Love Your Enemies

by Nicola Barker

  For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.

  At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.

  Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’

  This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.

  She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’

  After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.

  Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.

  Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.

  That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, big flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up – to eat, to wash, to have fun – all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.

  She slept late. When she awoke she felt battered and exhausted. When she looked into the mirror, her old face looked back at her. Nothing had changed. She felt utterly helpless. Her mind rambled and a thousand different images moved through the space behind her eyes. Her head was full of colour. She saw different people too, pointing their fingers, wiping her nose, holding her arm, bouncing her up and down on their knee, up and down, up and down.

  In the kitchen she looked for a small knife to cut the top off her boiled egg. Instead she found that she had a chopping knife in her hand and it was as long as her arm. She cut the egg in half and its yolk hit the wall. She placed the blade near to her nose and felt tempted to move it closer. She stopped. For hours she remained stationary.

  Larry had forgotten his sandwiches. He drove home in his lunch hour and let himself into the quiet house. He went upstairs for a quick pee. For once he neglected to shut and lock the door. He whistled contentedly.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Layla’s mind started to turn again. She considered her options.

  A Necessary Truth

  Sammy Jo burped the baby and then lay her down on her pink, rubber changing mat and began to unpin her nappy. The baby puffed a gentle tongueful of spew out of her tiny mouth and down the side of her chin. Sammy Jo undid the nappy and then, almost without thought, used one of its Terry corners to mop up the sick. She lifted the baby’s head up, gently supporting its weight in her free hand, to make sure that her mouth was now empty. She didn’t want her to choke accidentally.

  The baby was called Charlie, short for Charlotte. She was four months old. Sammy Jo tossed the nappy into the (thankfully close) washing basket and carefully laid Charlie’s head down again. She picked up a clean nappy and formed it into the requisite shape. The baby wheezed quietly.

  Sammy Jo stared out of the window for a moment and caught sight of her husband Jason hanging out some nappies on the line. She rolled her tongue around the long nappy pin with its baby pink tip which she had stuck in the corner of her mouth – like a metal cigarette – while she felt around sightlessly on the table for some baby-wipes and talc.

  The telephone rang. She grimaced to herself, let go of the tin of talc and then reached over to pick it up. Charlie screwed up her face at the sudden sharpness of the ringing – she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not – and then relaxed again when it stopped. Sammy Jo carried on staring out of the window. ‘Yes?’

  She never said anything but ‘yes’ when she answered the telephone. Her biggest mistake in the past had been repeating her name and number on answering. She now knew that if you say your name and number some strange people copy this information down when they hear a woman’s voice. Then they telephone you again and again and turn your life into a living hell.

  Sammy Jo’s telephone number was ex-directory. All the people who now had her number were people that she definitely trusted; a mere handful. This system had hitherto proved virtually foolproof.

  A voice said, ‘What can we be sure of in our life? What two things can we infer – almost immediately – without needing to resort to empirical information?’

  Sammy Jo’s eyes snapped away from the window and focused, somewhat pointlessly, on the telephone receiver in her hand. The voice continued, ‘By empirical I mean “information derived from experience”. Does all this sound rather confusing? Don’t let it confuse you. I’ve already confused myself. Bringing in the notion of empirical experience – Locke, Hume, remember those names – has confused things already. Let’s start again.’

  Sammy Jo slammed down the receiver. She stood up and searched around for some paper and a pen. She found a thick telephone pad with slightly sticky adhesive edges which she had been given (months before) by her local independent pizza restaurant and takeaway. Each piece of paper was shaped like a red and yellow pizza, intermittently round, with the address and telephone number of the restaurant in small print at the top.

  She placed the pad on the table in between the telephone and the baby and began to write: Man, Thirty/forty, deep but weak voice – muffled? Breathy.

  She paused and thought for a moment and then wrote: Rubbish, not offensive. She crossed out the word offensive and then wrote sexual instead. She bit her lip. The telephone rang again. She stared out of the window towards Jason (who still seemed rather preoccupied) and then slowly, hesitantly, picked up the receiver. A voice said, ‘Hi! Sammy Jo?’ Sammy Jo breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed visibly. She smiled. ‘Hello. Yes?’

  ‘Hi Sammy, it’s Lucy here, Lucy Cosbie. How are things?’

  Sammy Jo pinched the receiver between her shoulder and her ear while using her two free hands to grab a tissue and wipe Charlie’s bottom. Charlie let out a small whimper, but Lucy Cosbie heard it. ‘Is that Charlie there?’

  Sammy Jo grinned. ‘Yeah. I’m changing her. I haven’t seen you for a co
uple of months, Lucy. You must pop around when you’re free. Jason mentioned you only the other day …’

  Lucy’s laughter echoed down the telephone line. ‘Wow! I must be making progress if Jason’s asking about me!’

  Sammy Jo clucked her tongue and picked up the talc. ‘Don’t be stupid. In a way I think he kind of misses you.’

  Lucy stopped laughing and said, ‘Well, this is just a semi-professional informal call. I wanted to make sure that things are fine, that everything is going well, you know …’

  Sammy Jo finished talcing the baby’s bottom and put the talc bottle down on the table. She stared guiltily at the pizza pad in front of her and touched what she had written on the pad with her index finger. She then said, ‘Honestly, Lucy, everything’s great. I already have my midwife coming around every other week to check up on Charlie’s progress. She’s doing just fine. I think enough of the council’s resources have been spent on me already without you worrying too …’

  Lucy was sensitive to Sammy Jo’s tone. She said lightly, ‘Sammy Jo, relax. I’m not checking up on you. I know how sensitive young mums can be. I’m honestly not intruding, just interested.’

  Sammy Jo interrupted, breathless with embarrassment. ‘Lucy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, honestly. I’m just a bit uptight today. You’re more than welcome here any time. In fact, why don’t we make a date for a visit right now? How about Thursday afternoon?’

  Sammy Jo could hear the busy noises of an office and a typewriter behind Lucy’s voice. Lucy said, ‘Hey! I’m quite a busy person, Sammy Jo. I’m afraid Thursday’s a bit tight for me. I tell you what, why don’t I ring in a couple of weeks’ time and we can make an evening arrangement? Something purely social. That way the neighbours can’t possibly have anything to gossip about, especially if I arrive on your doorstep after six-thirty with a bottle of wine. How about it? Purely informal. I’m desperate to see that gorgeous baby again.’

  Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks, Lucy. I’d love to see you, any time of day. Telephone soon, OK?’

  They exchanged their farewells.

  Sammy Jo put down her receiver and reached out to pick up Charlie’s legs, lifted them up a few inches and slid the nappy underneath her whitely talced bottom. Before she could complete her nappy-tying, Jason had strolled into the room with the bag of remaining clothes pegs tucked under his arm. He said, ‘Did I hear the telephone ring?’

  Sammy Jo nodded. ‘Yes. It was Lucy Cosbie.’

  He raised his eyebrows, rather cynically. ‘Checking up? I didn’t think you were her department any more.’

  Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I’m not. Just a social call, that’s all.’ She pushed the nappy pin into Charlie’s nappy and, picking her up, said, ‘Look, Jason, Charlie’s left you a little present in the washing basket.’

  Jason looked down at the basket and let out a howl of horror. ‘Bloody hell! You’d think we had a production line of babies in here, not just one, with the amount of waste she produces. I’m sure that when she eventually gets around to speaking, her first coherent words will be “More washing, Daddy.”’

  Sammy Jo was looking around for one of Charlie’s clean romper suits. Before she could say anything Jason said, ‘In the pile on the sofa. Would you mind putting on some rubber knickers this time so it doesn’t get soaked in twenty seconds?’

  She winked. ‘Oh, Jason, you never said you liked me in rubber before!’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘I know that I agreed to take responsibility for the washing of nappies and stuff if we had a baby, Sammy Jo, but tomorrow I have a lot of work on so I might just pop out and buy a packet or two of disposables, all right? Just for one day.’

  Sammy Jo shrugged, unmoved, ‘I don’t care, Jason, go ahead. You’re the one who’s so bothered about the environmental angle concerning disposables, not me. Buy them if you want to, feel free.’

  Jason picked up his jacket, which was slung over the back of the sofa. He said, ‘I’ll pop out now. Do you want anything else?’

  Sammy Jo smiled obsequiously. ‘I’ll write you a list.’

  She looked around her and then saw the pizza pad on the table. Jason was watching her as he pulled his jacket on. She saw the few words that she had scribbled on to the top of the pad and, trying not to frown, ripped the page away and screwed it up in her hand. Jason said, ‘What’s that? Beginning of your thesis?’

  She grimaced. ‘Very funny. Actually it was a trial shopping list, but I’ve now thought of several items extra, including five years’ subscription to Parenting magazine.’

  She wrote down a couple of things and then handed him the piece of paper. He took it and perused it for a second. ‘For a frightening moment there I thought you were serious.’

  She shrugged, ‘You know me, Jason, happy with sterilizing liquid and rosehip syrup. I don’t need anything else in my life.’

  He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, chucked Charlie gently under her chin and said, ‘I’ll only be gone ten minutes or so, enjoy yourself.’ Sammy Jo smiled.

  When he had gone, she found a pair of rubber knickers, put them over Charlie’s nappy and then manoeuvred the baby’s tiny body into a yellow lambswool romper suit. She pulled a small, soft blanket from her cot by the window and wrapped her up in it, then lay her down inside the cot. Charlie squawked her disapproval as soon as Sammy Jo set her down. Sammy Jo steeled herself to ignore these noises and strolled into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. As she switched the kettle on the telephone started ringing. She paused for a moment and then went to answer it.

  ‘Yes?’

  A voice said, ‘Forget all that crap about empirical information. I don’t want to alarm you with big words before you’ve even got a grip on the basic ideas.’

  Sammy Jo bit her lip, and then said violently, ‘What makes you think that I don’t understand what that word means? What the hell makes you presume that?’

  Her heart sank. She hadn’t intended to participate in this conversation at all. She knew that participation was half of the trouble with anonymous callers. It meant that you were condoning the act. Implicitly. She felt ashamed and stupid and thought, ‘After all I’ve been through, I’m still a silly, stupid novice. I haven’t learned anything. I don’t deserve people’s help and advice.’

  The voice continued, ‘Let’s go back to what I said first, Sammy Jo. That question about two things in life that we can be sure of. Two basic things.’

  Sammy Jo’s heart plummeted. She thought, ‘My God, he knows my name. Did I say my name when I answered this time? Why did I answer him in the first place?’

  She said, ‘I guess I can be sure that you are telephoning me, irritating me, involving yourself in my life when all I really wish is that you were dead in a room somewhere or dying of a terrible disease, or at the very least in some fundamental physical discomfort.’

  The voice cackled, ‘Well done! That’s part of the answer, Sammy Jo, very well done. To put it simply, the two things that we can really be sure of in life are (a) that we exist. We can be sure of ourselves. Are you in any doubt that you exist, Sammy Jo, any doubt at all?’

  Sammy Jo sighed. ‘The only thing I don’t doubt is that you are a pain in the fanny. That’s all.’

  The voice paused for a moment and then said, ‘I get your point. We know that we exist because we can feel pain. Our bodies feel pain. I can be sure of two things, to quote Russell: “We are acquainted with our sense-data and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist.” Sense-data is a silly technical word which I’ll explain to you later.’

  Sammy Jo was biting her nails and looking around for the pen she’d used earlier to write her shopping list. To pass the time she said, ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’

  The voice said, ‘Imagine yourself in any situation, any situation at all. It doesn’t matter what you imagine yourself doing.’

  He paused. ‘I knew it would come to this, he’s going to talk dirty. I knew it,’ Sammy J
o thought instantaneously. She felt familiar feelings of outraged passivity seeping into her chest. ‘Go on, say it, you dirty bastard. Don’t pretend that this is about anything else,’ she said.

  But the voice continued, ‘No matter what you think, do or imagine, the only constant element is you. You can’t get away from yourself. You can imagine that the world is a figment of your imagination, that the sky is yellow but just seems blue, that your body doesn’t really exist and that you are just imagining that it does, that you are in fact asleep and dreaming and not awake at all. Close your eyes.’

  Automatically Sammy Jo closed her eyes and quickly opened them again. She hung up. The phone rang immediately. She let it ring about ten times until the repetitive noise it made began to upset Charlie and she began to splutter and howl. Sammy Jo felt guilty about letting it upset her and also couldn’t help thinking that perhaps it was someone else. Eventually she picked it up. ‘Yes?’

  The voice continued, ‘If you close your eyes it’s possible to reject almost everything that seems predictable in everyday life.’

  She sighed and then said bitterly, ‘I can’t deny the fact that you exist, though, can I? You exist, don’t you?’

  The voice was urgent and persuasive. ‘No way. Think about it. Nothing exterior to your mind and your thought is necessary. Don’t be confused by my use of the word “necessary” here. I used it in its philosophical context. By it I mean a Necessary Truth, something that cannot be denied. For all you know my voice could be just a figment of your imagination.’