THE SWAN WIFE
By Adrienne Clarke
Wife:
I am constantly off balance. Everything I used to know about myself has become tainted by this house, this man, and most of all this child whose eyes follow my every move as if expecting me to disappear like smoke. I think Lena senses my fear – my uncertainty. When I put her down for her nap she grabs my arm and screams; a streaming ribbon of sound. For a moment I feel almost violent towards her. "Let me go – let me go," I wanted to yell as I shook myself free of her grasp. “I am not yours – I belong to myself and no one else. You have no claim on me.”
But I do not remove myself from her embrace. I gather her into her arms and hold her against my chest so I can feel her heart beating against mine. And then we lie down together on my husband’s bed in my husband’s house where I am prisoner, wife, and Mother. I close my eyes and try to picture myself flying high over a clear, blue lake but the vision keeps going wrong. My wings, no longer made of flesh and bone, turn to glass. I watch them fall away from my body, and drift slowly towards the ground below in slow motion; but the moment my wings touch the earth they melted like snow. Forcing the image away, I listen to the sound of Lena’s breathing, soft and regular against my chest, until I feel my eyes begin to close.
When Lena wakes from her nap I take out the feathers that I have hidden underneath her mattress and run their silver winged tips down her cheek. She smiles and reaches out to hold them. This is when I feel closest to my daughter. Holding her on my lap, my hands filled with feathers, she is mine and I am hers. Nothing is being forced upon me. But these are stolen moments from days spent wandering through half-empty rooms where I cannot see the sky or feel the movement of water beneath my breast. “I love you,” my husband tells me. “I will make up for everything you think you’ve lost.” I am both a swan and a woman - neither form has ever claimed me. But now that I must eat, sleep, and work as humans do, I feel the loss of my wings every hour of every day. I dream of flying while my husband holds me in his arms at night, I dream of swimming fast and hard when I am making our dinner, I dream of sleeping alone, safe and warm in the feathered shelter of my wing. Always I dream of escape.
After my husband leaves for work in the morning, I wrap my daughter around my chest in a woolen shawl, and together we search the house for his hiding place. I have examined every closet, rifled through every drawer, pried open every lock but still I cannot find it. He has not destroyed it – despite everything I am sure of this. The morning he took me I told him that if he destroyed my feather dress I would die. I am a prisoner but a beloved one. This is his mistake. If I am to escape I must find a way to make him so sure of his possession that he will betray himself.
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