wren "birdie" beckett || D10 (fin)

A toothpick. That was the last gift she remembered receiving from her father.

It was right after he’d taught her how to eat an apple from the top down, core and all, so she wouldn’t waste a single bite. That summer was so hot the air shimmered on the pavement. They sat outside her mother’s small wooden house on a fallen log worn smooth from frequent use. Mother watched them through the window. There you go,” he’d encouraged. “Now spit the seeds out and you’ll grow more apples.” Dutifully, cheeks puffed, she’d shot them out as far as she could in three directions. “Nice work, Birdie,” her father said, and he’d passed her the toothpick. She didn’t even know what it was for until she saw him stick a second one in his mouth, digging between those slightly yellowed teeth, a mouth she would come to fear and resent.

His mouth that could turn from a smooth smile to a twisted snarl in the space of a breath.

She liked him then. Back when she has just learned how to braid her own hair and made sure to do it every time he came over, two neat rows tucked behind her ears. He was funny and she liked how tall he was. He showed her how to dance a jig and whittle a stick into a spear using a knife. He was always in a hurry, always seemed to have somewhere else to go.

Later she would know the reason her mother always watched them through the window with a wary expression. Why she always gripped Wren’s hand so tightly when they went anywhere outside the house. Why she spoke in a near-whisper, eyes flitting about, like she didn’t want to be heard by anyone but herself.

Wren’s childhood seemed so brief, so distant. Now it was like a place she could imagine but never truly visit. When she looked back, parts of the past seemed to glow with a soft, warm light. Others were cast in shadows. Fragments of nightmares and a chorus of dissonant sounds she struggled to forget.

Maybe, in some alternate universe, the three of them could have been a family. Sometimes she wondered, had her father ever considered it? There must have been a time when he thought her mother would be a person worth spending time with. At what point did he look at his new baby girl and decide that she was just another failed attempt at a son? A bad poker hand. Better luck next time.

Another little girl to ignore and throw away. She and her sisters had that much in common.

When he stopped visiting, she would lie awake and wonder what she could have done to make herself a child worth keeping. At least for the first few years.

Sometimes, when her mother worked late, she would stay at her grandparents with the plethora of siblings her father had conceived and similarly ignored. She didn’t feel so alone there with her sisters and the new babies that would come every few years. When they would play pretend together, she felt like they were dreaming up a different family for themselves, one where she was a caretaker and her siblings were the babies. She held them when they cried, kissed their soft little cheeks. Being with them taught her how to be gentle.

Looking at their faces, lending an ear to their many questions, she didn’t know how her father could be so indifferent and absent. The more she grew to love her sisters, the more confused she was by her father. Even when he had the son that he had—apparently—so badly wanted.

In his absence, they clung to each other.

✿ ✿ ✿

"Say that… one more time.”

Wren’s hands balled tightly into fists, half-bitten nails digging into her palms. Her shoulders were tense as she leaned forward with a scowl.

“I said you were probably a broken condom. That’s why we never see your da—“

Her knuckles connected with the boy's face before he could utter the end of his insult, the prickly skin of his cheek buckling against her hand. It was the third time her classmate had made fun of her but the first time she had punched someone, and it hurt more than she'd imagined. Knuckles hot and beginning to swell, she clutched her hand and bit back tears.

"Take it back!" she growled, jaw clenched to avoid the tremor creeping through her bottom lip. That ain't true and it ain't none of your business."

Inside, her heart ached from how close to true it might have been. In those quiet days spent at home with her mother--helping with chores, talking about school, receiving forehead kisses, being taken care of when she was sick-- Wren knew that she was very loved. With her siblings, she knew there was an important niche that she filled. Still, there was always an empty wound where her father's absence always hurt, like a scarred burn still tender to the touch.

Over time, she tired of the teasing she got from other kids at school. In theory their words were sticks and stones, but she hated the position she was in simply for being the middle child of a father who was always occupied somewhere else, with another life more important than the one that included her. She didn't choose this. After a while, it felt like she was letting her tormentors win if she didn't give them hell for it--it wasn't the last fight she would get into.

At least she would show them she wasn't going to sit there and take it. She gave them three strikes. One time, sticks and stones. Two times, break my bones. Three words, BAM! Your words will never hurt me again.

✿ ✿ ✿

If you were to paint Wren's portrait, she'd be lying on her back in the meadow, blue jeans flared at the ankle, her feet falling softly outwards in worn leather boots. Her hands, bony-fingered and delicate, pulling at strands of grass. Her hair was the color of wheat at the end of summer, her eyes blue-green and her gaze soft. She would lie there in the swaying weeds and dream with her eyes open, surrounded by the sweet perfume of chamomile and clover, until her arms were itchy and her legs had nearly fallen asleep against the hard ground. Sometimes she would just fall asleep there until someone came to find her, always a bit annoyed at each reoccurrence but usually in a fond way.

She wished she could always be soft, that everything could be so soft like this. She also kind of wished that she was taller.

Her daydreams were full of other places, alternate realities and possible futures. Sometimes she would turn her head, squinting into the horizon and wondering what lay just out of reach. Would life have been different if she were born in another district? Would Daddy be a drinker and a womanizer? Would Mama be the soft-spoken, frightened woman that she was? Would they all go to sleep with empty bellies?

If Wren would ever run away, she thought she would try to be another person wherever she ended up. In her daydreams, she and all of her siblings lived in District Four, right next to the beach. Or in District One, making a reality show with all of their family shenanigans. With more money she would buy makeup and nice clothes, and everyone at school would want to be on her good side, but she would only talk to the ones who spoke really sweetly to her.

No one except her family saw this part of her that wanted to be soft. At school she had been bullied into a constant state of unease. Hyper vigilance, even. Once she had put up those walls, she wasn't sure how to take them down. Sometimes she came home with a frown still cemented on her face like and image on a burned television screen, and when she caught her own reflection she would massage her cheeks anxiously until she felt normal again.

This was still better than being like her mother.

A quiet, yielding woman. A total pushover, Wren often thought. To hear her mother speak, you needed to stand close--otherwise it was impossible to hear that mouse-like voice, eking out in a near-whisper. Every answer was a quiet obliging nod, her eyes cast perpetually towards the floor.

You would never know this woman used to sing in front of anyone like there was no one listening.

In some dark corner of Wren's memory, the hazy shape of her drunken father was yelling, throwing dishes--at the floor, at the wall, at mother. And when a shard of porcelain cut her flesh, warm blood seeping through the sleeve of her shirt, she didn't cry out or curse her attacker. Mother just curled into a corner, made herself small, and quietly whimpered.

And Wren, like a mirrored image, hiding behind a chair, holding her breath. She promised herself she'd never again feel so helpless.

Maybe a part of Wren knew it wasn't her mother's fault that she was like that. But when she saw her mother every day, such a little person that you could blow her down in one big breath like a house of straw, she couldn't stop her own skin from crawling. It wasn't just disappointment or disgust. It was more like familiarity, which was somehow worse.

It hurt the most when she saw parts of her mother in herself. That gentle hand that stroked her forehead, those wary watchful eyes that scanned the room for every sign of danger. Her love for flowers and tiny useful objects. It hurt because Wren wished these beautiful things would shine out of her mother like sunbeams, unobscured by fear.

But now, in her mother's silence, Wren is the bird who sings.