Forgotten Girl

by Naomi Jacobs

  ‘He’s coming back.’ Toni, who had been quiet up until then, gave me an encouraging smile. I wiped my swollen eyes, took a swig of warm water, and put my large sunglasses on. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset.

  Everyone clambered onto the coach and I could feel their eyes staring at me, wondering if I was going to start something with their beloved tour guide. But I kept my face towards the window and didn’t look around until I woke up half an hour later outside of the Pyramids of Giza.

  Smile wouldn’t let us off the coach until he had given his version of who he reckoned had built the pyramids. He mocked the theory that aliens may have built them and at this point I didn’t care anymore; as far as I was concerned my mum said that they were built by aliens and Smile was wrong so I scoffed at him like the naughty schoolgirl at the back of the class.

  ‘You have fifteen minutes, and then the coach will leave for the Nile.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes?’ I couldn’t take any more. The cherry on the top of the whole unpalatable cake of Smile’s attitude was getting to spend time inside the great pyramids of Giza and now this man was telling me I would have to run around the monuments under the hot sun and could forget about actually going inside.

  ‘Yes, there is not much time and people have asked to go on the Nile.’

  ‘Well, then those people need to pay for an excursion that takes them on the Nile. I have waited all day for this and have paid my money for you to tell me that I am going to get fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Please, please, the journey took longer than I anticipated.’

  ‘That’s because we spent nearly two bloody hours in your precious mosque!’ I shouted at him.

  I heard gasps from the back of the coach. I was bordering on serious political incorrectness and about to free-fall into anti-Islamic territory – well, to some anyway; to me, I was just majorly pissed off that I was only getting fifteen minutes to see one of the greatest wonders of the world.

  This was personal. It was the last straw. I suddenly realized that to him and to everyone else, I really was a grown woman and I could tell him what I thought of him. ‘You are rude, ignorant, and clearly think that sucking up to these people will get you far in life.’ I waved my hand at the rest of the coach and gave them a dirty look for not being on my side.

  Smile was speechless; I grabbed my bag and stormed off the coach, furious. I turned by the door and looked him straight in the eye. ‘And I am putting in a complaint about you.’ He looked horrified. I snapped my pink parasol in the air and flounced off.

  In a show of solidarity, Ashley and Toni stuck their noses up at him and followed me towards the pyramids.

  ‘He is a complete wanker and needs to jog on,’ Toni remarked.

  ‘Yeah, knob jockey. I don’t wanna see the bloody Nile either,’ Ashley agreed.

  I shook my head at them both, too upset to speak. I just wanted to use what little time I had to see as much of the pyramids as possible. This meant walking around the largest one once and having pictures taken of me smiling, sitting on the large blocks of white stone under my parasol. I really wanted to burst into tears, but this time my womanly pride or my stubborn teenage dignity would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset.

  As promised, the coach pulled away from the Pyramids fifteen minutes after we had arrived. I had given up being angry at Smile and what he thought about me. It didn’t matter. Besides, the fear on his face the moment I had threatened to report him was mega and had made me feel so much better. I had taken back the power and a satisfied smugness hit me the same time as the realization that I was in Giza. This was when I felt that I shouldn’t give it any more energy and needed to take in the beautiful surroundings. So I stood instead and marvelled at the Sphinx, an unbelievable feat of design and architecture. It was majestic and its mere presence sought to remind me that I had accomplished my goal: to bring Adult Naomi to this marvellous ancient wonder and, even if it was just for a brief moment in time, allow me to absorb all of its gloriousness. If only for her.

  When we stopped at a petrol station, Smile approached me. ‘My friend, my friend.’ He edged tentatively to my table.

  ‘Oh, I am your friend now?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘I think maybe you and I . . . we . . . how do you say? Got in the wrong foot.’ He shifted from one foot to the other.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘It’s off on the wrong foot and I have no clue what you mean.’ I stared at him, wide-eyed and innocent.

  Visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation, he started to sweat. ‘I say we do not need this to be so disagreeable with each other. I am just trying to do a good job.’

  At the mention of his job, his face grew worried and I realized at that moment that he really was afraid of losing it and I held all the employment cards. As wickedly divine as it felt, playing the villain didn’t come naturally to me. I felt sorry for the poor div. I decided it was time to be honest with him.

  ‘I don’t understand what it was I did to you to make you not like me. From the moment I sat down on the coach, you were horrible to me, and then, to make matters worse, you ignored me, gave me horrible filthy looks all day and then demanded I follow you when I didn’t even want to be around you.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and hung his head in shame.

  ‘I get it,’ I continued. ‘You are a Muslim man; you are proud of your Arabic ancestors and what they have done for Egypt. Yeah, I get it, but I am African and Egypt was North Africa before it was Arabia, and my ancestors built the pyramids, and they lied to us in school and made us watch films with Elizabeth Taylor in them, and . . .’ I was going off topic; he looked confused. ‘And I paid a lot of money to come here from England and fly to Cairo all the way from Marsa Alam’ – he nodded his head like a chastised pupil – ‘only to go on a tour of your history, not mine,’ I finished.

  He lifted his head up. ‘Yes, I understand. I am sorry.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. It was too little too late. The day was over; we were heading home and this man was apologizing because I had threatened his job. As sincerely as he said it, it felt insincere. Still, I nodded my head. ‘Well, at least you listened, if nothing else.’ I got up and walked back to the coach, and while it took us to the Nile I tried not to think about how my visit to Cairo had not turned out at all the way I had expected.

  Back at my hotel room Ahmed had left his usual flower arrangement, but this time he had spelt LEO and NAOMI in an arch across the bed. I fell onto the flowers and burst into tears. I missed Leo; I missed Simone and Katie and Dean. It was time to go home. I didn’t want to be on my own anymore and I knew I needed to leave. That night, out of sheer exhaustion, I slipped easily into a dreamless sleep.

  I woke up feeling much better and determined not to spend my last day in Egypt in my room, so I dressed quickly, threw my bag on my shoulder, and made my way to the beach. I spotted an empty space close to the grand wall of rocks situated at the far end of the beach. The massive red-orange rock face provided the seclusion I craved, my very own private beach. I lay down on my towel, the hot sand sending waves of massaging heat kneading every tired knot from my body. It made me relax immediately.

  When I thought about the day before, I realized Smile was ignorant; he had been judgemental and arrogant because he didn’t know how to deal with me. So instead of giving me a chance and trying to get to know me, to understand me, he had tried to control me. Which felt kinda familiar. I realized that this had been happening to me since I was little. People trying to force me to be someone I am not. Force themselves on me.

  Had Adult Naomi become so afraid of this that she had tried to bend and break herself to appease people? If you always think every time you’re your ‘real’ self that you’re gonna be attacked, then eventually, it is safer to be someone else. But this wasn’t working anymore. I knew that this was what had caused the splits in her mind. In my mind.

  Was this also true for my mum? All of the things she h
ad said, the questions she had asked me that day I tried to kill myself. Were they really about me? Maybe they were questions she was asking herself. Maybe she was afraid because she had no answers for her own life. She couldn’t figure out her point, her purpose.

  Well, maybe being my true self means I have to stand alone, I thought. There is a point to me, I have a purpose and just because I haven’t figured it out yet, just because other people think they know me better than I do, and try to stop me or control what I say or do, then it doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out.

  I decided to write one more diary entry so I pulled Adult Naomi’s diary out of my bag, grabbed a pen and began to write.

  Dear Adult Naomi,

  I think I know what happened to you – to us. I think we got lost, somewhere along the way, somewhere in the splits; who we really are – who you really are – got lost. And every now and then, we met a complete smeg (last time I use it, I promise) face, tosspotting wanker who thought it was okay to barf their own mentalist issues and their own complete wackness all over you. And we forgot, forgot somehow that most of that barf wasn’t ours! We took it on, took it all on, and because it was heavy and he was not our brother (remember the song?) we got buried underneath all that spew like it was our responsibility. I think the books we read and the plays we were in taught us how to kind of split into all these different acting parts, so we could get through life, you know? Get through the crap. But you know what I have realized today is that I am me, you are you, we are we; it’s me, Naomi, and I don’t have to be what people want me to be. I’m okay, you are okay being yourself, and you need to start letting it all out, ALL of you out, every single bit, and well, if they don’t like it, tell them to take a long running jump off a very short pier. Stop giving yourself total crapness for other people’s ignorant, foolish idiocies. Speak your truth, be who you are, your true self, and don’t apologize for it! I mean it, no matter who it makes feel uncomfortable or who doesn’t like it. If it’s yours, then it’s you and no one can take that away from you. You know I’m glad I have come here and in case you don’t remember any of this when you come back, I want you to know what I have realized on this holiday about life.

  I realize it’s not about people and what they think of me; it’s about what I know about myself and who I really am, and in the end that’s all that really matters.

  Love from me,

  Totally frickin’ kriss biscuits Teen Nay xxx

  I put the book down, closed my eyes and fell asleep on the beach, thinking about the future.

  Sometime later, I opened my eyes and blinked at the blurred blue sky above me.

  It felt like I had had one of the best, deepest sleeps I had ever had. I looked around and knew instantly that I, Adult Naomi, had returned to my body.

  12

  All About Eve

  Everything has its time;

  you can’t force something

  to happen

  before it’s meant to.

  That’s a true law,

  a universal law.

  Y. J.

  The last thing I remembered was falling asleep crying, thinking about ‘French Dude’ and how much of a failure at life I was. Now two months had passed and I was back to seeing my life and my world from my perspective, but the odd thing was, I was carrying Teen Nay’s memories of what had happened to her from those strange few weeks.

  I knew that her whole experience of waking up in my future had brought her to one conclusion: that if life hadn’t turned out the way she had expected, I was the only one responsible for changing it. Things that had happened to me in the past were out of my control. But as I held the fresh memories from her experience of my adult life, I realized the only true power I had lay in how I reacted to those experiences. She had set me free to do what I needed to do, to make sure that things stayed as normal as possible for Leo, but at the same time changed for me. Teen Nay had done it for us; now I needed to do it for us. I knew undoubtedly that I, Adult Naomi, had to change things.

  I arrived back from the holiday refreshed, tanned and full of stories of Teen Nay’s adventures, and as soon as I walked through the door Simone burst into tears.

  ‘Oh my God.’ She clasped her hands over her mouth.

  ‘What?’ I looked behind, thinking the taxi driver had followed me in.

  ‘You, it’s you!’ She walked towards me and stood staring.

  ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘Straight away.’ She gave me one of her back-breaking hugs and I relaxed into her arms. ‘You’re back, I’ve got my sister back.’

  ‘I was always your sister,’ I said to her, tears welling in my eyes.

  She stepped back and laughed. ‘I know, but seriously, how much “smeg for brains” can a woman take?’

  We both stood crying and laughing and hugging each other.

  ‘Oh my God, Sim, what a trip.’

  ‘Egypt or the amnesia?’

  ‘Both.’ I paused. ‘And, chica, thank you so much for everything, for keeping me sane, looking after Leo and . . . just everything.’ I started to cry again.

  She hugged me again. ‘It’s okay. I’ve always told you, if I can support you and Leo in any way, then I always will.’

  I felt so grateful that throughout everything my sister had remained her calm and stoic self, trusted me to work through it and at the same time kept me out of the psychiatric ward.

  Leo was happy to see me and I had missed him so much. He had changed a lot in two months and I was grateful that somehow Simone and Katie had managed to keep him protected from the whole amnesia experience. When I told him what had happened later on, he was surprised and then said, ‘I wondered why you asked me what time I went to bed.’ Then he laughed and carried on skateboarding.

  It had been fascinating seeing the world from Teen Nay’s perspective but now I was back, recycling, coffee shops, bizarre fashion and inflation were as normal to me as they had always been. I still remembered how to drive and use a mobile phone. And my slush puppy love for Leo was as strong if not stronger.

  Their support and understanding gave me what I needed to sit down one night and read the diary entries Teen Nay had written for me. I saw that she wrote that I had extreme difficulty in using the word ‘no’. I said yes even when I didn’t want to do things and if I did feel brave enough to say no, I would feel guilt on a crazy level and at some point fall off that level into a large sea of shame and want to hide deep at the bottom of the ocean of my unworthiness. (Dramatic, she said. I know, I replied, but sadly, true.)

  According to her, it seemed saying yes way too many times had caused all the problems in the first place and under no circumstances was she going to allow me to repeat the same mistakes again. This resulted in her writing about Grange Hill’s Zammo curled up in a corner, doped up on heroin, and the rest of the fifth-year kids rapping ‘JUST SAY NO’. Teen Nay felt I needed this reminder as clearly it hadn’t penetrated my subconscious well enough the first time round.

  Still, her Egypt experience had shown me what life could be like, if I could just let go of the constant fear. Let go of feeling threatened. She had shown me that it was okay to trust myself and that somehow, through it all, I was protected. I didn’t quite fully understand that yet, but I knew I needed to find a way to trust her and thought about what Old Man Mo had said to her before she left. He shed a little tear when she said goodbye to him with hugs and thank yous, and gave her a bottle of Egyptian musk, saying to her ‘Serket will always be with you.’

  So, unlike me, Teen Nay had not disappeared. She still existed in my mind – in fact, she was resident in the ‘house’ – and she was watching what I would do next with a careful eye. I had no explanation as to why she hadn’t left like I had but as I wondered how I was going to find a way through this situation and, above all, how I could make sure this never happened again, I found that my conversations with Teen Nay were happening daily. Perhaps because no one else could give me any answers, I turned to her for advice rather t
han the other people in my life. Every time something happened I would check in with her, and in a sort of inner dialogue I’d hear her voice giving me her often brutal fifteen-year-old opinion on all things Adult Naomi.

  But it wasn’t until one sunny July morning, whilst I lay on my bed staring at my beautifully decorated bedroom in awe of her and the force of change she had brought to my life, that I decided to close my eyes, breathe deeply and really focus on entering the ‘house of my mind’.

  It was easier than I’d anticipated; I was so relaxed and could clearly see the vision of Teen Nay lounging on her own bed in a beautiful bedroom on the first floor (very reflective of the beautiful bedroom she had given me in real life). I could see myself sitting on the edge of her bed and we both smiled at each other. She was young, beautiful and vibrant. Expectant energy seemed to emanate from her. All of a sudden she somehow managed to propel my mind back to a time when it all started. She wanted me to remember something important. We went back to when I was five.

  Her: Remember when Mum . . . I mean, Eve, had moved us into a squat?

  Me: Yeah, I think so. Orange-brick house, on that quiet estate, the one with the Chinese neighbours? Didn’t Aunty June accuse them of kidnapping Blacky the dog and eating it?

  Her: Errrr . . . off topic! Anyway, remember the wall?

  Me: The wall, the wall . . . erm . . . no, I don’t . . . hang on, you mean . . . ? Oh yeah! You mean that night me and Simone took two small pencil stubs? I don’t know whose idea it was . . .

  Her: It was yours.

  Me: Yeah, I remember now. I decided to use the light from the hallway to draw all over the wall next to our bed . . . yeah, I drew houses and a large park in great detail with swings and slides. I drew a post office, a bank, a bakery, and a green grocer’s. Didn’t I even add people to my small town, and then . . . didn’t I put a forest next to it? With trees and woodland creatures and jungle animals?