Hush, Little Bird by Nicole Trope

Author:Nicole Trope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2015-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Everyone has come to help me cover the back half of the aviary. It’s getting cold at night now. I only have two months left here at the Farm. Two months is about sixty days. That’s two more times that Isabel will come and stay with me and then we will live together all the time. Lila says that I can come and live with her. ‘Isabel has already decorated her room,’ she told me, ‘but when you come we’ll do yours together.’

What if you find a boyfriend and want to get married and have babies? I said in the email when we were talking about where I was going to live after the Farm.

I don’t think that’s going to happen, she said. I have lots of friends. I don’t want a husband. Lila has always had lots of friends. When we were still at school together she would leave her friends and come and sit with me at lunch. Sometimes she would bring lots of girls with her and then I would feel like I was sitting with friends as well. School was hard for me, because kids are cruel. That’s what Mum said if I told her that going to school made me feel sad. ‘Yes, well, kids can be cruel, Felicity. You have to learn how to deal with it yourself. I can’t save you from everything.’ I didn’t understand what Mum meant, because she hadn’t saved me from anything.

I left school after year ten and finished up at a special college where I learned all the subjects but didn’t write the exams. I also learned how to cook and go to the bank and take care of myself. I didn’t mind the special college but I missed being able to sit with Lila at lunch.

Lila is a good little sister. I don’t think I have been a very good big sister. I thought Lila would be mad at me because I hurt Mum. I had to stay in the jail cell while I waited for my trial, because Mum told Lila that I would hurt her again. I agreed that I would stay because I was also afraid of myself, of the bubbling anger inside me. I didn’t know what I would do. In the jail I thought about all the things that I had been pretending didn’t happen. I thought about Mr Winslow and about Mrs Winslow and about Mum not seeing me. I thought about Dad going away so I couldn’t tell him about Mr Winslow, and then I thought about what Lester had done to Isabel and it was all too much. I cried and cried for all the things I’d been pretending about.

‘What happened, Fliss?’ said Lila when she came to visit me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just got so mad. My hand moved so quickly.’

‘But why were you mad with Mum? I mean, I know she can be difficult but we don’t hurt each other in this family. Mum never hit us, did she?’

‘No,’ I said.

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