Flying

Flying is a gift, Jessie. Don't forget it. Not everyone has this gift. You do. But remember, unless you use it, it may not be there for you when you want it.
    

Jessie hears her father's voice, dimly, as if he is speaking from behind a curtain. Strange. It used to be that she heard him so distinctly. She would turn around suddenly, expecting to find him standing behind her. "Could be just memories floating up to the conscious mind," her mother said. "Or it may be that he's communicating with you. I don't hear his voice so much, but he does like to visit me in dreams."

Jessie feels a familiar tightening of her throat. Where did they take her? Where is my mother now? And Grandma? What have they done to them? The girls around her are whispering. The meal is over and the bell will ring at any moment. What am I going to say? Jessie folds her napkin and slips through the napkin ring. For a moment she holds the polished, wooden shape in her hand.

Ten weeks since Collection Day. Ten weeks since Jessie’s world turned upside down. Tonight marks a graduation of sorts. All over the country girls and boys have been selected to speak. In their own words they must demonstrate their happy acceptance of the new circumstances of their lives. Flying is no longer a choice, a pleasure, an astonishing gift. It is a crime. That simple. So, don’t let them catch you hovering an inch or two off the ground. Don’t let them see you testing the wind and looking up at the sky.

The bell rings. Jessie pushes her chair back and stands up. She joins the line of girls waiting to file out of the hall. The braid of blonde hair in front of her belongs to Wanda. The other girl turns and looks at Jessie. Her face is empty of expression but her eyes say, "How are we going to do this? How are we going to make them believe we are happy to give up flying?"

Jessie blinks and looks down. Wanda makes her nervous. She takes all kinds of risks, like this. She openly follows the flight of a crow, swooping down from a branch to gather a nut. She sits herself down in the middle of the green area and watches swallows, diving and playing. She stands at open windows and lets the wind blow over her. From that first evening when they spoke, Jessie has been attracted, but wary as well.

"I’ve seen you before." Wanda was unpacking a little suitcase and placing her clothes in the small chest at the foot of the bed. She didn’t seem scared or lost. She seemed to know what was happening. "Your mother brings her vegetables into the market on Saturdays. At least she did before... I’ve seen you arranging the pumpkins and squash. You always wear a blue apron. What do you think of this dump?"

Wanda gestured around the room. The wooden ceilings were low, barely six feet, and the iron-frame beds crammed up against each other. There was only one window and it was shut. All human beings have this urge to soar, Jessie. But you're a lucky one. You can really do it. Jessie felt the old lump in her throat, like a bird had lodged itself in that tight space. She didn't want this strange girl to see her cry.

"It's okay, I guess." Her voice wavered.

"Oh, give me a break," Wanda snorted. "It's a squeeze up little place. They jam six girls in here, even if they do have room somewhere else, just to remind us who's in charge. Confine them, contain them, control them. That's the plan."

Jessie gasped. "How do you know someone isn't listening?"

Wanda stopped unpacking. Her tone softened. "It's Jessie, isn't it?"

Jessie nodded.

"Listen, Jessie, I'm scared too. I don't know where my parents are. I don't know what they've done with my brothers. This whole thing is too weird to be true. They come along in their nice neat uniforms and gather us up. They tell us we're being given a chance to be re-educated. Well, sorry, but I liked the education I got. I'm a flyer. I'm not going to pretend any different. I'm not going to keep my mouth shut and act as if this is just what I always wanted - to be labelled and classified and pinned to the earth."

Jessie's ears were buzzing. She sank down on her bed.

"You mean you're not going to stop flying? You're going to let them see you fly?" This girl was either completely crazy or very brave. The kind of brave her dad would have liked. Flying is about letting go, Jessie. It's about allowing the wind to take you places you never thought of going.

Wanda laughed. "I'm not that dumb." She laughed again. A deep, breezy chuckle.

"No," she explained. "I've got a plan. I'll play along with their game for awhile. Ask the right questions. Give the right answers. Then I'll be ready to take any chance I get."

Wanda continued her unpacking, tucked the last T-shirt into the drawer, closed it and stood up.

"What about you?" she said to Jessie. "What are you going to do?"

"I . . . I don't have a plan," Jessie stuttered. "I haven't thought about it."

Wanda leaned forward and placed her hands on Jessie's bed. She spoke in a whisper: "I know who your father was, Jessie. Lots of us do here. They killed him because he wasn't afraid. You see, that's what flying means to them - fearlessness. And it doesn't fit it with their view of things. After all, how can you control people who have no fear? You heard Miss Lourde this morning: 'Fear is a necessary emotion. A protective mantle. It keeps us safe, sound and on the ground.' They want us to believe that. They want us to give up flying so that we can learn how to be afraid." Wanda stopped and glanced over at the door of the room. "Okay, I've said enough. Just remember, Jessie. You know how to fly."

"That's what my dad always said to me." Jessie frowned and picked up her father's duffel bag. She upended it and let the contents spill out on the bed.

Ten weeks at Earthbank and Wanda was the only girl Jessie had spoken to, except for a few quick whispers here and there. Every day the routine was the same - all the girls' movements set out for them and supervised. Every part of the day a subtle or not so subtle reinforcement of the doctrine: common beliefs create common goals which create universal well-being. A stubborn insistence on individual talent (such as the ability to fly) was a selfish and dangerous direction to take. It led to conflict and ultimately the breakdown of the social order.

But was it true? The girls walk quietly along the flower-lined path to the auditorium. Their nervousness, their excitement, a contagious energy between them. Jessie feels the warm evening breeze wrap itself around her legs like a familiar pet. She shudders and consciously takes her feet and places them on the ground. If the breeze were only a little stronger she could lift up now. Or could she? Would she still remember how? Sometimes, Jessie, you will be unsure. Her father's voice is like a whisper. Trust yourself to remember.

But do I want to remember? The world looks so clear and sharp today. The tulips are a fierce, bright red; the daffodils, a blazing yellow. All so neat and tidy and upright. Jessie looks down at her uniform: the heavy plaid skirt, the black knee socks, the solid Oxford shoes. There is order in this world. And with order there is safety, isn't there?

The breeze has increased and now it tugs at Jessie's shirt sleeves. It sweeps around her, a dancing scarf of air. She feels a tiny urging upward of her shoulders. Her body remembers. Her body knows what flight means. Who is really in control? The old panic reappears. I don't want to be different anymore. I want to belong. Under her breath Jessie repeats the words of the chant:

    The earth is my mother, see how she carries me.
    The earth is my mother, see how she carries me.
    The earth is my mother, I shall not forsake her.
   
Miss Lourde leads them out of the sunlight through a side door, into the auditorium.  She directs them to stand in one of the wings offstage. The spotlight is already on and the audience of groundwalkers is seated. Miss Lourde indicates where they may go and stand to listen to the other after they have each had their turn.

Jessie is first. She comes out on to the half-circle of the stage and begins to speak. Inventive and charming, she tells her listeners how pleased she is with her new shoes, their comforting solidity, their sturdiness.

"Never again," she says, "Will I prefer bare feet to shoes, with shoes like these. They make me feel important. I feel as if I am a queen -  we must al be kings and queens here, don't you think? I am a queen and my shoes are great and weighty treasures. Their connection with the ground is an incredible discovery. The earth is there for me to walk upon. Why would I show my disrespect for her by not walking? I want to remember with every step that I am a connected being, connected to the earth, connected to you all. I am a groundwalker, you can be sure of that!"

Applause sounds in the auditorium when Jessie finishes and her fresh, young face beams in the artificial light. Jessie leaves the stage and comes to stand by an open door. Outside the leaves of the copper beech, the magnolia and the elms are rustling in the evening breeze. The lilacs are still in bloom and their fragrant scent drifts slyly into the auditorium, causing the groundwalkers to shift uneasily in their seats. Spring had always been the trickiest of seasons, with the flyers at their most unpredictable, and even the occasional groundwalker acting without careful forethought and planning.

Jessie slowly turns her head towards the muffled murmuring of the trees and then, as Wanda comes onto the stage and begins her speech, she turns back and listens as the other girl presents her transformation from flyer to groundwalker. She, too, talks about her new shoes and her new socks and the shiny silver pin they have given her for her plaid skirt. She describes its heaviness, and how it keeps 'everything in place'.

"That's what I'm finding out," Wanda concludes. "Every object and every person has a place of its own, a place where it belongs, and the world is much smoother, less bumpy and untidy, when everything goes back to its own place and stays there. That's why I'm so happy to be a groundwalker. I always know I'm going to be right here, where I belong: on the ground."

Again there is applause and the second girl leaves the stage and comes to stand next to Jessie. A low sound of approval rises from the ranks of the groundwalkers. Obviously this re-education is succeeding much better than anyone has anticipated. They have done these girls an enormous favour by grounding them. See how secure and happy they are! See how they have forgotten the pleasures of flight!

Jessie and Wanda do not look at each other. They stand quietly in the darkness, with the open door behind them, while the warm breeze roams into the room, teasing at their bare knees and arms, moving slightly the heavy fabric of their skirts. Then, there comes a louder disturbing of the leaves, as if the wind had grown bored with subtle games and wished now to make something happen.

Jessie cannot help herself, she turns away from the darkness of the auditorium and takes one step into the scent-filled evening, knowing that she must step back again before any of the groundwalkers seated near the door take note. Wanda has heard the wind as ell. She, too, turns her back on the interior darkness and looks out into the living, breathing evening. In the briefest of moments Jessie's green eyes meet the blue eyes of the other girl. Each girl knows the other has not forgotten. How could one ever forget the sensation of flight, the pure pleasure of that release?

In the next instant Wanda has stepped out. A gust of wind sweeps toward them and the two girls let themselves be lifted up into it, ascending effortlessly into the evening sky, letting the wind carry them up. Higher and higher and higher. All the world grows smaller below. What a wind it is. A wind to carry them away. To the seashore, to the mountains, to the forest and the river. It doesn't matter where. Let the wind take them. They are flying again.