Crow

by Renesha Dhanraj

Dadi was a crow, which meant he only came when Mami and I were asleep. After stacking dinnerware on the rack, I’d cracked open the kitchen window and stooped, measuring the space to ensure it was wide enough for him to fly through. 

One morning, we found him crumpled. I’d made the opening too small, and he’d had to contort his wings and neck into an unnatural position. I spent a long time snapping him back together. Then he flapped once in my palm and left. 

My biggest fear was forgetting to open the window altogether and Dadi bashing his tiny crow skull against the glass. I never forgot, though. When things are a certain way for long enough, they become sunlight washing skin. 

He’d come and go, and we knew he visited whenever presents were waiting for us in the morning. A cute hat for Mami, chocolate bars for me. Star apples for him. 

One morning, he slept in later than usual and forgot to change and disappear. We, who joked about keeping him in a birdcage, caught him by accident.

In his human form, he was skinnier and bonier than my friends’ fathers. Different shades of purple were splattered onto his skin. I imagined cruel little boys pelting him with rocks, and I began to cry. His pathetic nakedness was even too much for my mother, who’d seen his body before. She was so racked with disappointment in his limp human form that she had to lie down on the settee. She had a weak heart. 

We waited for one another to end—me to stop crying, my mother to open her eyes, him to turn back to normal. When it was clear no one was going to give, Mami hoisted herself up and slapped him. He did not respond. He was in a deep sleep. “I bathe him when this happens,” she said. But she wouldn’t help. Not this time. So, I carried him upstairs to the bathtub, the lightness on my shoulders prompting me to glance back to make sure he had not fallen off. 

Father!

Mother shouted directions for me and curses at him. As her words floated up from her perch on the settee, they snagged along the many corridors of the house. Everything happened so slowly because of the delay. On top of this, the sun was nonchalantly streaming through the stained glass window. 

I set him in the tub, then attacked his matted hair with my fingers. Shampoo was too weak to tame the coils. Brushing sent silver coins, a piece of yellow cloth, and chunks of flesh into the bathwater, reaching his knees. And blood. The water became tinged with rust, then absorbed it so completely until he was floating in more blood than water. The cuts in his skin fed the bath a steady stream, and there was no end. How could I tell the end? I wouldn’t have scrubbed on if it wasn’t for the shout, “Clean him good, you hear?” 

After I pulled him out, dried him, and applied to his wounds a layer of antibiotic ointment, his ugliness had become so pronounced I vomited. He was still sleeping. Mother’s prattle had long ceased. Without looking at the window, I knew the sun had died. 

I didn’t know what else to do. I did the most natural thing to do. I undressed and climbed into his filth, still swirling in the tub.