by Fred Crawley
She remembered leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. His skin had been as soft as a kitten’s fur. It had been love at first sight for her and she’d promised herself she would look after her baby brother no matter what.
Two years later and her promise was broken. When Mrs Mitchell sat down she did it with her hanky pressed against her mouth. The woman sitting next to her, who Joanie didn’t recognise, put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.
The vicar thanked Mrs Mitchell. Joanie could hear the organ playing very softly in the background. The vicar announced that they were going to sing ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ which was apparently one of Ben’s favourite songs. Joanie doubted he’d ever heard it; he was much more into Rasta Mouse than church hymns.
She stood with everyone else and mouthed the words because she didn’t know them. She watched the vicar because she could feel her mum trembling with tears beside her and she didn’t want to look at that big cross. She also didn’t want to look at the cherry wood box they had put her brother’s body in.
When the song was over they sat down. Joanie had a program in front of her. It was made of expensive cream coloured card with silver edging. There was a picture of Ben smiling and holding up his favourite bunny on the front.
She didn’t want the funeral to be over. Her dad had told her that funerals were where you said goodbye to people that you loved. That meant that once you’d finished saying goodbye they were gone. After a funeral you were supposed to get on with your life. Although, she supposed, she had really said goodbye to Ben a week ago when she’d stolen his favourite bunny.
His name was Mister Fixer and he had a tool belt and hard hat. He even had little tools that slotted into sections of the belt. He had a yellow jacket and blue trousers, he was Ben’s absolute favourite, the one he took to bed with him at night and insisted on carrying around the house with him.
She hadn’t meant to steal it, it had only been a joke.
Ben had been getting on her nerves ever since she had broken up for the summer holidays from school. It wasn’t that she didn’t still love him and everything but he was just always there and since he’d started talking he hadn’t stopped. She wanted to watch television and play computer games, chat with her friends online and watch silly videos. Yes, she wanted to spend time with him as well, but not all the time.
That morning, that fateful morning, she had been laying on the sofa wearing her pyjamas, her computer on her lap and cartoons on the television. Her mum was cleaning in the next room and Ben was on the floor playing with his rabbits, narrating the story he was creating to her.
The phone rang and she could hear her mum’s voice, muffled by the wall between them. Something clunked and then her mum appeared around the corner. ‘I have to go out,’ she said.
Joanie barely even looked up.
Her mum hurried past into the hallway where Joanie could hear her opening the cupboard and taking out her coat. ‘Mum it’s not cold out,’ she called.
‘What was that?’ asked her mum, sticking her head around the door. She looked flustered.
‘Are you alright?’ asked Joanie.
She shrugged on her coat and pulled her hair out of the collar. ‘I’m fine. It’s Mrs Mitchell.’
Joanie looked up, concerned.
‘Oh don’t look like that,’ said her mum, ‘she’s fine. I just forgot that I promised to drive her to the doctors.’
Joanie nodded, she was relieved that it wasn’t anything serious. She really liked Mrs Mitchell.
‘Do you mind watching Ben? I’ll only be gone twenty-minutes.’
‘Okay,’ said Joanie.
Her mum bent down and kissed Ben on the top of the head. Through their conversation he hadn’t stopped babbling. ‘You be good for your sister,’ she said.
Ben smiled and his fat pink tongue stuck out. His eyes were wide and he looked like he had no intention of being good.
‘Love you Joanie,’ she said and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Love you too mum,’ she said.
Then the front door closed and Joanie was alone in the house with Ben. Almost at once he started to annoy her.
‘Come play Joanie,’ he said. He stood at the side of the sofa and kept trying to drop Mister Fixer in her lap. ‘Come play.’
‘Not now Ben, I’m talking to Alex.’ She looked down at her computer and saw that Alex had disconnected two minutes ago. Well she wasn’t speaking to her any more then.
‘Play Joanie, play.’
Joanie had never told her brother off, she never would have dared and she wasn’t about to start now. She looked down at him and the Mister Fixer toy he was waving at her. ‘Okay Ben,’ she said. ‘You want to play a game?’
‘Play a game, play a game.’
She held out her hand. ‘Give me the bunny then.’
He looked at her, his bottom lip pouting. This was a new game to him and not one he was sure he was going to enjoy. But Joanie was his bigger sister and if she said it was going to be fun he believed her. Reluctantly he handed over Mister Fixer, most treasured of all his bunny family.
Joanie put her computer down and stood up. ‘Now close your eyes.’
He didn’t close his eyes, didn’t look away from the bunny.
‘Don’t you want to play?’ she said.
He looked at the bunny a final time and closed his eyes.
‘Don’t open them until I tell you,’ she said. ‘Promise?’
He nodded.
Joanie walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. The vacuum was still on the floor where her mum had dropped it. She took a glass out of the fridge and made herself an orange squash. She stood at the sink and drank it and then she rinsed out the glass and put it on the draining board.
Ben still had his eyes closed when she got back into the living room. She sat down on the sofa and slid Mister Fixer down the back cushion.
‘Right you can open your eyes now.’
Ben looked at her.
‘The game is that you have to find Mister Fixer,’ she said. ‘He’s somewhere down stairs.’
‘Mister Fixer!’ said Ben.
He ran into the next room without waiting for further instruction. Joanie put her feet back on the sofa, picked up her computer and forget all about him.
Ben left her alone for all of ten minutes before he ran back into the room screaming; ‘Mister Fixer! Mister Fixer!’
Joanie didn’t like the tone of panic in his voice but her mum would be out for another twenty-minutes so she had plenty of time to calm him down. ‘Didn’t you find him?’ she said.
Ben shook his head and looked like he might cry. He might already be crying, sometimes it was difficult to tell until the full on raging storm took hold.
‘Did you try looking under the cat’s bed?’ she said.
Ben brightened at that suggestion and without another word he turned around and ran back into the kitchen.
Once he was out of sight Joanie reached behind the cushion and pulled out the bunny. She dusted it down and put it on the cushion next to her ready for when he came back.
But Ben didn’t come back and now he was never coming back. When her mum came home the ambulance was already there. Joanie had called them because when she went to find Ben a couple of minutes later he had been laying on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor. Not breathing. The doctor said he had choked on his tongue when he slipped over.
Joanie stood for what the program said was the last time. To bow their heads and say the Lord’s Prayer. All around her there was silence and before the vicar could begin she heard the knocking.
She looked around to see if anyone else had noticed it but they had their heads down and their eyes closed.
‘Our father who art in heaven...’ began the vicar.
Joanie looked at Ben’s coffin and the knocking continued, slow measured. It sounded like it was coming from the box. She continued to watch and it seemed to move.
Ex
citement bubbled up inside her. A hope that she could not quite let herself believe.
‘...Give us this day our daily bread...’
There was a good chance she was going mad but she didn’t think so. Even if they didn’t know where it was coming from a few people near the front had begun to look up as if they could hear something too.
‘...Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil...’
She was going to do it. She had to. She would want Ben to do it for her if their positions were reversed. Better suffer a moment of embarrassment than live with the thought that Ben had still been alive when they’d buried him.
‘...forever and ever, Amen.’
The ‘Amen’ was repeated around the church and no one noticed that Joanie had left her seat.
They noticed by the time she got to the front. The vicar looked down at her from his platform. ‘Hello Joanie,’ he said and he smiled.
‘Joanie get back here,’ said her mum.
Joanie ignored both of them and walked along the front to Ben’s coffin. The knocking was louder than ever and she really could see it move.
‘He’s trying to get out,’ she said.
A few muttered voices behind her and then a hand on her shoulder. She turned around and saw her dad but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the coffin as well.
‘What’s going on here?’ he said to the vicar who had joined them. Joanie’s mum was there too with her hands over her mouth. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’
The vicar had his mouth open and shook his head.
Her dad looked at her mum and then back at the coffin.
Joanie stepped aside to let him through.
He reached out towards it nervously, as if he thought it might electrocute him. ‘Ben?’ he said.
The movement of the coffin stopped but the knocking continued. Her dad looked at her mum again and then he started to lift up the lid.
They all blamed themselves: her mum said she never should have left Joanie and Ben alone; her dad said he should have laid carpet in the kitchen like he had been planning to. But Joanie knew that it was her fault really. She was the one who stole Mister Fixer and got Ben so worked up that he’d gone running into the kitchen as fast as he could.
He was dead before the paramedics arrived. The woman pulled his tongue out of his throat and the man gave him mouth to mouth. But Ben’s skin was blue and he hadn’t been breathing for a long time.
Her dad arrived home and they drove behind the ambulance to the hospital. Joanie had never seen her dad cry but he did then. He couldn’t even ask her what had happened but she told him anyway: ‘I took Mister Fixer,’ she said. ‘He was looking for him.’
‘Joanie,’ said her dad but he didn’t look at her. ‘It’s not your fault.’
But she knew it was.
At the hospital they were taken to a little room with yellow walls. There were two grey sofas that didn’t look very comfortable. There were leaflets called things like ‘Coping with Bereavement’ on the coffee table.
The door opened and Joanie’s mum came in with the doctor. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. The doctor was an old man with grey temples and little glasses that perched on the end of his pinched nose.
‘Please have a seat,’ said the doctor, his voice was soft.
Joanie sat down between her mum and dad.
‘My name is Doctor Logan,’ said the doctor. He didn’t sit down. ‘And first of all let me say how very sorry I am for your loss.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss’ was a phrase that Joanie would hear a lot over the next few days. Soon it lost all meaning. The only thing she heard when people said it was ‘You killed him. You’re the one to blame’.
CHAPTER 4
JOANIE’S NEW SHOES SQUEAKED AS SHE STOOD ON the tips of her toes to look inside the coffin.
Ben was lying on his back with his eyes closed. His chubby little hands were clasped over the place where his heart would have been if it wasn’t inside some other little boy. There was a faint smile on his face.
‘I don’t understand,’ said her dad.
‘What did you expect?’ asked her mum. She was upset again.
Her dad nodded and turned to close the lid but something stopped him.
Joanie saw Ben’s fingers sticking out the side of the coffin, the lid was resting on them. ‘He’s alive,’ she said.
Her mum and her dad and now the vicar leaned over to look.
‘It can’t be,’ said her mum, she shook her head and Joanie couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or upset.
Her dad lifted up the coffin lid and there he was. Her little brother Ben sat up.
He turned his head from side to side but couldn’t open his eyes because they had been sewn shut. Joanie wasn’t even sure that his eyes were still in his head. He opened his mouth and she saw the dozen milk teeth that he had grown. ‘Mummy?’ he said.
Her mum pushed forward and took his hand in hers. She was crying and started kissing his face.
‘I can’t see mummy,’ he said. ‘It’s so dark.’
‘I know honey. Mummy’s right here.’
Joanie could hear people talking now and feel the press of bodies trying to move forward to see what was going on. She turned to look for the vicar but he was gone.
When Ben was very young he didn’t like bright lights. Whenever he was awake they would have to turn off the ceiling light and make do with table lamps. It was either that or put up with him crying for half an hour. When Ben started crying there were very few things that could get him to stop but Joanie usually found a way. Sometimes just the sound of her voice worked in a way neither her mum nor her dad’s did.
As he’d gotten older Ben had grown used to the light and went so far in the opposite direction that he had refused to sleep without a night light on. Even when he came and slept in Joanie’s room he would put the light on. This usually woke her up but she didn’t mind very much. She quite liked being able to look over the side of her bed and see him lying there.
It had been her dad’s idea to donate Ben’s organs when he died. He said it would help them if they knew that some other children were alive because of Ben. It would help them get over it. Joanie’s mum had said she didn’t want to get over it, she was never going to get over it, your son dying wasn’t something people were supposed to get over. But she had signed the papers and Ben’s body had been taken away so that doctors could take what they wanted.
Joanie couldn’t remember whether they had taken his eyes. She was sure that eyes could be transplanted but she didn’t know if they had taken Ben’s. Standing in the church watching him try to open his eyes it seemed important to remember. The thin skin of his eyelids stretched as he fought against the stitches. Joanie had to look away.
The other people were standing in small groups, talking together in hushed voices.
‘I can’t open my eyes mummy,’ said Ben.
She turned back to look at him. ‘It’s okay honey,’ her mum said, stroking his head. ‘Mummy will fix it.’
Joanie could still see him straining and then with a series of sickening pops the thin flesh of his eyelids tore and his eyes slowly opened.
She put a hand over her mouth.
‘Oh no!’ said her mum. ‘Darling are you okay?’
His eye lids hung loosely as if they had been stretched. The edges were frayed. The eyes beneath were dark black and shiny like marbles.
‘Mummy?’ said Ben.
‘Yes, yes I’m here,’ said her mum.
Ben turned his head in short jerky movements that reminded Joanie of a robot on television. He faced their mum and smiled. At least he opened his mouth in the shape of a smile but there was no sense of joy.
Her mum pulled him tightly against her and wrapped her arms around him. She held his head against her neck and sobbed gently. They stayed like that for a long time. Joanie looked at her dad but he was too busy watching his son to even notice her.
They had wanted another baby for a long time. Joanie knew that. She wasn’t too clear about the mechanics of ‘trying for another baby’ but whatever it was she heard the floor in their room creaking and gentle moans.
Joanie hadn’t really cared whether she got a brother or a sister or nothing at all. She was pretty happy by herself. She had friends that lived nearby and her parents were always there for her. She didn’t have to shares them with anyone else. The more she thought about it the less she liked the idea of having a brother or sister.
One day she came down to breakfast and found her parents at the table. Her dad had his arm around her mum. They were looking down at something on the table.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
They both looked up at her and smiled. ‘This,’ said her mum, holding up what turned out to be a photograph, ‘is your little brother or sister.’
She walked over to the table and took the photograph that her dad was holding up. If she squinted she could just about make out a blob that could have been a baby.
‘See that?’ said her mum pointing at the photo. ‘That’s its nose.’
Joanie held up the photo, she supposed it could have been a nose but it didn’t seem that remarkable.
‘I think it’s going to have your nose,’ said her dad.
They smiled at each other and laughed. Joanie decided that enough was enough. This had all gone entirely too far. They hadn’t even asked her whether she wanted a brother or sister. She had to put a stop to it. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said and slapped the picture back on the table.
‘I’ll put it on the fridge,’ said her mum. She untangled herself from her dad and carried the photograph over to the fridge. There were no magnets left so she lifted one off a picture Joanie had drawn of the three of them and stuck it over that.