The Bird Woman Read Online Free PDF Page A

hardly
     believe myself that some of the things that happened happened at all. And I couldn’t ever talk about them to folk here. They’d
     think I was mad or I’d made them up.

Chapter 3
    I cried a lot after Jacko died, so the doctor put me on anti-depressants. He said they might do the trick.
    I took the tablets and felt even worse, so I cried
all
the time, and the more I cried the more I couldn’t stop. Robbie kicked up, so I kept going back, but nothing the doctor did
     seemed to make any difference.
    Robbie said he’d come with me the next time, and I was glad. He talked to the doctor, the doctor talked back, then the doctor
     sighed and said that a week or two in Purdysburn might be worth a try. Robbie looked at me, I nodded my head, and the doctor
     filled in the forms.
    What you can’t see doesn’t exist. If you start into seeing things that aren’t there at all you have to be schizophrenic or
     mad. Purdysburn is Belfast’s mental hospital, so my going there made sense to me as well as to Robbie. And it wasn’t so bad,
     once I was used to it. Plus it was such a relief not to have to try to be normal that the crying stopped a few hours in, and
     I hardly noticed.
    The dining room frightened the wits out of me that first night. All those mad people, eyes down, eating away; I was terrified
     someone would take it into their heads to speak to me.
    Then when no one did I started wishing they would.
    “D’you not want that?” It was the fella sitting across from me, leaning forward, staring at the potato bread I’d been pushing
     around my plate. I didn’t answer.
    “Give it to Annie,” he said. “Annie’s mad for potato bread.” He still hadn’t looked at me, but I was looking at him and what
     I saw was a pasty-faced lad hardly older than I was, with hoody owl eyes that looked out from behind those round National
     Health glasses, the same as John Lennon wore.
    “You’re a picky eater,” he said to what was left of my Ulster fry. He had little slim wrists and brown tufty hair that stuck
     out round his head as though he’d just woken up.
    “I’ve a tapeworm,” I told him. “That’s why I’m thin.”
    “You have not. If you had one of them you’d have cleared the plate.”
    “It’s asleep,” I said. “On account of the medication.” He lifted his eyes slowly and looked at me and didn’t look away. His
     eyes were light blue, and the lids were large and his gaze seemed to come from a long way off.
    “Which one’s Annie?” I asked, just for something to say.
    “The auld doll at the end of the next table.”
    His name was Michael. After that, I always sat beside him in the dining room. He was the first person I’d spoken to, and that
     gave him stability in my uncertain world. That, and the impermeable distance in his half-closed eyes. He was in because he’d
     tried to drown himself. He didn’t tell me this right away, he waited till he was used to me, then he sprang it on me one afternoon,
     the two of us sitting in the dayroom, smoking.
    “It takes all sorts,” I said when I’d heard his news. “The Lagan’s a dirty old river, I wouldn’t go jumping in it myself.”
    “Who said anything about the Lagan?” He stared into the middle distance. “I built a raft, so I did. Pushed off from Bally-holme
     Bay.”
    “Where’s Ballyholme Bay?”
    “Bangor, County Down.”
    “Rafts are so you can float, not so you can drown.”
    “Fair point,” he said. “I had a bike, a Harley.”
    I stared. For a moment I wondered if he was
really
mad.
    “It’s a hard world, so it is,” he said carefully. “I couldn’t just go off and leave her now, could I?”
    It took me a minute to get it. “You put the
bike
on the raft?”
    He nodded and lit another cigarette. “I put the bike on the raft and chained my leg to the wheel. That way we’d both go down
     together—”
    “Sounds like a cry for help to me,” I said firmly.
    “Don’t be negative.”
    “I’m not being