When I Was Invisible

by Dorothy Koomson

  His hands had freed my knickers, his thighs were pushing mine open, he was doing something to himself, his meaty fingers bumping against me as he moved. I turned to look at Nika again and she was facing the other way, obviously didn’t want to see what would happen next – how roughly he would enter me, how hard he would move. The guttural gnnnrrrr-gnnnrrr-gnnnrrr of his grunts mingled with the music spilling out of the club and pouring into my head.

  Silence. There was silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  ‘You really wanted that, didn’t you?’ My vision focused on him. Who was he? Why was he talking to me? Why was he saying those awful words to me?

  I stood still while he tucked himself away, zipped himself up, buttoned at the top. He sniffed; his bulbous red nose seemed to glow in the dark of the alleyway. His small, piggy eyes were turned up like his lips were in a hideous, nauseating leer.

  ‘I’ve never seen a girl want it as much as you.’ His laugh, nasty and rancid, joined the noise in my swirly, blurry head. ‘You coming back inside?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Sound.’ He left the cut after giving Nika a filthy look.

  Nika averted her eyes while I pulled up my knickers, and then waited for me to join her on the pavement. She had her arms folded around herself against the cold and she had that look on her face. She’d had it the very first time at the ballet studio when Monsieur Armand had said he’d given her new material and new moves to try.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

  ‘No, no, I want a few more drinks,’ I told her.

  ‘Roni, no.’

  ‘Nika, yes. I just want to have some fun.’

  ‘That didn’t look like fun,’ she said.

  It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. But for a moment, there was silence. I would do almost anything to get some more of that silence. To find time away from the loudness lodged permanently, maddeningly, in my head.

  ‘Come on, Nika, come back in and have a drink. Everything is so much better with a drink.’

  She didn’t agree with me, she didn’t drink with me, but she never, ever left me.

  London, 2016

  ‘Is it OK if I kiss you?’ Cliff asks as we stand on the pavement. We’ve had a nice evening. Once he knew I wasn’t going to answer his question unless he asked, he seemed to relax even more. All pressure and expectation to try and trip me up gone.

  ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ I say to him. He’s nice, he’s very good-looking, and I haven’t been kissed in a million years, it feels like. But I’m not sure he’s the one I want to kiss right now.

  ‘Is it because I didn’t have the courage to ask the question?’ He’s disappointed, but not overly so. He certainly will survive.

  ‘No, it’s because I met you for five minutes earlier today and three hours now. I don’t want to rush anything.’

  ‘Does that mean you might possibly think about seeing me again?’

  ‘Yes, I might possibly. Let’s talk about it at school tomorrow and set off lots of gossip about whether you managed to bag yourself a nun.’

  Cliff laughs and I laugh. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ we say at the same time. Which reminds us that we’re wearing the same clothes.

  ‘Let’s never speak of this,’ I say to him before we wander off in different directions.

  As I approach the top of the high street, the door to a wine bar opens and two people stumble out, giggling like they’ve taken some of the extra-good drugs. Slowly they stop giggling, they stand upright and he draws her to him, presses his lips against hers. I try not to stare at them, but it’s difficult. Difficult because he is anywhere upwards of forty-five, maybe even pushing fifty, and she is about sixteen. It’s obvious how young she is to anyone who is interested in knowing; obviously the man who has been drinking with her is not interested. I’m surprised they allowed her in that bar, let alone served her. I have shoes older than her and her age is very obvious. I try not to stare, but it’s like a window to my past has opened and I am standing there, peering at my history. That is what I looked like: dressed up, but obviously still a child, being pawed at by someone three times my age.

  I swerve myself away from the window to my history, ashamed at how often this played out, sick with sadness at the reasons why it played itself out like that for me. I leave the 2016 version of me, in the street, ashamed and disgusted at what I used to be.

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016

  Eliza, Marshall and I walk slowly down the corridor outside Sebastian and Astrid’s flat towards the lift.

  After the way Sebastian had ranted about the great unwashed homeless that live on our doorstep, any good humour or will to socialise in the room seemed to seep out like a slow but potent leak in a tyre, leaving a tense, nervous atmosphere. Several people made no excuses at all and got up to dash out of there as soon as the meeting was finished, almost all of them leaving the leaflets behind. Others stood in huddles of four and five, talking quietly, pausing to smile at Sebastian and Astrid, while shifting themselves closer and closer to the door as though they were being watched by men with rifles in gun towers and would be shot if they all made a sudden break for it. Eliza, Marshall and I went back to the snack table, none of us wanting to seem rude, especially since Marshall had been the one to set Sebastian off. We hung around, not talking to each other, sipped a bit of the vinegar wine and then waved goodbye on our way out.

  ‘Well, that went a bit wrong for ol’ Sebby, didn’t it?’ Eliza says quietly as we arrive in front of the metal lift door. I’m a little giddy and light-headed on the warm muskiness of her perfume, and after the excitement of the end of the meeting, I could sway where I stand.

  ‘Hmmm,’ I reply.

  ‘And you,’ Eliza says to Marshall, ‘you were well out of order winding him up like that.’

  ‘I was out of order?’ he replies. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, no, but you know how he gets after someone – usually you – winds him up. He’ll start issuing edicts because he’s been through the rule book, and he’ll stop us putting plants outside our flats, and keeping pets that can possibly escape.’

  ‘Oh, right, so I’m supposed to sit there listening to that crap and say nothing?’ Marshall turns his attentions to me, lowers his voice. ‘What do you think? Do you think I was out of order, or do you think someone needed to call Sebastian out on that crap he was spouting?’

  ‘Does it matter what I think? I’m only renting, after all.’

  ‘Everyone’s important, as far as I’m concerned,’ Marshall says passionately. My gaze flicks to the door that we have just exited and then to him. ‘It’s why I had to say something about those spikes. You know, that’s one step away from saying homeless people aren’t human and I can’t have that. No, even if it does mean Sebastian fights back by making all of us get rid of all the pets, and plants and off-white paint, I don’t care. You don’t keep silent about something like that. It’s not on.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Eliza says, mollified.

  Marshall’s impassioned gaze swings back in my direction after settling on Eliza, daring me to disagree. I hold my hands up in surrender. ‘Don’t look at me, I’m just waiting for the lift to the seventh floor where I’m going to go into my rented flat and think happy thoughts.’

  ‘Sorry, but people like him make me so angry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I couldn’t tell at all. You’ve hidden it so well, right down to shouting about it outside his house – I really don’t think anyone noticed.’

  Marshall laughs, his face turning away from me for a second and then turning back to grin at me. I grin back at him. A spinning top of excitement rotates at the bottom of my chest and top of my stomach. He’s handsome. Not good-looking or gorgeous, more handsome. Dignified. I like the shape of his face, his lack of hair, which allows you to see all the contours of his head. I l
ike the warmth and depth of the colour of the dark brown of his skin. He is so handsome in a way I haven’t noticed in a man in a long time.

  ‘Aha-hem!’ Eliza interjects quietly. ‘Seventh floor, you said, didn’t you, Nika?’ She jabs at the lift’s down button.

  ‘Erm, yeah, yeah,’ I say and drop my visual link to Marshall. I take a step away from him. I do not need to make an enemy of a woman who knows where I live. I did enough of that in Birmingham. Plus, I do not need to get in the middle of these two people, whatever the status of their non-relationship.

  ‘I think I’ll walk down, actually,’ I say. ‘Stretch my legs.’ I move off before anyone decides they’ll walk too. ‘I’ll see you both.’

  ‘Oh, right, see you,’ Marshall says.

  ‘Bye, then,’ Eliza says, snippily.

  ‘Nika,’ Marshall calls as I’m about to disappear around the bend in the ornate staircase.

  ‘Yes?’ I say. I’ve paused – only my head is visible to them, and they look like giants from this angle.

  ‘It was nice to meet you,’ he says. I grin at him, I can’t help myself. ‘I hope to see you again soon.’

  I nod at him. Behind him, Eliza stares at me stony-faced and betrayed. I’m sorry, Eliza, I think and tuck away my smile, duck my head and pretend that I’m not incredibly flattered at the idea that someone as handsome as Marshall might possibly like me.

  6

  Roni

  London, 2016

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been six weeks since my last confession.’

  Six weeks since I have done this and unburdened myself by talking to a priest about what has been playing on my mind. I have travelled almost to the diagonal opposite side of London to find this church. It is large and stands at the centre of a large Regency square surrounded immediately by grass and trees, then encircled and enclosed by a road, then a semi-circle of smart-looking houses. I crave anonymity to do this. My former childhood priest still serves in the church near where my parents live and I got to know him very well during the years of contemplation and prayer leading up to me becoming an aspirant. I do not want him to know what I am about to say; I do not want to have disappointed him by not staying as someone who officially serves the Lord.

  ‘How can I help you, my child?’ The man on the other side of the carved wooden grille, whose outline I can make out if I raise my head and stare hard enough, sounds nice. He has a hint of an Irish accent, and his words are gently delivered.

  Inside this wooden box, with the door closed and the world on the other side, my life seems so simple. My heart feels stilled and rested. I am peaceful, fingers of silence are smoothing out the edges of my anxiety. This is what I felt when I first entered the monastery in Coventry. The noise and chaos of the world had been shut away – I could pretend the same was happening on the inside, too.

  ‘One of the things I need to confess, Father, is how long it has been since my last confession. I feel embarrassed and ashamed.’

  ‘Why, my child?’

  ‘I recently left my convent,’ I tell him. ‘I feel very odd about that. I feel bad, but I know, ultimately, it was the right thing to do. I thought at first I would observe the Divine Offices I had when I was a nun and a Sister, and then a nun again, but that hasn’t happened. I am ashamed. It’s been such a short time and I have let it all slip.’

  My confessor is silent, probably a little shocked that a former nun is admitting these things to him.

  ‘Are you experiencing a crisis of faith?’ he asks.

  ‘No, Father, I don’t think I am.’

  Coventry, 2000

  ‘Novice Grace, will you come for a walk with me around the gardens?’ Novice Maria Mary asked me. It was the start of recreation and the most sound-filled part of our day. There had been a tension over dinner, the silence between moments of speech loaded with something other than the usual thoughts we brought to the dinner table at night. I had noticed Novice Maria Mary seemed unsettled and had been constantly staring at the Novice Mistress but I did not dwell on those thoughts. Dwelling on those thoughts would always lead to thoughts that the professed Sisters would tell us were gossipy. Gossiping was an unkindness that fostered a meanness of spirit in thought and deed.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. I was not going to speculate on what it was she wanted to discuss. For all I knew, she may want to check on the progress of the beans we had planted a few weeks ago. Novice Maria Mary and I spent a lot of our recreation together and we were quite close even though individual closeness was discouraged in general.

  Once we entered the maze-like area of the gardens, its high leafy walls reassuring but equally a little overbearing (as the convent walls sometimes seemed), Novice Maria Mary relaxed. Her whole demeanour seemed to unclench and she grabbed my hand as we walked.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Tomorrow. The Novice Mistress said I am allowed to tell one person and that person is you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I really didn’t. Out of all of us, Novice Maria Mary was the one I knew would make it to final vows. She seemed so suited to this life, dedicated, certain. Whenever doubts would creep in for me, I would look at her, look at her example and know that if I behaved like her, stuck with it, I would find the silence and I would find God in that silence. ‘How can you be leaving? You out of all of us?’

  ‘This isn’t the life for me,’ she said. She covered my hand with her other hand. ‘I thought it was, it’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was a little girl. But I am not cut out for this life. I’m twenty-one like you, and I’ve realised I want a husband, I want a baby. Babies. I think I would be able to serve God so much better by becoming a wife and mother. Haven’t you ever wanted that, Novice Grace?’

  The question stumped me. I had never wanted those things. It had never occurred to me they might be possible. I had spent my early teenage years being wild, and never thought I would settle down with anyone then. I had spent my later teenage years in the search for silence and then in my dedication to becoming a nun. Husband and children hadn’t even occurred to me. ‘No, I haven’t,’ I told her honestly.

  She nodded and smiled. ‘That’s why, out of all of us, I know you’re the one who’ll make final vows,’ she said. ‘You’ve never wanted anything else. I was always conflicted, but being a nun won over for a while.’ She stepped forwards and hugged me. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She released me from the hug. ‘You won’t be able to talk about me after tomorrow. If you do, that will be gossiping. But I hope you remember me? In your prayers, if not in everyday life?’

  ‘Of course I’ll remember you,’ I told her. ‘Every day, not only in my prayers. Every day.’

  Novice Maria Mary was gone before morning Mass the next day. We remaining novices did not speak of her, but we all looked at each other, wondering who would be next. It wasn’t going to be me, I knew that. I was here to find the silence. The only reason I would ever leave, I knew, would be for her. For Nika.

  London, 2016

  ‘You did not leave your monastery because of a crisis of faith?’ the priest asks.

  ‘It feels very simple inside my head, Father, but when I try to explain it, it goes a bit wrong. I let down a friend very, very badly once. I’ve never quite forgiven myself, Father.’

  ‘Have you spoken of it in confessional before?’

  I stay silent.

  ‘I mean, have you given a confessor a chance to help absolve you from this burden?’

  ‘I want to say yes,’ I reply carefully. ‘I want to say that I have confessed all my sins over the years and I nearly have, except this one. It feels too big to say out loud. I feel so disgusted every time I think about it, Father. I couldn’t say it out loud.’

  ‘Do you not have faith that the Lord will forgive you for it?’

  I sigh and have to admit it to him: ‘I’m not sure I want forgiveness for it, Father. Until I confess to her, the friend I let down, I don’t see how I can allow myself to be forgiven. It would fee
l like an indulgence at her expense, if you see what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’

  ‘It’s not so simple, though. I don’t know how to find her. She could be anywhere; she could have died for all I know. I want to go round to her parents’ house and ask them, but she left home twenty years ago under a cloud and I doubt they’ll have patched things up. I suppose it felt that I had got too comfortable, that I was living a good life as a nun and I didn’t deserve to. I’m not even sure what I’m confessing, Father.’

  ‘I am. You are confessing to punishing a child of God for twenty years for a mistake she made when she was a child. You sound young, as though you have punished yourself for a long time. I can give you penance, you may undertake the act of contrition, and I can offer you absolution, but you will not believe it when it comes to this act. I am not talking only of the act which you feel guilty over, but also the sin you have committed in punishing yourself for so long.’

  ‘I can’t not punish myself, Father, until I’ve seen her and made things right.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve completely wasted your time.’

  ‘You haven’t. Talking, seeking counsel when you are troubled, is never a waste of time.’

  ‘Thank you. I do actually have a couple of other things to confess, though. Apart from not going to confession for such a long time and not observing the daily sacraments like I thought I would, I have been having some really, really uncharitable thoughts about my mother.’

  The priest smiles a little – I can hear him through the wall between us. ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  And for the next little while, I can unburden myself about the increasingly crazy situation brewing in my parents’ house.

  7

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016