The Woman Who Gave Birth to Children Who Sing

The bird does not sing because

it has an answer.

It sings because it has a song.

Once, a long time ago, when I was much younger, I knew a woman whose gift and work it was to give birth to children who sing.

She did not know it as a gift, any more than she thought it a gift when the muscles of her belly contracted and drew life-giving air through her lungs and into her body. She did not know it as work, any more than she was aware of working when the rich red warmth of blood surged through the vessels beneath her skin and in the depth of her, carrying sustenance to every cell and fiber. Giving birth to children who sing was, like breathing and pumping blood, something she simply did, something that was purely hers. Yet it was, in fact, both her gift to the world and her work in it, although she was much older and very much wiser before she saw it so.

She was young when she began, as young as she could be and still give shape to the singing children that she carried within her. They must have been borne within her when she was born, every one of them, the hundreds that she brought forth while she breathed and the untold thousands more that will, unborn, scatter when she dies. She was young, I say -- close enough to the magic moment of her own birth to know it as a continuation and not a beginning, and to know, without asking, that there were singing children inside her, children given to her, waiting to be brought into life through her.

Her body was small, her fingers fumbling and unschooled; yet her will was strong, and she knew. So she gave birth, over and over again. The early children were, like her, small and fumbling, crudely shaped, like stick figures, sketches skewed by short, stubby child’s-fingers struggling to give expression to the singing children who moved and turned and pressed within her. Stunted, one might almost say, yet sweet, like a promise of perfection. And her whole heart was in them, and she was proud.

Over the years, still a child herself, she gave birth to hundreds. Closeted in her room after supper, cloistered among the branches of a spicy pine, tucked away in her own secret pocket of the world, unafraid, young, she gave birth, time after time. It was without effort; as the bird releases the branch and finds itself soaring, so she would release herself, make herself open, let go, and the children who sing would come.

One after another they came, year after year, each one unique, so unlike any other. Some were mere wisps in the wind, a phrase, a fragment, half-caught in thought and lightly, loosely limned, incomplete, yet somehow whole in the moment. Some were great gusts of lusty joy, sheer dancing rhythms, all arms and legs and motion, strong, full and sassy. Some were quiet, gentle, small; others burned like molten lava burns, scorching the earth to cinders as it sears out from its deep-dark depths. Some were merry and capricious, dandelion fluff on her breath, scarcely there. Some came like tears, bringing their own tidings from places she had yet, in her youngness, to visit, bearing up their souvenirs from the Shadowlands and laying them penitently or flinging them irreverently at her feet. Some were strong and fine; some pale, fragile, phantomlike. Some burst forth from her in sheer, world-hugging exuberance, hungering and thirsting for life. Some struggled, fought, half-born, then gone, then born again, pushed or pulled into being by her innocent insistence: You will live! Some shouted. Some wept. Others simply sat and watched. And they were all born of this woman, every one.

In her youth they never stopped coming, the children who sing. By the hundreds they came, one after another. She liked to dress them up for company and show them off, her singing children. Carefully, lovingly, she would clean their faces and fingers, wipe away the smudges, make them pretty and pure. Not many others saw these singing children. When they saw them, not many knew what they were seeing.

At first she dressed them up for family and friends, two or ten or twenty at a time, pressed and meticulous as her own child’s-fingers could make them, giving each its name, its color, its sound and shape. Here now, she would say, holding these singing children soul-scrubbed and shining out in open-handed love. These are for you. I hope you like them. Then, Thank you, the others would say. Your children are beautiful. You make beautiful children.

Her girl-heart was glad at words such as these. Even so, even young, the thought stirred in her with every gift: If my children are beautiful, her girl-spirit would breathe, at midnight, or later, alone, then, maybe . . . maybe I am beautiful, too.

But the giving was pure, like the births themselves. And after a while, she began to ask a few of her singing children: Are you brave enough to go out into the real world, the world of strangers? Is your voice strong enough, your song true enough? Can you sing for someone who knows nothing of your mother, of the soul from which you sprang?

We think so, some of them whispered shyly. We would like to try.

So one by one, she selected a few of her singing children for this terrifying and tremulous journey away from home. With special care she washed them, lathered and scrubbed and scoured them until they shone like the very stars. With special care she dressed them, with a pinch here and a tickle there, in fresh new pinafores and overalls, smelling of clean bleach and seafoam, with pockets to hold things. Light and dark alike, sunshine and shadow, she selected and scrubbed and dressed them, one by one. I love you, she would say. Now go. Go sing your song for the world.

And away they would go, far, far into the world, and vanish.

For weeks, sometimes months, she would wait for word, and, hearing nothing, turn again to tending the singing children still at home and the singing children still unborn. There is plenty to do without fretting for the questers! she would remind herself. Leave them be. They are what they are. They must sing on their own, or not. And yet, and yet . . . deep inside, where other singing children waited to be born, her girl-spirit would thrum a soft, constant refrain, like the blood pulsing quietly in her veins, while she waited to hear from the voyaging children: I hope . . . I hope . . .

None of the children who sang ever found a home away from her.

Weeks would go by, sometimes months, without word . . . and then, one day, eventually, inevitably, a singing child would return. Without knock or warning there it would be, home again, as clean and pressed as the day it left -- home again.

Did you not sing? she would ask, startled. And did they not hear?

Yes, we did sing, the returning children would answer matter-of-factly. And yes, they did not hear.

When the children who sang came home, as they all did -- all who were sent questing -- they were simply put away. They were done, there was no more to do with them; they had sung and gone unheard. She had other singing children to tend to, others to breathe into life. Like breath itself, there was no end to them. So, singing to themselves now, the returned children were tucked away, safely, silently, each with the other, one by one. Where she kept them was where she kept the children who had never sung for the world, who had sung only for her, those she deemed too frail or too unformed or too fresh or raw with soul-blood to send seeking into the world of strangers. Day by day, year by year, the children who sang poured from her like breath from her lungs, blood from her veins. And day by day, year by year, the company of singing children grew around her, rising in a tide of silent, private song that filled her soul alone.

Sometimes, when there was time, or when her heart became a dark hole within her, the woman would seek out the company of the singing children who had come before. She would go to visit them in the place where they were kept, reverently, gathering them about her in clouds and clouds of dust, sitting among them and touch¬ing them one by one, their fragile pale shadows flicking lightly through her mother’s fingers, and she would say: Sing for me. Can you sing for me again? And one by one, the children who sang, long-cloistered, long-still, would give their songs to her once more.

There were so many -- some so old their bones shone through when held to the light, others still so fresh that when she touched them her fingers came away streaked with dark blood. They all sang. Some of the songs she remembered as yesterday, bright and crystalline; some came back to her dimly, like days once dreamt but never lived. And sometimes as she sat among her children who sang, the old ones and the fresh ones, there would come to her laying its head in her lap a child she did not know.

Not know one of her children who sing! It was not possible. Yet here it was, one among its brothers and sisters, comely and brave and alive. Who are you? she would ask, awestruck, searching the child’s features for familiar shapes and shades, and finding none. Who are you? In reply, the child would, simply, sing. The melody the woman would not remember, nor the words recall; yet still . . . still . . . there was something of the song she knew, something of paean and threnody, rhapsody and rhythm . . . something she knew. So, she would say to the strange singing child. You are born of me after all. Yes. But where did you come from?

Where, indeed?

It was a question she seldom asked, and never answered. The children who sang were borne within her when she was born; yet how did they come to be there? Where had they been before? And what was it that moved among them in her womb, among the myriad singing children waiting to be, chose one -- just one -- and stirred it to move, and grow, and, eventually, when it was time, to be born and sing its song?

Where did these children who sing come from? And who, who gave them their songs?

The woman who gave birth to children who sing knew it was not she who created the children, nor she who gave them their songs. It was not her gift to create or to sing; nor was it her work. Her gift and her work was to give birth to children who sing, children created by some Other and whose songs were given by some Other. They are mine, she would think, only in that they are born through me -- only in the sense that the riverbed can say, “These waters flowing through me are mine,” knowing that the waters come from somewhere Else and are merely passing through on the way to somewhere Else. It was not the riverbed’s job to know where that Else was. Nor was it her job, the woman who gave birth to children who sing, to know the Other that gave them to her and that gave them their songs.

Children who sing are of the spirit, and require nothing but the song. But those who give birth to them are of the flesh, and must feed and clothe themselves and lay down in shelter. And in time this woman I once knew, grown now from a girl, found need to labor for herself as well as for the gift she gave the world.

At first this labor was humble and rough: washing, and cleaning, and cooking, and serving -- simple, honest tasks that engaged her body and left the rest of her free to dream of the singing children to whom she would give birth. By day she labored to earn her bread, but the other hours were her own, and this is when the singing children came. Long after her neighbors slept, long after they had laid aside their weekly chores to rest, the children who sang would awaken inside her and clamor and cry, and she would set to her real work of giving birth to them.

One day, on a sunstruck morning in the moun¬tains maybe, or perhaps it was twilight and the city was just settling into night, the woman stopped washing and cleaning and cooking and serving and said: I do not want to do this any more. She said: I give birth to children who sing, and they are beautiful. I know this, because people tell me I make beautiful children, even when they cannot hear their songs. She said: Giving birth to them is my gift, my blessing, but making them beautiful is a craft, and an honest one. She said: If my beautiful children who sing cannot keep me in the world, then perhaps, she said, perhaps I can earn my way by making beautiful the children of others.

Word of the woman’s craft spread, and before long, people were bringing their children to her. Beautiful was not always what they wanted. Help us, the people would say. Fix this child. Make it work. And she would. Careful, competent, she turned her craft to the children of others and made them, if not beautiful, then upright and serviceable.

Her skill was profound, born as it was of artistry, and under her knowing fingers the children of others bloomed and flourished. Some came to her only slightly smudged, needing just a lick and a polish to show their shine. Some came crusted with grime so thick and oily that they were choking, near death, without air and without shape. Some came with beauty in their bones but dressed in garments ill-fitting or the wrong color. And some -- too many -- were brought to her crippled, twisted, grotesquely malformed, abominable in shape and in substance both, and deep within only the merest, merest spark of light or life.

She gave grace to all of them. Tall and straight, ugly and bent alike, her craft worked its gentle alchemy. The lame were made strong; the dirty made pristine; the bedraggled made tidy; the deformed made straight; and the mute she taught to speak. She gave grace to all of them, and when they were healed and whole and clean, she sent them back where they had come from, with her blessing.

She was proud of her craft and her labors, and, in a way, she loved each of these children, though they were not her own. She loved to send them into the world to do their work -- spare, elegant, direct, with clear cool voices that spoke persuasively and sounded fine and true. She was proud of her craft and of these children, and she was paid well.

For a while, that was enough. For a long while, she did not worry that no one came to her and said, Help this child sing. She did not worry that these children, the children of others, were not asked to sing. She did not know, for a long time, that they could not sing -- or that, when they spoke, the voices with which they spoke were not hers.

And for a long while -- for a very long while -- the woman who gave birth to children who sing, busy with her craft on the children of others, did not notice that she was no longer giving birth -- did not hear the great silence that washed through her womb like an icy, sterile sea.

Silver flecked her dark hair and fine lines webbed the corners of her eyes before she heard again the singing of her own children. Their voices were only stilled, not vanished. And one night, late one deep-dreaming night, the singing of an unborn child startled her awake.

In the dark she bolted upright, staring, her heart thundering. What is it? what is it? she asked urgently. The sound that had awakened her was only the phantom of the memory of a dream. Silent now, yet it resonated within her, like the shimmer of a deep-tolled bell that lingers even after the tongue has fallen still. It prickled at the back of her neck, that phantom sound, and tugged at her belly, so like . . . so like . . . what?

At first she thought of trains and the languid, longing wail that trails behind them as they go away. At first she thought of dim sea mists at twilight, and the mournful plaint of an offshore foghorn, like

some incredible ancient salt-water beast calling endlessly for its lost mate. At first she thought of birch trees, aglow with gold-green in the sun and whispering their lacy lyrics to the skies. At first she thought of the sound a church makes when someone inside is praying, or a flute in a canyon.

Then she knew.

In her body and her soul, old memory stirred, and she knew that the ghost of a ghost that had called her awake, then slipped quickly around the corner and out of sight, was the bittersweet, half-forgotten, rusty, faltering first notes of the song of an unborn child. And beyond that one frail, brave voice, already her very bones could feel the echo of a thousand, ten thousand more, coming awake.

It was a long time ago, I say, when I was much younger, that I first knew this woman whose gift and work it was to give birth to children who sing. They were borne within her when she was born, waiting to be brought to life through her, to sing in the world. For a long time their voices were still; then she heard them sing again, and began again to give birth.

This story is her second firstborn, singing.