Black Bird Read Online Free PDF Page B

English. No, she lost no love over Angus. The hard part was watching her mother’s grief. And knowing she had caused it.
    Never before had her mother’s feelings mattered. She’d always felt Mother’s feelings were the result of erroneous ideas, that if she could only see the truth she’d be ashamed of her heritage. The same way Marie was ashamed of her anglo blood. When she was small, even before she began to form her political ideas, Marie had looked at her mother and decided she would not be like her. She wouldn’t be subject to someone else’s will, the way Mother was to Father’s. And when she became a teenager, she began to see the French and the English as being in the same relationship.
    Nevertheless, even if Mother made her angry and represented something she hated, even if Mother had no place in Marie’s world, she was still Marie’s mother. And to see her staring vacantly, to hear herspontaneous sobbing, to watch her face drawn with expressions of madness, was agonizing. Marie knew that as long as those boxes of Angus’s were in the house, she couldn’t bear to be.
    She didn’t even tell them she was leaving. She took nothing with her. She simply stayed away.
    The rift between Aline and Grandfather had been growing since the day the police came. Though Aline was not brave, and was now frankly afraid of Grandfather, she was even more afraid of the police. She’d always believed that anyone who hid from them had reason to. The thought that she’d married a gangster mortified her.
    “This business you’re in with Uncle,” she asked, “it isn’t criminal, is it?”
    Lifting his eyes but not his head from the newspaper, Grandfather mocked her voice.
“Criminal
. That’s not an absolute, is it?”
    “Mon dieu,” said Aline. Her heart sank. It was the final degradation. The intimacies they’d shared sprang into her mind and repulsed her. She left her pan at the stove, sat at the table and cried.
    “Someone has to pay the bills,” said Grandfather. “Look, we’re months behind on everything. We have to eat.”
    Through her hands, Aline said, “Then it’s true crime doesn’t pay, isn’t it? Good Lord, help me.”
    “Fuck the Lord,” said Grandfather. “He never bought me a meal.”
    She couldn’t get any more than that out of him. He wouldn’t deny the illegality of his activities but he wouldn’t describe them either.
    Now she was glad that Grandfather had a nocturnal schedule. It relieved her of the burden of sharing the bed with him. While he slept during the day, she worked in the kitchen and did the shopping. She tried to encourage Mother to join her at the shops. It had been Mother’s task until Angus had died, and though Aline welcomed the excuse it gave her to leave the house, she thought it would be better if Mother came out of the basement and her depression. For the rest of the time, when Grandfather was not in his room, she slept.
    Eventually she grew used to the crow flapping in its cage and unless it screeched it no longer woke her. Its squalling became her alarm, signalling the entry of Grandfather into their bedroom and prompting her to rise for the day. While she dressed it would continue screeching. It was a great annoyance to Grandfather. Wanting to sleep, he’d bury himself in the bedclothes.
    At last a curious thing happened: Aline began to like the crow. She took its squawking as her own complaining, complaining that she was much too timid to undertake herself. Every time Grandfather flinched at a piercing cry, she felt as if she herself had screwed up the courage to yell at him. As soon as this occurred to her, she ceased resenting the crow’s waking her. She ceased to fear it or be surprised by its sudden outbursts. She began to feel relief; the more it cawed,the calmer she felt. There were times when its screeching scaled ear-piercing heights, spurred on by Grandfather’s desperation, his covering his ears or slapping at the bird. Times when she realized she