Me on the Floor, Bleeding

by Jenny J

‘This kick-off.’

  He kissed me with smoke in his mouth and amazingly enough it came out through my nose, and we laughed at that and I asked him if he played guitar and he looked at me, puzzled, and said:

  ‘How could you know that?’

  I smiled as if I knew it all, but I said nothing about the blisters I had felt. Like all guys who play guitar he loved to talk about his music so he talked and talked and talked about it and I listened good-naturedly as generations of women have done before me, and I thought about the things my body had just experienced. And what I had just experienced.

  Because this – this was something else. It made my previous insignificant sexual experiences fade to nothing. Made that skinny, sweaty internet boy who I wasted my virginity on – as well as a few naked fumbling winter weeks – dissolve and disappear.

  This was like a punch in the stomach!

  A smack on the chin!

  A saw in your thumb!

  So powerful that I lost my breath, lost track of time and space. Not because it was perfect, because it wasn’t, but so incredibly unsettling. At one point I didn’t know which way was up and which was down.

  With him, the internet guy, I had no such problems orientating myself in space and time. I would easily have been able to point out the direction south-southwest if anyone had come past during the act itself and asked.

  For over two hours we lay there, Justin and me, with our bodies pressed tight together, each with a headphone in one ear. We listened to Kate Bush and discussed American wrestling. Don’t ask why.

  What we did not talk about was missing mothers.

  When the battery went dead and the music fell silent, we fell silent too. Justin pulled me close and hugged me from behind. I felt his ribcage against my back, felt it moving up and down. His thighs against the back of mine. His long body sort of cupped around my body. He was warm. His breath gradually became slower. He fell asleep.

  For a long time all I did was lie there, staring straight ahead of me. I saw the yellow morning light filter through the lace curtains, saw it turn white and become daylight. I sensed a profound and overwhelming feeling of happiness, the happiness of being close to another person, another person’s body. I think a little salty tear actually trickled from my eye. And with that on my cheek I fell asleep.

  When I woke up it was cold and he was gone.

  The Horizon Starts to Tilt

  It was almost three thirty and my train was leaving in just over an hour. I circled Justin’s house like a restless spirit. It looked dead inside, as if no one was home, and the cherry-red Volvo was still not back on the drive. Ideally I would have phoned, of course, but I didn’t have his number. I didn’t even know his name, for goodness’ sake.

  At last I rang the bell, stamping nervously up and down on the top step, but no one opened and I was both relieved and disappointed. I wrote my name and mobile number on an old receipt and pushed it onto a nail that was sticking out of the door. Then I went, without turning round.

  I had waited as long as possible before leaving Mum’s house because it felt wrong, somehow. We always left together, me and Mum. We left at three forty-five even though it hardly took more than five or ten minutes to get to the station. Mum was definitely a pessimist when it came to time.

  She drove well, my mum, calmly and confidently, and always to the uninterrupted flow of talk on Radio P1. But she went mental if anyone broke the traffic regulations. If anyone overtook illegally she could get so worked up that she would sit there shouting behind the wheel. Those were the only times I heard her swear. At best she wrote down the registration number and phoned the police; at worst she followed the car until it stopped and asked the guilty driver for an explanation. It was awful. It not only made me feel excruciatingly embarrassed but also really uncomfortable.

  If other road users did not commit traffic offences we usually had time to listen to the news on Ekot – even the shipping news, if there were queues – before we reached the station.

  But not now. Not today.

  I ran to the bus stop. If I missed the bus I would miss the train and I didn’t have the money for another ticket, but after about twenty metres a thought struck me like a flash of lightning and I swung round and ran back.

  Quickly I turned the key in the lock and rushed through the hall and into the kitchen. Then I came to an abrupt halt. I hesitated, hearing my own breathing amplified in my ears. I plucked up my courage and opened the drawer in slow motion. The pens rolled around and on top of each other. My hands were trembling as I picked up the cerise diary and put it in my bag.

  The train rushed towards something that looked like dusk but was in actual fact a huge black thundercloud. I stared out at the countryside, at the horizon that tilted as we rounded the curves on sloping rails.

  I had bought a coffee even though I was as pumped up on adrenaline as if I had been swimming in a hole in the ice. I swallowed a few deeply desperate mouthfuls. It tasted burnt and bitter. I stared straight ahead, feeling tense.

  I was about to do something extreme. Something shocking. Something forbidden. I released the elastic that held the pages closed and slowly opened the cover, having time to read her name, printed in the capital letters so characteristic of her, on the first page, JANA MÜLLER, before shutting it again. I felt hot and stood up restlessly, because I needed to go to the toilet. Didn’t I?

  The toilet was claustrophobically small and had a window of milk-white plastic. It looked as if you could open it about fifteen centimetres. I climbed up onto the hand basin and pushed down on the metal strip running along the top edge, hanging onto it with my fingertips. It was difficult with only one hand but even so the window opened about a couple of millimetres. Cold air whirled in along with a loud whining noise. I crouched down and almost lost my balance when one foot slipped into the hand basin, but I managed to regain it by pressing my hand against the paper towel holder. I hung there with all my weight on the window, which now opened a few more centimetres. The whining became a deafening scream and my hair whipped angrily about. I so wanted to stick my head out of the window but I couldn’t, either because the window was too small or my head was too large, swollen from all the questions. I had to content myself with gazing longingly out. I saw the sky. The sky wasn’t the only thing I saw: black clouds piled up against a dark grey backdrop.

  Help.

  Why was my heart beating so loudly?

  Help me.

  Why was it beating as fast as if it wanted to beat its way out?

  Suddenly someone tugged on the door handle and that made me jump.

  I hopped to the floor, unlocked the door, and walked out, defiantly meeting the eyes of those that sought mine.

  When I got back to my seat the diary was there, of course. Where else would it be? It gave off an almost unnatural cerise pink glow in the dim carriage. I looked at it for a long time, gathering courage. I took a painkiller and swallowed hard. Then I whispered:

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  With the pulse in my thumb beating like a hammer, I slipped off the pink elastic band again and opened the book. Then I changed my mind and shut it, and then immediately opened it again. I found myself in the middle of February. I scanned the pages, at first not daring to look at anything in particular. Considering how much time she spent with her diary there was surprisingly little written in it, on this page at least. Just a few brief notes about university:

  UNI:

  8 - 10 A.M. LECTURE DEV. PSYCH. (ATTACHMENT THEORY)

  10 A.M. - 12.00 PREPARE LECTURE DEV. PSYCH

  (PERCEPTION AND COGNITIVE DEV.)

  12.00 - 1.00 P.M. LUNCH

  1 - 5 P.M. WORK ON THESIS

  I turned over a few pages. Day after day, page after page, were filled with similar entries: the things she planned to do at university. As I read I could make out a pattern. Every Monday and Thursday it said “FOOD SHOPPING” and on alternative weeks it said “WASHING” on Saturday and “CLEANING” on Sunday. I flicked quickly t
hrough the pages and saw that these reminders were written all the way through to December. And every other weekend it said “COLLECT MAJA 17.33!” on the Friday, a simple “MAJA HERE” on the Saturday and “MAJA LEAVES 16.24!” on the Sunday. The times were ridiculously exact.

  The matter-of-fact entries concerning me made me disappointed. I realised I had hoped for something more, something unreasonable. I banged my head against the seat in front of me because I had been so naïve. With the cut on my forehead stinging I realised that she would never have drawn a little heart around my name, if that was what I had been hoping for. It just wasn’t her, and I knew it. I hadn’t actually wanted her to draw a heart, especially. I only wanted her to reveal herself to me, reveal her feelings in a heart or anything at all, in a few words coloured by feelings, in some word that had broken away from that controlling pen.

  I took a deep breath and opened the diary at the current week. It said as usual: “COLLECT MAJA 17.33!” on Friday, and the worry began to flap around in my stomach again like an anxious bird.

  So, she had planned on doing it, but she hadn’t done it. The notes in the diary were law. I knew that all right.

  What had happened?

  What had happened?

  I looked up at the grey plastic mug holder and my cold coffee. I drank it down in one gulp as I stared out of the window at the dark forests and fields rushing past outside.

  I looked down at the diary again. My thoughts were interrupted by something unexpected, something that stood out from the strict weekly routine. On Wednesday the eleventh of April, two days before I was due to arrive, it said: “DR ROOS, VRINNEVI 14.00.”

  What was this?

  Was she ill?

  Was she seriously ill?

  And in that case why hadn’t she told me?

  I felt as if all the blood was leaving my body.

  Vrinnevi? Isn’t that what the big hospital in Norrköping was called? I was almost certain it was.

  I went back a few pages and my heart was beating so hard I was sure it could be heard from the outside. There was another entry about Dr Roos, on the eleventh of January, but of course I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t met Dr Roos the previous year as well. During my search a further two names appeared, Lundgren and Soltani. I counted five planned meetings with Lundgren in total: two in January, two in February and one in March. She had met Soltani three times: two in March and one in April. Was this connected to the hospital too? In the middle of February there was something strange: “CONTACT JONAS RE FAM. INT.”

  Contact Jonas?

  “Jonas” as in Dad?

  Contact Jonas re what?

  What?

  An Unlamented Satellite

  ‘I’ve made that fried cheese you like.’

  Dad walked towards me holding a spatula in one hand and dressed in a pretty awful lemon-yellow shirt.

  ‘Halloumi?’

  ‘No, you know, that cheese in breadcrumbs, with Czech potato salad, the kind with peas and … that sauce … what’s it called? We ate it at Bistro Bohème.’

  He looked at me, his brown eyes asking me to help him out. He had a tendency to forget words the day after he had been drinking. Mum told me it was called aphasia but Dad got insanely irritated if I used that word. “Insult me if you have to,” he had told me, “but not with Jana’s words!”

  I stumbled on the mat and it occurred to me that for the first time in our lives we had a hangover at the same time. It felt tragic.

  ‘Oh, what’s it called?’

  He looked intently at the hall floor as if he thought the answer was written in the cracks between the floorboards.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, and I really didn’t. Even if I had known I wouldn’t have wanted to help him, wouldn’t have wanted to cover up for him and his shag hangover.

  ‘That sauce, you know. Sauce … what the hell is it called? It’s got egg yolk in it.’

  I shrugged. He helped me off with my jacket and was overly careful with my thumb. Then he gave me a quick, light hug, which I wanted to be longer and harder, and I detected a faint smell of alcohol, well-hidden by the more pleasant fragrances of soap and aftershave. Triumphantly he let go of me and burst out:

  ‘Tartare sauce!’

  ‘Ah.’

  He took hold of my hand.

  ‘God, what does your bandage look like! What have you done with it?’

  I looked at the bandage. He was right. It looked disgusting. It was stained with dirt, grass and dried blood.

  ‘And what have you done to your forehead?’

  I touched my forehead, feeling for the plaster. I looked in the hall mirror and saw the skulls had come unstuck on one side, revealing the cut. Perfect. I wondered how long I had been wandering around with that hanging off my forehead. I pulled it off, crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into my pocket.

  What could I say? That I had been hit on the head by a stone? One that I had thrown myself? To give him yet another reason to believe I was self-harming? I recalled a T-shirt Enzo had that said: I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself.

  Hilarious.

  ‘It’s not a problem. I fell. On some gravel.’

  ‘Did you?’ answered Dad.

  His eyes were wide and questioning. He was waiting for me to go on. He would have to wait. He was not the only one who could withhold information.

  Contact Jonas.

  After a while he gave up and returned to the kitchen. I remained in the hall, unlacing my boots deliberately slowly with my right hand and then stepping out of them. I picked up a framed photo from the hall chest of drawers, one that had stood there forever. It showed me in the foreground at about five or six years old, swinging high up in the air. I’m fuzzy, out of focus. The wind has blown my dark brown hair off my face but a strand has fallen down over my nose and divided my face in two. On my feet are yellow Wellingtons. (I remember them very well. I loved them so much that I wore them long after I had grown out of them, with my toes slightly curled. I developed an odd way of walking, with short steps, waddling like a penguin. Eventually Dad worked out what was going on and bought a new pair that I refused to wear.) In the background is Dad, smiling, his arms outstretched and ready to push the swing, his contours sharp and clear. He looks so young. He looks about twenty.

  I replaced the photo and thought: I’m hovering like a satellite. Disconnected. I have no brothers or sisters to lean on and dismayingly few friends. There is no generation before my parents, no paternal grandparents to offer stability and history, and even though my maternal grandparents do exist they are absent, in another country, the image of them blurred by distance and time. The roof constructed by my parents was precarious and full of holes. I thought:

  Do we need a roof?

  Do we need walls? Something to take the blows?

  One more disappearance and I would be alone in the world. I would disappear into space like a forgotten and unlamented satellite.

  I gave my reflection the evil eye and in a whisper forced myself to give up the self-pity. There won’t be another disappearance. There will be a coming back!

  I walked towards the kitchen, leaned against the doorframe, and stayed there. I studied Dad, who was standing at the cooker in the shirt that was either very old or very new, because I had never seen it before. He smiled at me and I smiled politely back. He turned the cheese and I saw the fat leap and splutter in the frying pan. I felt so dead tired that I didn’t even make an attempt to help. He had made an effort by laying the table and lighting long white candles, but despite the nice touches I still felt that he was trying to hide something from me, though I didn’t know what. Was it his alcohol-stinking yesterday with Denise, or something I really ought to know? About Mum? About himself? About me? About Fam. Int?

  ‘You’ve made it look nice,’ I said.

  I wanted to add something but my words were forming thickly, like treacle. I wanted to say that he was all right. That he was an idiot. That Mum had never turned up. And th
at it was just as well. That I had been drunk and had sex with the first person to come along and who happened to be a neighbour. That I had spent the entire weekend alone in her big house. That I hated him. That I would always love him.

  But I said nothing, because how do you talk about such things? Suddenly he said:

  ‘So what did you and Jana do, then?’

  He stood with his back to me, looking for something in a cupboard.

  It made me jump. Now. Now was the time to tell him.

  Now.

  No. Yes, now.

  Now!

  But I didn’t. I tried instead to sound casual when I answered:

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘Well, you must have done something!’

  He laughed, but it was forced. Then he turned around, expectantly, drying his hands on the tea towel that he’d tucked into his back pocket. I looked at him. I had to tell him now.

  Now.

  Now.

  Now!

  But I said nothing. Because suddenly I noticed I was angry. Furiously angry.

  ‘Why do you always ask what we have done and never how it was? How I got on?’

  I could have answered my own questions because I knew exactly why. He was worried that we hadn’t done anything, worried that she had sat there reading constantly, that we had been indoors all weekend. And of course it had often been like that. But I liked it like that. Didn’t I? Wasn’t I allowed to like it?

  ‘Well, but …’

  ‘We did nothing special.’

  He looked pleadingly at me.

  ‘Maja, I only want …’

  ‘Well stop wanting! Stop wanting her to do things, us to do things,’ I said. ‘You know nothing about her! I didn’t see her read once.’

  That was certainly true. I hadn’t seen her. Read.

  ‘Have I even mentioned that?’ he said, hurt, and sat down.

  We ate in silence. I tried cutting the cheese with a fork because I couldn’t use a knife without my thumb resonating with pain. I felt the tears burning behind my eyelids. I stared stubbornly down at my plate and felt his anxious look. The cheese slid around and wouldn’t stay in one place. Small green peas fell off the edge of the plate and onto the table.