‘Birthday’
NAYANA SIVANANDAN lives in Bangalore, India and works in a bank. She loves photography but cannot take proper photos of humans.
Birthday
My bones are an aged framework, disfigured by time and the crush of the day-to-day. They hoist the essence of me, organs and all, up and through portals and paths that lead to places reserved for my various parts. I feel them shift and bend as I meander, sometimes purposefully, through hallways and rooms, up stairs and down, for one reason or another, as days drain through the sieve of time as if through the floorboards.
I wander through my mother’s house, day after day, secure within the confines of this old, broken citadel, but there came a day, a particular day, when my bones cried out for more. They insisted that I move, essentially restation myself, emerge from within to a place without and live life beyond these creaking walls, at least for a time. They were desperate and would have leaped through a window if given the chance, but they are bound to me and live within me, and I am now less capable of leaping than ever before.
Despite the demands of my bones, the thought of leaving terrified me, agonized me, generated pain that ran from my head through my torso, and all that pain caused me to remain in place, regardless of whatever rewards awaited beyond the door. I resisted, as scared to leave the house as to dive into a raging sea, and I struggled as my bones waged war against me.
I was alone in the kitchen when, suddenly, the voice of my mother shattered the morning air. She called out for tea. I set the kettle, made the tea and prepared a tray that I carried up the stairs. My feet pounded those steps, already warped and bruised beneath the weight and force of thousands of my footsteps, year after year, up and down that staircase.
On this particular morning, unlike other mornings, I carried the tray in a careless way and the tea spilled, pooled across the surface and shifted from one end to the other. As I walked, silverware jangled, saucers clattered, a small plate slid to the edge while the sea of spilt tea moved about as if driven by its own underlying tide. The noise might have been a warning of sorts, like the ringing of church bells at midnight, loud and alarming, as the entire tray threatened to fall to the floor.
Her room was dark. The curtains were thick and heavy, with large folds and pleats, all in the style of an era gone by. The walls were cracked and hosted shadows that danced in sync with anyone who moved about the room. The ceiling, like the top of a pot, trapped the old captive air that had long settled between the four walls. The only source of light in the entire room was a small table lamp with a dull green base that sat upon her night table. It tried its best to fill the room with light, and the yellow cloud that rose from the lamp highlighted my mother’s face but couldn’t quite reach the outer periphery of the room.
My mother was sitting up in bed. As was her routine, she pulled the curtain away from the window and studied the neighborhood. Her attention was drawn by an older man and a grey-haired woman engaged in friendly conversation on the front steps of the house across the street. They chatted rapidly and, when they laughed, they swayed toward the other and then back, almost as though the exchange were somehow choreographed. Eventually, they went their separate ways but their conversation, lighthearted and loud, became the focus of mother’s attention. Angrily, she leaned into the window so that her head practically touched the glass. “Always a racket, just to annoy me,” she blurted out, though her two neighbors certainly couldn’t hear her and, in any event, had ceased thinking of her years ago.
I approached the bed and I could see my mother’s face in detail. Her cheeks were cris-crossed with deep rivulets of age, the whole resembling a dried riverbed ruptured by furrows of varying depth, and those lines stretched and relaxed with each word spoken. Her glasses held firm upon her nose, resting on the tip. Her hair was long and untamed, straight auburn with streaks of grey. Her lips were tentatively upturned, almost curved, positioned as though she might smile - she used to smile quite often – but today she grimaced, unsatisfied as usual.
She turned from the window and peered into the yolk of my tired eyes as I brought the tray closer toward her. I held it above the nightstand as if offering some tithe, and I lowered it slowly but only after pushing a collection of pill containers to the side. “Over there . . .,” is all she said but I knew what she meant. Her voice was hoarse with frustration. As always, I had hoped to hear the lilt of the voice I had once known so well but I realized that her old voice was never coming back. She said not a word about my birthday though you’d think she’d remember a day that was presumably as important to her as it was to me. Admittedly, she could remember only so much. In any event, she brought the cup to her lips as drops of tea dripped from the bottom onto the sheets and wet tea circles grew large. I grabbed a towel and did what I could.
I exited the room without a word. I headed back to the kitchen but my bones, intent upon moving, were driving me out with a force that was irresistible. They were desperate, and it seemed as though my body had acquired a will of its own, separate and apart from my own resolve, inhabiting me and dragging me along despite my own desperate need to remain. I was ushered down the ancient staircase and out the door by my own body.
The car was out front, and I was no longer in control as I was somehow propelled from the door of the house to the door of the vehicle. I wound up in the driver’s seat. Perhaps I really was in control but not in the usual sense. I wasn’t prompted by conscious thought; rather, I was driven by thought’s undertone, the shadow of need, a semblance of will not quite formulated as defined purpose. I had one hand on the wheel and, with my other hand, I turned the key, I stepped on the accelerator and my entire body, bones and all, wrenched forth at resounding speed. I steered and the car carried me onto the highway and I was gone.
I drove through the city, past warehouses and apartment buildings, factories and empty lots until, eventually, I reached open country. I was afraid, and my head began to throb, but I soon felt enlivened. I was now out in the world and, amazingly, my need for my mother and the security of her house quickly dissipated. I felt increasingly free the further I distanced myself from that house, and my pain gradually subsided. I began to drive intentionally, purposely, and it was not long before I was driving relentlessly, in a way that was almost messianic. I jetted forth like an arrow released from the bow but, unlike that arrow, I was propelled by a will of my own. My head leaned forward from my purposed neck with each mile driven, and I trained my eyes upon the yellow centerline that lacerated the highway and split it in two. I pushed that wheel with both hands as if I could speed that car along by throwing my weight forward, and I crushed the accelerator with my foot. I drove ruthlessly, as if racing to catch the last plane out.
There were some trees along the road and their leaves shimmied in the breeze. Their branches seemed to reach out toward me like long arms, straining to embrace me, and I thought I heard those trees call my name. Their collective voice was calm and consoling and it was not long before those trees began to sing. It was a beautiful song and it lofted toward me, carried by the drifting air, tender like a mother’s song, and it was for me and about me and the sweet sound of it melted within me. I loved it and I absorbed it like rain upon dry ground. Lured by their song, I was tempted to stop and walk among those trees but I resisted: I was determined to drive on. I closed my ears in the same way I close my eyes at night at which point I could hear it no more: I was deaf to it. I heard nothing but the empty whoosh of the breeze and I leaned forward, intense against the wheel, sunlight dripping through the windshield as I sped away.
By this point, I was far from home. I was unaware of time and I wanted to drive forever. The road ahead was my only focus, but I suddenly thought of mother and I knew she would be summoning me, crying out from her bedside. I could practically hear her voice, and I felt guilty. There’s a sandwich in the refrigerator, I thought, and I mouthed the words with my lips. At that moment, I wished I could transmit that particular thought from out of my head into hers but, even if my thought could somehow rise out of my brain into the air, it was speeding along the highway with me, captured in a car, unable to escape, headed in the wrong direction.
I had now driven many miles, and my awareness of the world had become sharp and intense: I had acquired incredible acuity. My vision was unlimited, and I could hear everything. I could see cars that were miles ahead of me, and I could see the people in those cars and could hear their conversations while, simultaneously, I saw the twitch of mother’s lip though she was far away, a universe away, and I heard her call for me, impossible as it may seem. I felt her need and frustration resound within my head despite the myriad miles that separated us. I was here and I was there; I could sense both ends of reality.
I drove on. Night was approaching. The taillights in front of me turned sharp red as the outline of cars ahead fell into the shadows. A police car sped by, siren wailing, spewing blue light. I remembered: today is my birthday.
The sun was sinking. Its warm copper light descended slowly, like a clean sheet that floats and falls upon a bed. For a brief moment, the cars on the road gleamed beneath the light, and they looked like lamps in motion. The night soon stretched its dark arms around the horizon and darker it became, and the air became dim and the ground became grey, and blackened clouds merged as one, a mourner’s veil across the sky.
I was now bathed in darkness, and the world melted away. There was nothing left. There was no road, no speed, no direction, no sound or light. There was no side to side, no down or up, no ceiling, no floor, no line or angle. Everything had disappeared: every morning, every sunset, every thought and every need, all the houses and all the yards, all the streets and all the cars, all the towns and all the farms, everything intended, anything remembered, every hope, every death, every loss and every love, every sorrow and every song, every fading memory, every lonely hour, every mother and every child, every birthday yet to come, all these things were gone. There was no time because there was no distance, and there was no distance because no two things existed apart from each other: all things were one, there was nothing to measure. There could only be me, a consciousness moving nowhere, overcome with stillness. I was the world, reduced to a point, nothing more.
Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter's writing has appeared in a number of literary publications including La Piccioletta Barca, The Normal School, Lunch Ticket, The Carolina Quarterly, The Worcester Review and others. He is the author of "The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories" (Kelsay Books, 2023). More of Walter's work can be found at walterweinschenk.com.
