The Terrible

by Yrsa Daley-Ward

  and then she’s still on the floor holding her face and he kicks her twice.

  They call security and the bouncers run over and I can’t believe it. Everyone is fawning over him, apologizing; he gets a bottle of champagne on the house. She gets fired. She is holding her rib cage under her breast. There is blood in her mouth as she limps away. But it isn’t my business, I repeat to myself. She’s nothing to do with me, not really.

  Everyone goes back to what they were doing. I go and sit down with O’Connell and his eyes are glazed with a red film and he leans his head back like nothing has happened and says,

  Dance,

  and I do . . .

  and in my head I am dancing the lambada, rhumba, merengue

  and the polyester curtain that is pulled around us is made of silk and his hands are the applause . . . hard, strong, everywhere,

  and my sweat smell is the night air in the tropics—the beach and the sand and the yellow moon.

  I am suddenly more tired than I’ve ever been but I’m a professional, so I keep on dancing, you know, even though he is not a man among men at all.

  I am spinning, smiling, sinking. All of the waves in me are crashing

  while upstairs, at the same time, Angela is crossing the road. This is where everything hardens.

  I am still downstairs preparing to take more of O’Connell’s money because the bastard can’t get enough,

  he is foaming at the mouth.

  Later, the doorman is sitting on the step, whiter than usual.

  He says Angela just stepped into the road looking right at the

  oncoming traffic like she meant to get hurt.

  He says she didn’t look good. She didn’t look good at all.

  That is when I realize that she might as well be family. There is a wound in my chest, harder than a cricket ball.

  I go back downstairs. The cricketer wants another dance. Sade plays again; I hear my heart in my ears.

  Of course I keep on dancing. Time is money.

  heaven 1.5

  I look in the mirror one night;

  the moon is too thick. And I see other things.

  I look in the mirror.

  I cut off a lot of my hair tonight.

  A red wine decision. Red home, red house, red, red wine. I bind up my chest. I breathe out. Better.

  heaven 2

  The person I take home tonight smells perfumy. Like nothing bad but nothing particularly good. Also, they have plenty of wispy, long hair. It’s all very upsetting.

  We met tonight in a club called Heaven. I sank two cheapish bottles of red before I left the house. Easy, easy, and warm, warm.

  My two going-out friends, as usual, were not drinking half as much as I, or nearly as fast. I can’t imagine socializing sober. They are from a different planet, perfectly content to be out without liquid protection. Last night I couldn’t hold a conversation with either one of them because my eyes were darting around the room, dizzy, searching for the brightest distraction. They rolled their eyes at me (they are forever rolling their eyes) and told me to take it easy. Slow it down, they said.

  I thought,

  What the fuck for? We’re young only once

  and it’s easy for you both to say. My world needs cushions.

  I kissed someone

  because they said I smelled good

  they said I was beautiful

  the walls were getting tighter

  and it was too hot and dark and full of strangers and I wanted to feel something. Red wine,

  a hot prayer,

  was making me feel deliciously larger than myself. You can always rely on wine.

  There was nothing stopping me, as always. I was free. My friends left. I went back with the stranger,

  the usual story (I hate it and hate it but can’t face myself alone some mornings). This person was talking at me all the while about how they don’t normally do this.

  I thought, Please just be quiet,

  and kept on my T-shirt and socks.

  Also

  Marcia visited in my dream just now, saying:

  I am sorry. I am definitely sorry.

  I did not die, per se. How would you still be able to talk to me in your dreams? Can’t you see that by now I am entirely fact and entirely fiction?

  Pull yourself together. You are an African, the most magical kind of human there is.

  I am somewhere else now. I am part human, part metaphysics, and I still haven’t worked out which parts of me are which. I love this new form. I can feel space traveling through me. I am porous and wondrous and bold.

  And Marcia said:

  It’s not that I loved to leave,

  rather that staying was always completely impossible.

  You are 80 percent water. Stop getting so wasted. Please.

  You should have married the kind one.

  This searching, searching for nothing, will kill you.

  Hardly breathing, I go to creep out the door.

  “I wish you wouldn’t leave,” the stranger says, facedown in the bed. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  “I’m sorry, I have to go . . . work,” is all I can manage.

  “Nice,” they say. “Well, you seem in a hurry.”

  I must be. I’m already in the street, gone.

  The following days are tight, without peace. I buy a fifty-pound Naomi Campbell–style wig—long, black, with the fringe—and return to work at the club. I am quietly wondering about Angela.

  Also, I don’t have the energy to put up with the men or their requests, or their hands. One of them seems hell-bent on asking about my parents.

  “How do you think your mum would feel about you doing this?” asks a customer, who no doubt fancies himself a psychiatrist.

  “She died two months ago,” I say, deadpan.

  “So, my question still stands,” he says.

  Fucking smart-arse. I grit my teeth; tuck in my claws. When he asks me to dance, I do.

  Little Roo

  On the phone

  our cousin is saying

  your brother

  tried to end

  your brother tried

  to end

  tried

  to

  end with a leather black belt

  and his girl

  stopped him

  a belt

  a thick

  black/brown one

  they say

  some girl

  he was seeing

  or maybe

  just some girl

  stopped him

  his room smells like an ashtray

  they say

  there are cups and plates under his bed

  they say

  there are holes in the walls in our mum’s house. (He can’t keep a house. We cannot keep our houses

  no matter how far apart we are

  we are bound by fail

  failing

  hearts failing—we need to sell the house, man.)

  They said it was a thick black rope/cable

  that Little Roo

  sorry

  Roo

  used around his neck.

  I am on the phone.

  I can’t get hold of him

  I down half a bottle of vodka from the person’s fridge and nearly run out into the night

  but whoever I’m with says

  you drank too much

  come back to bed. There is

  nothing you can do from Brixton

  I say,

  “That’s where we are?”

  and they look at me.

  I try Roo all morning

  I get hold of him finally at 12:56 p.m.

  and he says

  I’m fine now

  I get these
feelings and they pass. I’m fine now

  but I know and he knows

  everyone is a long way from FINE. Roo says

  last week I decided to die

  arrogant, but it was my choice to make.

  Roo says

  remembering everything that has happened

  I promptly forgot God’s name

  Roo says

  do you know

  i . . .

  i

  i

  ah, it’s cool, never mind.

  They say it is a belt

  a thick black one

  or cable

  or whatever. I cannot swallow detail these days.

  I go up North. We sit at the doctor’s.

  I tap my leg in the waiting room. I want to hold Roo’s hand but I don’t.

  He goes out for a cig and the doctor comes and I say do you want me to come in with you

  and he says

  yeah.

  And Roo’s eyes are glazed

  blackshining

  and Dr. Melling (now gray gray gray

  and no longer of interest to me) makes notes

  and we’re thinking we can’t wait this long

  to get healed. We’re thinking, skin heals.

  Why can’t we? We’re thinking, how long do we have

  to travel in blistering rain, exactly? We’re thinking,

  does life owe us anything. Did we get it wrong? And time is

  an animal, man. The years. Time

  is killing us

  it has us in its teeth

  and Dr. Melling prints out papers

  and says to Roo, “How long have you been feeling like this?”

  Shit. Who can answer a question like that?

  We put the papers down (I think we sign them or something)

  read them, or something

  pick up a prescription, or something

  but I can’t be sure;

  I’m under.

  And out of nowhere, in the car, Roo says

  I’m into grime music

  these days.

  See. An outlet.

  Wanna listen?

  He passes me the earphones,

  he’s good, of course,

  and that’s the tragedy. Roo says

  I’m not taking those fucking antidepressants.

  I don’t want to bury you

  I say.

  He says

  you won’t.

  It won’t happen again.

  I want to say,

  yes, you’re brilliant.

  Yes, it hurts. Or

  come away with me. But I know he won’t.

  I say,

  So, stop living in her house.

  The walls are black

  the insides are coming away

  it looks like a crack den

  let’s get this place on the market.

  We have to go to Grandma’s cos we’re right there.

  We sit there at Grandma’s

  we eat her food

  he doesn’t say much and neither do I

  he stares into his potatoes and chicken and macaroni and cheese.

  Grandma’s house hasn’t changed since he was tiny

  sitting in the same chair, eating dinner. Maybe the feelings haven’t changed either.

  Finally,

  we make our excuses and escape into the night

  no one will let us in any of the bars so

  we sit in a parking lot across from the precinct.

  He smokes a blunt. I drink rum out of the bottle

  I’m fucked up.

  Where are we? I say

  The North of England

  he says

  unicorns don’t exist

  I say.

  Roo

  says

  yeah they do

  remember the garden?

  Things that I could tell you about Little Roo

  One. A genius, my little brother.

  Two. He was playing with his toy cars and tried to close

  up his throat.

  Three. His father is a wild, wild huntsman, from

  a different world.

  Four. We rarely talk, but he’s my best friend.

  true lies

  What do you do when all the certainties diametrically oppose each other? When the paradigms can’t agree? When the contradictions and horrible info are warring?

  Fact. Marcia is beautiful. Fact. Marcia is whole. Fact. Marcia is dead. Fact. Marcia appeared to me as a pregnant Asian girl on the bus clutching her belly and an old Rasta, who smiled at me when he saw that I was reading a book on Jamaica and its politics.

  Fact. Roo doesn’t care about anyone. Fact. Roo cares too much, about everything. And it’s too much for him. Fact. I need to call Roo. He needs to call me. Fact. I hardly do. He never does.

  Love/Money

  One morning I wake up and understand many things.

  Henry Parker is lying beside me making irritating little noises, snoring and grunting and gurgling. I think about covering his head a little with the pillow to drown out the sounds. But it’s his bed and his house and I wouldn’t want to scare him. It is ten minutes to six and I can’t get back to sleep. We are south of London, in Surrey, in his lovely, low-ceilinged country house with two wings and nine bedrooms. Surrounding the house are two large, very well-kept gardens. Henry lives here alone among all of this space and beauty. It is a muggy August morning and the air in the room is still. Well over half of the year has gone by already, which is a worry. I wanted to make something of myself this year. There’s still time, I think. Definitely some time.

  The bed is large and quite comfortable in theory, with a soft mattress and heavy floral bedspread. It is covered with lots of red and white peonies on a pink background.

  The difficulty of being a guest in someone else’s house is that you can’t just go and get yourself something to eat. I change position to see if that will help. He opens his eyes and says I seem disturbed and I say tell me something I don’t know and he chuckles, gurgles and then falls back to sleep. He sleeps with his mouth open. The elderly and babies share similar traits, I notice. Sometimes I am not sure who is taking advantage of whom. I have been here four times now and he always hands me a cream-colored envelope the night before so that he doesn’t forget and so things aren’t awkward in the morning. An envelope with my name neatly written across it in thick cerulean ink. When we met in person for the first time we discussed our arrangement over sea bass and brandy. I needed the brandy or I wouldn’t have had the courage to talk him up a little, because his first proposal was much too low. We were talking about a whole night after all and I agreed on a fee that was lower than I’d like but better than not having the work at all.

  Henry was a history lecturer. He hates anything written in the present tense. I wonder what that says about him. Last night we went out for dinner and I had steak for the first time in ages and he had the same. We drank a shot of brandy each. People are always very interested in us, which can become embarrassing because he is short, old and bald.

  I think all young people should spend time with somebody much older, although obviously not in these circumstances. Last night in the car we got onto the subject of fatality. He is aware, he said, that he is nearing the end of his life. I, on the other hand, am closer to the beginning of mine. He used the old hill metaphor, which got me to wondering which point exactly I am at on this hill. If I live till I’m eighty, for example, that makes me now just over halfway between the base and the highest peak;

  anyway, hills don’t have peaks. Mountains do.

  I don’t think that I’ll live a particularly long life. It doesn’t bother me.

  You gather speed when you’re descending.

>   Henry says he isn’t scared of death. It’s just as well.

  I don’t like it when he talks about the kids. We could be getting on all right and then he starts talking about the children, as if I really want to know. There are many pictures dotted around the house. His “girls” are horsey and plain-looking.

  Girls.

  His girls.

  Both of them are at the peak of the mountain and have been supported well and funded throughout their precious lives.

  It makes me giggle when I wonder what would happen if the girls found out what their father gets up to in bed with a girl my age. It makes me damn near hysterical, but not because it’s funny.

  The clock says six o’clock.

  Time crawls when you are not having fun.

  I do imagine the gravity of what I’m doing. I do consider soul damage. If the very physicality doesn’t get you,

  it’s the paranoia. What would people think?

  What would people think of this? What would anybody think?

  This catches up with me in the night, or strangles me in the small hours of the morning. I wonder about the outcome of it all. Will I ever be able to tell anyone what I have been? My mind is wandering into dark pockets. I want to jump off the roof.

  I open my eyes.

  To my surprise he is fully dressed, in a tweed jacket, slacks and green shirt, and is shaking me awake. “You need to wake up,” he is saying. “My daughter is on her way round to check in on me. And you’d hardly pass for the nurse.”

  The clock radio says 9:30 in large red figures.

  But Marcia is trying to talk to me. She is trying to talk to me, forever at inopportune times. Deep into the morning and way too early at night. It is often a Wrong Time for the two of us.

  I say,

  Mum, I can’t talk. I’m at work. Tonight maybe?

  But there is no point making appointments with her. She comes when she comes when she comes and all I have to do is not test the light switches and hope she comes alone.

  Marcia says she hasn’t met Jesus yet, can you believe it?