Milkman

by Anna Burns

  My Dearest Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie,

  It is incumbent upon us to list you your fears lest you forget them: that of being needy; of being clingy; of being odd; of being invisible; of being visible; of being shamed; of being shunned; of being deceived; of being bullied, of being abandoned; of being hit; of being talked about; of being pitied; of being mocked; of being thought both ‘child’ and at the same time ‘old woman’; of anger; of others; of making mistakes; of knowing instinctively; of sadness; of loneliness; of failure; of loss; of love; of death. If not death, then of living – of the body, its needs, its bits, its daring bits, its unwanted bits. Then the shudders, the ripples, our legs turning to pulp because of those shudders and ripples. On a scale of one to ten, nine and nine-tenths of us believe in the loss of our power and in succumbing to weakness, also in the slyness of others. In instability too, we believe. Nine and nine-tenths of us think we are spied upon, that we replay old trauma, that we are tight and unhappy and numb in our facial expression. These are our fears, Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie. Note them please. Remember these points please. Susannah, oh our Susannah. We are afraid.

  ‘Golly,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ tablets girl’s sister said. ‘And there was more.’

  Not to prolong or belabour, the biggest worry, the worry that we hold, and one that if only we didn’t have it, even if we should retain all our other fears, still would we be indescribably happy, that which has condemned us profoundly, changed us negatively, stopped us surmounting trifles such as the fears already listed, and it is that weird something of the psyche – for do you remember, our Susannah, that weird something of the psyche? Of Lightness and Niceness that had got inside us, that was inside us and which, as you recall, possesses us still?

  ‘She meant me,’ said tablets girl’s sister. ‘Before the poisonings took off, and I mean really took off – I’m referring to the olden days when sister was poisoning just the odd seasonal person – and don’t forget, she was my big sister, my older sister, so I had to respect her for her years – but I went to talk to her but because I’d no understanding, not only of the extent of her fears, but of the very existence of her fears, I went to her room and I blundered in my words. I didn’t know I was blundering but I made things worse. Didn’t see what was staring me in the face. Did nothing with my attempts but arise in her suspicions of me. I tried to elicit the wherefore of her poisoning, unravel the distortions, have her right mind restored to her. She said it was impossible, that it was perilous to focus on good things when there were bad things, all these bad things, she said, that could not be forgot. She said old dark things as well as new dark things had to be remembered, had to be acknowledged because otherwise everything that had gone before would have been in vain. In my ignorance,’ went on tablets girl’s sister, ‘and even though I’d no clue what she meant by “in vainness”, I said could they not have been in vain then, regretfully in vain maybe, but crucially that they could be set down now, that she could walk away from them now? That was when she poisoned me for the first time.’ ‘First time?’ I said. ‘Yes. She poisoned me five times, though the first three times I thought were just periods.’ This younger sister then said that she and her older sister had another cup of tea and a chat on a second occasion. This time, while tablets girl once again made the tea, the younger sister once more heard her speak of bad things that had to be held on to. She realised that her sister was yet entrapped within the issue of the bad things. This time it was how they were not to be let go of, otherwise that would mean forgiveness could get in by the back door. She couldn’t forgive, tablets girl’s sister said tablets girl said, least not while she hadn’t received the sorries. ‘I said,’ said tablets girl’s sister, ‘and again I said this in spite of not knowing who these sorries were to come from or what the unforgiven were to be sorry for – but I said I had an instinct that awaiting the sorries was part of the war-thinking and I asked if she could stop waiting for them, because otherwise to wait around for them would only destroy her even more. She said she couldn’t move forward, that she had to receive the sorries before anything could be possible, and I said she didn’t, that she really, really didn’t, and that was when I thought I’d taken a very bad bout of menstruation for the second time.’ On the third time when they had had tea and a talk together, it seemed, said tablets girl’s sister, that they’d left off that whole subject of ‘in vain’ and of the undelivered sorries, also of whether or not to forgive, and had moved instead to identity, legacy and tradition. ‘I said to her that it seemed to me,’ said tablets girl’s sister, ‘that she was minding to a very great degree, adhering far too much, giving more attention perhaps than was meet, to separating herself, to isolating herself which was what she was doing whenever she did her poisoning. “What about co-existence?” I asked and she said things had to be respected, that besides, if she were to focus only on shiny aspects, then everyone would think there were no other aspects. They’d forget, she said. Consider everything fine and they’d leave her the only one remembering. I didn’t know what these things were that she was talking about. I said that her identity seemed to be coming from an extreme edge so could she not let herself have doubt instead of reinforcing this edge, which was when I took an excruciatingly bad, crampy period for the third time.’ On the fourth time tablets girl’s sister said she realised her sister had been poisoning her and after that, they stopped having tea and chats together. ‘I still thought though,’ she said, ‘there must be another way.’ By then, the renouncers-of-the-state in our district had threatened tablets girl which was when her family began searching for the murder weapons. ‘That was when I found the missive,’ said the sister, ‘which started in that vein of fear and went on for pages and pages, an awful lot of thirteen, smally written pages.’ Eventually though, it ended:

  With love and very much worryies and concerneds for your present and your ever future safety, from,

  Yours, while still being really truly frightened,

  Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days.

  Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days hadn’t pulled any punches. There’d been no sustained correspondence either, said tablets girl’s sister, meaning one of opposing strength, of some brave foray by an inner oppositional party attempting to outdo and wrest back a situation of terror to one of hopeful resolution. Instead there was one loose sheet from Lightness and Niceness, and even then, with constant interruptions from Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days. Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie, this Lone Ranger sheet of paper began.

  Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie,

  You don’t need me to tell you—

  IT’S FRIGHTENING! O SO FRIGHTENING!

  —that everything you see is a reflection of—

  ALL SO TERRIFYING!

  —your inner landscape and that you don’t have to—

  HELP! HELP! WE’RE GOING TO DIE! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

  —believe in this inner—

  MY STOMACH! MY HEAD! O MY INTESTINES!

  —landscape. Instead we can—

  REMEMBER OUR HELP KIT, SUSANNAH! OUR COMFORT KIT! OUR SURVIVAL SELF-DEFENCE KIT! OUR WAY TO FIGHT OUR CORNER KIT! OUR PHIALS AND OUR POTIONS AND OUR SHINY BLACK PILLS! OH QUICK! REVENGE! WE WANT THEM TO FEEL OUR PAIN AND …

  So it was that Terror Of Other People overruled, disordered, then finally assassinated Lightness and Niceness. Lightness and Niceness had come in other guises: Oneness, Shininess, Syster. It had come in under Syster. So it was logical. Syster had got inside her. She needed Syster not inside her. Syster, therefore, had to go. That was how come tablets girl’s sister was poisoned for the fifth and almost the fatal time. Then I was poisoned. Then the man mistaken for Hitler was poisoned. After that, tablets girl herself violently died. Terror Of Other People probably thought that with her dead, it, itself, could carry on living. It would party it up, let its hair down, continue to be fearful. Never do
they realise, these psychological usurpers and possessors, that in dispensing with the host – with the one being above all whom they need for their own survival – inevitably they are also dispensing with themselves. I stared at tablets girl’s sister then, and she was of an ill pallor, sweat on her brow, difficulty breathing, eyes wretched with impairment and with her tiny hands clutching still to railings. She was plucking at them as in a fever. Maybe she was in a fever. And she was tissue-paper thin, not only in her body but in every aspect of her. Wired she was, undercurrents becoming overcurrents, sensitivities and early warning systems, all her surveillance detections overwhelmed and overwhelming. I’d gone to help but I didn’t know how to help. If anything, I felt myself pulled in. She said my name then, my first name, and that felt warm, friendly, it felt a relief, far from my expectation of ‘You killed our sister!’ Then it was, ‘You see how frightened she was? I never knew how beleaguered because she was my big sister, no matter too, she had that whole enemy situation going on.’ I answered with a nod then realised she might not have seen it. So I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I was wondering what else to add because, just as with real milkman in his lorry, I felt I wanted to add something, to do something. Before anything occurred to me though, her ex-lover showed up.

  I felt him behind me before I felt the hands upon me. It was third brother, my third brother, whom I hadn’t seen in a year. Hardly now, or for long, not since his marriage also a year earlier, did he appear in this area. He would come to visit ma, bring her money, but he’d arrive in a hurry and get out in a hurry, taking her and wee sisters with him, picking them up – quick! hurry! – dropping them off – quick! hurry! – driving them somewhere on a jaunt. He’d take them downtown, said wee sisters, or up to the hills, or to the seaside if it was sunny and always they’d stop for treats and bouts of indulgence – ‘ice-cream and chips and lemonade and sausages’. ‘When the merry-go-rounds are here,’ they added, ‘we go there too, and he puts us, even ma, on all the attractions.’ He also took them across town from time to time, they said, to have tea in his own house with him and his new wife. This new wife had been unexpected. She hadn’t been seen coming – not by ma, not by us, not by the community, not by third brother and certainly not by tablets girl’s sister, the long-time girlfriend whom for years he’d been in love with. As for me and him, we hadn’t met since his marriage because he’d come to the house every second or third Tuesday, exactly the day of the week I spent after work over at maybe-boyfriend’s. But here he was, having come up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders before I’d a chance to turn and realise it wasn’t Milkman, wasn’t the lynchers from the chip shop, wasn’t Terror Of Other People or the revenant of tablets girl herself. It was him, third brother, and I felt the vibrations of his approach and wasn’t alone either in picking up on them. Tablets girl’s sister had sensed something as well. She broke off from her talk about her sister’s great terror, which had been mistaken for her sister’s great anger, and she started, then cried out, ‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Who is that?’, her voice urgent and demanding, yet also excited, hopeful, because she knew before I did who was standing behind me; knew even before brother said, ‘Step aside, twin sister, I’m coming through.’

  He had to step me aside himself though, for I was too overwhelmed to do my own stepping. Even though he’d spoken to me, I could see already he’d forgotten my existence, was looking past me, making moves directly towards the only girl he’d ever loved. On hearing his voice, tablets girl’s sister uttered another cry, one hand flew to her mouth, the other reached out, possibly to ward him off, possibly to take hold of him. Then she dropped her hands, tried to step back but couldn’t because already she was at the railings. Instead she stepped sideways and I knew by this point I was all but forgotten by her as well. This was the second reason I thought she might have rebuffed the help I’d offered. Given I was the sister of the ex-lover who’d ditched her to go and marry some expedient unknown, might she not have wanted any reminder of this terrible event from her past? So it was back to the wrong spouse, in this case to that of third brother’s wife being the wrong spouse with tablets girl’s sister meant to have been the right spouse. That was how it looked to us – to my family, her family, everybody in the community. Yet they hadn’t married because third brother had gone and done the usual unquestioned, unconscious, self-protective thing. Being loved back by the person he loved to the point where he couldn’t cope anymore with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving, he ended the relationship to get it over with before he lost it, before it was snatched from him, either by fate or by somebody else. Nobody said anything sensible to him at the time because who would have been that somebody? So it was that brother attempted to evade his great fear of theoretically losing what he wanted more than anything and to make do with a substitute instead. Unsurprisingly, tablets girl’s sister had something to say about that.

  ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘You went away, ex-boy lover, so now you just go away.’ Her voice was trembling, her body shaking, definitely she was angry and it was with difficulty she was trying to focus; clear too, that she couldn’t properly make him out. As for me, I remained invisible to both but that didn’t stop my mind racing. Was it too late? Had he burnt his boats? Had he ruined everything? Or was she going to relent and let him make repair? With the intention of repair, it seemed, third brother didn’t go away as commanded. Instead he stepped closer and although he hadn’t yet touched her, he was now speaking to her, imploring her. Without editing, without refining, because he was too far gone emotionally for any self-conscious evaluation, he was saying something about ‘… mistake … fool! … Big fool! Buck idjit! Didn’t know what I was thinking, what I was doing … Stupid … Wrong person. Because I loved you … Afraid. Risky … Played for safety … Sold out the dream … Oh idjit! … Oh fool! … Dammit! … Wrong person … Fuckit … Immature!’ There was something else on ‘not cherishment’, then something about ‘cherishment’, something on ‘love, my love’ and ‘couldn’t cope’ and ‘idjit, madman, big idjit, the happiness, couldn’t … wouldn’t … big bastard idjit’. I think he was meaning himself. After that, it was ‘this love business’ and how he’d compromised, how he’d ‘settled’, telling her he was shaking, that here he was, standing before her right now, shaking. ‘Cannot you see me shaking?’ he said. Then he said, ‘Fuck! You can’t see me shaking! You can’t see! What did she do? What did your sister do to your eyes?’

  This stopped him in his tracks and I think it must have been recently he’d heard that tablets girl’s sister, his ex-girlfriend, had been poisoned but without anticipating the extent of this poisoning, not having been around many poisoned people perhaps at close quarters to have grasped it wasn’t always only the alimentary tract that got destroyed. Tablets girl’s sister, however, by now was well into her stride. ‘You broke my heart,’ she cried. ‘You made me miserable. You made you miserable and any way you look at this, you can’t have made her – whoever she is – not miserable. So go away, go away,’ and again her hands came out. Again his hands came out, and she tried, and he tried, then she tried, then she halted. Then he tried again, then she pushed him off. Generally, there was halting and pushing, hands coming out, arms coming out, hands pushing away and more than one verbal ‘go away’ but with no going-away happening. Then, from him there were further declarations of love, further fools and damn fools and damn idjits. ‘If she’d killed you!’ he cried. ‘What if your sister’d killed you! You could have died and I would never have …’ and though he wasn’t really shaking, not physically, definitely there was turmoil churning up from inside. Not that she could see, but it was unmistakable not to hear what he looked like. It was true, certainly, that he had compromised, that he had settled, become sullied, jaded, so that maybe in less than another year of not following his heart, not allowing his heart, he was to be turned into one of those buried-alive, hundred-per-cent, dulled-to-death, coffined people. But in the middle of this declaration of love and of
his innards shaking there came upon him a change in tone. Now there was urgency, a sharpness, an admirable fearlessness, even anger. He asked again what her sister had done to her and had anyone taken her, his beloved, to get help? So now it was the doctor. Had she been taken to one? What had been done to help her? Had anything been done to help her? But tablets girl’s sister interrupted, rebuffed his concern over the trifle of what her sister had done to her. ‘For what care you what’s been done to me when you didn’t care what you did to me yourself!’ There was more somethings here, this time from both, followed by pushing from her, then a taking hold of his shirt, a taking hold of him, an almost laying her head onto— But no! Instead it was rejection of his shirt, rejection of him, then further pushing, but then a taking to the shirt again, stepping close, closer, another closer, more closers. Then she leaned over, leaned in, leaned her head onto her forearms, already at home on his heart. She closed her eyes then and breathed him into her, her lover, ex-lover, her lover, at which point third brother must have thought permission was granted. He brought his arms up – too early! – not granted. With a cry she pushed him off once more.

  So there they were. She pushed again, weaker pushing, and already his arms were out – wiser, waiting, alert for the cue, for the subtle indication that this time would be the right time, all of which, of course, was not meant for my ears to hear or my eyes to see. Ordinarily, I would have been shocked, disgusted, at the thought of anyone – especially me – standing feet away from and having a good gawk at two overly wrought, emotional lovers. But I had become glued, couldn’t stop myself, didn’t want to stop myself and besides, they’d started it and were continuing it. And now, permitting him to bring his arms around her, while she herself held on to him while managing at the same time to push away at him, she admonished, saying, ‘I think I hate you,’ which meant she didn’t because ‘I think I hate you’ is the same as ‘probably I hate you’, which is the same as ‘I don’t know if I hate you’, which is the same as ‘I don’t hate you, oh my God, my love, I love you, still love you, always, always have I loved you and never have I stopped loving you’. Then, taking her face out of his chest, to push or not push, both of them ceased activity. There was a second of nothing, a blip of suspension, then they fell – no more talk, no more dramatics – with relief into each other’s arms.