I still remember, do you mum?

I was 7 when my grandmother, now crippled by dementia, gave me the humming bird along with the promise that it would set me free. Since that day everything has changed, and until this very moment I had all but forgotten about my little hummingbird. Though I can see it clearly now.

It was small, just about large enough to fit into your palm, though to me it had seemed much larger as was the case with my view of most things at that age. It was made of gold that shone in the light and trapped your eyes when they danced upon it.
Each wing held a jewel with a rose pink colouring that would refract the light into thousands of tiny rainbows when it was hit in just the right spot, the simple glass jewel captivated me in a way that I haven’t felt since. I remember the thin coils that held the jewels in place, 8 of them in total making sure that the jewel would never be lost.
The bird itself was held inflight by a beam of gold leading to a small cylinder that housed the birds voice. Upon winding, which I did nightly, the bird would begin to sing the most soothing and beautiful song. My grandma always said that it was in the birds song that you could be free forever.
It was my prized possession, the one thing that was solely mine. In the bird I found myself and I could escape. Sure I had toys and bears, books and a whole host of other random crap but my bird. My bird was everything to me, Id sit and watch it sing all day and it would help me to sleep at night.

But the memories are just that.

That night I remember that my parents had gone out and left us with our usual baby sitter, she was nice and mustn’t have been all that much older that I am now. Me and my brother were playing in the front room, if I can recall correctly it was a simple game of catch. It was going well. I threw the ball once more to my brother… crash.
I hadn’t the best aim at 7 and missed my brother, instead breaking one of my mothers many ornaments.
I burst out crying, knowing that she was going to be mad when she found out. Waiting in my room with baited breath I asked my bird to sing. It would be the last time I ever heard its voice.
I heard footsteps. No they were stomps. Mum was home and she was coming up the stairs. My door was burst open and she was more mad than I had ever seen her. Perhaps looking back on it now, with the tainted eyes or age I can see that maybe alcohol had played its part to and maybe had she not drunk anything my bird would live in more that just my memories.

I don’t know why I remember her what she said so clearly, “how would you like it?”. Not really a question more of a trap to see if I would provoke her any more that I seemingly had but I stay silent. “If I broke all of your things.” I wonder if she knew. If she knew that it was an accident, that I was sorry. If she knew before even opening my door what she was about to do. I bet she’d never have guessed that at 18 years of age I would be reliving this memory at night over and over until it made me want to scream.

I remember her grabbing hold to my bird, while it still sang to me as if it was trying to tell me that it would be alright. That everything would be alright again.
It’s almost like in slow motion I watched her pull her arm back and thrown my beautiful bird at the wall. I heard it smash before it stopped singing.
I was frozen. Maybe it was a fear, I can tell you I had never been more scared of my own mother before then. Maybe it was guilt, for breaking her vase and for not protecting my bird. Or perhaps the closes thing I can describe it to is grief, not that I had ever known grief before that point I didn’t have so much as a golf fish die. But I’ve come to find that grief is the closest thing that describes that moment.
My mum left straight after throwing it, or maybe she stayed and apologised hugging me saying that she would find a way to fix it. I can’t remember.
I just know that I stood over the one thing that meant more to me than anything and I looked down at it, to find it in pieces on the floor dead at the hands of the woman who was meant to protect me. No amount of glue and apologies could fix that.
Which is probably why 11 years later I cannot sleep for thinking of that night. What makes it stranger is that the thought seems to have revived itself entirely from no where like a jack-in-the-box that just exploded without anyone even turning the handle.
I find myself angry and resentful but I cannot allow myself to feel like this because happened so long ago that I doubt my mum even remembers doing so. But I cant let it go. I want to know what she thought, want to know if she knows what she’s done. If she knows that that one incident would impact me so intensely all these years later.
Because I still remember.