Laura smiles and sniffs her tears away. She kisses the back of her mother’s hand.
The work studio is in the house so that Gaga and Laura can work on the clothes alterations and care for her at the same time, though Gaga still deals with the customers in the garage. Their home is private. Protection of Laura has always been their main priority though now Gaga struggles with leaving her ill daughter. Laura often thinks that even though she is by her mother’s side, Gaga wants to be there herself. She is letting the business go, letting standards drop, just so that she won’t have to leave her. Her mother’s health has deteriorated fast, they sit up with her all night, supposed to be taking their shifts in turns but neither of them wanting to be asleep when the moment comes. It is on one of those days that Gaga is dealing with a customer in the garage, that Laura is alone with her mum. Laura can tell by the change in her mother’s breathing that something is happening.
‘Mummy,’ Isabel says, in a raspy voice, sounding like a child.
It is the first word she has said in days.
‘I’m here, Mum, it’s Laura,’ Laura takes her hand and holds it to her lips.
‘Mummy,’ she repeats. Her eyes are open, they look around as if searching for Gaga.
Laura’s heart pounds. She hurries to the window and peeks through the blinds toward the garage. There’s no sign of Gaga, the customer’s car is still in the drive. She looks back from her mother to the garage, feeling trapped, the most trapped she’s ever felt in her life. If she calls Gaga, the customer will hear or see her. They’d all made a pact that Laura would never be seen, not until she’s the legal age. It was long understood and long unspoken. The idea of her being out in the world before she’s sixteen terrifies them.
Laura is torn. Her mother’s breathing is shallow, she knows she’s leaving the world, she can’t call Gaga and risk anybody discovering her existence, but she can’t let her mum go thinking that she’s on her own.
The panic. The hot feeling that overwhelms her body, as sweat breaks out on her brow and trickles down her back. The palpitations. The cold fear. She is losing her mum and while she wants to shout to the world for help, she knows she can’t risk being taken away from Gaga too. She would lose everything.
She doesn’t want her mum to die thinking she is alone, just as she will feel without hers. She doesn’t want Gaga to know that her daughter died without her thinking she was there. She sits beside her, closes her eyes and wills every single part of her to solve the problem, to save her in the moment.
She opens her mouth and sings, and when she sings, she hears Gaga’s voice, the voice of an older woman with a Yorkshire accent. Isabel squeezes her hand.
The broken tree, with a broken limb,
Stands where the grass is brown, and the sky is dim.
Flowers are forever buds,
A skeleton tree in the luscious woods.
No spiders crawl, no animals reign,
On the broken tree, with a broken limb.
But on the branch a She Bird props,
With her beak held high, and her eyes apop.
As she sings her song for all
The buds open wide and the petals fall.
The spiders crawl and weave their webs,
The fruit flies flee from the strawberry beds
The broken tree is broken no more when the She Bird sits to sing her lore.
The tree’s alive, the limb’s repaired,
The animals inhabit because they all have heard.
Children climb, and laugh and play,
The broken tree comes alive for just one day.
The She Bird’s song stops and she flies away
And the broken tree returns that way.
Solomon and Bo are holding their breath as they watch Laura. It’s not just her voice that has changed as she recalls the song from her mother’s deathbed, somehow she has managed to allow the spirit of her Gaga to inhabit her. It is nothing short of magical. Bo turns to Solomon, looks at him for the first time since she effectively left him; her eyes are wide and filled with tears. He reaches for her hand and she takes it, squeezes it. Laura opens her eyes and looks at their hands, joined.
Bo wipes her cheek and Laura smiles.
‘Was that …’ She clears her throat to remove the emotion and starts again. ‘Was that the first time you realised you had this skill?’
‘Yes,’ she says softly. ‘It’s the first time I realised it. But then, when I realised it, it became clear it wasn’t the first time I’d done it.’
Bo nods at her to tell her more.
‘Gaga brought it up with me one day, years before. We were lying on the grass, behind the house, I was making daisy chains. Mam was reading a book, she loved romance books, Gaga hated them. Mam would sometimes read the sentences aloud, just to annoy Gaga,’ she laughs. ‘I can hear them, at each other. Gaga blocking her ears la la la la.’
Isabel isn’t reading aloud. It is silent. And suddenly Gaga starts laughing.
‘That was a good one, Laura,’ she says.
Laura has no idea what she is talking about.