Louise O'Neill: Even when the omens are ominous, it makes me feel less alone

I am someone who looks for signs. The number 63 has surfaced and re-surfaced in my life for such a long time now that I sneak the number into every book I write

Louise O'Neill Photo: Cathal Noonan

It started with the bird. I was sitting in my living room, reading, when I heard a loud banging noise. The dog jumped from his bed, howling at whatever was outside. It was a bird, I saw when I went to investigate. It had flown straight into the glass window panes and was now lying on the ground outside my front door, dead. Its brown feathers splayed; its right eye still open, ghoulishly white.

I stared at it for a few minutes, knowing I should do something, I should go and pick it up at least, but I seemed to be unable to move. Without taking my gaze off the bird, I phoned my father and explained the situation.

“Move it with a shovel,” he told me as if a shovel was something I should be expected to have around the house.

“I don’t have a bloody shovel!” I wailed at him, begging him to call over and sort it out for me.

“I’m busy,” he said with a sigh. “I do have a life of my own, you know.”

Cooper was still barking furiously, as if that would be enough to reanimate the dead corpse, then looked at me as if to say: “Why aren’t you doing anything, Mama?”

“Not a hope,” I told him, because that’s what I do now — I talk to the dog as if he can understand me, as if he might, someday, talk back. That’s what happens when you live alone, I thought to myself as I closed the blind, pretending the bird wasn’t still out there, and waited for my father to take care of it for me.

“Isn’t that a sign of death?” a friend said to me later, when I was recounting the story to her. “A bird flying into the window?”

My boyfriend threw her a sharp look, knowing how superstitious I am.

“Sorry,” she rallied quickly. “I was thinking of when a bird flies into the house, that’s bad luck.”

But it was too late, the damage had been done. I went to bed that night and lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, thinking of all the people I loved most in the world and listing them in order of whom I would least like to die first. (Wondering where you ranked? That’s a secret I’ll never tell. XOXO.) 

But at least it wasn’t a bird in the house, I reminded myself in an attempt to talk myself off the ledge. It’s fine! I’m safe!

Two nights later, I heard an odd flapping noise in my writing room. I walked in, half asleep, but saw nothing untoward. Then I looked up and saw — I’m not making any of this up, I swear — a small bird. 

It was in a panic, flapping its wings desperately, trying to find its way out. I would love to say I stayed calm and guided the bird out the open window — “fly my pretty, fly! — but I screamed loudly and fell over my travel kettle in my rush to get out of there.

Once again, I rang my father for help. He arrived to the door with an old tea cloth, shaking his head at me. “It’s only a bird, Louise,” he said.

Five minutes later, he came back downstairs. “Actually. Not a bird,” he said. “It was a bat.”

(For some reason, the immortal lines of Laney Boggs in She’s All That came to mind, except now it was “Am I a bat? Am I a bat? Am I a fucking bat?” I have no explanation for this except my brain is broken.)

I texted my friend and told her the latest news.

Me: If a bird in the house is a harbinger of death, what do you think a bat means?

Her: I’m sending thoughts and prayers.

I am someone who looks for signs. A certain colour of butterfly; a dream where my teeth fall out; or I jump from a skyscraper.

White feathers and robins and rainbows. A clock falling off the wall, my mother hearing a knock on the door three times the night before my granddad died. Pulling the Nine of Cups out of the deck when I’m reading my Tarot cards in the morning. 

The number 63 has surfaced and re-surfaced in my life for such a long time now that I sneak the number into every book I write, like a good luck charm.

When I watched my grandmother draw her last breath and checked my phone to see it was 6.35am, I was not surprised. Rather, I was comforted. Many of us take solace in such things after someone passes, hoping they speak to something greater, serving perhaps as proof that our loved ones are still close, watching over us. That death is not so final, after all.

When I look for these signs, I feel as if I am in communication with the world around me. That the universe is trying to guide me in ways little and large, if only I would listen.

Even when the omens are ominous, like dead birds and bats, it makes me feel less alone.

Louise Says

Read: The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye. If you feel at all confused by the ‘debate’ over trans rights, this is the book for you. Clear, concise, and compassionate. A must-read.

Listen: I have WizKid’s 2020 album, Made in Lagos, on repeat. Full of irresistible pop songs.