The Break of Dawn, page 7
She didn’t want me.
The end.
And it was the end. What life could I possibly have after the last six weeks?
To my surprise, Marianne slid a pack of tissues into my clenched fist. It was how I knew I’d been crying—not secret tears but a great river of them, accompanied by embarrassing gasps and grunts.
I scrubbed at my eyes, closing them for a brief spell. The humming stopped. When I next looked up, Sky had left the café, and Marianne gazed at me with such empathy that I sobbed again.
“Oh, Cora. You’ve changed so much. I don’t think you’ve ever cried in all the years we’ve known each other.” She wiped her own eyes, for she was a kind woman who always wanted the best for me and, no doubt, her other clients.
We arranged where I’d stay after the project finished—a female hostel in Barnsley—and Marianne left, hugging me. Usually, I’d have refused any show of physical affection.
Afterwards, I couldn’t face the old college, the Sunday night quiz we’d arranged, or the warm kitchen with Jez and Chris, who’d kindly bought me a personalised cup. And I definitely couldn’t face her, the woman who’d crept into the space where my heart should have been.
Instead, I stumbled down to the lake, looking for the baby ducks and geese, craving the familiar sights of home. Undoubtedly, it was all very self-indulgent of me, but I just couldn’t help myself. All I could hear above my own sobs was a distant hum, which sounded like a goodbye.
For the attention of the prison governor.
Dear Miss Holmes,
Hmmmm.
I fucked up badly. Why didn’t I speak and invite her to come with Jez, Chris, and me? All I’d been able to think about since she arrived was working with Cora long-term, getting to know her at our own pace until we were ready for more.
Why didn’t I offer Cora a job?
The answer is simple, really: For years, my words had been crushed into the depths of my heart.
Speak up?
I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know how.
My inability to speak made me miserable. I obsessed over a potential future with Cora every second of the day, considering various solutions. Could I write a letter and leave it on her bed, or would it be too formal? Should I assume Cora would stay after the project without me having to ask? I asked the others for help, but they refused. Jez said the job offer had to come from me. He helped me decide what to say, but I still couldn’t do it. Chris locked himself in the greenhouse, and all the time, Cora’s sentence was coming to an end.
I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of upsetting Cora. Most of all, I was petrified of her answer.
Please understand how much she meant to me. She was, and is, my dawn after the darkest, longest night. What if she had said no? How would I cope?
You understand the other answer, Miss—you’ve read my childhood records. Except for my hands, doctors said I survived the petrol and the fire unscathed. They were wrong. I survived, but not without deep wounds that will never heal. Art can achieve a lot. It cannot absolve what has been done to me. Nothing could.
You also know that Cora’s past is similar to mine; she holds it in her body as I do.
How can two ice mountains melt into each other? If only I’d known the answer.
More later. I can only say so much in one go. It’s frustrating for you, I know— Imagine what it’s like for me!
Ex-inmate number: 67534
Chapter Eight
The days ticked past.
My heart did not stop beating, however much I wished it would.
We worked harder still, labouring from dawn to dusk and during the hours between. I stopped keeping my opinions to myself. What was the point of being the perfect worker if Sky didn’t want me anyway? Instead, I started bossing everyone around, voicing my ideas about the project, figuring I might as well enjoy my last days at the park. Maybe I was trying to goad Sky into a reaction, or more likely, I wished only to become a part of her hum, her song, and her life?
On the day before the opening ceremony, we positioned a temporary pavement inside the egg to protect the ground from being ruined.
“We should provide benches for people to sit. They don’t want to stand on the big day when they could be resting, watching, relaxing.”
A shudder went through me at the mention of the opening ceremony. Sky still wouldn’t reveal any details about what was supposed to happen to the egg, if anything. Each morning, I crept inside the structure as the birdsong started. The weak morning light affected the bricks, making them hum and vibrate as if they woke up, too, causing colourful shafts of light to pattern the egg’s interior.
The various tones wafting in the air, including shades of pink, orange, violet, and yellow, created an almost spooky atmosphere. Sometimes, ducks waddled in with me to watch the show. It was beautiful, of course, and more. There were no adequate words to describe the emotion rising through my chest. I could not imagine what would happen on the opening day. Fantasising about potential outcomes consumed us all, especially me.
Easter Monday would be my last day at the park. Using my old survival skills, I channelled my fear and anxiety about the future into the big day, throwing myself into the preparations, ignoring Jez when he tentatively asked about my plans for after.
“It’s sorted,” I told him, turning away, brushing away his kind hand, swallowing down the concern on their faces as if it tasted of bile.
I am all that I need.
The end.
Not the end.
Fortunately, our focus turned to more exciting things—the egg, which had become a visual, vocal, beacon, and talisman. It represented my extensive journey since my release from prison and what I hoped would be a future following a kinder path. In eight weeks, I’d travelled from the galaxy of no-hope to starting to believe in myself. Maybe I’d do what Marianne had been suggesting for years and enrol in college.
“Do it,” Chris said. “Any college will be pleased to accept an artist who worked with Sky. And you’re talented too. I’ve seen you drawing and making figurines. They’re lovely. So happy and sweet!” He inched forward to say more. I cut him off by lifting a massive pile of chocolate eggs intended for the children over the Easter weekend.
Obviously, my love for the art process was tinged with the sorrow of parting with my new friends, especially Sky. I’d have been a robot not to experience deep sadness about our time together ending. But it would not be my first goodbye. I didn’t allow myself the indulgent luxury of moping. What would be the point?
The egg was ready. When morning light rose above the hills, it came alive. During the daylight hours, we heard it from all over the park, humming, vibrating its strange wisdom, and singing into the surrounding fields. It fell silent once darkness settled, with only a faint glow rising from within its strange orb.
TV cameras and sets had appeared throughout the last week, standing ready to capture the big moment. Jez made them stay behind the barrier we erected to keep the world out of our arty nest.
I often glanced at the crowds beginning to form, laughing at how I’d ended up among people like Sky Sunday. Jenny would have laughed her socks off.
We talked endlessly about what would happen the following day. Chris believed Sky had something up her sleeve.
“She always does. Maybe some kind of lighting affect? Or how about we suspend some huge bird models from the ceiling for the kids.”
Throughout the previous weeks, choirs of kids appeared to survey the ground. Sky had led them away into a secret room to finalise the plans.
She would not be drawn into our conversations, smiling when we offered implausible ideas. “You’ll have to wait until Easter.”
She did, however, agree with my suggestions. Actually, she agreed to everything. Maybe she felt sorry for me since Marianne’s visit. “Great idea. If we line the walls with benches, people can view the light from various angles. The choir will want to stand up. We’ll have to construct them inside the egg. Otherwise, they won’t fit through the slit.”
She instructed Jez to craft benches from the wood cut from the park’s trees and then enquired breathlessly about the plants Chris had so lovingly cultivated, “Are they ready?” clutching at her chest and worrying her lip.
Once, I’d have mocked her passion for the project. Now, her eagerness and devotion only echoed my own. I’d have died for the egg. The end.
I’d have died for Sky.
Also, the end and, I wished, the beginning.
Chris nodded. “Just about. Some are strong, but we might lose a few if the temperature plummets tonight.”
The plants and flowers fitted inside the brickwork, weaving in and out of the egg. In my excitement to tend the final stage of the process, I spoke aloud.
“How will they affect the white bricks? Imagine what could happen when a flower blooms! I’m sure the bricks are psychic.”
The white bricks continued to fascinate us all, reacting as they did with the environment. At my words, the egg glowed brighter, or so it seemed. Sometimes, I was sure emotions and tempers affected it.
We spent all day carefully transporting the fragile plants from containers into the spaces between the bricks, ensuring enough soil was stuffed within the hollow bricks to nourish them.
Carrying the baby leaves, my heart ached. I’d have to say goodbye to the ducklings and lambs who waited for me at dawn as I emerged from bed bleary-eyed.
Ironically, the best day of my life would also be the worst. Once the project was completed, the workers would pack up and move on. The egg would stay, belonging to the park forever. The Barnsley hostel expected me to arrive by the Tuesday after Easter.
I am all that I need.
I repeatedly asked Jez how he coped with the frequent goodbyes, hoping Sky would chime in too. I craved information about her—even smelling her shampoo in the shower so I could buy it when we parted, trying to fit her into my brain and the space where my heart should have been so I’d have something to cling to after we parted. “Doesn’t it sting to finish a project? To walk away from what matters so much? From the art, I mean.”
Jez grimaced and threw Sky a ‘look’. “You answer.”
To my delight, she glared at Jez and then caught my eye.
“The art doesn’t belong to us once it’s publicly available,” she said. “Sure, I grieve, yeah, and then start something else. All we do is facilitate the beginning. Just the way of things.”
The way of things? Her words upset and incensed me. It wouldn’t only be the art she left behind, after all.
“You can’t just up and leave at the beginning. You can’t.” I didn’t mean to shout, but my words, struggling through a forest of what-ifs, came from the part of me that couldn’t yet speak an emotional language without screaming or crying. As an emotional person, I was as new and raw as the chicks and the lambs. Yet, I didn’t regret my outburst. The time had come when I simply had to voice the uneasiness inside me: the emotion of wind, rain, mud, and the longing of a lifetime. Still, the question that popped out shocked me and Sky. “What about me?” What about us, was what I actually thought: what about me and you?
Jez and Chris exchanged looks. “Here it is at last,” Chris muttered.
Jez clasped Sky by the shoulders and turned her to face me before disappearing with Chris.
Me? The word echoed around the egg in a loud whisper it was impossible to evade. The orb glowed a brilliant shade of orange before changing rapidly to pink, yellow, grey, purple, blue, all the colours of passion.
Sky usually avoided confrontations, asking Jez or Chris for help or slipping into her office. Now, she chose to stand her ground, moving close, fiddling with the branch of a sapling. Her face underwent several transformations.
It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, but my turbulent mood didn’t dissipate. Above all, I wished I could communicate with her to tell her how much she had affected me. My longing didn’t go as far as wishing I could kiss her because the idea was ludicrous.
Under different circumstances, I might have welcomed the opportunity to be alone with her, but I also longed to run with my question hovering in the air. Maybe I would have if the bricks hadn’t reacted with the unspoken forces sparkling between us, built up over the last few months, dancing, playing, sizzling.
It happened quickly. The space inside the egg became hot enough to explode. A ricochet of sparks fired around the egg, gone too quickly to touch. At the same time, several buds opened to reveal a perfect fragile flower. The walls hummed louder than ever. Anything could have happened.
I forgot about our ‘moment’, grabbing Sky’s hand in excitement. “Oh! Incredible. How does the egg work?” God, her hand against mine.
The end.
Sky laughed softly, squeezing my hand without letting it go, similarly enraptured by the show of colours and fire, humming louder. “The bricks react to the sunlight and to sound. Looks like they react to other precious things too.” Again, she didn’t walk away or change the subject. Instead, she looked at me, and I looked at her, thinking about her hand and mine, and what it signified.
It was not the end.
We were not the end.
Around us, birds sang, and sheep called for their babies. The wind rushed past, gathering us, jostling us. From the lake, geese yakked and shrieked. The park was as noisy as ever, and yet, cocooned as we were within the egg, the silence between us suppressed all else. If the world had stopped, I would not have been surprised.
I’d remember those minutes forever, fighting off the urge to speak, to demand, with the equally powerful desire to listen, holding our moment inside me and, at the same time, dying to let it develop freely. At some point, my hum merged with hers.
Sky’s expressive eyes stopped me from moving even an inch. Those amber, green, and brown galaxies stopped me.
Stop.
Their complexity shouted not goodbyes but of a past filled with pain and rejection, of solitude and vulnerability. She and I were experiencing the same magnitude of emotion, and neither of us was equipped to deal with it. Two hums dancing together were intensely personal, but they could not say all the words needing to be heard.
Minutes ticked past. Why didn’t she speak? How would those intense seconds be brought to a conclusion?
It was too much. I became sick with nerves, sure she was poised to say goodbye kindly, as people like her always did. Maybe I wanted her to, if only to end the pain of not knowing.
And then I saw it.
Through all the years of hiding, I’d thought myself a good judge of character, someone who ‘knew’ people. Now, faced with a woman I hardly knew and yearned for; it was obvious I knew nothing except one thing—Sky liked me too. Attraction was in her beautiful smile, shyly acknowledging me as if for the first time as a woman, bursting with questions, pleading with something that might have been a relief.
She broke the spell first, stepping a little closer. “Do you mean what about me and you? I mean, yes, you’ve got a job for life with me if you want it. You’ll have to spell it out—your feelings—because I’m not very good at your language.” She hummed helplessly.
Neither, it seemed, was I. Sky had sensed my attraction for her all along?
I imploded, lost the ability to speak, breathe, or do anything except stare and hope.
Sky continued. “I was—I come from the same place as you. Prison, I mean. Drugs, crime, trouble, the care system, pain. I kept meaning to tell you, and I’m sorry, Cora. I’m terrible at explaining anything. It was too hard to explain. I guess you’ve noticed.” She belly laughed properly for the first time, without the addition of funny accents or weird mannerisms.
Although I hadn’t known about her past, it didn’t surprise me. Actually, a lot made sense in a few seconds—her awkwardness and inability to cope with her success, the way she ran from the press, and how she wore her identity like Dolly Parton’s coat of many colours. Of course, she’d been hurt, like all the women in prison, the hurt you didn’t talk about because you couldn’t. “We both speak art better than English.”
Sky fidgeted as if she didn’t know how to continue the conversation. Typically, she rushed around without pause, so seeing her so still seemed further proof of the attraction I believed and hoped lay between us.
Finally, she almost spat out the words. “Your prison art made me cry. I knew what it meant and wanted to meet you to say—I understand. We are the same. I’ve never seen such raw talent! I thought I could help you, just like people helped me get started. But when you turned up here, I couldn’t speak to you at all; I was too scared of how you made me feel. I wasn’t expecting it. Yes, there’s a you and me, at least, I wish there were.” She broke into laughter again, which ricocheted around the egg, creating a series of hums that ebbed and flowed into waves.
It was the best moment of my life. Yeah, the job and opportunity would be terrific, but the heart and heat of Sky’s confession lifted me above the egg, right into the clouds.
Somehow, I snapped back to life. “Me and you. It’s been there all along. Why do you use all of those accents, by the way?” I changed the subject from her and me because it was too close and essential to linger on before we were ready. I’d guessed why she grabbed at accents and personas—because she didn’t have the confidence to be herself. I didn’t ask about the hum because it already made sense to me—Sky needed to ride the day, and the hum became her surfboard, and now mine too.
We sat, or fell, together, leaning against the brick wall, soaking up the warmth from the egg, snuggling together without looking. Being close wasn’t as uncomfortable as it would have been a few weeks ago; the harsh weather had forced the workers together physically and otherwise.
She didn’t remove her hand from mine. Very quickly, our fingers interlocked. “I’m not an easy person. The accents are a remnant of a bigger picture. One day, I’ll find the right one. I’ll find me.” She seemed on the cusp of saying more, and like before, she held back.
