Thornbird of the New City

Chapter 2

Uncle Neely was from Felis. He held himself straight, had long legs, and eyes that sparkled with vitality. An old friend of my parents, supposedly a childhood companion, he also came from a village but was now a wealthy boss. He was quite proud of this and loved holding forth about his business. During those times, he was the star at the dinner table, and everyone looked at him with respect.

“Annie, would you like some more stew?” asked my brother Danny.

Danny was Uncle Neely and Aunt Tina’s son, twelve years old, a tall, lanky boy with a head of messy black curls. I looked into his eyes, my heart fluttering like a happy bird, my cheeks growing warm. I nodded and said, “Of course, thank you.”

“I want more too!” my little sister Bella chimed in.

I hated Bella. She copied everything I did and was always taking my things.

Danny smiled and served her more stew, even affectionately ruffling her hair, which made me even angrier.

Bella looked at me challengingly and reached for my fruit.

A plum rolled under the table. Everyone else was engrossed in listening to Uncle Neely, paying no attention to the squabble between us sisters. I glared at Bella and crawled under the table to retrieve it.

I found the plum, but I also found two pairs of legs entwined.

One pair belonged to my mother, Elena. She wore red high heels and long nylon stockings, and those legs were lightly rubbing against the legs of the man opposite her.

In the dim world beneath the tablecloth, it seemed there was only me and these two intimately tangled pairs of legs.

I suddenly remembered Hainé’s words.

‘Your dad? That cuckolded cripple?’

I crawled out from under the table. Uncle Neely was still holding court. Across from him, my mother watched him, chin propped on her hand, like a girl in love, her eyes full of tenderness.

That night, Bella refused to sleep. She clamored about marrying Brother Danny, about being his bride. Then she asked me when she could start wearing a bra. She even squeezed her arms against her chest, creating a tiny bit of cleavage, saying she thought she was ready.

After she fell asleep, I slipped out to the bathroom.

Mother took a bath every day. When I pushed the bathroom door open, she had one foot up on the edge of the tub, shaving her leg, her face slathered in a thick white cream.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked, glancing at me.

“I’m going to tell Dad.”

“What?”

“I’m going to tell Dad your leg was touching Uncle Neely’s.”

She froze for a second, then quickly pulled me into the bathroom and shut the door.

For the first time, I found my mother terrifying. Her face, coated in white cream, was stiff, and her eyes blazed with fury.

She bent down and spoke to me, word by deliberate word. “You didn’t see anything. If you dare talk nonsense to your father, I’ll beat you to death.”

“I *will* tell Dad. I saw it. You were rubbing against him. You did something wrong.” I stared back stubbornly, but I was terrified, tears welling in my eyes.

She looked down at me for a moment, then smiled. “Fine. Go tell him. If you tell him, I’ll leave this home forever. You’ll never see me again. Is that what you want? Go on then! Go tell him!”

“Mom…”

Mother grabbed my arm and started dragging me out. “Come on! I’ll take you to tell him right now!”

“No, don’t.” I wrapped my arms around her leg, crying. “I won’t say anything, I won’t. Please don’t go.”

Mother sighed, gently patted my back, comforted me softly for a bit, and then put me to bed.

The next day was the weekend.

I was woken by the sound of an argument. Groggily, I got up and looked out the window.

Down below, three people stumbled and shoved in a tight cluster. Older sister Juliet’s father had her by the hair, dragging his daughter forward like a dog. His wife knelt on the ground, wailing.

“No! Please, no!” the woman shrieked.

“Get back inside!” Mr. Vides kicked his wife over.

The woman sobbed and pleaded, only to be slapped twice by him. As if that wasn’t enough to vent his rage, he then kicked her hard in the face. Instantly, blood streamed from her mouth and nose, a shocking red staining the ground.

Juliet cried hysterically, begging her father not to hit her mother. “I’ll go! I’ll stay there quietly! I’ll do whatever they tell me! Just stop hitting her!”

Onlookers pointed and whispered, but no one stepped forward to stop it, to help the poor woman and her daughter.

Under the clear sky, the sunlight was blinding. Bella knelt by the window, her bright face looking strangely serene. She was also captivated by the scene below, her small hand covering her mouth, her eyes wide.

I felt awful. I lay down, curled up, and covered my head with a pillow.

But Bella bothered me. “Annie, what’s a brothel? Is it those little houses by the bridge? Monky and them said lots of whores live there.”

I didn’t know what a brothel was either, or what a w***e was, but it couldn’t be anything good. When people cursed each other, they always called the women in the other person’s family whores. Even kids often used that word.

I couldn’t stand the crying and shouting from downstairs anymore. I put on my shoes and ran out, but Mom and Dad were arguing in the living room too.

Mom’s voice was shrill. “With your pathetic wages, we can barely afford bread!”

“And what’s the use of you buying all that makeup and clothes! We have no money, yet you’re always inviting people over for meals! God knows what you’re scheming!”

“What I’m scheming! It’s all for this family! You only dare take it out on me! If you had the ability, you’d support this family properly! If I hadn’t married you, I wouldn’t have to live like this at all!”

*Smack!* A slap landed on Mother’s face. Father was breathing heavily, like an angry bull.

Mother went mad too. She lunged at him, and they started brawling. “You hit me! What right do you have to hit me…”

Her fierce resistance earned her an even louder slap.

Terrified, I stumbled out of the house, thinking to hide at Melissa’s place across the street. Melissa was my age. Her father was a foreman at the textile mill, and her mother had four kids. Melissa never went to school; every day she did housework and looked after her younger siblings. We sometimes played together.

Melissa’s mother opened the door. Her right eye was black and blue, her arms covered in dark bruises. I’d noticed long ago that her mother often had injuries. Melissa said it was from bumps and knocks while working.

For the first time, I realized the faint crying sounds that sometimes came from their house weren’t from ‘bumps.’ I didn’t step inside. I ran away as if fleeing. I suddenly discovered I lived in a terrifying world where men could raise their fists and beat women whenever they pleased.

That night, I had a dream. The first half was beautiful. I put on a white wedding dress and married Brother Danny. But suddenly, the groom became Hainé. He gripped my neck, shoved my face against a wall. Then Hainé transformed into the one-eyed Mr. Vides. He kicked and punched me, and I became his ugly wife, surrounded by mountains of laundry waiting to be washed, with several babies crying themselves hoarse.

I woke up frightened, gasping in the dark, my chest tight. It turned out Bella had thrown her leg and arm over me.

…

One day, a group of visitors came to the school.

We were told to wash our faces and hands, put on our neatest uniforms, and hold out our workbooks for inspection. Apparently, a school patron was visiting.

Lilyan was positioned at the very front. She held a bouquet of flowers. The teacher told her to present it to one of the ladies.

I had never seen a woman like her before. The teachers treated her with great respect, and the headmaster personally escorted her around the campus. She didn’t look particularly beautiful or wealthy, yet she held her head high. She had a certain vitality ordinary women lacked, a kind of presence I’d only seen in self-satisfied men. The teachers called her Lady Flavi. They said she was a scientist who had used mathematical calculations to prove a theorem and had been in the newspaper.

I thought again of the numb, suffering faces of the women around me—their hunched backs, their coarse voices, screaming and fighting in the streets, buried under housework all day, turned into slaves imprisoned by children, dogs controlled by wails. Forget being respected by men; their bodies were always covered in bruises.

Even my mother, Elena—she was pretty, had many clothes and cosmetics, she even owned two gold necklaces—but Mother wasn’t happy at all. She was always finding fault with Father, arguing with him. Her only happy time was every Friday, the day Uncle Neely’s family came to visit.

Just then, Lilyan’s voice interrupted my thoughts. She was presenting the flowers to the lady.

“What a clever girl. Your Latin is excellent,” the woman praised.

Lilyan beamed and replied in a strange language.

The woman looked delighted. “What does your school teach, besides reading, writing, arithmetic, and theology?”

“Drawing and music as well,” Lilyan said.

“And who taught you Latin?”

“I taught myself, ma’am.”

The woman was even more pleased. She bent down and kissed Lilyan’s cheek, encouraging her, “You are wonderful. Keep studying hard.”

“If I study hard, can I become someone like you in the future?” Lilyan blinked her big eyes. “I want to be a woman like you.”

The woman laughed happily and nodded. “Studying can change a person’s entire life. I wish you success, my dear.”

The woman hadn’t exactly said that studying would make you like her, but to me at that moment, the two were indeed equated.

I stared at her, excited. The sky that had been gloomy for days instantly cleared.

For many days, I had been afraid—afraid that when I grew up, I would become like Juliet or Melissa’s mother, working hard every day and being beaten by my husband.

Suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Yes, if I were respected like this lady, surely no man would dare hit me.