So I even think it’s odd that I dream of flying. I’m not at all speaking of airplanes or hang gliders, but of myself as a bird. Those are my most active but safe dreams. I spend so much time looking down from perches far above people where I can see their activities better.
As a bird, I go from housetops to trees and to the tops of buildings; I see around town every day. I am never in a hurry or a tizzie to see one person or another, but I see them. If they see me in return, I think I only look like what I am, a bird.
When I first flew, it was night, and even my neighborhood was strange-looking from up there. My house roof was steep, and in the wind I would have to attach myself to a gutter hangar to keep looking from the highest points.
It is true that one can always be more than one appears to be. At my first flight i appeared to be a thirteen year old girl named Jane. Each day I woke up, and when my wings were completely hidden and my beak looked mostly like a mouth again in the bathroom mirror, I would forget feathers and flying, and walk to school and my 8th grade classes.
I walked to school with Trudy, my best friend. We talked about boys. Edward Savoy’s a very short boy with large hazel colored eyes. Trudy was nearly six feet tall and had no logical chance at him, but we can all fly in dreams. It was Trudy who put in for him first and considered him as her own possession. I often chose Feemer Bradley to talk about, who was the class president and came to my fifth grade birthday party, or Alan Owens a very cute, shy boy with wonderful curly hair and attractive hands and ears. I like long slender fingers and shapely ears on a boy. Trudy said, “I wouldn’t notice a boys ears unless he didn’t have any.”
“You can’t see ears,” I said, “That are non-existent.”
“That’s what I mean,” she would reply.
One morning after I had just flown the night before and was talking about Feemer, mostly because all the other girls seemed to want him. Also, i walked and talked about him because I knew Trudy would tell me again what she overheard Feemer say to other boys about me, when he thought no female ears were around. Trudy liked to gossip and had a wonderful memory for exact quotes when it came to anything about sex.
She got quickly to Feemer’s statements about me, “She’s a fine piece, that Jane Every, he had said. “I haven’t seen tits that good since the last August issue of Playboy. Then some other boy who Trudy couldn’t identify by voice in the group said, “Her tits are beautiful, but I thought her face was like an angel even before she grew any.” I do wish I knew who said that! It’s about the best thing anyone could say about a human girl’s face, and especially about a girl who flys in a bird’s face. I don’t think Trudy sees my face as angelic, and I search mirrors and see few resemblances between my features and angels in books. I think one of the boys at school imagines about me, as grand. I feel that about myself on my night flights around town. I don’t tell Trudy about flying, because she would think I’m crazy. I wouldn’t enjoy being a bird if someone thought it was stupid. The great thing about going out windows into the night air is that you are free from stupid, you circle stupid, and you pick a high perch above it, and sit. Sometimes I flap my wings just because they are there. I have no reason for anyone else to know the bird things about me, but it is intuitive of my mystery boy to see me as a n angel even my face, or something in my eyes may have meant angel to him. Angels are winged creatures.
Angels even are in literature, Miss Airovine, my English teacher, once read stories about angels and demons, spiritual beings. Most of her stories were made up by a Mr. Isaac Singer. They were stories in which people could fly or go into a mirror, or something could be looking out at a girl from inside a mirror. I thought Miss Airovine and I were the only people in the room while she read, who shivered with the impact of all the words. Trudy sat next to me and doodled with her pen writing over and over, ‘Mrs Trudy Savoy’, so she seemingly missed the magic of the stories. Rob who always sits in front of me and takes down everything Miss Airovine might use on a test, just bit his pencil during the stories. He could have been the boy Trudy couldn’t identify, because he was an all ‘A’ boy like Feemer. But why did he sit in front of me and not where he could see me, if I had a face like that? Maybe he sat in front of me, because I would distract him from his school work. He was trying to be a great student. Rob had nice ears and brown hair that was often cut too short. Hair has to be God’s halo, to blow around the head a thing for the wind. Of course, at thirteen parents approve and veto hair styles. I’m lucky that my parents work, eat and go to bed, and only somehow know there is an invisible girl living with them. They just stuff money at my hair so I wear it allowing the wind to catch it.
I asked Miss Airovine after she read, ‘The Mirror’ by Singer, “Do you believe that something could hide in a mirror Miss Airovine and fly away with a woman?”
“Anything can happen in a story” she said, “fiction can be as real as the fluids that splash in our brains.” I liked that answer, and I thought Airovine, Singer and I might all believe that I could fly; but Singer may be dead. Miss Airovine said when asked, “I think he is dead. I’m almost sure he is because of his date of birth, or else he’s on life support.” she added.
It makes one wonder about the abilities we have to fly or go into the interiors of mirror’s, when they finally hook up to the artificial hearts and the endless hospital tubes to nowhere like I saw Aunt Fosey on. She didn’t say ‘Hi!’ and didn’t look alive. Father asid to mother, “Why did we bring Jane down to see this?” Mother didn’t even reach out and touch her sister, choked in plastic circles. We just spent hours in the hall with Uncle Jeff who they don’t like much.
If Mr. Singer is dead now, can he fly better because the brain water becomes part of the ground water, and I might drink him? Or, I might drink Aunt Fosey who did nice things for me, just because she liked me, and wished I had been named Fosey instead of Jane. We have no relatives on either side named Jane. It may be brain water all along that makes some of us fly and others squat flat on the ground.
Trudy said walking home after the last Singer story, “The greatest thing in the world would be to have Edward Savoy’s six children.” We walked for two blocks more before she said, “You know I will name the first one Singer, because I already see him every day in my mirror. Does that sound crazy Jane?”
“No,” I said, “I think you should fly with that.”
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This story if by Ray Cates. He is a teacher and writer in Ocala Florida Please comment about this story.
