Under the Amber Glass

Mira Senn, night-bus cleaner:

“I was carrying Lio home because the pram wheel had come off again. He was asleep inside my coat, hot as bread, with one fist against my throat.

“The lamps on Bellweather Street were the old amber kind. As I passed beneath the first, it began humming. Not the usual ballast noise. This had pauses in it. Three notes, then one held low.

“At the second lamp the tune continued.

“I knew it. That is the part Orris never believes. I had known it before I heard it.

“By the grocer’s shutter I was singing along. There were no words, only the shape your mouth makes when words are unnecessary. Lio woke and listened. He did not cry.

“All six lamps sang us home.”

Orris Bell, municipal lamp fitter:

“There were five lamps on Bellweather, and two had dead chokes. People add lamps when they remember a dark street.

“I went out the following afternoon. Mira met me in slippers, though there was frost along the curb. She sang the tune. Plain little thing. Could have been anything.

“The wiring on that street was older than the houses. Rubber insulation gone hard as toast. If you touched the column with a screwdriver, you felt a faint trembling.

“I climbed the third lamp and found a bird’s nest behind the gear tray. No bird, just blue thread, hair, and the silver paper from cough sweets. When I pulled it free, the lamp made four notes.

“Not Mira’s four notes. Mine.

“My mother used to hum them while washing my hair over the kitchen sink. I had forgotten that until I was halfway down the ladder.”

Mira Senn:

“He came down white around the mouth. Then he said it was resonance from the power line.”

Orris Bell:

“I said it might be. There is a difference.

“We replaced the fittings before winter. The new lamps gave a clean white light and no sound at all. That should have ended it.

“It did not.”

---

Ada Fane, former resident of Bellweather Street:

“Orris found me because my name was written inside one of the columns. ADA, in green pencil, low enough for a child’s hand.

“I had written it after I left the baby there.

“No, not abandoned. Do not use that word. Her father was waiting across the street with his sister. They had a warm house. I had a room where the ice formed inside the window.

“I held her beneath the lamp until they came. The glass was amber and full of dead moths. I sang so she would not wake frightened in other arms.

“I invented the tune there and then. I never sang it again.”

Mira Senn:

“She is mistaken about that. Someone must have taught it to me.

“My parents said no. They remembered the blanket, the milk smell, the little scab above my eyebrow. They remembered everything except a song.”

Ada Fane:

“Mira sang it over the telephone. She sang it too quickly, but it was mine.

“Then the child joined her from somewhere in the room.”

“He sang the part I had only thought.”

Orris Bell:

“That is not what Ada told me. She said the boy supplied words.”

Ada Fane:

“I said no such thing.”

Mira Senn:

“Lio was barely speaking then. He called every lamp Moon.

“After the council changed the fittings, Bellweather Street seemed wider and much colder. Ada came once. We stood beneath the clean white light while Lio slept against her shoulder. Nothing hummed.

“But when she handed him back, the lamp above us flickered amber.

“Only for a breath.”

Orris Bell:

“The new lamps cannot produce amber.”

Mira Senn:

“No. Orris says that every time.

“Lio is older now. Sometimes, when I carry him from the sofa to bed, he hums against my neck. It is nearly the same tune.

“There is one note I do not know yet.”