My Sister's Bones

by Nuala Ellwood

  Shaw’s voice brings me hurtling back to the here and now. I feel exposed. But I know I have to stay focused and answer her questions. Even if I don’t like them.

  “But I didn’t break or else I wouldn’t have been much use,” I reply. “It’s the first rule of journalism: stay impartial.”

  She writes something down and I wonder if in my effort to stay calm I’m starting to sound too cold and detached. Isn’t lack of emotion a psychopathic trait? I decide to change tack, to soften my edges a little and keep her onside.

  “The one that stays in my head is Layla. A little girl who lost both her legs when a shell hit her home.”

  Shaw looks up, startled that I’ve begun to talk unbidden.

  “She was so brave,” I continue. “Still smiling despite the pain. I remember she took my hand and said something I didn’t understand. She said it over and over again, so when the doctor came in I asked him to translate for me. He told me she was asking where I had put her legs and when would she be getting them back.”

  Shaw shakes her head and sighs a long, deep sigh, the sigh of a mother who knows her children are safe at home.

  “She was four years old and all alone in one of the most dangerous places on earth. The rest of her family had been killed in the attack. No one knows how she survived. I sat by her bed listening to her cries of pain.”

  I take a sip of water and try to steady myself as Layla’s moans fill the room. “Painkillers were in short supply and they’d cauterized the stumps of her legs without anesthetic. At one point I reached into my knapsack and pulled out three boxes of cheap paracetamol. When the doctor came in I handed them over and he looked at me like I’d just come up with a cure for cancer. I looked at Layla and wondered what kind of future lay ahead for an orphaned child with no legs in a country seething with . . .”

  The moans grow louder, obliterating my words. I put my hands to my ears, trying to block them out, but they seem to multiply.

  “Kate.”

  Shaw’s voice is muffled against the din.

  “Please stop,” I shout to the voices. “Please just stop.”

  I feel Shaw’s hand on my shoulder and I look up.

  “What is it, Kate?” she says gently. “Tell me.”

  I shake my head. She can’t find out.

  “Are you okay?” she presses.

  “I just . . .” I say, my hands trembling, “I just need a break. Can we please have a break?”

  “Of course,” says Shaw. “We can take five minutes.”

  She returns to her seat, collects her things, and leaves the room. A moment later a stocky police officer enters to take her place. He stands by the door, frowning at me.

  Meanwhile the moans grow louder and louder and as I sit under the policeman’s gaze I am as helpless as little Layla, wondering where her legs have gone.

  10

  Wednesday, April 15, 2015

  No more voices last night. I suppose that is a good thing, but they have become such an integral part of me I’ve become strangely used to them. My sleep wasn’t altogether restful though. I dreamed of Aleppo and it was the clearest of all the dreams I have had so far. So vivid that even now as I sit cradling a cup of coffee and looking out onto the damp expanse of my mother’s suburban garden I still feel shaken. And as I close my eyes I can smell the mustiness of the bedroom and hear the gentle tap, tap as a small boy drives his toy car up and down the corridor.

  Nidal is in the corridor playing. As I step over him, he bombards me with questions.

  “What is England like, Kate? What are the people like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Some are nice, some are a bit grumpy.”

  “What is grumpy?”

  I make a face and purse my lips. “It’s like this,” I tell him. “Never with a smile.”

  “Oh, unhappy,” he says, his face falling. “Why are they unhappy?”

  “Well, in England, people complain a lot. Often about things that aren’t really important.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like trains running late and poor service in restaurants, oh, and the weather, everyone in England complains about the weather.”

  “Is it cold in England?”

  “Sometimes. Though we complain when it’s too hot as well as when it’s too cold.”

  “English people sound funny,” he says and his face breaks into a smile.

  “Yes, they are. But you’ll see it for yourself one day. You can visit me.”

  “Maybe,” says Nidal. He shrugs his shoulders and turns away.

  “What is it, Nidal? Tell me.”

  I kneel down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  He turns around and his face is stained with tears.

  “It is this,” he yells, gesturing to the dank hallway. “I used to go to school. I used to play football and go on school trips. I did real things, fun things. Now I am trapped in here with this.”

  He grabs his toy car and hurls it at the wall.

  “I don’t want to do pretend things, I want to do real things again. I don’t want to be locked up inside like a prisoner.”

  I take his hand. It is shaking.

  “Nidal, I know you are scared but this won’t last forever.”

  He bats my hand away.

  “My aunt, she wants us to go with her to Turkey,” he says. “She knows a man who can get us there but Papa, he says we can’t. He says we stay here until all this is over, that he won’t become refugee.”

  Khaled is a proud man, I think to myself, though I wish with all my heart that he would follow the aunt’s advice and head for Turkey.

  “Mama says we should go,” he says, his voice cracking. “She says that we’ll be safe there and I can play football again.”

  As I look at him, his eyes wide with hope, I remember the refugee camp I visited on the Turkish border six months ago. It was chaotic and disease-ridden and rammed full of desperate people whose dead eyes told me they had seen things that I could never imagine. It is not the paradise Nidal is imagining, but it would offer safety and shelter and a chance for Khaled and Zaynah to set about rebuilding their lives. But I know Khaled’s mind is made up.

  “Your father knows what’s best for you,” I say to Nidal, trying to reassure him.

  “You think this is best?” he cries, gesturing to the dank hallway. “I can’t stand it. I want to get out.”

  “You will get out,” I say softly. “And when you do you can come visit me in England and meet all the grumpy people I’ve been telling you about.”

  He looks up at me. His face is swollen with tears.

  “No,” he cries. “Stop saying that. Stop saying they are not happy. They have to be happy. They live in England.”

  “Nidal, sweetheart,” I say, putting my arm around his shoulders. “Please don’t get upset.”

  But he can’t hear me. His hands cover his ears and he shakes his head furiously.

  “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” he says. “You say silly things. Just go away. Leave me alone.”

  I touch his shoulder gently as I stand up and make my way out. As I reach the end of the corridor I look back and he is there, still shaking his head, and I realize how insensitive I have been. Why did I tell him that people were unhappy in England? Couldn’t I see that, for him, a little boy trapped in a war zone, the idea of anyone being unhappy in a safe place like England was more than he could bear?

  A hammering at the front door interrupts the memory and I stand up and put my empty coffee cup into the sink. It will be Paul, come to take me to the solicitor’s.

  I open the door and he hugs me.

  “You look better this morning,” he says. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes,” I lie. “Though the sea gulls are rather noisy.”

  “One of the drawbacks of living by the sea,” he says with a laugh as he steps inside. But something’s not right. The lines around his eyes deepen as he stares back down the driveway.

  “Is everything
okay, Paul?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” he says. “It’s just I’m in a bit of a rush, that’s all. We’re short-staffed at work and I’ve told the lads I’ll be two hours max.” He glances at his watch.

  “Oh, you should have said. I would have got a cab.”

  “Don’t be silly, I wouldn’t hear of it,” he says. “Those lads are a bunch of pansies sometimes and I’ve put in enough overtime as it is.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” he says. “Now come on, grab your coat, chop chop.”

  I take my coat from the hall closet and knock over my bag in the process.

  “Dammit.”

  “Here, let me help.” Paul crouches next to me and begins to pick up various items that have fallen onto the floor. He hands me a box of pills and narrows his eyes as I hurriedly toss them into the bag.

  “Surely it hasn’t come to that, love?” he says as we get to our feet. “Those things are no good for you. In fact, they’re dangerous. You could end up having an overdose.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” I say as he opens the door. “I’m a big girl now. No need for safety caps.”

  “Yes, well, even big girls can get themselves into trouble,” he says, shaking his head. “That looks like pretty strong stuff you’ve got there.”

  “I’m fine, honestly, Paul,” I say as we step outside. “You mustn’t worry.”

  But as I go to close the door I remember something.

  “Won’t be a sec,” I tell him, running back inside. “Just need to get my lucky pen.”

  “Lucky pen?” he calls from the front step. “Blimey, I’ve heard it all.”

  I go into the living room and look on the coffee table where I last had it, but it’s not there.

  “That’s strange,” I say. “I’m sure I left it here this morning.”

  “Oh, come on,” says Paul, walking into the room. “We’ll be late. Look, I’ll lend you my lucky Bic.”

  He grins and reaches into his pocket, pulling out an old pen with a chewed cap. I take it and put it in my pocket. But as we head for the door I feel strangely uneasy. Where can it be? I can clearly remember putting it down next to the pad I was writing on.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if I’ve lost it,” I say to Paul as we head back outside.

  “Oh, it’ll turn up,” he says, locking the door. “Things like that always do.”

  I nod my head but as we walk to the car I have a bad feeling in my stomach.

  “Retrace your steps,” says Paul, pointing the fob at the driver’s side of the car. “Always works for me.”

  While he makes a fuss of adjusting the mirror and making sure his seat belt is properly secured I take my phone out and check to see if I’ve had any messages. There are none. I start to compose a text but there’s so much to say I don’t know where to begin. I delete the message and put the phone into my bag as Paul starts up the car.

  “Anything important?” asks Paul as we slowly pull away.

  “No,” I reply. “It can wait.”

  Paul turns on the radio and the car fills with the crackly voice of a DJ but all I can think about is my lucky pen. It’s an omen, I tell myself. Maybe my luck has finally run out.

  A LUGUBRIOUS SUN hangs in the late afternoon sky. It casts a feeble light across the surface of the water as I sit on a bench watching the last of the fishing boats make their way into the harbor.

  I’d asked Paul to drop me at the seafront on the way back from the solicitor’s office where I’d spent an hour drinking tepid tea and reading the contents of my mother’s will. When all the documents had been signed the solicitor, a pleasant young woman called Maria, had handed me an envelope: a letter from my mother. It was a shock. I never expected Mum to leave me a letter.

  Paul offered to stay with me while I read it but I knew I would need to be alone to hear my mother’s final words, so I decided to take myself and the letter to the benches at Neptune’s Arm, the mile-long stretch of breakwater where my mother and I used to sit before Sally was born to watch the boats come in. It seemed fitting somehow.

  The wind is icy and it whips around my face like an angry hand as I sit with the unopened envelope on my knee. Several feet below me the fishermen growl and bluster as they haul their heavy nets full of flounder and silver eels onto the shore and shoo away the sea gulls who, following the scent of death on the air, whirl remorselessly above their heads.

  The birds wail in tandem with the howling wind. It is a cruel, brutal noise that always makes me think of the vultures that descended on the death carts in Africa during the famine of 1984, pecking scant flesh from the emaciated bodies of children. I remember lying on the living room floor watching the scenes unfold on the TV screen while behind me Sally played with her dolls, oblivious to the hellish images that were already boring into my memory. At one point she stopped and pointed at the screen where a little boy with emaciated legs and a swollen tummy batted flies from his face. “Where’s his mummy?” she asked and I told her in my matter-of-fact way that his mother was probably dead. “How did she die?” Sally asked. And I told her that she had died from hunger; that the sun had dried the earth, that the rain had failed to come and the crops they needed for survival had shriveled and died. “Was Mummy starving,” she asked, “when baby David died? Did our crops fail?” And I shushed her as I heard my father’s footsteps coming down the hall and switched the channel to a quiz show where a man in a shiny suit was showing a crying woman what she could have won.

  The sea below me thuds and the waves hurtling in and out sound like tiny explosions. Boom, pause. Boom, pause. I find myself lulled by the noise. It makes me feel safe. Finally I tear open the envelope and flatten the lavender-colored paper on my lap, and as I see my mother’s distinctive curled handwriting the waves fall in step with the pounding of my heart.

  30th Sept., 1993

  Dearest Kate,

  I am writing this letter in our favorite spot: the big old green armchair where I nursed you as a baby and where you would sit as a young child to read your books. I can still see you there, like a statue, lost in your stories. It used to scare me sometimes, your silence, and I would have to call your name to check that you were still there, that you hadn’t floated off to some distant land.

  Your father’s death has prompted me to get my affairs in order and write my will, but I also wanted to leave you a letter that will only be read after my death.

  He is gone, Kate, and with his passing I want to ask for your forgiveness. You saw things in your young life that no child should ever see. We never spoke of what you witnessed and your silence scared me more than his fists. I worried that it had damaged you so deeply you would never recover.

  But, Kate, though he was a monster there was a reason for his anger. He had lost his child, his precious David, and though we told you girls it was a tragic accident, that is not the truth. You see, it was my fault that David died and I have lived with that guilt ever since.

  The words scramble as the wind blows the edges of the paper and I have to squint to read it clearly. Here it is: an ancient wound that never healed. Reasoning and pleading, guilt and sorrow, it is all here in my mother’s letter; decades of penance spelled out in petrol-blue ink.

  We were at Reculver beach, as you know. You and me and David. He had seen a boat. He kept shouting it: “Boat, boat!” And I saw it, a fishing boat way out across the water. I said, “Yes, David, pretty boat.” But he’d forgotten about it ten minutes later. He was making a sandcastle. You pottered around my feet collecting shells. I was exhausted that day, things with your father had been difficult. The day was hot and I felt so tired I sat down in the shade by the rocks. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I swear it, but I did, and when I woke up I couldn’t see David. I ran down the beach shouting his name over and over.

  I get up, still holding the letter in my hands. The edge of the breakwater is wide and exposed and I stand for a moment looking out onto the milky surface, trying to
take in what I have just read. My mother fell asleep? My sensible, overprotective mother fell asleep while in charge of two toddlers. It doesn’t make sense.

  You were closer to the waves now. I ran past you as I headed for the water calling David’s name. A couple of moments later I saw him. He was floating facedown in the sea. I went to run to him but my feet wouldn’t move. Everything seemed to slow down. I could hear you screaming and a man calling but still I couldn’t move.

  Next thing I knew there was a fishing boat and a man waving his arms. He’d got David. He’d got him out of the water. You were in the boat too. That man had done what I had failed to do. He had brought my children to safety. But as he reached the shingle he looked at me and shook his head. When he did that my feet started to work at last and I ran to the boat but it was too late. David was dead.

  It was my fault, Kate. I fell asleep when I should have been looking after my children. I was a bad mother that day and I want to say sorry for all the pain and hurt you’ve had to experience as a result of my negligence.

  I will be sorry for it until the day I die.

  I read the last sentence in a daze.

  I fold the letter neatly and put it in my pocket. The sky is covered in a jagged cloud that filters the light of the sun onto the fishing boats, temporarily erasing the names.

  I grip the blue railings and scan the mottled horizon. The shoreline has taken on a new meaning since I read the letter; what was once a place of happiness and escape is now tainted. I look up the coast toward the twin towers of Reculver, the remains of the Roman fortress jutting out from the cliffs, and shiver as I remember my mother’s insistence that, every Sunday, we visit the little strip of beach that runs below. As I grew older I assumed that my mother was using the Sunday trips as an excuse to escape my father’s moods; now I realize that they were something much more unsettling.

  I sit at the edge of Neptune’s Arm, watching as my feet dangle toward the sea. What had I been expecting from my mother? Words of comfort? A warm drink to make the nightmares stop?

  I ease myself farther along the edge of the wall and take the letter out of my pocket. Below me an old fishing boat bobs aimlessly on the surface of the water. I look down at the empty wooden husk and try to think of my mother, try to summon the image of the soft, sparrow-like woman who gave me life, but she’s not there. I can’t find her.