Forgotten Girl

by Naomi Jacobs

  ‘No, it’s okay, she’ll be fine,’ my mum said as she left the shop. I followed behind her. She was still screaming stuff at me until we got to our neighbour Thelma’s house. I had to sit there in Thelma’s living room while Thelma, Joanne and Carol just frickin’ sat there staring at me, biting their lips nervously as Eve told them what I had just done. Again, the looks of horror and pity mirrored Harry’s and I hung my head down.

  ‘Don’t you think she should go to the hospital, Eve?’ Thelma asked, most probably not wanting her neighbour’s daughter dropping dead in her living room or herself becoming an accessory to murder.

  ‘No, she can sit there and suffer; she won’t die.’ My mum pulled the ring off the can of lager and gulped it down. The drunken feeling I’d had was gone; I was shaking and sobbing and felt so full of this, like, major frickin’ soul-crushing shame that I just couldn’t look at anyone.

  18 April 1992 (same night)

  I’ve got to keep writing. If I keep writing, then I’ll stay awake and maybe I won’t die. I can’t believe what I’ve done. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. I didn’t mean for it to go so far, but I didn’t know what else to do and as soon as I did it I told Eve, but she went ballistic – I mean, all-out warfare, man – and I don’t know what to do, ’cause she’s still in Thelma’s drinking and what if I die?

  I mean, Thelma helped me; well, she went into her kitchen and poured me a glass of water and made me a slice of toast. By this time I was just drained and exhausted and I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I just wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t tell if it was the tablets or everything that had happened so I ate the toast. It tasted like cardboard and I drank the water and did my best to hide my surprise when I tasted salt in it. I looked at Thelma and she gave me a wink. Eve was deep in conversation so I asked if I could use the toilet and went into the bathroom at the back of the house. I stood over the toilet and gulped the salt water down in one and stuck my fingers down my throat again and threw up the toast and this white acidy stuff.

  I just wanted to leave after that. I wanted to come home. My stomach must be empty of the tablets so I’m sure I won’t die. Eve said I could come home.

  You know what? I felt so free when I left that house, like a caged bird that had been let out and had found a crack open in a forgotten window and escaped. I found my way straight here to my bed and I’m curled up under my duvet, with my feet wrapped in it at the bottom ’cause I’m cold and I feel sick. I genuinely thought Eve was waiting to see if I passed out first, then she would have taken me to hospital. Why didn’t she take me to the hospital? Didn’t she believe me? Did she think I was lying? Maybe it wasn’t serious enough, or maybe she just doesn’t care. I hate her so much.

  Still, I’m lying here writing this, crying and praying. Please, if there is anyone out there listening, I don’t want to die, and if you could at all help it, can you make sure I don’t die? Because I think I know the answer to my problem. I won’t know the point of me, I won’t know why I am here until I get as far away as possible from Eve! Far away from here.

  Just please don’t let me die and I’ll never take another drug again, not even a painkiller.

  And then maybe one day, everything will be okay.

  Maybe.

  Naomi x

  I closed my eyes and the images, the memories playing out in the house in my mind stopped. It had all now become clear and for the first time I actually had some flashes of memory from my near future. That night had been the start of my drug-taking journey. It was me; I didn’t matter, so my life didn’t matter and I had allowed it to spiral out of control from then on. I remembered I started to smoke weed, I failed my exams, I even went into an exam stoned one day, and then I started to take harder drugs.

  I did exactly what Adult Naomi had done. I got stuck and split, left the building, possibly the house of my mind.

  When I was fifteen, I split. Just like when Little Naomi was six and was raped and when Adult Naomi was twenty-nine and fell down the stairs. It happened to me too when I was fifteen and couldn’t cope with school and the possibility of my mum dying and then I did it again when I was sixteen when I tried to kill myself. I split.

  But I think I got stuck at fifteen; my mind stayed fifteen because of that time with my dad during the Easter holidays, when he bought us loads of chocolate eggs and took us for meals in nice restaurants. He took us on shopping sprees; bought us loads and told us over and over how much he loved us. That was the last time I felt like a child, the last time I felt safe, protected.

  And then everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

  And I split.

  I then remembered I had a fight with my school friend Katie, a physical fist fight. I attacked her because people had been telling me she had been talking about me. She hit me back and I bit her head with my braces on. She was devastated. I was numb. I am remembering it.

  And I split.

  I tried to cope with everything and started to somehow separate from my reality. I wanted so much to feel like a child again, feel protected. Except that ended the day I was told I had to leave. I had to face being sixteen and the fact that I was truly on my own; to fend for myself in a world I had no clue about. I couldn’t cope so I tried to kill myself. That didn’t work, so I turned to drugs.

  And I split.

  The threats from the cocaine men to kill my mum; my friends and the sexual assault and not being able to protect them; failing my exams; not wanting to leave school, but hating it at the same time. In the space of a year, everything fell apart. Joseph and my mum were splitting up and I remembered that – as great as our Easter visit in Liverpool was – I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear my dad and Marlene arguing. Simone seemed to be protected from it all, and I, like a sponge, absorbed it all and eventually my mind split.

  It went wrong and I wanted to stay, no, needed to be somewhere where it felt safe. I needed the pain to stop. I couldn’t find anywhere.

  Eventually, death was my only answer; if not death, then drugs.

  And my mind split.

  I turned from the images in the darkness and saw a small orange light floating in front of me. I reached my hand out and grabbed hold of it, carrying it through the house until I reached the very window I had spent almost six weeks staring into, locked outside. This time, I was staring out of it, from the inside.

  The street was still dark. I placed the light on the window-sill and caught my reflection in the glass.

  I knew then why I had woken up in the future: it was me. It had all started with me. I had got stuck, stuck in a time when I had given up on myself. When I felt that I really didn’t matter. And the small part of me that still believed I did, I cut out of my mind and buried with drugs. No wonder my life had turned out the way it had. The amount of bad stuff I had gone through before I was sixteen . . . no wonder I didn’t wanna grow up. The only way my mind could cope was to break itself into pieces and hide those pieces away in the pages of my diaries and deep in the darkness of my mind, in the darkness of a house.

  Everything that had happened to me, up until that age, had proved to me that there was no hope, no hope for a better future, no hope for me. In the end, when things got really bad, that’s where my mind would go, to the safety and the security that thoughts of my death would bring. It would mean peace instead of pain.

  I looked at my reflection in the window. My face changed into hers, into Adult Naomi’s. ‘I am so sorry’ I sobbed to her.

  The pain pulled my mind out of the dark house.

  I opened my eyes, got off the bed, and looked out of the window into the night sky. Rain was falling and I stared hard through the wavy patterns it created under the street light. The salt from my tears stung my face. I took a deep breath, my heart shrank in my chest, and I cried.

  Remembering had eventually led me to this point; it was a wound so heavy with pain that it forced its way through me and pulled me into a cold darkness. I choked through the tears. I felt weak and my
lungs ached.

  Neither the world nor my life had turned out the way they were supposed to and after spending several weeks reading my diaries, I had realized why.

  I could see clearly now, the constant running away and drifting from place to place, smoking weed and taking drugs. Over the weeks, I had read in the diaries that Adult Naomi had dealt with a drug-addicted boyfriend, emotionally abusive relationships, being a single mother, running her own businesses, teaching others how to heal while trying to heal herself, a cocaine habit, a drug-induced breakdown . . . She had been declared bankrupt, lost all of her possessions, been homeless, and in effect had to start again . . .

  And then I woke up.

  Because it all began with me, Teen Nay, and ended with Adult Naomi’s future. I sobbed as I thought about everything I had read from start to finish, the last seventeen years of Adult Naomi’s life – no, my life – in a nutshell. All of it led to this future, the council house, the cat and the car and the son who looked like her. A future where Adult Naomi tried to find some stability, some safety and security, but always felt like she failed.

  And all because I had buried me, hiding behind a facade of smiles. A mask, like the one Leo had made me. That told the outside world that everything was okay, that everything was all glittery and gold, when really inside I was breaking. Constantly breaking down.

  I turned my head into the pillow and screamed. I screamed so terrifyingly loud that I was surprised Leo didn’t wake up. The released emotion welled up like a giant wave crashing against me with such a force, my body repelled it in droves. I threw up in the bin and screamed with rage, with anger at Eve, at Art, at the cocaine men, at the men who abused me, at the women in Thelma’s house. I screamed at the world for letting me down, at myself for allowing this to happen. For playing a part in the death of me. My head wanted to explode, but I couldn’t cry quickly enough. I curled my body into the foetal position and lay there on my bed for what felt like an eternity, and I cried out every pain, every heartbreak, everything I had ever done to myself.

  The room grew dark. I felt empty, numb; my head pounded into my swollen face. I didn’t want to move; I had given up and nothing was going to pull me out. I had started the destruction of my life and no matter how hard she had tried, Adult Naomi just couldn’t put it back together.

  Somewhere in the darkness of my mind, I heard a faint whisper, a gentle voice telling me to breathe. I took a deep breath and eventually the tears stopped. The pain subsided. I had cried myself into exhaustion. I closed my eyes and stared into the darkness that had once housed all of those memories. I saw nothing. ‘I’m scared,’ I whimpered to the empty bedroom. I searched for some hope – that same small hope I’d had lying in my bed thinking I was dying seventeen years ago. I looked into the darkness and saw me lying in the bed again, under the Marilyn Monroe duvet cover, crying, praying I wouldn’t die. I had heard the gentle whisper of a voice, telling me to breathe. Now, lying in Adult Naomi’s bed seventeen years later, I heard that same voice again.

  ‘Breathe, Naomi, breathe,’ it said.

  As I drifted off and fell into a deep sleep, it gently whispered again. A song, like a lullaby, singing the words, ‘Sleep. You know who you are, everything is well within. We love you, you are protected. Sleep.’

  Protected?

  10

  The Scorpion Queen

  The more and more each is impelled by that which is intuitive,

  or the relying upon the soul force within,

  the greater, the farther,

  the deeper, the broader,

  the more constructive may be the result.

  EDGAR CAYCE

  Something has changed, I thought, as I opened my eyes the next morning.

  I climbed off the bed and opened the curtains. The sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful cornflower blue peppered with dashes of white cloud. Everything looked different. I opened the window, breathed in the city air – a faint mix of car fumes and freshly cut grass from the park – and listened to the birds singing the new day in. The tall evergreens stood opposite, proud and protective like giant guards watching over me. I could sense this universal agreement that I was okay and that all would be well in my world.

  Yes, something had changed. I was still a teenager and I was still in the future. But somewhere inside of me, I knew I had the power to handle it. I knew that I was going to make things different, that I was going to change things and that this life was going to get much, much better.

  ‘I have to go away!’ I shouted to the awakening street.

  I turned around to the messy, undecorated room. ‘But before I go, I’m so going to decorate you. In fact, I’m going to do the whole house and get rid of that puke salmon colour downstairs.’

  In the mirror, I looked at my puffy face. My eyes were still swollen but I stared at my body, my skin, my hair and opened my mouth to flash my teeth. They were stained by years of coffee and smoking. ‘And I am going to get you all sorted,’ I said to the reflection, whilst doing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. ‘This body, my body. All of you.’

  I ran a bath and, whilst the tub filled, I tidied the bedroom, removing every diary from the floor. The red diary had served its purpose and I knew it was time to put it away for good. Leaving out the 2008 diary, I packed the rest into a box and sealed it with Sellotape, promising myself I would never open it again. I didn’t have to; the diaries had given me what I’d needed – a past I had to know but was now ready to forget. Even though I understood Adult Naomi more and could see that it was me who had started her on this path, all that mattered to me was the present and the decisions I could make in that moment to turn her future – no, my future – into the one I deserved. In spite of everything, I reckoned that holiday I never got didn’t matter anymore, because I was going to take myself on one.

  ‘Egypt!’ I exclaimed to my sister later that day.

  ‘Wow, really? Egypt? Are you sure?’ she questioned.

  ‘Absolutely.’ I knew she would be concerned and I knew I would have to convince her I would be okay to go on my own. From conversations with Katie and Simone, I had learned that Adult Naomi had in fact visited all of the places on the postcards on the kitchen wall. She and Leo had taken a few holidays. He had even gone to Canada with his father, which I was surprised by. I still didn’t want to meet him, though. Adult Naomi had felt betrayed by him too many times and I felt I needed to protect her from his lack of respect and loyalty.

  But in one diary, she had spoken a lot about Ancient Egypt, Kemetic wisdom, and something called Hermetic philosophy. They sounded like they belonged on The Muppet Show but hey, I believed I owed it to her to get there.

  Once I explained this to my sister, googled where I’d be staying so I could show her and convinced her how safe I would be, she agreed that it was maybe what I needed and said she would take care of Leo while I was gone. It turned out Adult Naomi had saved quite a bit of money, so I could afford to go. My passport said I was thirty-two, so no one would know I was fifteen, and being the sensible teenager I was, I reassured her that there was no chance of me wandering off with strangers (ahem). I trusted myself and so did Simone and that’s all that was needed for me to find a suitcase and book the holiday.

  And then in a totally weird way, I began to remember. It was almost like the belief that I could make things better had allowed my mind to relax more. The more it relaxed, the more memories started to drip-feed into my mind, like a leaky tap slowly filling a plugged sink. With the help of Simone and Adult Naomi’s friends I began to remember. And what was majorly wigged was that I was the one in control of it all.

  The more I remembered, the closer I felt to Adult Naomi and the more protective I became of her. She still hadn’t returned and that was okay too. She had been through some mega hard times. We both had, but she had relied on smeghead people, been betrayed by Jekyll friends, been attacked and lied to by those she trusted, and yet she still believed in love and had a compassion for people th
at I totally didn’t get, but kind of respected at the same time.

  Dean reminded me of the time he and Adult Naomi had gone to a small festival together and the organizers were so off their faces, she had taken over the barn where they were making breakfasts and cooked for almost everyone there. As he told me this, I had a kinda flashback/flashforward to jumping up and down on a trampoline whilst on magic mushrooms, giggling uncontrollably. Weird!

  Katie reminded me of the times Adult Naomi had sat with her sons and helped them with their homework and supported them through their exams. I had another kind of flashback/flashforward of trying to figure out algebra with her eldest.

  An Alanis Morissette song brought back images of me pushing a 9lb 9 baby out of my . . . well, I won’t go there, but it was in a birthing pool while Simone, Simone’s best friend Lynette and Leo’s father held my hands and told me to push.

  I also remembered early bits about Leo’s dad. Yeah, kinda intense and a bit rank, actually. He had kids from other relationships and was seriously commitment shy. Trying to relate to him while she was pregnant was STRESSFUL!

  And then I remembered having sex! Which was totally mentally bizarro since I was still a virgin. During a TV episode of Angel, I flashbacked/flashforwarded to an ex-boyfriend dressed in a long black leather coat, who was tall with dark, brooding good looks and who Adult Naomi really liked and had a lot of fun with.

  Some memories weren’t so pleasant – people getting shot, friends being raped, heated arguments and fights in clubs – but I somehow managed to steer them away, like a politician avoiding embarrassing questions.

  I also started to get the whole pet thing and one day decided to stroke Sophia and explain to her what was going on. I didn’t sneeze and she didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t Adult Naomi; she just seemed to want to be around me anyway. Which I kinda liked.

  And so that’s how it was: music, food, images, clothes, smells, words, all sparked memories of a rich past, of experiences that played out like a film on the projector of my mind. But as it was Adult Naomi’s past and my future, the emotions attached to those images were not mine, so I wasn’t attached to them. I felt them, I acknowledged what or who they were about, and I just moved on to the next image with, like, this aloof curiosity.