pushed up against my fingers as she fed. And the warmth of her, and the sense of her oblivion as she abandoned herself to the grain I was holding – it felt almost like trust. As though this creature had chosen to put its fragile and precious life in my hands alone. And all at once my face was warm with tears. I turned away from my grandmother so she couldn’t see.
Her voice came to me nevertheless, soft but weathered.
‘She hurt her leg, but she got better. Because she is strong inside, you see. She walks in a completely straight line now. And that’s good.’