Under a Bruised Wing
Initially written on May 2021 for a school project named “This I believe,” which asked students to detail something that they believe in. Though I no longer resonate with this writing, I find it important to document my headspace during particular moments of my life.
I never really understood the concept of heaven. For years I sat in church study groups learning the story of genesis, but never felt God’s embrace. I doubt his unquestionable hold of power and the required moral good of our doings in this ambiguous world. I prefer something materialistic. Real. The only things close enough for me to latch on. But life doesn’t thrive in hard facts, I know. I wonder who is really out there when we bleed. The real world doesn’t provide that answer for us. They say it’s your mom. They say it’s your dad. They say it’s your lover. But who are really out there when they aren’t?
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I believe in angels. They are mortal beings with flaws and cuts and wrinkled clothes. They thrive beyond our peripheral vision, treating one they care for with care. The white I would imagine is red, grey, brown, black and blondes of all shades. The one I met dyed her hair red, black mascara laced with vibrancy. When I first met her, I thought she was the most insane person I’ve met. She ventured so, so far beyond our societal expectations. She lived in the middle of the camping site; a simple van with a patio. She lived with the sun and the snow. She lived with the bears and the deers. Each Christmas she hung up food on the pine waiting for the animal’s annual feast. And she drove in her little red car to town to grab some movies and snacks for herself. With the owner’s key, she did it all alone. Her name was Christine.
When she became our new house mother, I knew things were different. My school in Ontario was small, and change was slow. It wasn’t up to me whether my personality will get me in trouble the next day. When you, a child, live alone, you don’t grow. You float. Like a lily pad, you hope for your root to adapt to the water and expand your surface. Each day, someone with scissors can cut the root, and each time it gets harder to stabilize. I don’t think people noticed that I was floating, because a big smile usually covers it up. I didn’t even know if I was ok, so I pretended to be everyone else, with the others on soil, towering over me. Christine found her feet wet when she saw me floating. To her, there wasn’t an excessive need for trimming. She let me sing my songs and buy my dolls. She drove us to the flea market where I would save enough allowance to buy one, and she taught me to knit, string by string, from a bowl of wool to a scarf for my sister. When the kids sleep, I held up my needles again, and she would be there on the couch, coaching me through the process. With each mistake I learned to reroute and fix, slowly learning to find the soil under the water.
She once took me and this kid I lived with to her van by the deep trees in her little red car. Her hair waved as it passed through the other cars, making a statement. We rented a movie like she always does, and he and I slept on the floor as the night sang. With the hollows of silence, the enclosure comforted me like never before — a feeling I haven’t felt since my time back home. I keep thinking about her hair, and the way it stood against everyone and anyone, energetic and fierce, ready to do what’s right. There was the curse of age and sorrow laid within her wrinkles, but her hair told a different story. A story of defiance. I shared part of myself to her, too, in an act of defiance against my past. Within the pond, a lily began to take shape. She might have seen it after she left abruptly, but I can sense that she felt it, her feather landing on the leaf as she flies away.
Under a bruised wing are the ones they saved. Keeping them alive. Saving them without question. I could once recall her last name with pride. I hope that she can recall those short three months with pride. I hope that as she is healing after all those years, she will remember me, too, a person she saved. She, a person of effortless feminism. She, a silent angel. Christine, someone I believe in.
