The Things We Thought We Knew

by Mahsuda Snaith

  So yes, I have a lifebed. It probably sounds like a deathbed but it isn’t. I spend my life in bed, that’s why it’s my lifebed.

  I lie coiled up, muscles throbbing, trying not to look at the photos on the wall or the piece of cake Amma has left me. Downstairs I can hear the babble of conversation and, every few minutes, the squeal of party blowers followed by shrieks of laughter. As time ticks on, the shrieks peter out. Guests say their goodbyes until the only noise left is the hiss of citrus breeze being sprayed along the hallway. When the hissing stops, Amma appears at my door with an armful of presents.

  ‘Didn’t it go well?’ she says, shrugging the load onto my bed. She drops into her seat, a grin plastered across her face. ‘In fact, I’d say it went swimmingly.’

  The presents topple to the side of my legs as I wedge the pillows behind my back. I push the hair off my face.

  ‘I didn’t want a party,’ I say.

  Amma flaps her hand at me. ‘You’re welcome.’

  I sigh, looking at the repeat-print wallpaper beside me. The neck of each bird is arched back, wings cocked in the air as if ready to escape. I hated those birds when Amma covered the living room with them and hated them even more when she used the leftover rolls for my room. The sharp beaks and beady eyes give me nightmares but when I told Amma she chuckled as though I’d told her a cute joke.

  ‘Open your presents, darling,’ Amma says.

  I carry on looking at the birds.

  ‘Ravine.’

  When Amma uses a certain voice it’s best to do what she says.

  I don’t look up as I rip each present open: a flowery bracelet I have no use for, some glitzed-up slippers to brighten my visits to the bathroom, and a fabric-covered journal with jewel-encrusted pen.

  I roll the pen between my fingers, feeling the sting of frayed nerves in my wrist. Sometimes the pain is hard and throbbing like a repeated punch, other times quick and sharp. As the light sparks against the jewels on the pen, the pain in my wrist sparks too.

  ‘What am I supposed to write about?’ I ask.

  Amma nods as though this is an excellent question.

  ‘Your pain,’ she says. ‘There are studies that show if you write about your physical pain it helps you heal your mental pain.’

  I curl my top lip. ‘That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ I say.

  ‘Also,’ Amma continues, ‘it will be good preparation for when you leave the flat. You will be able to record your progress.’

  She taps the diary then stands up, clearing the wrapping paper from my bed as she begins humming. The pain is getting worse; the electric shocks in my wrist flash so furiously that my muscles begin to spasm. I drop the pen, trying to breathe through the pain the way my physiotherapist has taught me.

  Remember to breathe, he said. People with chronic pain tense all their muscles and forget to relax.

  I relax. The spasms ease. But there is still a trembling in my fingers, the feeling of electricity surging through my nerves.

  ‘Amma,’ I say, ‘this talk of me leaving the flat …’

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she says.

  She carries on collecting.

  I shake my head. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

  Amma stands straight, holding the balled-up paper to her chest as though it’s a fat, multi-coloured baby. ‘But of course it will happen. You promised me,’ she says.

  She holds my gaze for a moment before taking the paper and stuffing it into the bin. I hear the crackle of layers crushing into each other.

  ‘Amma,’ I say. ‘The pain …’

  When she turns to look at me I can see her eyes flickering with new plans.

  ‘We will take it slowly. Walking down and up the stairs a few steps at a time. Sitting on the balcony so you get used to the air.’

  ‘Why would I need to—’

  ‘Then we will walk to the park. Feed the ducks.’

  ‘I don’t like d—’

  ‘Soon you will be able to go out on your own. See your friends. It is like the doctor says: a little exercise and a healthy social life will lift your mood.’

  The birds begin squawking, flapping their wings as the walls collapse around me. The full force of a blazing sun hits my body, wind blowing leaves across my face before sucking me up into a hurricane that spins me to the sky.

  I roll my eyes. ‘My mood is just fine,’ I say.

  Amma lists the symptoms that indicate it isn’t.

  - Loss of interest in daily activities.

  - Avoiding contact with other people.

  - Irritability and anger.

  - Reluctance to talk about feelings.

  She pushes her chin deep into her neck.

  ‘We all know about the last one, yes?’

  I shuffle down flat on my back. Getting me to ‘talk about my feelings’ is Amma’s number-one mission. She tried to get me to talk to a doctor and she tried to get me to talk to a counsellor. She tried to get me to talk in a support group and even tried to get me to talk to her. But the doctor was too clinical, the counsellor too soft, the support group made me want to jump out of the window. While speaking to Amma feels like speaking to an alien race.

  The problem is simple. Nobody can understand my life because nobody else has lived it.

  Except, maybe, for you.

  ‘Make sure you write something in your Pain Diary tonight,’ Amma says now.

  Pain Diary. Just the name of it makes my stomach coil. I exhale slowly, waiting for my body to inhale naturally. This is a trick the physiotherapist showed me, a way of distracting my brain from the pain. When she speaks again Amma’s voice is soft, hopeful.

  ‘Will you at least try?’

  My chest inflates. I breathe out.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  I wait until I hear her feet going down the stairs then sit back up, gulp down the painkillers and gaze at the wall opposite. It still has the timeline of my life across it. The baby pictures, the teenage ones and there, smack in the middle, the picture of us on my seventh birthday. It used to be my favourite photo. Before you disappeared I kept it on my bedside table in a frame I’d made out of cereal-box cardboard and sweet wrappers. The wrappers always fell off so I had to eat more chocolates whenever I wanted to fix it.

  In the photo our faces are pressed cheek to cheek as we sit in those absurd party dresses we wore whenever we could get away with it. Amma bought them in the January sales: a pair of peach-coloured garments covered with ribbons, sparkles and so many ruffles we looked as if we were made out of whipped cream. You have your tanned arms wrapped around my brown neck, and that elastic smile that stretched your face out like a rugby ball. The curly mop of your hair is flattened against my cheek as I smile my own gap-toothed grin towards the camera. As I look at the photo I remember how, after it was taken, the ribbons on our dresses were so tangled we hobbled around for the rest of the afternoon pretending we were conjoined twins.

  The memory comes like an extra coin in the pocket: it has always been there but finding it again is a happy surprise. I lie on my back, rummaging through my mind for more memories. I look up at the cracked ceiling, images of our life flickering across it: you climbing down trees with twigs in your hair, us sliding down the railings to the bottom of the estate. I see flashing shots of nineties memorabilia: tie-dyed T-shirts, a Jagged Little Pill CD, the Commodore 64 your brother owned when really he wanted a Sega Mega Drive. Then there’s the scene of when your mother decided to leave. Us sitting on the rug in front of your television, pretending to play chess (though neither of us knew how), Jonathan in the back, sulking over something or other, and your mother at the dining-room table with her head in her hands.

  I sense the weight of the diary on my lap. It feels as heavy as the bricks of the walls around me. My eyes begin to sting and my throat tightens with a sharp twist as I lift my hand to hurl the book across the room.

  But something, a small seed of thought, makes me stop. Streetlamps shine a honey glow, th
e blaze of car headlights zooms across the walls as the thought grows and blossoms. I pick up the jewel-encrusted pen from the bedside table and grip it tightly. Maybe I should write it down. All the things that happened to us the way I remember, as well as the life I have now. I could document it all and then maybe I would understand it. And you, Marianne, you would understand too.

  When I have this thought, something amazing happens. You wouldn’t believe it.

  I smile.

  And that is just at the thought.

  The Constellation of Stinging Nettles

  When the illness first came I tried not to remember anything. Memories are like stinging nettles. At first you don’t realize they’ve stung you and by the time you do, the needles are already buried under your skin, making you itch until all you can think about is ways to get rid of the sting. I tried to get rid of you, Marianne. I hid all our toys beneath my bed, removed all the pictures from their frames yet still, even when I try to forget, you’re there.

  The first memory I have of you is all knickers and legs. You can’t have been more than six at the time but had somehow flipped yourself into a handstand against the wall of my flat and couldn’t get back down. The skirt of your dress was so long it covered not only the bottom half of your upside-down body but also your head. I remember the sight of your tanned legs against the cream of the wall, the tiny flower print on your frilly yellow knickers. Even then I was jealous of you because all my underwear was plain and white and bought from the local pound shop.

  Memories are slippery. Although this image of you is clear in my mind, I can’t remember what you said as I helped flip you back up. Whether you were dizzy as the blood drained from your head, whether you tried to teach me the same trick and I point-blank refused. But I do remember thinking you were someone I wanted to be friends with, even when all I could see were your knickers and legs. I had no other friends on Westhill and you fitted the bill (i.e. you were my age, you were a girl).

  Amma had been worried about me at the time because I hadn’t been mixing well at school. I had a habit of hiding from the other children, inventing my own games in quiet little corners and screaming at anyone who found me. At home I stayed superglued to Amma’s side, asking her never-ending questions as she did the housework. After I took an interest in you she regularly pushed me out of the flat, making me knock on your door, then, when you answered, telling me not to rush home. Amma decided we were best friends before either of us did.

  At school we did every project together. There was the time we tried to research a tourist brochure of our local area but the only facts we found out were how the city was (roughly) in the middle of the country, had a cheese named after it and was once home to Daniel Lambert, the fattest man in England. It took us a while to come up with a slogan. At first we thought of Leicester: in the middle of everything, then became more ambitious with Leicester! Eat cheese! Get fat! Get famous! Eventually we decided to steal Rebecca Knight’s idea: Leicester – the heart of England. Rebecca Knight sat on the top table and was so clever she didn’t have to do partner work. She was a safe bet.

  When it came to the actual content of the brochure we decided to narrow our focus to facts about Westhill Estate and, more specifically, the residents of Bosworth House and their pets. Most of those people have left now. The Pattersons still live on the fourth floor (one mother, three boys, two British bulldogs) and Sandy Burke and her twins live on the first (three cats), but other people like old Mrs Simmons across the hall (two budgies and a parakeet) have gone.

  People move in and out of Bosworth House all the time. In your old flat next door, a Somali family are getting ready to move after – allegedly – winning the lottery. This was controversial because the Ahmed family are Muslim and the mother had been buying lottery tickets secretly at the corner shop, even though it’s against her religion to gamble. You should have heard the way they argued about it. I didn’t understand what they said but it sounded bitter. Their two boys slept in the room that used to be yours and, whenever their parents argued, hid there until it blew over. Through the walls, I’d hear them debating whether it was better to do a water-bomb attack from the third- or fourth-floor balcony (third had better range, fourth had better height). But just as I got drawn into the debate they began speaking in fast beats of Somali that washed straight over me.

  I miss their voices. The sound filled the emptiness the way your voice did when you spoke to me at night. It was a blessing and a curse that your bed was pushed up against the same partition wall as mine. If you spoke loudly I could hear most of what you said, but if you lowered your voice it was like listening to a radio that keeps losing its signal. If it was past nine o’clock I’d tell you to shut up because I needed to sleep. I believed in sleep then because Amma fed me the lie that without enough of it not only would I stop growing but I would shrink. I was too small already and wouldn’t have been so rude if I wasn’t afraid of disappearing. Still, you never seemed to mind, carrying on with your jibber-jabber right through the night.

  ‘If you could have a superpower, what (mumble, mumble)? … I (mumble) invisible. I read about this man who (mumble, mumble) but there was a picture of him right there so (mumble, mumble). Or maybe (mumble) was invincible.’

  I kept my mini dictionary in my robe pocket, and wanted to check what ‘invincible’ meant but was scared that, if I did, the lack of sleep would make me shrivel into a speck of dust. Eventually my fear of shrinking was outweighed by my need to know and I’d end up sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor, looking up all the unknown words you bombarded me with.

  I was the queen of words back then. I’d constantly look up meanings in my mini dictionary, which you found funny and useful, and your messy-haired brother found plain irritating. He used to shove me in the shoulder when I used a word he didn’t understand (which was often), making sure you were looking the other way when he did it. Sometimes he’d snatch my mini dictionary and wave it over my head until I’d have to jump up and down like a Jack Russell to retrieve it. Jonathan always knew how to rattle me. It was his one and only gift in life.

  I suppose you won’t remember much about Bosworth House, it’s been so long. You probably remember the size of it, looming high and wide as it sits on the side of the hill, but you’ll have forgotten the details. The bars they extended on the balconies so that people wouldn’t throw themselves (or each other) over the side. The narrow steps with a rank stink we only found out was piss when Jonathan told us in a well-what-else-would-it-be tone one day. The way the council comes and repaints the outside walls each and every year but still doesn’t send anyone to fix the stupid lifts. The view from the fourth floor where you can see down to the whole of Westhill Estate, white-painted blocks of flats snaking down to the main road like vertebrae. We used to sit up there on the fourth floor with our legs poking out from the gaps in the railings, swinging them in the breeze as we sucked orange-flavoured ice-lollies. We’d turn to each other and shout, ‘Open wide and say ahhrr!’ in our poshest doctor voices, then stick out tangerine tongues at each other before droning out the sound. We tried to see who could carry the note the longest. You always won.

  No, when I think through the logic of it I don’t believe you’d remember any of it. I don’t blame you. You haven’t had ten years of lying in the same bed with nothing but the same memories running through your head. That’s all I’ve had, you see. That and Amma.

  ‘It’s my job to take care of you, shona,’ she tells me on my bad days. ‘I will never leave you, Ravine. You cannot be selfish when you’re a mother.’

  When she says this, I don’t remind her about yours.

  She was beautiful, your mum, or at least she had been in the photographs. She had a whole row of them lined up in silver frames on the dresser in your living room. Glossy shots of her young grinning face, ruffled blonde eighties hair, pink silky lipstick circling her mouth. When she was drunk she would tell us about when she was a beauty queen. We imagined her on stage in an eve
ning gown, tiara perched on big pouffy hair as she rolled her hand in a royal wave. After she’d gone we found a picture under the bed of her sitting on her knees, skin tanned brown as horse hide, chin dipped down to her collarbone as her breasts lay exposed.

  Your mother was always so happy in those photographs – even the nudey one. She hardly ever smiled when we were around and never at me. I had a habit of irritating her without meaning to. Every time I called her Mrs Dickerson she’d visibly flinch.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, just call me Elaine,’ she’d say.

  I’d nod my head. ‘Yes, Mrs Dickerson.’

  In fact, the only time I saw your mother use her photograph-smile was with your dad. Her eyes would light up, every tooth on display. Then, five minutes later she’d be throwing plates at his head. When she sat me, you and Jonathan down to explain he’d moved to live in ‘the castle’ in the middle of the city, we all believed her. It was only later that we found out this was HM Prison Leicester, which did in fact look like a giant castle, though wasn’t home to any lords or ladies. You never saw him again.

  On the day that would change everything, the same day we were pretend-playing chess in your living room, Mrs Dickerson only began smiling after she’d opened the letter. It had been lying there on the pile she always banned you from looking at – white envelopes with official type, brown envelopes with red writing at the edges of their plastic windows. But this letter was different. It had a loose handwritten scrawl across it, and when your mother opened it she didn’t throw a mug against the wall like she did when she read the other letters, but sat upright in her seat. We were eight then and so used to her slump – lying across sofas, draped across table tops – that when she sat up straight we both looked up from the chessboard. Her pale-blue eyes were scanning the pages, dropping down to the bottom of a sheet before flicking quickly to the next. When she’d finished she simply sat, staring at the bundle of papers in her hands. Eventually she smiled. Not the same as the toothy smiles in the pictures, wide and exaggerated, but soft, slow and full of hope. It wasn’t long after that she got the vodka bottle from the kitchen and pulled us into a barn dance.