Hands, Sunshine Hair and Safe Flying

A long time ago, when for the first time I discovered the sky was blue, I remember my brother Daniel brought a friend home.

Daniel's friend was old, much older than me, he looked like he was thirty but Daniel told me he was seventeen. He got me to hold up both my hands and he held up one of his

"Three hands and two fingers" he said "that is how old me and Nick are" I looked at my hands and his hands and I pulled his fingers and giggled. They felt like melting jelly pops, kind of soft and a little wet but not cold.

"How old am I?" I asked, maybe not at the same he had told me how old he was but at a time it made sense for me to ask. Daniel held up nearly all the fingers on one hand and said

"This many" he called it four, I called it a lot but not as many as him and Nick.

I liked Nick.

He was fun. He had soft blonde hair which he would let me touch.

And he would pick me up and throw me about, and let me fly like a little sparrow through the sky. Nobody else would let me fly. I think maybe they thought I would fly off forever in the sky and get lost and not be able to find my way back to the ground. I worried about that sometimes.

But when I flew with Nick I knew this wouldn't happen cause he was always there to help me down from the sky and to help me find my way back to the ground.

Then he would put me on his shoulders, and I would play with his hair and feel it flying out of my hands like little threads of sunlight on a windy day.

Lots of people liked Nick's hair, I know cause I saw them looking at it, especially the girls. They looked at it the way I look at my-little-pony-dolls which the mean assistant lady keeps just out of reach on the second to top shelf where I can't quite touch them.

Daniel likes Nick's hair too. Sometimes when they are in Daniel's bedroom, listening to bang-pots-and-pans music I see him running his fingers through Nick's hair, like I do after Nick makes me fly.

The next year I was one hand old. My teacher told me, she held my hand and named my fingers. One, two, three, four, five. Four was how old I used to be, six was how old I was going to be and in a very long time after that I was going to be ten. That was two hands! That was old! Nearly as old as Daniel and Nick.

The day I learnt that I went to tell them that, and Mum and Daddy and everybody else.

Daniel's door was open a tiny bitsy bit. Thumpy music tore out of that crack like rain floods from the sky, all at once but it keeps coming. I peaked in and saw Daniel and Nick were kissing.

I always knew kissing would have been invented by boys, only boys would think up something so gross. Sometimes I see Mum and Daddy kissing, but Mum doesn't like it cause she always makes him stop when I come in. Daddy likes it, but he's a boy and boys like gross stuff, like spit and mud and baby frogs that grow in the slimy water in the pond on the corner of the road.

I crouched down and touched the carpet, watching my fingers one, two, three, four and five, and waited for Daniel and Nick to notice me. The music thumped on me like dumpers on the beach and I made waves in the rug with my finger nails. If I swirled my waves a little they turned into wispy spirals, tiny threads of cloud in the sky. Some time past. I'm not sure how much, we haven't learnt counting time in school yet, and Mum came to see how I was doing. I tried to tell her about my finger names

"Mumsy! Mumsy! Look at my hand! This finger is called one and this one is called two and this one, guess what this one is called"

"That's great darling" Mum said but her thinking wasn't there, she was paying her attentions to Daniel's music. She had her annoyed frown on, she always gets that look when she hears Daniel's music. She says it clutters up the air in the house, but I don't know how, music isn't a real thing, you can't touch it, not like sugar.

She looked into Daniel's room and she went very angry. Whiteness came to her face, cold blizzardy hard clouds like at the top of the mountain we visited one time.

Bang! Thud! Went the door and the music crashed over me, mixed into a swirling tearing screechy by Mum's yelling. I didn't like it, the way the sounds clawed at me, they were sharp and poked me and made me hurt even though they can't be touched. Hurt inside like a sore throat only very much worse cause it was in my chest, the hurt, the pain, the angry sadness, and lollies couldn't fix it, I knew that.

I didn't understand, why was Mum so angry? She didn't get this angry cause of music, it must of been cause Daniel and Nick were kissing. But what was bad about that? It's just gross, and when boys do gross things girls run away and scream and laugh, that is what we do at school. Nobody gets angry, not like this.

I made a little ball. Very, very small like I wasn't there. Cause if I wasn't there then maybe I'd go somewhere else, up into the sky perhaps. And there the noise would stop and maybe this wouldn't be happening if I wasn't here. I tried very hard to fly away but you can't fly if you don't have someone else to help you.

Daniel yelled back at Mum and Mum yelled at Daniel, and the music bashed me and scratched me and hurt me something bad and Nick said nothing. But I heard him shuffle and I peaked through my fingers and he was sitting next to me. He picked me up and held me and he helped me fly. He made it a little less scary though I still wished the yelling would stop.

"Don't worry" he said "it'll be over soon" and his words made soft, soft like the baby blanket I had when I was very little. I hugged him like I hugged my blanket and it made it better, just like my blanket made the darkness less. The soreness in my chest crawled into my throat and made it ache, ache in a heavy way.

After a long time the loudness stopped, the waves stopped pounding me. Mum yelled once at Nick and pulled me away from him, I closed my eyes very tight so they wouldn't start being angry again and I heard a door slam. Slam like hitting the ground after you fall out out of a tree and all the air goes out of you and you hurt all over and you cry even though you don't want to and Mum comes over and kisses it better, but she didn't.

She hugged me in an angry way but told me nicely it would be okay and I believed her. But she lied.

Daniel doesn't live with us any more. Nick doesn't visit. I asked Mum why and she told me it was because Daniel loved Nick and I asked why that was wrong. She said boys shouldn't love boys, they should love girls and girls should love boys. I didn't understand. How could it be wrong to love someone? Love is good. Love is happy endings, in fairytales in the end the bad person gets punished and the good people get to fall in love and be happy ever after, how could Daniel be the bad person? I asked Mum if it was wrong that I loved her because I was a girl and she was a girl and she said no, that was different. But I didn't see how. Love is love is love is flying free in the sky with happiness and birds sing and sun shines and you jump through the clouds.

Sometimes now Daniel rings and I get to talk to him on the phone, if I answer it first.

"When are you coming home?" I ask and he says

"Maybe never" I ask him how long that is

"Hold up your hand" so I do "Imagine every finger is another hand and every finger on each of those is another and each of the fingers on those hands is another"

"That's forever before you come home" I say and there is sadness in his voice

"I know, I'll miss you"

"I'll miss you to" I say "and Nick, will Nick ever come visit again?"

"Probably not" he says

It is very sad that Daniel and Nick are not here. Sad like lost kittens. But I try to remember, every time that I miss them, that at least they are happy. Daniel is not here to teach me numbers but he is teaching Nick and Nick may not be here to make me fly high in the sky, holding me safe and letting me play with his sunshine hair, but he is making Daniel fly.

Though Daniel may be a bit heavy for that.