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CLIP
My daughter lies on her stomach on the wooden floor. Her legs are under my bed. She points my camera at her baby parrot holding a grape in its bandaged foot. I bought grapes and mangoes and avocado pears at a wooden stall near the Blyde River yesterday.
Why’s Pi eating in my room? I ask, staring at the beard of pulp around his beak. He shakes his head and the mush disperses across the parquet tiles.
He likes the décor, says Kate.
You mean he can see the floor in here, I say, wiping up grape particles with a tissue.
Whaddevah, she says. A flash. Light bounces off the walls, my wardrobe. Gotcha!
We’ve been apart for five days, me in the bush, her looking at boarding schools with her father. Her pet had stayed at the vet because it needed antibiotics. We left Karma, the other bird, the one that had ripped out Pi’s claw, with a friend.
Clean up after him when you’re done, I say. I don’t want to tread in sticky stuff.
She ignores me.
She had constructed a toy for his cage, looping together old keys, a dead tin opener, a plastic toy, and the silver ring I gave her last birthday. She’d worried about him being fretful. The toy will distract him, she’d said.
Don’t let him chew the electrics, I say.
You hear that, Pi? No wires for nibblies. Don’t want a Fried Pi. No burned beak. What would the vet say? Abusive parents, neglectful mothers. Pass a tissue, Ma.
I hand her the box. She wipes the bird’s face. It struggles. Stop fussing, Pi Baby.
Take one of me and Pi, Mom. I click. We laugh. She reviews the images, showing them to the bird on her shoulder. Look, that’s you, Pi. You’re cute. And photogenic. She holds the image out to me. He says it’s a bad pic. The angle’s not right. He’s looking away.
Take another, Mom. I’ll need good photos of me and Pi. For my wall. At boarding school.
CREST
I’m ten minutes early at the psychologist’s rooms where the mediation is being held. Kate’s father is there already, talking to his lawyer, whose mascara is punishing. I hold out my hand. Her fingers are sticks, her hand-shake pointed, hurting.
I wear my black work skirt, ironed, the mauve silk jacket I bought at a second-hand shop for its good label. The heels do it, make me look competent, perhaps even pretty.
Her father returns to his car, retrieving a folder from the boot. The last jacaranda blossoms fall on the roof. I say to the lawyer, Did he tell you today was the day? She scrutinises me as if she’s hearing-disordered. It’s too late to quit the story. I say, Twenty-one years ago today, we got married.
She says, No. He didn’t tell me that. I feel an idiot. But I’m not finished. I say, I was 19.
He returns and rings the doorbell. While we wait, a woman in the street answers her cell phone. She talks loudly, saying, That wasn’t the deal; I can’t possibly agree. She’s big, with cropped hair, wearing quilted salmon. From the way she opens her car door, I know she’s unafraid.
I carry my lap-top in a brief case. Moral support – that self I’m still proud of: photographer, writer, those digital codes more real than paper, than court orders.
Inside is dark and cool. A dragonfly hovers above a decorative Koi pond at the entrance. This is going to be an expensive two hours. I’ll pay the child psychologist; he’ll pay the lawyer.
