IV

I used to play in Brendan's room but now he's in high school so I'm not allowed. He shuts the door because he's doing homework and he only comes out at dinnertime. Well once Dad went in his room and Brendan wasn't even there, he'd gone out the window. When he came back they had a fight, Dad said from now on Brendan had to leave his door open all the time so Dad and Mum could watch him. Brendan said, you can't make me but Dad said, as long as you're under my roof you'll do as I tell you. Then Mum came and stood in the doorway and said, Kevin.

I keep the magpie under my bed to look at when the nurses aren't there. After Brendan ran away I couldn't see anything for a while but then they gave me a needle to turn the lights off and now it's all right again. Usually you only see dead things on the side of the road that are squashed or mostly eaten. It has feathers that are a bit untidy and there's a line down the front which is where Dad took its insides out and stuffed it. Because birds have one eye on each side of their heads it means both eyes would see different things. I want to ask my Dad if birds have a soul because Mum says animals don't, only humans, but how does she know? When you die your soul still remembers being alive even if your brain forgets and I think the magpie has a soul that remembers about flying.

The nurse said, you had a visitor while you were asleep. Your big brother came to see you.

Well they sent him away, why didn't they wake me up? The nurse said, don't worry sweetie, you're going home in a couple of days, you'll see him then.

And Dad was here again, sitting in the chair in the dark, talking. His voice was slower than normal like he was sleepy. He said, perhaps I was wrong to correct him. Your mother thinks so. She's always with her priest but she can't find it in herself to forgive me. And soon your door will be closed and you will be lost to me too. Then he didn't say anything for a while and I thought he'd gone to sleep.

page 156

Then he said, I drove him away. He cried a bit and then he started talking again. He said,

It's always been difficult for me to say these things. But I took the life of the bird so you would know that you are safe. A life for an eye. Nothing will hurt you again because I won't allow it.

Before Dad killed the magpie, it was alive. Maybe the bird part went inside me as well as the God part. He said, a gesture of faith, do you understand?

I said, do you mean in God?

He looked a bit surprised, I don't think he knew I was awake. Then he said, what is God? Only something that will take an eye from a child. Have faith in me. Promise.

But if I promised, that would be denying God and then He would think that I wasn't ready after all.

After Dad left I got out of bed and timed how long I could kneel with my arms stretched out. St Kevin prayed like that to remember how Jesus suffered on the cross but the church was so small he had to stretch his arms out of the windows and he stayed there so long that a bird made a nest in his hand. Well when he noticed he just stayed still so she could hatch her eggs in a safe place and then he kept waiting and not moving until all the baby birds got big enough to fly away.

I counted on the clock and the magpie watched. Actually it was harder for me because I've been quite sick and I didn't have anything to rest my arms on. After one minute and seventeen seconds my arms started to really ache and the floor hurt my knees like church. I thought about birds getting born and flying out of your hands, it would be a miracle but you'd have to be patient. Then I started to get a headache. It filled up both my eyes one at a time. I went for nearly two and a half minutes but then my arms were burning and I couldn't keep them up any more. My brain started floating around in my head and I got dizzy and that's when I could notice other things, like stars are falling out and burning holes through the black and this time when I fall the sky does let me and it's like sinking with the page 157wind inside my lungs and bones and even my eyes, all the way down to where my house is.

And I can see everything, inside all the rooms. Even Brendan's empty room with the sliding cupboards, where we used to play secret pirates. And Dad's standing in the hallway holding a screwdriver out in front of him like a torch and way over on the other side of the house in the living room, Mum's on the floor, crying. And in between is just open doorways. Because all the doors in our house are gone, there's nothing left just the hinges.