Forgotten Girl

by Naomi Jacobs

  Maybe.

  I feel like crying right now, but I can’t, I have a class to teach. I need to get it together. You know, if I think about it, I really didn’t stand a chance; these were my experiences before I even knew about boys, and eventually when I did meet a boy he ended up trying to kill me – my first boyfriend tried to strangle the life out of me, while he was under the influence of drugs. I often wonder what would have happened if his best friend hadn’t pulled him off me.

  Well, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

  And through all of this, the only thing I ever wanted was for my dad to come and get me, and take me away from these bad men. Except that never happened, so instead I buried it.

  Ben says that maybe I seek men out who remind me of my dad because I feel I need rescuing, that the little girl inside me still needs rescuing. And I do, you know. Even Karl, the break-ups and then the make-ups and the arguments . . . we seem to be going around in the same circle. I am the victim, he is my rescuer, and then everything is okay for a while. Until it begins again. But my dad is the only man I have ever trusted, the only man I feel safe around. I don’t know what to do.

  And, well, the worst of it came out on the stairs last month. That was different, that was a flashback on a whole other level. A level I don’t understand. Why did my mind split like that?

  Maybe I need to tell someone. I might tell Georgie – she’s my fellow psychology student; maybe she can figure out what it was. I think maybe this is the real reason I am studying psychology, so that eventually I can stop depending on therapy and become my own therapist.

  Maybe.

  Callie’s just pulled up in her car. Well, uni starts next month. I will talk to Georgie then, fresh start. I have a good job, a business that is going well, a beautiful son, and a great boyfriend. Maybe things will only get better from here on out.

  Yeah, they can only get better.

  Maybe.

  But they didn’t.

  I put the paper down; the grey afternoon clouds outside made the room feel dark. It felt empty, devoid of life, numb, like me. The tears had stopped. I wiped my face and tried to think, but my mind was blank. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know where to go.

  Outside, I heard the faint sound of Simone’s car door close and Leo calling the cat to him. After splashing my face with cold water, I rushed down the stairs to see Leo taking off his shoes at the door.

  ‘Hiya, Leo,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t notice my swollen eyes. He looked up at me and the smile on his face immediately wiped any sad thoughts from my mind. He was so happy to see me.

  ‘Oooh, I’ve missed you.’ I threw my arms around him and squeezed him tight.

  ‘I made you a mask.’ He pulled it out from behind his back. Colourfully and carefully decorated in green and blue with glitter and feathers on, it looked like something I would wear to a Mardi Gras.

  ‘Wow.’ I looked at it in awe and then at him. ‘You did this? No way, Jose.’

  He nodded proudly. ‘Yeah, I made one for me as well, but mine’s more of a boy’s one. Look, it’s got the Brazil colours on it.’ He took a yellow-, blue- and green-painted one from his bag and handed it to me.

  ‘Oh my dayz! Leo Jacobs, you are, like, sooooo talented; you’re, like, this mega awesome artist. Who knew? Have you been keeping secrets from me?’ I asked him.

  He giggled and shook his head. We walked into the living room together. Simone was already in the kitchen, putting the shopping away.

  ‘Yeah, you know I’m good at art, Mum, like Granddad and JJ and Simone,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘I know, but these are on, like, another level, so wicked.’ I stared at the masks, beaming.

  ‘And we went skateboarding and I did a kickflip one-eighty,’ he stated proudly.

  ‘Shut the front door! Really?’ I had no clue what he was talking about. ‘What did your mates think?’

  ‘Oh, they know I’m good at boarding, no biggy. I’m gonna try a heelflip next time.’ He laughed and went into the kitchen.

  ‘Kriss biscuits. Nice one, top one.’ I followed him in awe, thinking, Where does this kid get his confidence from? I watched him make himself a juice, while Simone told me of their weekend.

  Leo placed his glass by the sink.

  ‘Can I go and play on my Xbox, Mum?’ He widened his eyes, reminding me of a cute puppy dog.

  ‘Err . . .’ My instinct was to look at Simone, but I really wanted to be his mum at that moment and make this small but significant decision. ‘Have you got any homework?’ Yes, that’s what mums would say.

  He looked up at the ceiling and retrieved the answer from his ten-year-old memory bank. ‘Naaa, did it all on Friday.’

  ‘Cool; go on then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes!’ He was out of the kitchen and upstairs faster than Linford Christie.

  ‘You all right, sis?’ Simone walked over to me and gave me a big hug.

  I sank into her arms and gave a deep sigh. ‘Yeah, I am now that you guys are here.’

  She pulled back and took a good look at me and, in true Simone style, like a bartender doling out advice to a drunk customer, she gave it to me straight, no chaser. ‘You look awful.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s what will happen to you when you cry loads while reading that half of your life has been really smegged up and most of it is full of tosser crap that’s sent your mind bipolar-bear mental.’

  Simone laughed. ‘Bipolar bear?’

  ‘Well, I’ve gotta laugh, sis. If I don’t, well, I think it will send me like . . . like Loopy Larry.’

  ‘Loopy Larry?’

  ‘Do you have a penny, missus?’ I reminded her and held out my hand.

  ‘Oh my God, I’d forgotten about him,’ she chuckled. ‘Nay, things won’t ever get that bad.’

  ‘They nearly did. I mean, look at me now; she’s totally left the building and I’m like fifteen AGAIN! Like the first time she left wasn’t bad enough, Adult Naomi has some frickin’ need to split and leave me here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I knew I was talking about the adult me in the third person again, but Simone didn’t seem disturbed by it.

  ‘Well, this has happened before.’ My throat was tightening; my eyes were beginning to burn.

  ‘Before?’ Simone frowned, and from her face, I could tell she had no clue. ‘When?’

  ‘Three years ago, 2005, except it only lasted for an hour and she was six again, and she didn’t tell anyone until she told Georgie at uni, and then Georgie suggested she go and see someone, like a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Oh, right, okay.’ Simone went quiet. This was the first time she was hearing of this, I could tell.

  ‘And then, like, well, all that stuff about when I was little . . . I don’t remember.’ The tears fell. ‘Someone hurt her, Sim. Hurt me, like really hurt me.’

  She stepped to me and held me tightly while I cried. ‘I know, babe, I know.’

  ‘And I don’t know what to do now. I mean, why am I fifteen again? Is it because of what happened? Do I have to do something? I don’t understand what’s happening.’

  ‘What did Adult Naomi do?’ If this third person concept was strange to her, she seemed to accept it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I released myself from my sister’s embrace and sought the kitchen paper. ‘Total snot fest,’ I said, mocking my dripping nose.

  ‘Look, you’re still laughing, even though you’re feeling . . .’

  ‘Majorly sad.’ I blew my nose.

  ‘Yeah.’ Simone smiled. ‘So what would you – I mean, Adult Naomi – do?’

  I thought about it for a second and what I’d read about her in the diary entries. ‘Get frickin’ high most probably,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not an option.’

  ‘Oh, hell no,’ I agreed. The way I felt, I would never pick up another spliff as long as I lived.

  I thought for a while longer. Her friends were out of the picture for now. Katie had four
children to deal with. Dean was away on his music travels. Eve was gone and had no clue what was happening and hadn’t for the past four years. Art was a motorway ride away and had no clue what was going on. I didn’t want to read a book or watch a DVD.

  There was a loud crash and a bang from the floor above us. Leo. Of course, duh!

  I looked at Simone as if I had just been searching for my glasses and found them on my head.

  I went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Are you okay, son?’ I shouted up. It was the first time I had called him ‘son’ and I liked it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he shouted back. ‘It was my Xbox games; they fell off my shelf.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  I looked up at the photos on the wall and that was when I had my own first memory. I didn’t know whether it was because of what I had read in the diary pages, if it was a flashback, or some weird flashforward, but it was like a screen had flipped down and someone was projecting an image onto a white canvas. I could see Adult Naomi clearly lying at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t this house; it was another house. The carpet colour was different. She was half naked because she had just got out of the bath, and was wrapped in a towel and had fallen down the stairs. She was distressed, scared, and in pain and, yes, in her mind, she was six years old again and didn’t know where she was or what to do. Adult Naomi was, like, there, but not – the part of her mind that was her was watching from above, cut off from her body. She had no control over what was happening. The six-year-old girl had control and lay there for ages, scared and confused. Then she saw a photograph of Leo on the wall above her and it brought her back into the moment. It made her realize she was in the future and she needed to let go and let Adult Naomi back into her body.

  Seeing this made me feel dizzy so I sat on the bottom step of the stairs, realizing that this had happened before. It hadn’t happened to me. But it had happened to Adult Naomi. It had happened to this body I was in.

  It made me think of the letter: fragmentation of her personality.

  So it was a picture of Leo that saved her, stopped it from happening. Until now.

  I stared at Leo’s wellington boots.

  ‘Leo,’ I shouted up to him.

  ‘Yes, Mum?’

  Mum. Cool! ‘Do you wanna go to the park with me?’

  ‘The park?’ He came to the top of the stairs. ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘I know, but we’ve got boots.’

  He shook his head ‘Naaa.’

  I felt despondent.

  ‘Actually . . .’ He came back to the top of the stairs. ‘Let me finish this level and we’ll go.’

  ‘Safe.’ I jumped up and pulled my Ugly boots on.

  Leo and I went to the park under the clouds of a soft drizzle rain and splashed in the puddles. We played in the mud, making shapes with twigs, and tried to guess each other’s pictures. We fed stale bread to the ducks and geese by the lake and nuts to the squirrels. The swings and roundabouts were wet and slippery, but it didn’t stop us from jumping on them and laughing loudly while the spinning motion made our stomachs flip over. We told each other jokes. He didn’t get mine, and I laughed at his anyway.

  The sun came out eventually and three rainbows formed. I told Leo of how I had once followed a rainbow and actually found an end. It had lit up the grass and the trees and everywhere had a golden glow and I had felt magical, special even, that I had found the end of a rainbow. Leo reminded me of the time Adult Naomi had found a four-leaf clover before she started her holistic therapy business and Art had framed it for her. I pretended to remember and stated that I was lucky in my life, especially lucky to have a child like him.

  He smiled and went off to make mud castles while I swung on the swings and watched him. Adult Naomi had been through so much in her life, so much crap. But I reckoned that Leo made it all right, that whatever she couldn’t do for herself, she did for Leo, and I knew deep down that she had made sure he’d got the life she never had. I was glad she’d stuck it out and that she had somehow protected him from a lot of what she had been through. She was a good mum, it was obvious, but I think somewhere along the way, Adult Naomi had forgotten herself. She had forgotten who she really was. But, I thought, had she ever really known?

  We arrived home a couple of hours later, wet, muddy, but happy I felt so much better, lighter and free. Simone, Leo and I ate a lovely roast dinner, watched a movie, and played Monopoly. We laughed all night and then I put Leo to bed.

  ‘Tell me another story, Mum.’ Leo pulled the covers up to his chin.

  I sat on the edge of his bed and thought for a while, and then I told him a story of a brother and sister, who were a skateboarding-loving prince and a hip-hop music-loving princess, but the princess was kidnapped by a wicked witch and given a forgetting potion. She forgot who she was and lived as a house servant for the witch and had to cook lots and lots of pigeons because that was all the witch would eat. Everyone thought she was dead, but the brother never gave up looking for her and eventually, while disguised as a market seller who sold wood for skateboards, he found her. But she didn’t remember him and didn’t trust him. The brother had to slay a big bad scary dragon to get the dragon’s tooth, which could be made into a potion to help his sister remember. He did and then used the dragon scales as armour to protect him when the witch tried to stop him. The brother and sister both killed the witch and he gave the potion to his sister. She remembered him and they went back home to the kingdom where everyone was happy and celebrated the return of the princess. Of course, the kingdom had massive skateboard ramps, and Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr Dre came especially to perform for the princess.

  Leo thought my story was fantastic and it reminded me of when I was little and used to tell my sister stories to help her fall asleep. I always felt good when I did. Telling stories had always helped me.

  That night, I sat in a hot bath and looked down at the body I had woken up in. Adult Naomi’s body, my body. I was tired and sad, but now I understood everything. Adult Naomi was sexually abused and assaulted when she was six years of age and it was the first time her mind had split from her body. This body.

  It happened again when she was ten. That was why she had turned to books and food.

  Is this why I binged then threw up all the time?

  She had a boyfriend who tried to kill her?

  Tried to strangle the air from this body.

  I put my hand to my neck and I understood why, by the time she was eighteen, she had turned to drugs.

  The heat from the water felt good. I took a deep breath in and watched my abdomen fill with air; I breathed out and watched it lay flat. The water massaged over it.

  This body has been abused with drugs; she buried it all under drugs.

  And then Leo was born.

  This body had carried a baby, a big baby, and gave birth. I looked at my breasts. They had fed the baby, nurtured and comforted him.

  This body was a mum, is a mum.

  Leo.

  He was the reason she had counselling, so she could be better for him, could make sure he got the life she never had. I held my breath and pulled my head under. The water separated my hair. She had counselling; she needed to know, she needed to understand her mind. She needed to find a way to heal it.

  My head relaxed and I shook it from side to side. The water felt like fingers massaging my scalp. I understood why she was doing the psychology degree. It wasn’t because she wanted to be a psychologist; it was so that she could understand the mind, her mind.

  This body was hurt, damaged, and the pressure from all the buried pain caused the ‘fragmentation of her personality’ when, for an hour, she was six years old again. It was what she was afraid of and couldn’t talk about in her diary. My lungs felt as if they were going to burst. I pulled my face out of the water and took a deep breath in.

  I thought about the psychologists, the psychiatrists, the psychotherapists that had tried to help this body and mind, but in the end, hadn’t really helped.

>   They said it was bipolar disorder.

  I placed my palms on my face and closed my eyes. I tried to see inside my body. It hadn’t slept properly in years – days and nights of no sleep, and then nights and days of nightmare-filled dreams. It hadn’t eaten properly for years – constant diet changes, throwing up, not eating for days, meat one day, vegan the next.

  But it’s still here. It’s still intact.

  I moved my hands from my face to the handles on the side of the bath and pulled myself up. The water trickled down my body back into the bath.

  Adult Naomi had tried – she had tried to save this body, and she had tried to save her mind. Moving to a new country to start again had been her only option, but it didn’t work and she had to come back.

  And that’s when I think she gave up on herself.

  I got out of the bath and towel-dried my body, silently thanking it for still being here, still surviving. I got into my PJs and lay on the bed, thinking about everything that had happened on the weekend: meeting Adult Naomi’s friends, experiencing the future world again, and trying to understand her mind through the diaries. Before I closed my eyes and drifted off, I picked up the same diary that had the ripped pages missing from it. The 2002 diary.

  9 April 2002

  Dear Naomi,

  I want to heal you and mother you and make you feel better, and I know I will. I am trying. Please be patient with me and give me time; this is gonna take time, but it will happen, we will get through this. The universe is on our side; the divine spirit, the healing energies that exist will continue to come to us. I know that you are still hurt and angry and upset and in pain. I know that you are still in denial about some parts, but the healing will continue, the anger will cease and one day you will learn to love you. The abuse will stop. You will learn to listen to what you want, and how to listen to what you need. I can do that for you. It’s not hard; I do it for Leo every day, for my loved ones. If I can do it for them, then I can do it for you.