FICTION - Angel Paper by Ellen Phillips

When I came downstairs this morning, there was an angel in the corner of my kitchen. It was about two inches tall, wearing a white robe, and was stuck fast by its feathered wings to the strip of angel-paper that hung by the sink. Its eyes were shut and it was humming softly to itself.

When I was little, my grandmother told me you could catch angels with angel-paper. It’s a little like fly-paper, except you make it out of linen and honey. For the past few days, Travis and I had been soaking strips of linen in clear honey from the farm down the road. In the years I spent away, on the other side of the continent, I’d dismissed all the old tales my grandmother told me. But now I was home, in Granny’s house, with my eight year old son, and these stories didn’t seem quite so far-fetched.

Last night, Travis and I hung the angel-paper through the house. He’d even hung one in his bedroom, by the window. Just in case. Most of them had flies stuck to them, even this early in the morning.

‘There’s nothing puts an angel off like flies in his honey,’ Grandma told me. ‘That’s why you don’t often catch angels, even with the finest white linen and the sweetest honey. Mostly the flies just get there first.’

But there, in the corner of my kitchen, was an angel. Stuck to the angel-paper. I stood in the kitchen doorway, hardly daring to breathe in case this miracle disappeared.

There was a bang as Travis’s door slammed behind him upstairs, followed by the thump of his small, bare feet on the polished hardwood floors. He came charging downstairs, hollering, ‘Mom! Mom! I didn’t get one! Did you get an angel?’ He skidded across the livingroom and thumped into the backs of my legs, knocking me forward a pace. Into the kitchen.

Travis’s head, with its thick dark hair still tousled from his sleep, peered round my hip. I heard his intake of breath, like a bad child actor in a kid’s film. Looking down at him, I saw his eyes were open as wide as they would go, and his mouth formed an ‘Oh!’ of astonishment. In this way, Travis is like his father. He will humour me in my eccentricities, but he never quite believes there might be some truth in my view of the world.

The humming stopped. With the end of that soft music, unlike anything I’d ever heard before, I felt bereft. And apprehensive, suddenly. What had Grandma said you did with an angel once you’d caught it? Had she said anything? After all, this was an emissary of the Divine. It could be angry. It could smite us both.

‘Oh, gas explosion’ the fire chief would say, surveying the smoking ruins of the house. I found myself putting my hand down, to hold Travis’s shoulder, but he slid past me, and stood in front of the sink.

‘Hi!’ he said, breathlessly. ‘My name’s Travis. What’s yours?’

The angel opened its eyes and looked at us. The kitchen seemed brighter, somehow; the counters and cupboards less worn and chipped. Its eyes were radiant, like citrine or some other precious stone, and it didn’t just look at us, it looked through us. It knew us for who we are. Its gaze made me flinch a little, and I wanted to apologise. Not just for calling it here, for trapping it, but for the parts of me that are petty and mean, scared, angry – inadequate.

Travis beamed.

The angel spoke. ‘My name is LovingKindness,’ it said. Or rather, it didn’t say, but somehow we knew anyway.

‘Pleased to meetcha, sir.’ Travis smiled, and held out his hand, as if to shake hands with the angel. He looked so like his father that it made the breath catch in my throat and my chest hurt.

LovingKindness turned his attention to me.

‘Uh, hi,’ I said. I felt winded. I was aware that my bare feet were chilled on the floor, and the t-shirt I wore for sleeping had a hole in the shoulder.

‘My – my name’s Carey.’ I babbled. ‘I’m so sorry I put up angel-paper. Would you like me to – could I – uh – unstick you?’ The words tumbled away out of my mouth and rolled across the kitchen. The angel’s eyes were on me, beautiful, unblinking – alien. I was quiet, then. Travis, after one brief look over his shoulder at me, stared at the angel. He was mesmerised.

Then LovingKindness nodded. Or would have nodded, but his long blonde hair was stuck to the angel-paper too.

That freed me, and I walked across the kitchen, and unhooked the angel-paper as if this was something I did every day. I laid it – and LovingKindness – gently by the sink, and ran the water until it was warm, but not hot. With the corner of a damp sponge, I began the delicate process of unsticking the angel from the paper.

By the time LovingKindness was free, there was honey coating my hands, and the counter, and smeared liberally across the stomach of my t-shirt. All through this, Travis was dancing from foot to foot by my elbow, watching what was going on. LovingKindness had kept its eyes shut throughout.

Once it was freed from the confines of the angel paper, LovingKindness stood up, bedraggled wings trailing behind it, through the mess of honey and water on the counter. It walked to the edge. I moved back, and moved Travis with me. The angel sat at the edge of the counter, and grew.

LovingKindness at two inches tall was intimidating; at six feet tall, it was unbearably beautiful. Its face and hands were radiant, its long blonde hair made the sunlight pale and chased the shadows from the kitchen. Its wings and robe were no longer sodden and messy, but such spotless white that washing powder commercials would have given up their advertising in an instant had they seen it. The angel opened its eyes and looked at us both, mother and son.

I found myself on my knees, tears streaming down my face. Travis, though, had wrapped his arms around the angel, who was stroking his hair.

‘Don’t cry.’ LovingKindness said, so I didn’t, and I haven't since. I got to my knees awkwardly, aware of how messy I was, how my hair hadn’t been done in months, how I was in my pyjamas and hadn’t showered yet this morning. LovingKindness enfolded me in its arms, and warmth flooded through me. For a long moment, we stood pressed together. Its lips brushed my forehead, then Travis’s hair. And then it was gone.

Travis let out a yell of delight. ‘Wow! Mom, that was awesome! Can we do it again?’

I took a deep breath and got my voice under control. “I think maybe we’d better not.’ I picked up the sponge and rinsed it out, then started wiping down the counter.