Storm Birds

Edwina Shaw

I grew up where fish flew and giant birds with blue faces wore helmets; where the air smelt of sugar, sweet and heady; where ceiling fans blew hot and waterholes that killed young men were my playgrounds; where storms came in green and gold and drummed on the roof so loudly no one could speak, but only listen. Crocodiles lurked in the shadows, and snakes and toads ran in front of fire that roared and wept ash onto the land for miles around.

***

Take my hand, Daddy, and together we’ll climb up, up, up, over slippery boulders and into the mountains. I will follow you anywhere—behind waterfalls, frogs on my skin, sticky and green—and down waterfalls, sliding. . . JUMP! Splashing into the dark, cold water, down, down, down, deep, deep, deep. Under. Until breath is God. And your hand reaches into the darkness and draws me back up again, and you are God, and we are laughing and your yellow teeth shine like the sun, and you smoke another cigarette as we sit wrapped in towels and I never need to go home, because with you everywhere is home and I am safe.

I sink into the smell of you—Albany Trim Size cigarettes and Brut and suede and rain and red dirt and hair, lots of hair, even on your shoulders and the back of your hands that fold over mine. Home tastes of your Beef Wellington and paprika-smothered cheese balls and homemade pancakes with lemon and sugar and hot syrup and honey with ice cream melting through, and the sound of your laugh, your head thrown back, blue eyes sparkling, and the tap tap tap of your hammer singing you are home, and all is well.

***

Storm birds sang your death into being, all that long hot October when I was fourteen, singing mournful cries oowhit, oowoo heavy in the air, heralding storms that came black and weeping every afternoon, crying the tears I wouldn’t allow myself. The storm birds sang, and I kept myself coiled, hard and tight, until it hurt—unable to hold the once joyful man shrinking to bones in the bed, in too much pain to touch or be touched, your belly bloating like the starving Ethiopians we saw on television.

Not far away. In the next room.

Outside the storm birds sang, oowhit, oowoo, oowhit, oowoo, and I hated them for it. Hated you for it.

As the rain thundered down and you gritted your teeth, I cried out for them to stop. But they wouldn’t. Life relentlessly kept pushing forward and the storm birds called again and again and again.

oowhit oowoo, oowhit oowoo, oowhit oowoo

All these many years later I return to the forest in search of you. Inside my bones, I hold you, and the rainforest and deep cold water. Red earth colours my blood. Your blood. Your home. Thunder and rain beat my heart, and the roiling rumble of a coming storm sings of golden light. In every newspaper-wrapped package of fish and chips, in any whiff of salt breeze, the pungent rot of mulch, the stink of a crushed bug, in the call of storm birds, I find you, and rest in the mauve comfort of sugarcane blossoms, soft as dawn, swaying in the breeze.

Edwina Shaw is an Australian author and editor of fiction, memoir, and screenplays. She is the author of A Guide Through Grief, Thrill Seekers, In the Dark of Night and over forty short pieces that have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Best Australian Stories. She is the editor of Bjelke Blue and Hard As, and co-editor of Our Inside Voices. Her screenplay M was awarded Screen Queensland funding. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing and has been teaching creative writing at university and in the community for over eighteen years. She also runs Relax and Write Retreats and is co-director of Transformational Writing Retreats.