I shake my head. I can’t let my thoughts go there, because that would be to salivate, only to taste the bitter bile of disappointment.

The lawyer said he’d asked the court to repeal the decision…

The letter. I reach down and my breath surges inwards. The gold crest of the court is emblazoned on the thick paper. I rip through it and read.

Dear Ms. Hammond,

The court has decided to accept your repeal of their 19th January decision regarding the custody of David Hammond.

We have written to your lawyer requesting your appearance in court on the 23rd of April for a further hearing.

Yours faithfully,

Daniel Mendonca

Clerk to the Tribunal

My breath dashes out.

“It worked, it worked!” I whoop in the dark hallway. “Oh, Davey, it worked!”

The hallway mirror stares back at me, impervious. I stick out my tongue and jig in front of it. I look crazy but it feels good, I don’t remember the last time I let my limbs leap.

Still jumpy inside, I call the lawyer.

***

There are more swans out today. They huddle together at the far end of the pond, long necks lowered. It’s the bread they’re after. The bird-woman stands at the edge and drops the soft pieces into the pond. They clamor for the pieces that she pulls out from the inside of a loaf and places into waiting beaks, her fingers gentle, loving.

I find myself staring. Who is this woman? What makes her do this?

When the swans have quieted she looks up and I find her eyes. Her lips contort but I know she means to smile. It is the first time I’ve seen her face.

I know that face.

I recognize it now that she is not shadowed by the birds. Isn’t she the one who’s always in shul for hazkaras neshamos?

No one in shul knows her story, or why she never stays for davening, appearing just to pay her respects to the deceased in her life. I know she always slips out the door as soon as the service is done, because when I do go to shul — which, admittedly, isn’t often — I hang just beyond the crowd, too, near the doors.

So this is her story? This is her life?

She turns back to the birds, pats one or two of the pigeons, and then the tune falls out of her mouth and enchants the air, and I know there is more to her.

Even if her smile is rough, there’s a kindness about her. She’s not frightening, she’s in pain, that’s all. She’s just a woman alone. Like me, really.

Cold cringes inside. My mind conjures up my son, a reflex.

I must tell Davey she’s not as scary as he thinks.

The thought plinks and sets the cogs whirring.

Davey, Davey, I will get to tell you stuff soon, won’t I? Davey you’re coming to live with Mommy again. I didn’t let you down, Davey. I didn’t let him take you. The court made me. Because he said I couldn’t care for you. But I’m going to fight that decision now and win!

The thoughts caper in my head, and despite the disappointment that I so fear, I indulge them until my head is heavy. I drop it into my hands and close my eyes softly.

I hear the scramble of children coming to race the ducks. The delighted squeals, the honk of the geese. A pack of them run past my bench. I wonder what they think of me. They must think I’m a basket case. They don’t know that hope surges in my chest, they don’t know that today is the first time in all these dark months that I’ve let the thoughts run gaily in the head that they only see as lowered.

And it occurs to me, maybe because I’ve seen the bird-woman’s eyes, that there’s so much we don’t know about other people. So much that we just don’t see.

I know, I just know, when it’s 3:30 and the half-hour walk home with Davey — which I now fill by sitting at the pond — is up. I nod at the bird-woman when I leave.

A beautiful contortion of her face is my response.

***

Moody, out-of-touch, non-conformist, even an aspiring novelist. These were the strikes against me. Strikes that became a sentence because Michael had the audacity to involve the boss I was working for during the heat of our separation. Home was no haven, so I would put in longer hours at work. I took on the Starglow account to keep me distracted, but with all the goings on I couldn’t keep it up. The account soured along with my marriage, and my boss, the consummate conventionalist, pointed fingers at the employee with too much originality for her own good.

I think he honestly thought helping Michael get custody was the right thing. “Indulgence in fantasy, almost sinful” he’d said about novels. And if I was crazy enough to want to write one, and lose the Starglow account at the same time, he’d make sure my poor son was taken from me. Oh, he wasn’t the CEO of Economix for nothing.

I sigh, low and long. Oh to rigidity. So I did want to write a book, so I did have a penchant for long-winded (beautiful) description, does that make a lesser Mom of me?

As if to prove a point, I circumvent my bench and sit in the one adjacent to the bird-woman.

I risk a throaty, “Hello,” that’s lost in the squawks and cheeps.

Does she want to surround herself with creatures? What sort of life has she lived that these are her companions? What has humanity done to her? Is it a choice anymore — and what if I gave her a choice now?

I’m feeling unusually gregarious today, more true to myself than I’ve felt in a long time. Maybe it’s because it’s only hours to the date I’d circled in red weeks ago — tomorrow is the day. The repeal. I’m almost giddy with nerves but there’s a strange peace about me too that’s helping me push what I thought were limits. I rise off the bench and step towards her.

Two hulking men, dressed in fluorescent yellow vests, get there before me. They lumber up the path bearing a big board and a toolbox and get to work just inches from the bird-woman’s unwieldy shoes. They crouch over the pond fence, their boots upsetting the ferns, and she doesn’t appear to see them.

I don’t know what they’re up to, but their jackets proclaim that they’re workers for the Council. I don’t have a good feeling about this. There’s too much authority in their movements. The board, when they affix it firmly, is a statement of finality.

DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS, THEY ARE A NUISANCE. PENALTIES FOR VIOLATERS

I look over at the woman, she still hasn’t seen it. Something folds closed — and then opens — within me. She can’t see it. She won’t see it. I run after the council’s men. They’re headed to their car. I tap on the window hard, too hard.

“Ma’am what’s up with the knocking?”

They are angry but I am angrier.

“The sign. Why did it have to go up? This is our pond, our little place.”

If I am here for the bird-woman, why am I including myself?

“Council’s orders.”

“But listen, there’s a woman at the pond, an older woman, she feeds the birds. It’s her work, her life. She hasn’t yet seen the sign. It will kill her when she does, so can you please, please take it down before she sees it. And get the Council to rethink this decision meantime…”

Two brusque heads shake side-to-side. “I’m sorry for her,” one of them says, “but a decision is a decision,”

“No it’s not,” I say, thinking of tomorrow’s repeal, “we’re talking about a woman who loves the birds, to her they aren’t a nuisance, she takes care of them every day, she takes care of the pond…” I know I’m rambling, but I’m desperate.

The other man turns on me, “So there’s a woman who feeds the birds every day?”

“Yes.”

“Well we’ll have to tell her to stop, won’t we, in case she doesn’t see the sign, maybe her eyesight’s bad or something…”

My shoulders slump. “Don’t…”

But they are used to ignoring everything except orders, and I watch helplessly, from the distance, as they stomp up to her, bend down slightly from the waist, and explain the board’s order, miming it out to her as if she can’t read.

Slowly she heaves herself off the bench. The birds take wing and for a moment they hover like a plume above her. Is this their routine thank you, or do they somehow know that she will not feed them again and this is an ode to her years of dedication.

She looks up at the birds, something drifting in her face, and then the bird-woman shuffles away.

My eyes cry two tears. Two tears for another person. I don’t brush them away; I haven’t felt for anyone, cried for anyone, except myself, in a while.

Suddenly I want to know her, help her, comfort her — even though I don’t know what I’ve got left to give.

It’s not hard for me to find her a short distance down the path. Her gait is cumbersome and sad. It seems she doesn’t live far, just across the street from the pond. I want to call out to her, attract her attention, but already she’s turning the key in the lock, and she walks into her home without ever looking back.

***

The pond is not the same without her. Even the birds seem to brood. They’d mourned at first, the ones who’d felt her absence keenest, and I fancied that their pitiful shrieks could be heard all the way to the Council.

She’s not been back. Not once. But I keep coming for the sacred half-hour when the rest of the mommies in the world are picking up their kids from school. And I think about Davey then and the bird-woman. Sometimes I imagine telling her all about the custody proceedings. The backs and forths that take my heart on a see-saw. Her silent presence at the pond has made her an unwitting partner in my struggle and something inside me wants to tell her — for her sake? for mine?

How is she holding up? I’ve only known her as the bird-woman, and now that she isn’t with the birds, where is she, what is she?

I have to find out. She’s a woman alone, and I know how lonely that can be.

Once, twice, I pass her house. It looks dark, dingy, and then a bird’s hoot or a sudden wind makes the place seem haunted and I find myself walking away.

It’s more than the fear of a musty home, it’s the fear of finding the person behind the sad eyes. “Bird-woman” put her in a league all of her own. Reaching out would risk discovering the person, the pain.

And then my lawyer calls to say they let me have Davey for two days. Just to see how he feels about me and to assess if I can cope with him. Like I’m gonna run off and write my book when he needs his supper. It hurts, but it’s part of a process and I have to keep looking at the goal.

Davey knows I love him, he must. But he’s all of 5 years old. How can I make him understand that there’s more to what he possibly sees as abandonment? And suddenly I know.

After a precious day that slips away too fast, like sand through my fingers, a day of stories and laughter and toys with my little boy, I say, “Davey, there’s somewhere I want to take you. I want you to meet someone.”

“Who?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I explain. “She’s a lady who will help you to understand that not everything is as it seems, that often there’s more to a story.”

He nods, slow and solemn. He doesn’t quite know what I’m saying — how can he? — but he seems to sense it’s important to me, and maybe to him too.

I love this boy.

I take his little hand and we walk through the darkening streets. We pass the pond. “The ducks and birds are sleeping now, Davey, but they’ll be up early tomorrow,” I say when he asks to play with them.

“I’d like that.”

“Now we’re going to someone who likes the birds very much. You know who?”

“I think so,” he looks a little frightened, “that woman?”

“Yes that woman, and we’re going to make her feel good. We’re going to see who she really is.”

We walk across the street and stand at the door. My son squeezes my hand and I don’t know which of us is more afraid. I knock then long and loud, and when she opens the door she’s not a bird-woman, she’s just a woman who doesn’t yet know how to smile.

So I do.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 517)