Anita and Me

by Meera Syal

  I scrabbled around for a pen and paper; mama seemed to have brought everything in the house except for those two items. Food, comics, books, puzzles, knitting (‘Now’s the time to learn!’ mama said. I never did.), photographs of everyone I loved, even yesterday’s Express and Star with the crossword half-completed in Mrs Worrall’s large uneven capitals. ‘No paper!’ I mouthed to Robert who wagged his finger at me mock-angrily. ‘Tomorrow!’ he mouthed back and eased himself back onto his bed like a very old man.

  When mama and papa came to see me that evening, I made them promise to bring me a large supply of pens and paper on their next visit. I could tell that they were thrilled at this request, they made a big fuss of noting carefully what kind of paper exactly, whether I wanted pens or crayons, notebooks or loose-leafs, as if getting this right would be a miracle cure. And it was only then I noticed how much weight mama had lost, her usually moon-shaped face was all angles and shadows, she and papa had saddlebags of dark under their eyes, papa’s rosy complexion had given way to a sallow tinge, as if he had been indoors for too long.

  They had asked me about the accident, of course, and I had told them I had simply fallen awkwardly. I knew it had been a deliberate act, as deliberate as any of the lies I had told. Uncle Alan had been right all along; sin always had consequences, whether it was his vision of fiery pits or Auntie Shaila’s prediction that I would come back to earth as an insect. I decided there and then to heal myself, both in body and mind. It was time. I asked mama to bring in all my school books to prepare for the eleven-plus, I would grow my hair long and vaguely feminine, I would be nice to Pinky and Baby and seek out their company willingly, I would write letters to India and introduce myself properly to that anonymous army of blood relatives, I would learn to knit, probably, and I would always always tell the truth.

  So when mama’s next question was, ‘Why do you need all this paper?’ I, of course, pointed to Robert and told her about my new friend. Robert was sitting up in bed chatting with his visitors, whom I presumed were his grandparents; I saw grey hair and the stems of reading glasses poking out from beneath their surgical masks. Anyone who wished to enter Robert’s glass cubicle had to dress like they were entering a radioactive zone, masks and gowns and gloves sometimes, and floppy green wellies cut off at the ankle. I had not seen anyone visit him besides these two old people and a small battalion of faceless doctors, but I assumed he must have been popular as his walls were covered in Get Well cards and funny drawings (no flowers or fruit, they were not allowed apparently), and pictures of footballers and pop stars.

  I was also beginning to build up quite a collection from wellwishers: my class at school sent a card and books; several Aunties and Uncles dispatched toys I was far too old for and Indian food in tupperware containers which the nurses always appropriated and ate themselves (I could smell Auntie Shaila’s pickle on their breath at ten paces); Mrs Worrall sent fairy cakes and a crossword book; Sherrie’s parents sent me photographs of Trixie; and there were several cards from various Tollington old people. But nothing from Anita.

  ‘He must be quite ill, poor boy,’ mama said, glancing over at Robert. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ ‘Dunno,’ I shrugged. I had never asked, I actually did not want to.

  As soon as mama and papa had gone, more optimistic than I had seen them for ages, I dived for the pen papa had given me from his breast pocket, with BENSON LOCKS in gold letters down one side, and ripped a page out of a magazine that had a decent-sized white border on it. I wrote a message to Robert quickly and threw a grape at his window to attract his attention. He was twiddling with one of the knobs on his portable radio and came to the window, still holding it in one hand. He squinted as he read, mouthing the words to himself, ‘Tomorrow I get supplies…Know how to play Hangman?’ He raised a thumb to me like a soldier, message understood, and I saw that the nail above the knuckle was splintered and black.

  I had often dreamed of having a Boyfriend, as opposed to a mindless crush on a pop star or American TV detective. The boys I fantasised about were invariably white, clean shaven, tall and yet insubstantial, exactly like the cartoon heroes in the romantic comic strips in Jackie. They were car mechanics who wrote novels, racing car drivers who loved animals, surgeons who sculpted in their spare time: they inevitably spotted me across a crowded room and fell instantly, and I always resisted them until the last moment when I would swoon into their arms reluctantly. We kissed a lot and never spoke except in greeting card cliches: ‘You are the one I’ve been waiting for, Meena…Meena, I was so afraid that I’d lost you…marry me, Meena, or I’ll die …’ In these scenarios, words were secondary, unnecessary; physical contact and smouldering looks were all. So it was very strange that my first and most intense relationship with a boy was conducted via scribbled messages on scrap paper through a pane of glass blend where you could look but not touch, understand but not hear – a true hospital love, sanitised and inevitably temporary.

  At first we stuck to the obvious channels, word games, jokes, gossip about the rest of the ward, then we progressed to swapping autobiographical details; I found out the two old people who visited Robert were his parents, he was an only child, born to people who had been told long ago they would never bear children. ‘I’m a medical miracle!!’ he wrote. I did not write a reply, I just nodded stupidly in agreement, my throat full, my chest singing. Sharing our past inevitably led to sharing secrets and we naturally had to develop a code; we decided that we would insert extra letters between every letter in the word we wrote, and in alphabetical order. So ‘How are you?’ became ‘Haobw Acrde Yeofu?’ ‘I’ve just had a good dump’ became ‘Iavbejcudsft hgahd ai gjokold dmunmop’ etc. The first few days were incredibly frustrating, as if two old friends had stopped speaking after a stupid row, or one of us had just brought back a new spouse after a torrid, whirlwind holiday romance and discovered our future partner only spoke and understood an obscure East European dialect.

  Pretty soon, we reached a stage where we did not even need to complete our unpronounceable sentences, I would begin a phrase and before I had reached the full stop, Robert was holding the same question, or in a few spooky cases, the answer to something I had been about to ask him. Now to get his attention, I simply had to look up, shift my body, or if his head was turned towards his wall, casually wave my hand over the anglepoise lamp I had trained on his cubicle and my shadow would bring him to me. Even when we switched off our respective lamps, I could still hear him talking, although I had never actually heard his voice, and still see his blacknailed hands whizzing off messages which I read like braille in the dark.

  When, one evening, my whole family descended upon me bearing gifts, a birthday cake and Sunil in a new outfit several sizes too large, I was temporarily dumbfounded. The logical part of my brain, the seriously underused section since I had been in hospital, told me that it must have been Sunil’s birthday and therefore Diwali tomorrow and so it must be somewhere around the end of October. But the rest of my body went into emotional shock upon realising that I had been prone in this bed for over six weeks, that summer had handed over to autumn and that winter was standing in the wings sucking a throat lozenge and waiting for his cue. A new school year had started, leaves had fallen, duffle coats and mittens on strings would now be the de rigueur yard-wear, and I was six weeks older and a lifetime wiser.

  Nanima was not her usual ironic self; she sat huddled into the folds of her shawl on the end of my bed regarding me with moist mournful eyes. I knew there was something drastically wrong when she refused the sweetmeats and Milk Tray being waved enticingly under her nose. ‘What’s up, Nanima?’ I joked. ‘You’ve always beaten me to the caramel whirl …’ Nanima wiped her eyes with the end of her shawl and mama and papa swapped a You Tell Her Darling look over my head.

  ‘What?’ I said, patting the bedclothes to attract Sunil to me who was toddling now around the metal frame legs, singing some weird off-key song to himself.

  ‘Meena,’ papa began. ‘Your Nan
ima has decided to go back to India.’

  I blinked rapidly for a few seconds and from the corner of my eye I thought I saw Robert look up sharply and heave himself to his knees. ‘When?’ I asked casually, a chasm cracking open somewhere.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ papa said gently. ‘She wanted to stay longer but now we’re …’ He was going to say, Now We’re Not Going To India but as that was all my fault, he changed it to ‘…now she’s feeling homesick, and the cold weather is coming …’

  ‘Well, keep her inside!’ I screamed in my head. ‘Buy her a fur coat! Leave the heating on all night! Strap a sodding hot water bottle to her bosom and force feed her rum!’ But I chose to nod understandingly and flash Nanima a bright, reassuring smile. I was a grown-up now, I had seen my parents swallow down anger and grief a million times, for our sakes, for the sake of others watching, for the sake of their own sanity. It was not so hard to do, this sacrificial lark, it came with the territory. ‘Anyway,’ I chirped, patting Nanima’s gnarled hands which I would mourn forever, I knew it, ‘we’ll be coming to India soon, eh? And next time, you can teach me how to sing this in Punjabi!’ and I launched into an overloud and unnecessarily bouncy rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Sunil’ which made him stare at me with a frightened owlish face.

  I wanted many more years with Nanima, more than that I passionately wanted back all the years I had already missed with her, all the other birthdays and accidents and door slammings and apologies that so many other children had at their disposal and treated as disposable. But I did not crack, even when she said goodbye and leaned over me, smoothing my hair back into the horrible centre parting she thought suited me, whispering her familiar prayer, ‘Wahe Guru Satnam …’ And then, even more quietly, ‘Meena…jewel…precious…light…bless you …’ and she was gone, shuffling after mama who held the swing doors open for her and touched her lightly, motherly, as she passed through.

  I lay back on my bed and waited for the nurses to do their final rounds before lights off. I could not lift my head to look at Robert, it felt heavy and leaden, full of water and stones which swished about on an irregular tide. After so long of living in that dusk where my fantasies almost met reality, where longings could become possibilities, where I tortured myself sweetly with dramatic scenarios of near-disasters and doomed love affairs, I was having to learn the difference between acting and being – and it hurt. I had enacted loss and departure so many times and thrilled to the tears I could make myself shed, but now, I could not cry at all. Robert and I sent no messages that evening. We did not make eye contact although I knew he was watching me, even in the darkness. And I woke up comforted, my fist warm and curled where he had been holding my hand.

  One day, the nurses dragged in a six foot high mock pine tree, with nylon branches and a bright red plastic stand, and I realised with a start that it was a Christmas tree. The Horse Face doctor entered with a wake of eager-eyed students, and at the same time I looked over automatically to Robert’s cubicle and saw that it was empty. I sat bolt upright as the flock of medics perched round my bed expectantly.

  ‘Hello Mary, how are we today?’

  ‘Where’s Robert?’ I demanded.

  Horse Face cracked her first smile ever, I could tell she’d strained a muscle doing it.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked again, sharply.

  ‘Robert’s having some tests today. He’ll be back. But what about you? Leg still hurts, does it?’

  I slumped back in relief onto my pillow and regarded my leg spitefully, this alien, useless liability stuck to the end of my body. ‘It’s fine. Just itches a lot.’

  Horse Face whispered something to her disciples who looked over my leg with sudden interest, one of them tapped his pencil on the plaster cast which was no longer brilliant white but grey and mottled, with a dirty band like unwashed neck skin where my toes met fresh air. ‘Will Robert be leaving the same time as me?’ I demanded. The nurses paused at the now erect tree, arms loaded with bright red tinsel and tiny icicles hanging from their fingers.

  I wanted Robert to see the tree and lobbed a half-eaten tangerine at his window which landed with a soft splat and inched down the pane like a sleepy snail. He did not look up; I could see the top of his tousled head, he was lying on his back with the sheets drawn right up to his neck, his arms slack at his sides. He was not asleep, I could feel him blink, so I eased myself up onto my elbows for the first time in weeks and was able to bring my head right up to his cubicle. The silly face I had started to pull slid off the end of my chin; his face was papery and chalk white, there were two bruised holes in the centre of each hand, his drip marks, which looked like stigmata, and he was crying. ‘Robert!’ I shouted. It was strange to have to use my voice for him. ‘Rob! Please!’ He deliberately swung his head away from me but his shoulders still moved in tiny judders. ‘Nurse! Quick!’ Nurse Sylvie stepped to my side.

  ‘What’s wrong with Robert?’ I gulped. ‘He won’t speak to me!’ Sylvie sighed, patted her paper hat into place and sat down easily on the bed. I liked Sylvie best of all the staff, with her oval boyish face, mad frizzy hair and perpetual air of bewilderment, she reminded me of a flickering lightbulb about to blow a fuse.

  ‘Robert had some very painful tests today. He’s feeling a bit low, sweetheart,’ she said.

  ‘What tests?’ I asked. ‘Good tests? I mean, to make him better?’

  Sylvie chewed her lip and glanced over her shoulder to check whether the Staff Nurse was snooping about. ‘He’s not a well little boy at the moment, sort of two steps forward and one back. He gets very tired, you know? Depressed. But we’re doing our best, don’t you worry.’

  Robert and depression did not go together in the same sentence. I had a selfish desire to march in there, slap him round a bit and tell him not to be so stupid, because if he didn’t get better, neither would I.

  On December the twentieth, I packed my spongy vanity case myself as soon as I got up, distributed my comics and magazines to various other patients and said my cheery farewells, gave away my remaining fruit and juices and was all ready to leave by ten o’clock. Sylvie appeared clutching a surgical gown, mask and one green wellie and said, ‘Come on then, I nearly got sacked for asking this favour for you.’ Sylvie handed me my crutches and stood back to admire her handiwork; I checked my reflection, a strange hunched figure swathed in shiny green grown-up clothes, a stupid smile stretching the mask across my mouth like a gag.

  We entered an anteroom with a huge sink and several empty pegs where Sylvie made me wash my hands, and then she heaved open a door marked ‘Authorised Visitors Only!’ which opened with a vacuum-filled pop. I limped inside and automatically sat down on the metal chair next to Robert’s bed, the door closing with a sigh behind me. ‘Well, don’t you look fetching,’ said a voice I had never heard before, surprisingly adult, posh even, only a hint of Black Country twang which sat upon the last G of his sentence. ‘Hiya Robert…how’m you feeling?’ I said, lost. Robert broke into giggles, they sounded exactly as I had imagined, rude farty bubbles in a bath. ‘Ey up, yow’m a real Midland wench, our Meena! I thought you’d sound a bit more exotic than this!’ God he was thin, the length of his body stretched out like a flattened skin in the sun, interrupted only by his knees and elbows.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, most of his fingertips wore helmets of gauzey bandages, the two exposed to the air were dead and coming away from the skin. ‘I’m unwrapping like the Invisible Man,’ he said. ‘Seen that film, the old black and white one?’ I shook my head, as tongue-tied as if he’d cornered me on a sweaty dance floor and was trying his luck for a grope. (I’d never been to a disco, but this was what I always imagined happened to girls like me, the favoured beauties would get whisked away by the hunks, I would get landed with the guy with acne and tomato sauce down his tank top…)

  ‘Well, you’re better company with sign language, our Meena,’ Robert sighed. ‘But I suppose we already know everything about each other anyway. What else is there to say?�
� I drew in a breath, he interrupted me, ‘I know. Before you go, we’ve got to tell each other something we haven’t told each other before. Something new, yeah?’

  I nodded. ‘Um, I’m getting a bike!’ I said brightly.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘So you can fall off it and break the other leg? I’ll tell them to hold onto your bed, eh?’

  ‘Rob, when will you be better?’

  Robert paused and then said carefully, ‘Now that’s something I don’t know. I’ve got my O levels next summer, so …’ It wasn’t an answer, but he had set himself his own time limit which I understood and respected. He continued, ‘Now, what don’t you know about me?’

  I had nothing to lose. I could hear clocks ticking and see pages of a calendar being ripped away by a strong breeze, film titles like ‘Never Say Die!’ and ‘The Last Chance Saloon!’ inexplicably dancing across my vision. ‘Okay Rob, I don’t know if you’ve got a girlfriend or not,’ I said loudly.

  ‘Yeah, I have,’ said Robert quietly and took my hand in his.