Bina

by Anakana Schofield

  This was what Bina’s mother always said of her time in England.

  I left my appendix in England is all Bina will say.

  I’m not going back for it.

  Bina knows what she did do and what she didn’t do.

  Don’t forget that.

  That much she knows

  The rest is up to yourselves.

  The Solicitor wants to know what I did in England. He says he’ll need evidence and proof to counter this fresh accusation.

  I hear him say it on the message.

  The message he leaves for me when I don’t answer the phone.

  I’m glad he left the message he did, though, because I have to think about who knew I was in England at all and I cannot remember if I told Eddie this. He’s the most likely person to be spreading filthy untruths that will see me locked up, but since I cannot remember, this is a problem.

  I have no one who might remember for me.

  The other people who certainly knew I had gone to England were Tomás and Phil.

  They are both gone.

  They’ll not be telling anyone anything to defend me.

  The Crusties are right.

  It’s an enemy and it’s time to make a list.

  I’ll make a list of everything I can remember and then maybe it’ll come again, the parts I cannot remember. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not. Sometimes you’re glad about that. Not everything needs to be remembered. Don’t forget that when you’re struggling to recall.

  My mother changed the story. She changed my story and said I had to come back home. She said I was needed there. My siblings needed me. She forgave that money was needed and she let me come back. I am remembering that now but how much use is that in a court of law?

  I have started taking small naps to help with the remembering. I am doing this because I heard a woman on the radio saying that Einstein took one-second naps to help him do difficult calculations.

  It was on Raidió Na Gaeltachta.

  I was amazed there I was listening to Einstein as Gaeilge and he helped me remember information about myself.

  Would you credit it?

  I’m only forgetting in English, I’m remembering in Irish.

  How is that possible?

  Only for Einstein.*12 *13

  I’d be blanked.

  I don’t like it.

  The not being able to remember.

  The scrambling.

  It’s like trying to bite something that keeps moving away from your mouth. It’s like that, except the first few times you bite yourself and it hurts and then on the fourth time you stop trying. The trouble, even right here, is I can’t finish the sentence because I cannot remember what you stop trying at.

  This is getting very difficult

  I think you can see that.

  Can’t you?

  They are wanting me to provide information but I cannot remember any information they need me to provide.

  Unfit to stand trial.

  Those were four words Phil used

  To reassure me.

  That was Phil

  Always wrong.

  Unfit to stand trial, I tell the Solicitor.

  Not getting out of bed, I tell the man.

  Unfortunately staying in bed doesn’t render you unfit to stand trial.

  He cautions against it.

  You’re too functional, he says.

  And what would you know about what way I am, I told him.

  Come here and look at me and you’ll see I’m unfit.

  Next week, he says he’ll come, but he’s not hopeful.

  I’ll need to be dead by next week

  Maybe

  That’s all I could think against him not being hopeful.

  Now just in case there’s speculation about Loughborough and what I did there…I will state unequivocally everything I did that would have interest to any person looking to convict me. I did a bit of cleaning work and I did factory work and finally I did some Home Help. They are going to make an awful song and dance about how many jobs I had in a short time, but there is an explanation for it and I will write it out here in as much detail as time and this excruciating shoulder pain permits.

  And I think that is all it permits.

  I cleaned

  I worked in a factory

  I was a Home Help

  And then I came home, which is where I have been writing to you from ever since, and forgot about it.

  And then Eddie ruined my life

  And now I’ve gotten rid of him

  And he’s still ruining my life.

  If I am dead and you are burying me reading this, there is to be no bad singing. D’ya hear?

  I have to stop now though because of the pain.

  You learn all manner of unexpected things when you lie down in bed.

  My teeth are gone very painful

  It’s happening when I read certain words

  Words with an e in them

  I’m just putting this down here

  In case they autopsy me

  And could find out the cause.

  I won’t be able to go to the dentist again.

  I’m not moving

  And dentists don’t come into the bed to you.

  I can’t go anywhere when my teeth are this bad

  It even hurts to turn my head

  It even hurts to have a head

  They just throb and throb and throb.

  On account of my teeth, I have to phone *14

  Could you bring me painkillers?

  What’s wrong, she said.

  It’s my teeth, I said. I can’t walk.

  I had to say I can’t walk because otherwise why would she bring them?

  You need to go the dentist, she said

  Oh it’s not that kinda thing, I said.

  I won’t last long, I thought.

  It’d be a waste of his time to be drilling.

  David Bowie came back. He talks to me of exhaustion and blandness. It might be a hint. Escape, Bina! Bowie says. Get out. Find out who you are! Another time he recommends I watch a film with a man called Stanley in it. Ah I’m not much for television, Mr. Bowie, I said. It’s a film, Bina, says Bowie. It would be a nice day out for you to go and see it. Put on a scarf though, and keep your ears warm.

  Sure I’m warm here in me bed, I said.

  I’ll stop bothering you, said he.

  Oh you’re no bother. You’re no bother at all. But he was gone before I completed my second delivery of the word bother.

  David Bowie came back.*15 He didn’t abandon me. He came back to talk about Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. I’m not good with names anymore, I told him. Mr. Bowie says he’ll sing me a song. Then he says he’ll sing me a song every day. Oh there’s no need for that, I wave the back of my hand at him. He’s on a chair with his back against the wall. Watch your back, I said, I think that wall is damp. I don’t invite him into my bed because it would be very bad manners and we’d be squished. Also, he’s smoking and he might set the house on fire if he drops ash on my bed and then where would I be? I might be in a better place though, if I go up in smoke with David Bowie.

  He leans forward on the stool and sings to me while he smokes and thinks.

  It’s a new song he sings. Although I’ll be honest, I’m not fluent in his songs. He could be singing me anything and I wouldn’t mind a bit. And then he’s gone again.

  He only came back one more time. Do you know what I’m good at, Bina? What’s that, Mr. Bowie? Synthezising and refracting how we live. Oh you are, I agreed. I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand what he meant. You’re helping me live with your visits, I told him. He smiled and drifted off again, thinking and humming. He was wearing small round sunglasses which I found a bit distracting because I could see my reflection in them and I looked a state—but what woman has time to prepare for these visits?—and if I prepared he’d never come and if I thought about the visits I wouldn’t let him in because of all the warnings I’ve already g
iven you here. In = Din. I’ll add an exception. Unless it’s David Bowie and he’s sat on a stool humming. I might warn you not to let him smoke since the place does smell of cigarettes after he leaves and it’s not the best smell to be sniffing when you are laid up the way I am.

  I lay in my bed, listening.

  The radio told me who had died and where I could find them reposing and the exact time they’d cease reposing and go into the ground. Another voice complained about the lack of public toilets in our towns. Lack of toilets causes distress for many, she said. Parking charges should cover public toilets. Another caller phoned to say there should be no parking charges. It was a disgrace and he’d be happy use his own toilet, thanks, if parking were free.

  We don’t know what real charity means in this country, came another caller, unrelated to the public toilets. The conversation was disrupted by Went to a River with My Fishing Rod But I Couldn’t Even Find a Spot to Cast My Line Because of All the Bushes—confused fella phoning that there were too many bushes in this country.

  I needed the right tractor for the right job. Or so an advert sung out stridently to me.

  We Are No Longer in a Democracy We Are Living in a Dictatorship gave me another 20 minutes of opining about smoking. I was taking it all in. Just allowing it to go into my ears and swish about my brain, unimpeded. I wasn’t going to be thinking any more important thoughts. I would let others occupy my thinking vessel. They could have it. It was empty. It was at this point I realized people have no problems at all, they have nothing bothering them if bushes and fishing are the worst of it.

  A woman phoned the radio on Friday and said people were having their sex against the gable of her house and it was interrupting her night’s sleep. I want them to go elsewhere, she said. They are even out there in the rain. Yowling. Like a bag of cats.

  And what had she tried to deter them with?

  A bucket of soapy water, she said.

  And did it work?

  It did not, she said, there’s even more of them out there now.

  Are they reproducing, somebody texted in.

  Another caller suggested a hose. A fire hose. Soapy water was too good for them. She needed a water cannon, he espoused.

  I admired the woman with the soapy bucket. They only gave her first name and the area where she lived. I wrote down her name in case I was ever passing it.

  I revised my thoughts. I was wrong.

  Some people were being plain tormented.

  Bina wonders about Phil’s point of view

  She concludes Phil thought she was a burden.

  Or about to become one

  So she removed herself.

  She was no burden, thinks Bina

  She was no burden at all

  One time recent somebody shouted at me in the street.

  Baby killer! he roared, waving his arm and fingers fiercely at my face.

  If you don’t get outta my way, you’ll be the first baby I kill, I told him.

  Stern and firm, and off he hoofed.

  Phil didn’t do enough shouting

  That was her problem.

  She requested, like a sane person would

  And when she found no permission

  She removed herself.

  I have too many versions of Phil now

  And that’s my problem

  I just want her back

  The best version.

  She and I,

  Giving out

  And

  Lively.

  from the Group phoned and said she’d heard Eddie was coming home to testify against me.

  She said something about a plea bargain.

  I asked her how she was.

  This was to avoid telling her to stop watching American crime shows.

  That we don’t live in plea bargains.

  We live in Ireland.

  Where it takes a century to get to court & rapists and murderers*16 are acquitted and old women like me won’t ever get a fair trial.

  She was so surprised I asked how she was that she said she was in a hurry and had to go.

  I didn’t believe her.

  She didn’t expect me to ask her how she was.

  This is what we’ve become.

  See.

  She expects me to billow on about my anxieties about what Eddie will and won’t say.

  She doesn’t expect I want to know how she is.

  Because we do not want to know how the other is

  We want only to talk and hear tell of ourselves.

  Since I lay down in the bed I lost all interest in myself.

  You should all try it.

  It is very peaceful.

  It is a few days before I thought again on what she’d told me.

  It took a few days for it to fully register.

  Eddie was coming back.

  They were going to use Eddie against me.

  I would have to phone the Solicitor.

  He would be even less hopeful now.

  The thing is, if that fella can testify against me then I will have to go to court

  Because I will have to testify as to what I have put up with from Eddie.

  He’s not indicted, the Solicitor said.

  He’s not the problem here.

  Indict him, I said, and hung up.

  You have to stop hanging up on me, the Solicitor said when he phoned me back.

  I can’t stop, I said.

  What more proof is there I am not fit to stand trial if I can’t stop hanging up on the man who’s to defend me.

  Just stop doing it, he said.

  I was fed up of men telling me to stop doing things when they never heeded me asking them to stop starting things. If he wanted me to stop hanging up on him, he could start by stopping phoning me and he could come over here and see for himself that it’s Eddie I need defending against and not the other way around. And I never did anything for anybody that wasn’t asked of me. And we have, nearly, all the videos to prove it.

  Nearly.

  Except Phil’s.

  Who was wrong.

  Left a silly misleading note

  When I was on my way over there to help her by persuading her she didn’t need to be dead.

  No matter what she said about the baking and about the claw, not being able to bake is not a good enough reason for being dead. We all know that. Even Eddie, thick as a brick, knows it.

  I was going over there to tell Phil she could move in with me or I would move in with her and then she wouldn’t need to bake. She could have her claw hand and she wouldn’t need to do anything. Neither would I. I could lie down here the way I am lying down now and writing to you. And when she shouted for help I could get up and go to her and help her because she was Phil, and we had known each other for a very long time and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, but the big problem is I forgot to tell her this. And this is the problem with forgetting, and this is where the doctor has misunderstood me.

  I have started to worry about what Eddie’s going to say about me in the courts.

  And I have no Phil to go over and discuss it with.

  And this is the worst of Phil being gone.

  It was only Phil who understood how ridiculous Eddie was.

  It was Phil I confided in the most

  And now Phil’s gone.

  Phil should be testifying against Eddie. I know she would. I know this because she once said to me during a very difficult conversation, after he had been shouting at me, if you kill him, I’ll defend you.

  You’re joking, I said.

  I am not, she replied.

  It would be a mercy killing and it would be a great public service.

  How would it be a mercy killing?

  He is unmerciful. Relentless, she said, and if he did it himself the rope would probably snap. So if you do it, for me it’s a precaution.

  I was stern with her.

  You shouldn’t joke about that, I said. Mercy killing isn’t for joking.

 
Give over, she replied.

  We drank another cup of tea and she let it out of her.

  When you think about it, isn’t it a miracle he hasn’t been shot? Might happen yet, she said. He’s on target for getting shot I’d say. If you can hold out and be patient.

  I agreed with her, but it was terrible advice. If you are reading this and you are locked in with an Eddie or tolerating a nasty man or woman—don’t. Don’t wait for anything.

  Get gone

  By whatever means necessary.

  No one will come for you

  And no one will save you from them.

  This much I know.

  Imagine the very worst and then see it happening and use the sight of it to flee.

  A warning.

  I have had some of my finest thoughts lying down.

  I have experienced the glorious mind, as it was described by that woman on the radio while I was lying down.

  She was an American and I’ve knocked my knees together in frustration while lying here that I never wrote down her name. Not even her initial. It might have been Mary. It might have been Madeleine. She spoke like a woman who had a great brain insulated by a good, warm curl of hair. She was a very solid woman. But since I have no name for her and I have no surname for her, I have instead created a head and good crop of hair for her. I have imagined that brain of hers, as she instructed us—and it wasn’t instructing she was at: it was remarking. I caught my remarking from her. I was always remarking to myself, but now I’m doing my remarking in a more formal capacity for yourselves, and for after I’m gone, and I am very glad of it. For it has been a long life of being talked at, often unintelligently, and at this late hour in the departure lounge of life, I am happy to do the full remarking aloud and down onto these papers. Ordinary extraordinary remarking was what the woman on the radio was at, but she caught me when she told of how people were chased by that which was catching up to them and it was on hearing that that she gave me the final permission to lay still. To lie there and experience the glory of my own mind, for hadn’t I been long chased daily from my house by the intolerable agony of Eddie wrecking my inglorious head? I came to understand that what I had been doing in the Group was affording people the very same right. That is, the right to lie still.