by Alex Preston
SO THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK A SOUL IS FOR
Katharine Kilalea
THERE were fluorescent lights in the consulting room. Flo lay down beneath the painting of a Renaissance-style woman reclining on a chaise with the words it is the mind that makes the body written above her in cursive script. The papery, blue curtains around the bed billowed as the obstetrician opened the door. How are you feeling? she said. But Flo’s feeling was difficult to describe. Well, the obstetrician wanted to know – being, as doctors are, pragmatic about feelings – what does it feel like? Like a mobile phone, said Flo, on vibrate. Interesting, the obstetrician said, and who do you think is calling?
Can you tell that someone has no one inside them just by looking at them? The obstetrician apologised for the coldness of the consulting room, which was large and badly insulated, and for the coldness of her hands feeling downwards from Flo’s belly button to her womb. Flo watched the probe rooting around the inner surfaces of her body, pushing her organs to one side. She didn’t like the sight of herself: she was too bulbous, seen from within. Where previously there’d been a heartbeat – something pulsing – were just vague gelatinous shapes dissolving into each other, organs which, had the obstetrician not described them by their anatomical names, Flo would’ve been unable to recognise. There’s nothing here, said the obstetrician, or if there is we can’t see it any more.
Meanwhile, the vibrating continued. It was late January. Snow was falling over the city. A woman standing outside the hospital was talking on her phone. He was my best friend, she cried. Was she a doctor? People were wearing coats so the distinction between doctors and patients was problematic. A man describing treatment for his condition said, And what makes death any different? Flo waited ages for a taxi then finally one arrived. They drove three miles west and two miles south. She was coatless. Aren’t you cold? the driver said, and she supposed she was. He lent her his coat to wear and she wore it. On the radio a coroner describing a mother and daughter who’d died in a fire said, We buried them in a single grave because their bodies were impossible to separate.
I know it’s unfashionable to say such things, the obstetrician had said, but what about a metaphysical cure? So at seven a.m. the following morning Flo made her way to the address on the bottom of the invoice.
The obstetrician said that Flo’s womb had become susceptible to – how had she put it? – ordinary vibrations, the kind that are always there, only you don’t usually notice them. A womb shouldn’t be too sensitive, she’d said. Indifference is the ideal state for a womb. Didn’t Flo know that women fell pregnant the moment they stopped thinking about it? The best way to conceive a baby was not to conceive of it. It’s true, Flo thought about the baby too much. The thought of the baby was toxic; it made her sick. Morning sickness, the obstetrician had said. Mourning sickness, Flo had heard.
The yoga instructor paused mid-sentence as Flo arrived and the group of students, bent forward, looked up in mutinous, uncomprehending resentment. The workshop was meant to restore the body’s natural vibrational state, but for now they seemed to be doing a visualisation exercise, eyes closed, arms waving as if clearing the air in front of them. What’s that in the water? the instructor was saying. It’s kelp. And what’s that swimming at the foot of the kelp? It’s a flat fish. Now imagine I’m a kelp and you’re some kind of flat fish lurking low in the water . . . The pose was unnatural. Flo’s pelvis hurt. She’d assumed she’d become immune to the discomfort, or that they’d stop the pose and move on, but they kept it up for some time until, perhaps because of the pain, Flo’s hips began to tremble. And the yoga must really have been working because now she felt it shifting, rippling from her hips into her chest, and then her throat, so that as the blood welled in her skull, making her face redden, her lips and eyes began to twitch.
Previously the vibrating had been bearable-ish, but now it was totally unbearable. Only of course it wasn’t unbearable because Flo didn’t die. Flo waited for the vibrating to subside – ten nine eight seven six five four – but it didn’t go away. Someone was calling . . . Someone was calling . . . Maybe it was her father, always dialling her by mistake, repeatedly, so she’d hear his phone rubbing against the fabric of his jacket, or her Eurosceptic husband – Italy has so much gold it could walk away from the Euro tomorrow – or the obstetrician, or some deeper, more private, communication, from the baby perhaps – I haven’t forgotten you, Flo – or the phone itself – I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be.
The instructor said Ohmmm and Flo couldn’t stop herself joining in. She opened her mouth to say something or make some noise to discharge the feeling, but when she opened her mouth she said, I don’t know. Because although the idea of it disgusted her – you couldn’t help imagining it, that piece of plastic moulded against those dappled inner walls – the inner phone seemed to Flo the expression of some inner good, something worth keeping hold of, like her soul, perhaps. Because that’s what frightened her, her soul escaping on a gust of breath. Oh, I don’t know, Flo said again with a regretful sort of sigh, because she didn’t want to overestimate the soul or put it on a pedestal, because of course nobody knows what happens in a soul . . . But still, she didn’t like the idea of her soul feeling like a mobile phone.
The students didn’t speak to each other during the class but afterwards they did. Look at me, one said, patting a round belly, I’m having a food baby. Me too, said another, putting on her shoes, I’ve been constipated for so long that there’ll be a geyser one day. On another day, if she’d been less timid, or less stupid perhaps (because it’s complicated to describe one’s feelings), Flo might’ve allowed herself to speak the way they did. But the conversations going on in that dimly lit waiting room – the kind of conversations for which, perhaps, the yoga had been just a pretext – were too personal, too truthful, as if the desire to talk was not so much the urge to talk as the urge to relieve themselves, to let something out. After all, wasn’t that what yoga was about, wasn’t the business of turning oneself upside down and emptying one’s head seen to be a form of self-improvement?
Flo sat on the old bench, carved with schoolchildren’s graffiti. The yoga instructor sat down beside her. She had a thoughtful expression. What was she thinking about? They were both facing a fish tank in which a dozen or so small yellow fish were, themselves, all facing one direction. Was she wondering what the fish were thinking? What were they thinking? Were they hoping for some miracle to occur? Were they thinking: one day a great tide will come and we will be free? Flo reminded herself of the instructor’s name – it’s Joy, isn’t it? – and thought it an apt name because Joy’s body – busty, exuberant, bursting from its clothing – did have a joyful quality. Joy’s body had an effect on Flo. It made her wish the phone would ring. She wished the phone would ring and was surprised that it didn’t, because if the phone was a mental sensation – dependent on her thoughts and feelings – then she ought to have been able, by force of will, to move it the way she could her arm or her leg.
Flo hadn’t liked the idea of the phone, exactly, but she preferred the idea of having the phone to not having it. The truth is, she was very bound up with the phone. Or rather, the idea of the phone was so bound up with her idea of herself that if she didn’t have the phone, she wasn’t sure she’d have a self any more. So that whereas previously the inner phone had seemed very strange to her, now the memory of its vibrations being transmitted through her blood and nerves was accompanied by a kind of pride, an astonishment, even, at all the incomprehensible things a person can be made up of. She cast her eye into the glowing redness of her inner world. She imagined it nestled somewhere, its screen dark, as if fast asleep. A memory arrived of herself, as a child, being called down a corridor for a long-distance call. Beside her, Joy was putting on a gold helmet. Yes, Joy was gorgeous and you could tell that she liked being gorgeous because she was wearing a complicated gold jumpsuit and putting on that gold helmet. Her body was communicative; it spoke to Flo. When did you
stop wanting to be beautiful? it seemed to be asking her. But Flo was reluctant to answer it, because her phone wasn’t ringing, if she couldn’t speak to whomever had been calling, she didn’t want to speak to anybody, because if she couldn’t talk about the phone, she wouldn’t talk about anything, because she simply didn’t know what to say, because what she wanted to say was disgusting (the idea of the phone inside called to the mind all the sordid stories you hear about the things found in women’s bodies: car keys, curling tongs . . .) and the phone wasn’t disgusting. It was precious. Its secretiveness was what made it so precious.
So pressing were these thoughts that Flo couldn’t help saying, almost to herself, I’ve lost my phone. And Joy, who must have heard her, said Do you want me to call it? And although at first Flo thought, No, then, after a moment, she said, Yes, that would be brilliant. Joy dialled and Flo felt afraid because there had never actually been a phone inside her – of course not, the idea was outrageous! – still, as she waited, her gaze travelled inwards, imagined the phone, its little screen lighting up inside her, and felt a vague panic, a tingling. A phone could not ring unless it has been conceived of in advance. It was her responsibility to have faith in its existence. Of course, it needed someone at the end of the line, but without the preconception, that conversation was just a hope.
SUSTENANCE
Michael Donkor
WHEN people talked about Regina, they said her name slowly, turning the ‘eeeeeee’ into a long and lovely sigh. People said it like that – Reg-eeeeeee-na – because Regina was beautiful and, perhaps, people felt they should say her name in a way they thought made it sound extra special and extra beautiful.
You understood the general view: her face was more perfect than any other Ghanaian lady’s face in south London. Yes, she could have had her pick. Her dull husband didn’t know his luck.
Sometimes, at church, Regina caught you staring at her relaxed hair. You couldn’t help yourself.
Her relaxed hair.
It glanced off her cheeks and flowed down her magical neck, her long neck that made her hold her head as if she were the most super of supermodels.
Because they all loved and were jealous of her, the aunties had tried hard with their outfits for the christening of Regina’s ugly baby that Sunday. The aunties’ headwraps were higher, their choices of colour cleverer than you’d ever seen before. Orange stilettos matched with sapphire clutches. Plum lips, black lips, sin-red lips.
Aunty Gladys – Regina’s mother – was swirled up in lilac and cream, an overgrown tulip at the entrance. She nodded at everyone as they shuffled into St Dunstan’s Senior School Hall, specially hired for the party. You watched Aunty Gladys taking compliments and doing catlike things with her hands. When you entered, sticking close to Mum and Dad, Aunty Gladys told you she liked your necklace, but it was very simple: just a little gold cross.
Now, properly in the hall, you loved how it was the same as the playground: the aunties became girls, judging each other with quick looks but pretending they weren’t judging each other at all. Your favourites were Aunties Efua and Latrice. They were very old. Maybe forty to fifty years older than Mum, for definite. Or at least their wrinkles made you think that. They were the worst at hiding their watching and judging. It was funny. They were a bit snobby and rude in a good way. They didn’t seem to care if anyone knew they were watching and judging. They were fat, old twins, and they lived together because both of their husbands were dead.
At a wedding last year, they were bored and yawning, and you asked why and Aunty Efua said they’d seen it all, seen it all before. But that’s impossible, you said, how can you have seen everything? And you liked them most at these christenings and funerals and weddings because they sometimes let you touch the funny skin on their underarms which was loose and baggy and crêpey, and they always each gave you five pounds which you added to the savings jar beneath your bed.
The uncles were like big kids as well: pretending to be serious in shadowy corners, flapping their robes so they seemed grand and more important than they were, holding Guinness or Supermalt and frowning and nodding and frowning.
You wanted to be involved in it all so badly.
You were annoyed Mum had done you up in something so dry – black skirt and white shirt. Mum had said you didn’t need to be fancy or attract attention. So you just had to imagine what it would be like to wear long earrings made from peacocks’ feathers or to have massively puffed turquoise sleeves.
You were eleven.
Earlier, on the way to the christening and party, on the bus packed with sad, folded-up shoppers, you wanted Mum to tell you what your baptism had been like. Mum only said, ‘Small. Quiet.’
Again you asked Mum if, when the new baby came, when your new brother or sister came in three months, if it would have a christening too? You asked her to describe how horrible and hard it was to get a baby out of down there. Like an earthquake – but inside of you?
She only said, ‘Hold on to the pole or you will fall and hurt your knees. See us rocking and rolling all around the place. This driver he thinks he is racing Lewis Hamilton.’
Dad had laughed – a little laugh – at the window, at the rain-battered high street outside. He pulled your earlobe. He was in a good mood. He’d polished his shoes nicely – burgundy brogues to match his robes. He’d put in new laces too.
This christening party in the creaky hall was an OK party. There were quite a few kids from Sunday School like Damon, and you and Damon were brave and asked the DJing uncle to turn off the Ghanaian music for a few songs and to play Drake instead – and the DJing uncle actually did it! And you drank gallons of Coca-Cola because Coca-Cola was banned at home. So, with Mum busy talking to Aunties Efua and Latrice, the three of them being nearly as serious as the silly, serious men, you and Damon sat with bottles of sugary goodness, imagining the bubbles spiralling into your stomach.
Damon hiccupped a lot and found it hilarious. He kept giggling, gurgling. Each time he hiccupped, he slapped his hands over his mouth like a naughty clown. After he had hiccupped nonstop for about three minutes, you wondered whether it was real or for effect. A lot of the kids from Sunday School thought Damon was stupid. In class, whenever Mrs Carter asked him an easy question Damon’s eyes went glassy. Everyone found it annoying because why couldn’t he just keep up? Mostly, you thought he was kind and nice. When Mrs Carter told the most horrible Bible stories – what being a slave was actually like, what being crucified was actually like – most people became blank and closed-up. But Damon cried one or two or even three tears. And that was the right thing to do.
But now Damon’s burping-hiccupping-whatever was getting really boring. Really boring. Even though it was obvious you weren’t enjoying the game, he kept on.
‘I need to go to the loo. I’m bursting,’ you shouted over the music, getting to your feet.
‘Do you want me to come too?’ Damon offered.
‘No. I’ll just be a second. Wait here.’
You could sort of sense his disappointment but didn’t care.
You didn’t really know the way.
You should have asked one of the tall cousins for help.
The arrows pointed in confusing directions.
The walls were covered with stuff, which wasn’t helping either. Year Ten’s posters on A View From The Bridge. Year Nine’s recipes from their charity Great British Bake Off. Say No To Single-Use Plastic Bottles. Can War Ever Be Just?
Down more stairs, through some doors, along a corridor and past a growling boiler.
Your bladder was getting properly needy now.
Then more swing doors that opened into a corridor. The only brightness was at the end, the green-white glow of an exit sign. Underneath the sign: a slumped and shifty-shifting thing pressed against the wall. You clicked forward in your Clarks.
Lilac mixed with burgundy.
The one thing split and became two.
First they were holding hands. When they spotted you,
they stopped. What light there was caught the smoothness of a man’s bald spot and the pointy jewels on a woman’s ears.
Lilac mixed with burgundy.
The one thing split and became two.
Dad neatened his robes. Aunty Gladys played with her wrapper skirt. And then they walked towards you. Dad seemed like he was going to hit and hurt. Aunty Gladys was smaller, left him to it. Dad changed, put both hands on your shoulders, smiled at you: a wise man about to give advice.
‘Why, why aren’t you with your little friends, sweetness? I was . . . helping Aunty Gladys here. She feels very unwell. Unfortunately.’
And Aunty Gladys nodded and did downturned lips. Wilty tulip.
You don’t know what came over you. Maybe it was the word ‘sweetness’ – he had never called you that before. Or maybe it was because of Aunty Gladys’s bad acting. Whatever it was, it made you shake off Dad’s hands.
You knew how to shake him off but had no clue how to open your mouth. Words appeared in your mind and they travelled through you, deep into your heat, dizziness. They punched their way up your throat and you worried your throat might bleed all over the dark corridor.
In that corridor, with Dad putting his hands back on you and you shaking them off even harder, you thought about earthquakes inside you, volcanoes, Hell. And the words your mind had created stuck to the roof of your mouth and were screaming to get out.
You felt your body’s horrible tightness, heat, dizziness. They had made you ill, ill, ill.
What had they given you? Dad. Aunty Gladys. You didn’t want what they had given you.