Witchbird

Neither of them had meant it to go on this long. This wintery distance between them, like a lonely wind searching the hollow between two immovable ice sheets.

Now, it was too late.

I thought there would be more time, Lindi thought. Time to be angry, to cool down, to mend things. As they always did. But she’d snowed herself in somewhere in the middle.

Lindi pushed the bedroom door open. She peered at the wisp of a creature sleeping soundly in bed. Her mother’s face, softly illuminated in the slice of hallway light Lindi was letting in, looked impossibly young. Chestnut cheeks still gleamed under a halo of closely shorn white curls. Only her neck, crêping delicately, and a smattering of crow's feet betrayed her seventy-odd years.

“It’s not too late,” said a soft rumble in her ear. Theo, always seeming to know what she was thinking, squeezed her shoulder.

Lindi nodded, afraid to speak and jinx her unspoken wish to wake up tomorrow and find her mother as she'd left her all those months ago. She closed the door gently, turned and pecked Theo on the cheek, then darted upstairs to get ready for bed.

Theo sighed and followed at a distance.

The whole ride east had been like this — steering wheel gripped tightly under Lindi’s protesting knuckles as her eyes darted between only the snowy horizon and the glowing green numbers of the digital clock, as though her mother’s life was slipping away with the last of the afternoon light.

So, the icy silence had seeped in between them, too. Like a cold draft under a door. They'd passed most of the drive from Portland in silence, finding whatever solace could be scavenged from the playlists of midwestern radio jockeys. Theo had drummed his fingers on the dash and hummed along from time to time. His ability to find shreds of normalcy in an unraveling hope was something Lindi had come to both resent and depend on, like a silent prayer thrown to the wind.

By the time Lindi climbed into bed, the exhaustion of two long days of driving hit her head-on. The sun had long since set on the second day of driving by the time they’d taken the I-94 into the city and crossed the Franklin Avenue bridge, hugging the bank of the Mississippi through Prospect Park to her parents’ house. Sturdy oaks stood at attention like shadowy sentinels as she and Theo drove up the long, spindly laneway of her childhood home. The old house her mother had insisted on buying when they first come to America.

Maame didn’t believe in living in new houses, if she could help it. Not enough history in them, she said. Lindi’s chest constricted as she lay in bed remembering, imagining the long and winding thread of her mother's life, memories unspooling into a runaway tangle.

Outside, a sloping silhouette swooped across the window. A flicker of dark against the glow of the moon, as Lindi closed her eyes.

***

“AH! No, no no!"

Lindi was startled awake. The sound of her mother’s acerbic voice lashed her out of a fitful sleep.

"You want me to eat this? No! My dear, death shall come for me soon enough. Must you really speed his arrival?”

It took Lindi a few seconds to realize that maame wasn’t standing over her. She blinked bleary eyes, her hands searching out Theo on the other side of the bed.

He yawned as she jostled him.

“It would seem,” Theo breathed, sitting up sleepily beside her. “That your mother is up.”

A woman’s murmured entreaties wafted up the stairs. “Come now, Mrs. Osei, a healthy breakfast—”

“Doctor Osei,” maame corrected belligerently and at an unreasonable decibel. “And yes, yes, we must all eat. But we must eat food, my dear."

Lindi snorted despite herself, then grimaced at the tinkling of dishes clattering to the floor downstairs.

“Up with a vengeance, it would appear,” Lindi replied to Theo, and swung her legs out of bed, yawning.

She knew that the woman downstairs on the receiving end of maame's abuse would be Hani, the day nurse. They'd spoken on the phone only once before, but Lindi recognized the softly lilting accent.

Dressing quickly, Lindi hurried downstairs, nerves knotting in her abdomen. As she entered the dining room, Hani waved wearily from the floor, where she gingerly plucked up shards of ceramic and ruined clumps of brown goop.

Lindi locked eyes with her mother, who stopped and stared at her. slowly, maame drew from her chair, studying Lindi’s face as though transfixed.

For a minute they said nothing. Just looked at each another over the long dining table.

Maame’s face, proud as ever, looked older in the light of day, Lindi notice. Fine lines pleated her face, though her eyes were bright with vim.

Lindi raised a hand, frozen to her foothold on the threshold.

“Good morning, maame,” she said quietly. The words felt formal in her mouth, cooler and more brittle than she’d intended.

Maame slammed a fist down on the table, apruptly. The crack of the impact rang out like shockwave. Lindi and Hani flinched.

“AHA!" Maame pointed to Lindi, her face exulting. "Yes! This one has the look about her, heh?” She threw a look of disgust at Hani then snapped back to Lindi. “You, girl, can you make waakye? This one keeps trying to feed me a gelid rock of oatmeal. Can you imagine?”

Lindi’s heart sank like a stone tossed carelessly into the sea. Her breath came in ragged pockets, small bubbles gulping their way to the surface in the stone’s wake.

You have no idea who I am, Lindi realized. She stumbled forward and grasped the edge of the dining table for support.

“Well, can you?”

Lindi looked up. Though she heard the words, she couldn’t make sense of the question.

“My God, child, I asked you if you could cook not swim with the crocodiles.”

With a slow-burning kind of clarity, Lindi realized that she was too late. She couldn’t fix what had been broken with maame. But she could do this small service and make her favorite breakfast, at least. Lindi straightened up and came to her mother’s side.

“Maame, I can make you waakye, but not today. For that we need plantains, we need to soak the beans and we need to make the stew. That’s a day’s work.”

Her mother licked her lips, considering. “Kooko?”

Lindi thought of the traditional porridge of creamy fermented millet. That, too, would take a night of soaking the grains.

“How about—” Lindi thought quickly, surmising that the cupboards must be filled with unfamiliar food stocked by the health provider. “How about I make you a nice rice-water porridge instead? You can eat something gentle for the morning, hey?”

Her mother arched an eyebrow.

Lindi knew her mother was almost convinced. “And today, I’ll buy the ingredients and prepare them so that tomorrow morning you can eat waakye.”

After a moment, Maame threw up her hands and sat back down.

“Fine, fine.”

Lindi felt a rush of victory. She smiled at Hani, who stood up cradling the wreck of the first attempt at breakfast in her hands.

“Sorry,” Lindi whispered as they made their introductions on the way to the kitchen.

“Not a worry,” Hani replied with a shake of her head. “She’s a real firecracker.”

Lindi laughed a real belly laugh. It must have been the first time in days.

“Like the Fourth of July.”

Hani rattled off her mother’s morning routine, which Lindi committed to memory in between soaking the rice, boiling the water, and simmering the porridge down to a hot, soft mash.

As she set the bowl down in front of maame and drizzled creamy evaporated milk, nutmeg and brown sugar over it, Theo bounded down the stairs.

Maame jumped to her feet, sending her chair careening backward.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” she yelled.

The friendly smile dropped of Theo's face as he skidded to a halt, reminding Lindi of a scolded golden retriever.

“What is this obruni doing in my house o?!” Her mother yelped. “What kind of Silicon Valley billionaire are you that you can just walk into my house as if you own it, heh?”

Theo chuckled. Having spent a year living in Ghana, he knew the word to describe Westerners in her family's language.

Lindi went to stand beside him.

“Maame, this is my husband, Theo. You don’t remember him?”

“Ah, now really. How should I know your husband? I’ve only just met you. And since when does a house girl bring her husband to work?”

“I’m not a house girl. I’m your daughter.” Lindi soldiered on, hands clasped over her heart. “Daughter. Lindi.”

Her mother stared at her blankly.

“Lindiiiiii?” She waved her arms irrationally. As if jazz hands would not trigger her mother’s memory. As if enunciation would clear up this misunderstanding.

“Daughter?” her mother chirped, sucking air in through her teeth in the exasperated way only West African parents can. “What’s all this nonsense? My daughter is a small, small child — mind you, already top of her class.”

Maame smiled a smug smile, then turned her attention back to breakfast, sipping her porridge in a meticulous, bird-like way. Lindi felt a prickling behind her eyes, a storm of emotion brewing in her chest.

The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind of clinical instructions from Hani and sharp-tongued temper tantrums from her mother. When evening came, Lindi and Theo, armed with bottles of pills and printed lists of instructions pills, walked Hani to the door.

They waved from the porch at Hani’s retreating car. As Lindi turned to come back inside, Theo suddenly tugged her back.

“Look,” he whispered, pointing out over the sprawling lawn.

Lindi’s gaze drifted up just in time to see a snowy white barn owl soar to its roost in a hollowed-out knot of the big oak in the center of the lawn. The owl turned to look at them. Her eyes (somehow Lindi knew it was “her”) glimmered dark and mysterious. Her heart-shaped face was ringed by golden feathers that also spread out along the tops of her wings. The owl screeched once before retreating into the hollow. The sound echoed over the grass and spilled out over the river.

“Beauty,” Theo breathed. “I wonder if she’s got chicks in there.”

Lindi stiffened.

She rolled her eyes.

“Easy there, Mr. Audubon. It’s December, remember?”

Theo winced, realizing he’d tripped some invisible wire, and they headed back inside.

Guilt boiled up in Lindi. She knew she wasn’t being fair. Why is it so easy to mistreat those who love us most unconditionally? she had wondered more than once over the years. She brushed the feeling aside. More important, now, was the task of getting maame to bed.

“Okay Dr. O.” Theo walked into the living room and clapped his hands like an overzealous Scout leader. “Ready for bed?”

“My god. You’re still here.”

***

The next morning was a truce. Having sent Theo to the African market just before closing, Lindi had everything she needed to make waakye. As she worked in the kitcken Theo tiptoed around making tea and bringing it to maame. They spoke to each other in deliberate overly light tones, both determined not to fight.

Maame sat in the living room, sipped from a small, colourful teacup while Lindi boiled the black-eyes peas in a large steel pot with the jasmine rice and sorghum leaves. She stirred them often so that the leaves’ colorful extract seeped into the water, turning the beige beans and white grains deep burgundy. When that was done, she fried the plantains until they were crispy, golden and sweet. Then doused it all in the tomato stew she’d made last night.

It was a relief to see maame go at it with gusto. She’d picked away at her food yesterday, barely touching anything Hani cooked after Lindi’s rice-water porridge.

“You can cook o,” maame grinned between mouthfuls. “Did your mother teach you?”

Lindi smiled and took a seat next to maame. “She did.”

“Good girl. Too many of you girls from back home can’t cook anymore. I see them in my classrooms, talking PhD this, fellowship that, letters of recommendation, whatnot, whatnot. And why shouldn’t they? But why shouldn’t they also be able to make their children a decent meal, too? Or did they come here just to sit in the library and eat macaroni and cheese?”

“So quick to judge, heh?” Lindi retorted. “Who says it's the girls’ fault? Maybe you should speak to their nasty, nasty mothers.”

Maame’s eyes went wide, then relaxed as she let our a peel of laughter.

“Oh, so, you think I have a bitter heart?” Maame wiped the tears from her eyes with a crooked knuckle. “Maybe I have.” She became serious, chewing thoughtfully. “You see, I haven’t spoken to my own daughter in many, many months now.”

Lindi's breath stuck in her throat.

“Terrible, isn’t it,” her mother whispered, peering at her intently. “And what did we quarrel over? Some nonsense, nonsense comment.” She sighed. “I’m cursed with a mouth like a yawning hippo.”

Lindi chuckled. “Who? You?” she teased with mock innocence.

Her mother slapped her playfully.

“Wicked girl! I’m your elder. You should treat me with the respect of a queen mother. Listen to this now: the girl is thirty-five. Thirty-five! She has a house, a career as a medical doctor, and still no children. And she’s married, to an obruni like yours! You know,” maame paused thoughtfully, “they even look something alike. I suggested maybe, just maybe, she needed another match. A Ghana man.”

Lindi felt the familiar anger. It gathered like a wave, ready to crest. She thought of the small, long piece of plastic she'd bought on the road, realizing she was late, now discarded fruitlessly in the bathroom garbage. She wanted to scream at her mother. But before she could speak, maame's head drooped, dropping into her hands.

“It’s too hard,” maame said into her fingers. Then she looked up and rapped her head with her knuckled. “With this … this …this thing. And when I’m gone, she’ll be here. No sisters. No brothers. Her father, may he rest in peace. What will she do if her obruni leaves? She would be completely alone. When I’m gone. Or what about when I'm gone? When I don’t even know her name? Who will remind her where she's from, where her history is?”

Lindi felt a pang of regret for never letting her mother explain, despite how unacceptable the comment had been. Her heart ached to think of maame struggling alone with her diagnosis, so severe, for nearly a year, too proud to call her until it was no longer her choice to call. Until she got up one morning, forgetting she was retired, and walked to the university to teach the same fourth-year seminar she’d taught for ten years. The Dean's voice on the phone had been exceedly kind.

Lindi drew a long, shuddering breath. “It’s hard when your children choose a path that’s unfamiliar to you. That even though you feel left behind, you worry that’s it’s they who will be left alone.”

Maame patted Lindi’s knee. “You’re right about that, my dear.”

“You could call her now,” Lindi suggested.

“I could ... but I’m afraid she won’t answer,” maame admitted, a rare shamefaced smallness in her voice.“That would be the worst thing.”

“Maybe she’s afraid of the same thing.”

Maame reached up and cupped Lindi’s cheek. Her skin was paper-soft, its spicy, aged scent both familiar and foreign at once. Maaame’s eyes crinkled as her lips curved into a sweet smile. Lindi’s tears threatened to spill over a mix of gratitude and despair set in at the fact that she had to become a stranger to her mother in order to reconcile.

“And you, girl?” maame asked. “What does your mother say of your life?”

“We haven’t spoken in a while,” Lindi smiled sadly, honestly. “We fell out, too.” She shrugged. "Mothers and daughters."

Maame laughed ruefully. “Hwe ne kwasia se medie.” Look at her foolishness, just like mine.

Lindi smiled to herself, her mother's words triggering her memory of her father, sitting here in the living room and shaking his head at her teenaged fights with maame. She pictured him shake out the newspaper as she turned to stomp upstairs, remarking to maame that a crab does not give birth to a bird.

***

In the afternoon, before maame woke up from her nap, Theo trudged into the house with a triumphant whoop. He’d successfully installed the wildlife webcam he’d bought while out the night before, high in the tree opposite the big oak.

“Now we can watch the owl at night!”

“Since when are you such an owl fiend?” Lindi quizzed.

“Oh, I’ve always thought they were a real hoot,” Theo deadpanned.

Lindi groaned, but pulled him into a hug. He squeezed her back and the world seem calm for a moment, Theo’s steady heartbeat and the rhythm of Maame’s fluttering breathing tethering her to the feeling. She closed her eyes, enjoying the skillness. The calm in the storm, she thought.

“Hey, hey, hey. Break it up, lovebirds. No kissing on the job.”

They both laughed as maame sat up and began barking orders. Lindi felt a warmth glowing between them all for the first time since they’d arrived. A feeling like family. The knotting in her abdomen loosened ever so slightly.

But Maame refused to eat in the evening. And she insisted that she wanted to sleep in her own bed upstairs but refused to be carried by Theo. (“God above no! We know what happens when you people begin carrying us off!”). Eventually, she was prevailed upon to let Theo bring her up under Lindi’s watchful eye.

Lindi brushed her teeth, feeling happy — against all odds — with how the day had gone. She gave herself a once-over in the mirror and smoothed her hair, excited to snuggle into Theo. Coming into the bedroom, Lindi stopped short when she saw Theo sitting at the edge of the bed. In his hand, he held the long white stick of plastic she’d thrown in the trash.

“I thought we were going to do these together?” he said, his face sad but holding back the betrayal Lindi knew he felt.

She shrugged, defaulting to the practiced coldness she worse as armor. “Nothing to tell.”

“No news is still news.”

True.

“Look, uh …” Theo scratched a phantom itch on the back of his head. “I know you’re going through a lot right now. But we’re a team, you can talk to —”

“I’ll tell you next time,” Lindi cut in.

Theo looked at her hard and exhaled a long slow breath. “I really hope so.”

***

The rest of the week passed without any incident and they fell into a comfortable routine. Lindi would cook and Theo would entertain maame, letting her tease him as much as she pleased.

In the evening, once maame was in bed, Lindi and Theo would keep to themselves. Theo became engrossed in the wildlife cam, giving Lindi her space and abandoning his useful chattiness.

Lindi began to feel a frantic kind of restlessness. She craved an olive branch to extend to Theo. As she watched him, monitoring the owl's roost, she began looking up facts out barn owls.

“Hey! Did you know barn owls have the same place cells that humans do?” She help up her laptop, showing Theo the news article she'd found. “Their brains can make mental maps of everywhere they fly.”

Theo turned away from the grainy black and white footage on his laptop.

“I teach third graders, Doctor Brainiac. What are place cells?

“Oh. They’re these clusters of neurons that fire whenever you go to a particular location. They’re like spatial recognition. It’s like this: my brain can see a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and know it’s in San Francisco, but I know because of my current surroundings I’m not in San Francisco. It’s funny. These are the exact cells that are likely disrupted by Alzheimer’s.”

Theo was pensive. Suddenly, a flutter on the screen caught their attention.

“Good thing your mom has these guys looking out for her then,” Theo said. Two barn owls had appeared at the mouth of their knot hollow. But then, as if feeling our gaze, they retreated almost right away.

“Damn,” Theo groaned and got up to make some tea.

Lindi went back to researching, pleased that the icy silence has thawed somewhat. Barn owls are monogamous and mate for life, she reads. Pairs separate only in the event that they are unable to produce offspring.

Lindi closed her eyes, counting her breaths slowly to calm down.

“Aren’t you glad we aren’t owls?”

She jumped, turning to see Theo reading over her shoulder.

“Are you?” is all she could muster in a small voice.

Theo rolled his eyes and handed her one of the two steaming mugs of tea he held. He planted a kiss on her forehead before climbing the stairs to bed.

***

A piercing screech pulled Lindi out of a deep sleep sometime in the middle of the night. She sat bolt upright with her heart pounding in her ears.

Maame.

Lindi jumped out of bed and burst into her mother’s bedroom. Crouched over by the window, feet flat in a solid squat, her mother peeked over the sill and gazed through the glass into the night.

“Come, come,” maame urged hoarsely, motioning Lindi to crouch beside her. Perched on the branch of an old elm, beautiful in the moonlight, was one of the barn owls.

“An o —” Lindi began, but her mother shushed her.

“Don’t say the name of the witchbird! You know in Ghana, many people will say this bird is a bad omen. An omen of death. Even a witch in disguise.”

Lindi studied the bird. As if in slow motion, the owl sank down into her weight before springing up in flight. Her tail feathers splayed out like a fan behind her talons. Her wings unfurled in a breathtaking expanse of white. Lindi could imagine them as visions of angels or spirits seen by people in the night long ago.

“But you know what?” Maame interrupted her reverie.

“What, maame?”

“I’ve always liked women of mischief. A quite like the idea of a witch keeping me company. So, I’ve taken this bird as my friend, you know. She’s come to visit me every night. Such a serious face! But I know one day I’ll make her smile” Maame winked.

The owl soared, scouting the lawn for her next meal. Her wings flapped lithely and silently.

Clutching the window sill for support, maame hauled herself up and went to sit on the bed. She patted the empty space on the duvet next to her. Lindi sat down.

“Your father had an old, old friend in this town before he died,” maame said.

Lindi blinked, sensing a seismic shift in the fabric of their reality. It took her a moment to realize the her mother was lucid. That maame knew her for her daughter.

“His great grandmother had been a slave, “ maame continued. “Bound in chains. He spit on a stick or whatnot and discovered that the DNA in his blood and bones came from Ghana. So, so many from Ghana.” She said sadly. “Centuries apart but here we are. Blood from the same land living and dying here on this patch of frozen America, this place by the river and the university your father loved so much. I want to be near him when I go, so I stayed here in this house where we made our life’s memories.”

Maame stopped talking and they sat in silence together. Lindi could feel the many years of life lived in this house. It was as though the memories had come alive. As though they had a form of their own. The warm timbre of her father’s laughter. The heat of his arms wrapping around her and maame both. Lindi’s hand found its way to her mother’s and they held each other tightly.

“It pains me to die here and not under the shade of a tall mango tree back home. When I'm sad, I remember what your father's friend said to us, so many years ago when you were so small I could still carry you with just one arm."

They both laughed at notion that Lindi could once have been so small. It seemed absurb, here as she snuck into middle age, clutching her mother'swizened hand.

"The slaves believed that the witchbird was a spirit for the dead. That she would carry them home to Africa, across the detestable middle passage and deliver them into the red dirt of home, where they could rest with their ancestors around them. So, I know she’s out there, just waiting to carry me home.”

They were both quiet for a minute. Tear ran in silent river down Lindi's cheecks. Her mother turned and wiped them away.

“We wasted so much time,” maame's eyes were big with emotion. “Fa kyɛ me.” Forgive me.

Lindi nodded, wiping her face with her arm. “Me too,” Lindi whispered.

“Visit me in Ghana from time to time, heh?”

“Of course.”

And she would. Lindi could see it in her mind as clear as day. Her and Theo and golden-skinned children amongst the coconut palms, stuccoed houses, the mango groves and colorful markets. Her cousins, uncles and aunties reclaimed. Lindi allowed herself to feel certain about this, to feel an unabashed hope, the last of her protective armor melting away.

“Berɛ te sɛ anomaa, woankyere no na otu a, wonhu no bio,” her mother whispered softly, still holding Lindi's face in her hands. Time flies like a bird. If you don’t catch it and it flies away, you’ll never see it again.

Outside the witchbird climbed out of a dive, her head rotating so that her black eyes turned toward them as she glided past the window. She screeched again, a haunting sound.

Maame and Lindi shivered. Time was up. Lindi could feel that a spell had been broken.

“Be a dear and bring me some warm milk, won’t you Hani dear?” Her mother patted her hand. A dreamy vacant look swam almost ethereally on her face. “Then you can go home. Your little ones must be missing you. They grow up too fast…too fast.”

Lindi smiled and stood up. She thought of the barn owls’ place cells, neuron clusters lighting up like constellations of stars, mapping their small slice of the world as they flew. This tiny fragment of the universe where generation after generation had lived and died. She smiled to think that the owl might also map the spirit world, plotting little lights on a coordinates and ferrying the souls safely to their final destinations.

“Ɛkwan so dwoodwoo,” she whispered, gazing back at her mother once before closing the door. Have a good journey.