Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi

  He had summoned Jean: she was always there before me. Both of them, thick with it, loaded me and my case into a cab and sat close on either side of me, in silence, in sunset, until we reached Chapelfield. I thought they were taking me back to my grandfather’s house. I thought Hewitt simply wanted rid of me. I was a fool. We were going to Bethel Street House.

  She needs to understand the value of property, said Hewitt, To respect other people’s possessions.

  He smiled sadly, trying to charm the Sisters,

  She has no family, you see. We tried our best, both of us. But her stories – very damaging, he added, in a knowing whisper, Damaging to a man of my position, who only wished to help. You do understand?

  Jean gave him a sly, knowing look; she understood well enough, but she wasn’t about to take my side.

  For a short while, just until she gets herself right, she said, showing the Sisters the mark on her hand where I’d bit her, She’s normally very placid.

  ~

  A short while, she had said, handing my case to the Sisters. A short while, which would not be short at all: not a week, or a month, or a year, but forever.

  It remains this way forever. This is how it is.

  twenty-eight

  Robin had summoned a devil, but still I followed him. He led me down the steps and through a run of stalls selling watches and gold chains, secondhand records, drawings of cartoon dogs in pink frames, until we were at the far end of the market, near the food stalls. It was packed with people, all of them eating: mushy peas out of plastic bowls, chips, hot pork sandwiches. Robin was moving too quickly for me, I had to grab him by the coat.

  I’m not a thief, I said, through the steam and stink of fat, She’s the thief.

  He ducked under an awning, pulling me with him out of the way of the crowd.

  What are you on about? he said. He looked impatient, glancing over the heads towards the Guildhall and the trees.

  She’s the thief, not me.

  The pain in my chest was mighty now, but I had to tell him. I was pushing the words out, noise by noise.

  They put you away for it, I said.

  I thought at last he would understand me, but he just stared.

  She only wants to talk to you, he said.

  She stole my stuff.

  He folded my hand into his, and led me on.

  Just a friendly chat, he said, pulling me behind him.

  On a wall under the tree, a brace of old men were sitting side by side, getting themselves a suntan. There was burning, down my throat, in my chest, as if I had taken lye. I couldn’t see past a gang of boys, blocking the pavement. I couldn’t tell anything for the burning, and the words, spinning from my mouth. Robin pointed to where the two old men sat, someone bending over in front of them. It was her, not as young as I’d remembered her, but the same girl – a woman, if I’m true – crouching now at one of the old men’s feet, pulling something from a folder. A piece of paper. Crouching down. It was her, but older, much older than I’d thought.

  I was just wondering, she was saying.

  The first man was wearing a red neckerchief. I’d seen him around. He was shaking his head, and the one next to him just kept giggling to himself, as if he really did know but wasn’t about to say. Robin stood in front of me, coughed and bowed, as if he were a magician and I was the trick.

  Ta-ra! he went, This is the lady you’re wanting, I think. He put his arm round my shoulder, just like she had, that first time.

  You remember, he said to her, We spoke the other day. Told you I’d find her.

  She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Still staring at me, she nodded.

  Can we go somewhere, she said, ignoring him, For a chat? I wasn’t having no preamble.

  Give me back my stuff, I said, Give it back.

  She looked at Robin.

  What did she say? she asked.

  Give it back!

  I can’t . . . can you ask her to calm down?

  I told her I was calm. I told her to give me my stuff back. The laughing man’s mouth was black and wide, the neckerchief man was clapping. Pigeons doing their dance all around us. The words spinning like a top. I told her, and I told her again. Robin pulled me tighter into him.

  Steady on, Win, he said, You’re not making any sense. He turned to the girl.

  She thinks you’ve stolen her stuff, he said.

  Is there somewhere we could go? the woman repeated, as if I were deaf, and looking at Robin – Perhaps if you came too?

  She moved away from the men, inched slowly towards me. They were on either side of me now, Robin and the woman, trapping me between them. The neckerchief man clapped his hands in the air, scattering the pigeons in a whip of feathers and dust, scattering the sounds in my head.

  A thief! Nothing but a thief.

  I couldn’t tell if it came from her mouth, or from mine.

  RULES

  is written in a fine, sloping script. Unlike the ones my grandfather pinned on the back of my door, these are stuck up on all the walls of Bethel Street House, in bold letters, so that everywhere you look, you’re reminded, and every time you break a rule, the Sister can point to the notice and ask you what it is you’ve forgotten to do. I forget to wash. I don’t know how they can tell, but they always catch me out. ‘Cleanliness is Next to Godliness’ they say, pointing to the first rule on the list. We all have to wash in time for prayers, which happen in the chapel, before breakfast. Miss a wash, miss prayers, and you’ll get no breakfast. I discover from reading the rules that we are not patients but Objects, who through prayer and guidance may be Restored. Most of us are ordinary girls, except the older ones, who were ordinary once, perhaps, but really are objects now: pieces of furniture that you walk around, try not to break. I am an object too: I am a thief. Denying the fact has also made me a liar. Others are depraved, which means they go with men, and some are here because they’re poor. It’s all the reason that’s needed.

  There are no clocks, no calendar, nothing to tell you where you are in the world, because really, you are out of the world now. But in the day room at the front of Bethel Street House there’s a row of high windows, facing out onto the street. They’re too far up to look out of, but the sky is visible, showing the tops of the trees in Chapelfield. You can tell the seasons from them. The day room has a wireless which doesn’t work, too many chairs, and nothing else, unless you count the old woman, slumped like a sack of sticks in front of the fire.

  The opposite to the day room is the night room. Mine is window-barred and barren. I’m not allowed to have my case in there with me; it’s kept in the bootstore in the cellar for the time when I may be Restored: although I know by looking at the women that some of us never will be. Worse, I can’t tell who might have to stay here for life, or why. It could be me.

  Restoring involves cleaning, working in the garden, making things for outside people to buy from a stall in the market. The senior Objects, the ones the Sisters think they can trust, look after the rest of us. They earn privileges which are written in a ledger, just like the one Hewitt used to keep. It all counts, we are told, it all counts for us. We know there is another tally, and that this one counts against us: the owing and debt carefully registered in black ink.

  On Mondays we have Meeting, which is held in the day room from two until four in the afternoon. We have Conversation, which means we’re supposed to talk to each other. There’s nothing to say, but that doesn’t stop Noreen, who ended up here after Mrs Philips in the boarding house found out about her night-time jaunts into King Street.

  Well. A girl’s got to earn a bit of money, she says, not in the least bit on the way to being Restored. She tells me there are others here too: the one with Greta Garbo eyes who spent all her time looking out of the window, and Emily, who is here because of her nerves. I don’t ever see them. When I ask one of the Sisters where I might find Emily, she tells me she is in a closed wing. I’m jealous of this; I imagine her nestled beneath the feathers of a bittern,
near the warm, beating heart of the bird.

  Noreen pretends to have access to the papers. Every week, she tells us the latest news of the world, as she puts it. A Princess gets wooed by a Prince from a foreign land. A Princess gets married and a King dies and she gets to be crowned and more Princes and Princesses are born. It’s not news to me; my mother used to read me these stories when I was little. One time Noreen tells us that a man has been sent into space; after that, we know not to believe a word she says.

  The Sister – it could be any of the women who work here, they all wear the same clothes, the big crucifix, the chain of keys swinging from their belts, and they are all called by the same name – has to keep telling Noreen to let the others have a chance to speak. But when I ask who the wicked Stepmother is, who is the haughty Queen in this tale, Sister tells me to be quiet too, and that I should stop saying such ridiculous things and think of something that might be interesting. But there is nothing interesting, because nothing happens. We would go back, if we were allowed, but back is confused; back is just a story, and sometimes it causes pain. Sister discourages us from going back. Memories are not Approved subjects; there must be no Before. I give up on Conversation; I learn a different language here. It’s one we all understand: pauses and sighs, the wind blowing rain on the high windows, the rustling of long skirts, a jangle of keys. Sometimes there is screaming too, which is a language all of its own.

  Saturdays are special. Depending on a Rule kept or an Improvement made, some of us are taken out into the city, where we are made to follow each other in a long crocodile, one brown-pinafored shape after another, like a row of cutout dolls. People stare, children trail behind us with limping walks, calling out names. I choose not to go on these excursions – I have enough people in my head to mock me, without seeking them out. No one forces me to go into town, but I can’t avoid Sundays. That’s when the Outside people come here. If it’s fair, they’re allowed in the garden where those of us who do not have visitors tend the roses, or bring the Outsiders tea on a tray. Because I have no visitors, I tend the roses. No one remembers me.

  twenty-nine

  The place is called Mezzo, which is Italian for Expensive Cafe. Robin told me that, while we were waiting for the girl to get served. The windows are sheet glass and the tables are metal and bobbly on top. It felt very cold inside. Normally, we’re not allowed in, not even for a cup of tea, but this time the boy at the counter was all smiles.

  What would you like, Win? Robin asked, sitting me down, Anything you like – holding out a long white plastic card – It’s on the lady.

  The lady, as he called her, was standing at the bar. Now and then she looked across at us, an anxious face on her, as if Robin really might do some magic and make me disappear. She wasn’t a girl, I’d give him that: close up, you could see the lines round her mouth, and that dropped flesh under the jaw that living gives you. But she was no lady, and I told him.

  Slow down, Winnie, it’s a free lunch, Robin said, She only wants to ask you some questions. Just tell me the answers, and I’ll tell her.

  He lowered his voice,

  But no shouting, okay? Don’t go showing me up.

  The boy brought over three cups, and put a plate in front of me with a rolled-up pancake on it, even though I didn’t ask for anything. Robin called it a cheese wrap, but it didn’t taste like any cheese I knew. It had a smell of dirty socks; the filling burnt my mouth.

  I want tea, I said, when I saw the froth in my cup, but no one seemed to hear me.

  The girl – the woman – was talking to Robin.

  I’ve been down at the night shelter, she was saying, Trying to trace a Miss Winifred Foy. Robin pointed his thumb at me.

  You’ve found her, he grinned.

  It’s a personal matter, she said, eyeing me but still only talking to him, And I wonder if she’ll . . . She stopped, stared straight at me.

  I’d like to ask you some questions – it’s to do with that place on The Parade. A long time ago.

  Where you robbed me, I said, sharp as a whistle, Not so long ago.

  She ignored me. I glanced at Robin: he can’t have heard, because he was still looking at her, looking and nodding.

  This would be 1970, she continued, Can you remember? May 1970. You lived at The Parade, didn’t you?

  The bird was in my chest again, fluttering, fluttering.

  I lived nowhere, I said, but it sounded wrong. My words were blurring. I repeated them, tried to say them differently, but they were coming out wrong, the wrong sounds, or no sounds at all. The woman and Robin were both looking at me, his smile fading and his hand on my arm, and she was saying,

  Maybe if I show you a picture,

  but try as I might, the words had left me. There was only the bird, scrabbling to get out.

  I lived at Bethel Street, I said to Robin, Bethel Street House.

  His eyes went wide, but he seemed to understand because he nodded at me.

  The new apartments, he said, Used to be a nuthouse. Sorry, Win. An institution. She says she was there.

  The woman shook her head,

  No, according to this – pulling out a pile of clippings from a cardboard folder – She was released.

  Her voice was high up, gliding over the top of my head, over the counter and up to the ceiling,

  You were, weren’t you? she said, fanning the papers at me, You’d been let out by then?

  Something was trapped in the back of my throat, jamming my words.

  That was not my life, I wanted to say, Don’t think you can own me just because you know my name. A few scraps of paper won’t own me. A name won’t own me.

  I had to shout to do it – to make them listen, just like that time in the supermarket when the woman called me a derelict. I should have shouted all those years ago. When people don’t listen and the words get stuck, you must shout. Like the spirits, scrabbling to be heard. You must roar. Otherwise you are nothing. I told her, I told him, I told everyone in the cafe. I wanted everyone to hear how it is.

  You’re never let out! No one comes to set you free. Not for a hundred years. Not ever.

  release

  It wasn’t just that I was in Bethel Street House: it was in me. The feeling is just like being underwater: sounds distorted, movement slow – everything beautifully clear, in vivid colour, but just out of reach. The girl in the lake all those years ago, when Bernard found me, she was a warning. I was looking at my future. The Sisters might as well have killed me as set me free. They don’t tell you that this feeling will come back in your life, like a sweat of malaria, a night terror from childhood; that you will never entirely shake it off. They don’t tell you that the world doesn’t work on Bethel Street rules. They tell you only that you are free to go, now.

  It wasn’t a hundred years. It was twenty-four, if I’m true, twenty-four years and I was out in the air again with my case full of stolen goods and a pair of shoes a size too small. I had finally Reformed, which meant that I admitted to everything – that the spirits were only in my head, that I would never steal another thing, not so much as a daisy from the park, that if I needed help, I would go straight to the Assistance and present the card they gave me to whoever was behind the counter. My progress in Bethel Street House – learning to be clean, to look after the others, to sew a straight hem on a skirt using their Singer – meant that I would be able to find work. I had someone to turn to, they said, writing a name on the back of the card. I told Noreen I would put in a word for her, knowing that not only would I never find the word that was needed, but that it would make no difference. Noreen remained unreformed, refusing food and prayer and hissing like a snake whenever she felt like it. She was past going anywhere.

  I didn’t want to go, either. Twenty-four years: buildings grow, and fall, and grow again, money gets smaller, colours get bigger, sounds are louder, people are faster – everything has changed. But not you: same clothes, same skin underneath them, same bones.

  The Sisters gave me m
y case and directions to the halfway house and let me out by the side gate. I went straight back round the corner to my grandfather’s house with an idea of seeing Mr Stadnik. In Bethel Street, his words would rise up like vapour, catch me unawares: a young girl in the scullery with her bandaged wrists, carefully stacking the plates; the day room full of empty faces; the washroom, with its arc of blood on the ceiling. I wanted to tell him that I’d learned about the torments of hope, about the many places of a broken heart. The door to Chapelfield was open, beige blinds on the window and a pot plant with its leafy edges crisping in the sunlight. A brass plate on the wall read Underwell’s Solicitors. I didn’t go in. I could tell from the umbrella stand in the hall, the creamy swirls on the carpet, the smell of office, that this wasn’t anybody’s home.

  I walked on. The morning was so bright, so sharp a light, it hurt my eyes. All around me the smell of dust. Noise came off the road and out of buildings, and people were everywhere; all going fast, not at all like being underwater. I thought I might be stared at, but no one took the slightest notice. I walked the streets just like anyone, behind a girl in a short skirt, her eyes painted black, then a woman with a pram and two babies in it. As soon as I’d noticed one baby, I couldn’t stop seeing them: asleep in the arms of their mothers, lurching forward on the end of a pair of reins, standing over a dropped lolly, wailing. They were everywhere – in photographs in a wool-shop window, wearing a crochet top or a hat with flaps; a plaster boy with a calliper and a hand out at the corner of Woolworth’s; painted on the side of a house, looming down at me, pink-cheeked and kiss-curled and massive. I saw what the world had become while I was away from it: a place full of children.