Windowpane showcases the writing of the Clear Writing Community. Click here to learn more.
This story was written by Heer Shingala in response to the following prompt:
Random Sentence: Pick up the nearest book of fiction. Go to page 124. Read the fourth complete sentence on that page. Make that the first line of your story.
The book closest to Heer was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
“It’s like an aerie where a beautiful bird would nest,” I said. “A quetzal, or an imperial eagle.”
“Comment!?”
Of course that wretched woman never bothered to teach him English.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, making an okay symbol with my hands and smiling. He stared at me for a moment before starting another drawing.
This is my life now. Finally parenting my own weird son who barely understands English and spends all his time sketching.
It all began with my phone ringing at 3:00 AM, with some unintelligible mumbling in my ex-wife’s tongue on the other end. For a moment, I thought I was having a bad dream. It wouldn’t have been the first one.
She met with a car accident on her way to work. I almost smiled. During the brief time we spent together, we would often diss lazy writers with unoriginal plot twists in the books we read together, and in the movies we enjoyed between the sheets.
She didn’t have any friends in France, not even the kids she grew up with in the orphanage. She didn’t bother naming a godfather or godmother for her son. They found my name and address scribbled on an old, crumpled paper and contacted me, asking if I could take in the little boy.
“Le garçon pitoyable!”
I wanted to yell at her. Who doesn’t bother preparing for an emergency like this for their 8-year-old? What if he was injured and she was unreachable? What would happen to him?
One week later, I picked up the weird little boy from the airport. Five minutes later, when I found out that he didn’t understand English, I wondered if I was making a mistake.
I wouldn’t find out how big a mistake it was until much later.
At first, he seemed like an odd but fairly normal child who enjoyed doing art. A quick look at his drawing book over his shoulder revealed confident, masterful strokes, but I had no bar of comparison.
I should have noticed how he didn’t cry. Not even once. Did he not miss his mother or were they not very close?
He just kept drawing. And painting. And I kept buying him art supplies.
To be honest, I didn’t know what else to do. All the schools were shut for a break. I tried finding an English tutor but they were exorbitant. I couldn’t just push him to the grounds to interact with other kids in the neighbourhood.
He went through an entire sketchbook in the first two days, and he only got quicker with time.
Unlike the kids I met at the parties thrown by my married friends, he didn’t seem to need my approval. He never once waved a drawing in front of me, but he didn’t seem to be secretive either. He just kept drawing. As if he was on a mission to draw before everything disappeared.
One day he brought me a picture of an aerie, a bird nest. I tried to look impressed and appreciate it, but he took it away before I could put it on the refrigerator.
Don’t get me wrong. It was impressive for his age and I should have been more encouraging, but I needed a moment to get a hold of myself.
You see, I had seen that exact nest before. When I was a child. Outside my grandparents’ house.
The exact same aerie.
At dinner, I tried asking him in my broken French. How does he get ideas for his drawings? Does he have any other hobbies?
He didn’t say anything.
The second drawing soon followed: my parents’ garden. The one I grew up in. The chickoo tree at the far right with a border of jasmine bushes at the far end. The unmistakable yellow swing, with the small brown patch where the paint had worn off.
I croaked: How did you draw this?
“I want book,” he said.
I went out and got him a train set instead. I couldn’t take any more drawings.
That night, he went to sleep early.
When I woke up next morning, there were five sheets of paper inside my room, near the door. More drawings.
Me with my mother. Me with his mother. My dog who died last month. My closet. And a care package.
I put them under my mattress and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. As we ate eggs, I kept thinking about the care package. I’d never seen it before. Was it something I received years ago?
I didn’t realise at the moment: the fact that I’d never seen the care package before seemed strange to me.
While we were having breakfast, the doorbell rang. Aunt Floris had sent me a care package. The care package. She had heard about my dog and wanted to send something nice. I retaped the box and put it in the storage.
After I cleared up our plates, I found a drawing attached to the refrigerator. How did he manage to put it here?
It was a photo of two men carrying me on a stretcher outside an ambulance.
The phone rang, taking me out of my trance. My mom’s neighbour found her on the bathroom floor. She had slipped on the wet flor and given herself a minor hip fracture. They wanted me at the hospital to sign the insurance forms.
I glanced over to him. He was playing with the trainset I got him. He looked up to me and said, without the slightest hint of an accent, “Bye!”
***
Here’s how Heer Shingala describes herself: Advertising Professional. Writer & Comedian. Gets nervous while writing bios. Got a writer’s block midway so left this one incomp
***
Subscribe to Windowpane — it’s free!
And do check out Amit Varma’s online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Registrations for the March cohort closes today.