My Name is E

by Frederick Lightfoot

  I could never abandon my sister.

  *

  I fished around the kitchen drawers until I found a satisfactory knife – I couldn’t really have made my way across the countryside like a warrior in broad daylight, even one as grey and misty as that one was, so I had left the weapon among gorse bushes at the mine buildings – then I went into Mr Drake. He had also wet himself. He didn’t seem to care, unlike Harold, who I think cared a great deal, though he was too self-conscious to say. I didn’t know what I expected when I ripped the tape from his mouth. Harold was predictable – filthy language, limited, vicious – but Mr Drake wasn’t. He did what I least expected, he defended himself.

  His style was vulgar and ugly, woven with reproaches and forgiveness, but was certainly a defence. ‘‘Look, it’s not your fault,’’ he began, ‘‘but you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t do anything. That was made up. You know that. I don’t know who’s been telling you things, but it’s all wrong. I really don’t blame you.’’

  ‘‘Stop,’’ I demanded, though not brutally, just a simple command. There were too many words, too great an attempt to swamp me. I would dictate the quantity of words. He looked instantly perturbed, a thin film of sweat forming in the angular creases of his face, miraculously, like moisture on petals. His skin had turned a lustreless, grey-yellow colour overnight. He tried to avoid eye contact but couldn’t stop himself from darting furtive glances at me. I smiled, without generosity, listlessly, and asked: ‘‘Do you suffer with your liver?’’

  He looked confused, but obviously felt compelled to answer, replying: ‘‘I take salts.’’

  ‘‘Salts. I wonder if I’m interested? Probably not. Not what I need to know.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t do anything.’’

  ‘‘You said, and that is interesting. I’m interested in that, because it’s an admission of a sort, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t do anything, I’m telling you. No, it’s not any sort of admission.’’

  ‘‘But something happened. You see the logic. I didn’t do anything means, but somebody did. I didn’t do anything, but I oh so know what you mean.’’

  ‘‘Not me,’’ he replied moodily, and then again more quietly, trying to avert his face as if aggrieved by the suggestion: ‘‘Really not me.’’

  ‘‘I’ve just had an interesting chat with Harold.’’

  ‘‘He’s a liar,’’ he retorted instantly.

  ‘‘A liar?’’

  ‘‘He always had it in for me. Of course he’s a liar, and a bully.’’

  ‘‘But you don’t know what he said. Maybe he didn’t lie at all.’’

  Once again he lowered his head, looking sheepish and hurt, his eyes flicking to me all of the time, then uttered: ‘‘You know he’s a bully.’’

  ‘‘He told me you tried to pay him off.’’

  ‘‘That’s a lie,’’ he snapped.

  ‘‘I haven’t said for what?’’

  ‘‘Well, it’s a lie whatever.’’

  I moved closer so that I was standing over him. I could smell his urine, which I hadn’t with Harold, an acrid, cloying must. I had intended to lean down close to his ear but thought better of it. I remained upright, his bread-knife crossed over my chest, and said: ‘‘I don’t want to play anymore games, I’ve had enough. You’re the sort of man who draws people into games, confusing what’s real and what isn’t. Maybe you’ve watched too many films, but I’ve had enough. So, do you understand, I’m impatient now, and I feel stupid and cheated, letting you wrangle with me, so I don’t know what I might do. Now, he said you tried to pay him off.’’

  He lifted his face, its sharp lines contracted, the expression weary. ‘‘He said he would tell Mother.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  He twisted his head upwards, towards me and snapped: ‘‘That I messed around with kids. But I never did. Never. It was all lies, filthy lies.’’

  ‘‘Lies, you, sitting in The Shed, in the dark, sitting with the kids, touching them.’’

  ‘‘Don’t be disgusting. I love kids.’’ Suddenly I sprung the knife to his face, crossways over the bridge of his sharp nose, so that it was almost against the skin, incensed, I suppose, by the fact he should use the word love. He looked straight ahead, past it, though not disputing it, and again defended himself. ‘‘I was scared, scared of him, scared of what he could do. It cost me The Shed all the money I gave him. They’d kill you around here for something like that.’’

  ‘‘He said it was your baby.’’

  He smiled, the gesture strong and uncontained, liable to become laughter. ‘‘That’s ridiculous,’’ he said, ‘‘you know that, ridiculous.’’

  ‘‘I don’t believe anything,’’ I replied, going closer to his ear to say it, regardless of the stink of ammonia, his stink, and at the same time lowered the blade to his throat.

  *

  I wondered whether the child would take after Abby, share her airy truculence, her avowal not to please, her singularity. I tried to share that wonder with Stephen, but he was too crushed by Abby’s confinement to be able to think about things he couldn’t visualise. I tried to tell him that everything would be all right; they couldn’t be kept apart forever. After all, I didn’t expect Harold and Agnes would want to keep Abby now that she was an adult. I couldn’t work out why they’d locked her up at all and hadn’t just sent her off to fend for herself.

  It was painful that Stephen refused to speculate about the child, but then he had never seen Abby as a little girl, viewing the horizon for its meanings, the landscape for its cryptic clues, plumbing the depths of both, the hidden life of which they were only signs. Nothing had ever silenced her and she had laid claim to everything, giving it her name, making it correspondent with her identity, its witness.

  Like any auntie I was already in love with the child, and planned to pamper and spoil it. I could see it in my mind’s eye, exploring the shore, the granular sands, the strange corrugated surface, not a place of confinement, but of openings, doorways into any sphere it dreamed of. We would make sure of that, three sisters – because Grace would not remove herself, though she might insist on describing everything in her own particular way. I never considered whether Abby would have a boy or a girl, because it would inevitably be a girl, though if the inevitable didn’t happen, it wouldn’t matter at all.

  I never considered whether the child would be able to hear or not. What did that matter? It would be possessed of Abby’s poetry whatever. Stephen never mentioned it. Like Abby, her child would never be deaf to the joy and suffering of this joyous and suffering world.

  I tried to convince Stephen that it would never be a Sempie. They could never insist on that, not three generations of inaccurately defined life. Abby and Harold never had the choice – in that one thing they were related – but they couldn’t maintain the deceit indefinitely. The child would have its true name: but Stephen didn’t believe it for a second, and of course Stephen was right.

  They took the child the same way the matriarch had taken her, claiming it, owning it, deciding how to dispose of it, and she did the only thing her mind could tell her – she fled.

  I found her in front of the angel cradling Poppy, little deaf Poppy. She was completely quiet, neither sobbing nor uttering her name. She had opted for silence as if sound answered a demand to please, and she just wasn’t prepared to do that. She simply gazed, wide-eyed, scarcely blinking, rocking Poppy back and forth, with her usual rough, indefatigable love, after all she had learned the sign so long ago.

  *

  ‘‘You haven’t wet yourself,’’ I said, slowly strolling around Agnes, tied to her chair at the table.

  ‘‘Do you think I’d give you that satisfaction?’’

  ‘‘No, probably not.’’

  ‘‘You’re going to pay, you know. You’re not getting away with this, I’ll make sure of that.’’

  I smiled, though deep down I felt as if I were back at school, scared of what was next. I s
topped in front of her, showed her the knife and said: ‘‘I have the knife, you’re going to pay.’’

  ‘‘Are you sure?’’

  ‘‘I’m in charge.’’

  She smiled grimly: ‘‘Are you sure?’’

  ‘‘Don’t rile me.’’

  ‘‘Are you not simply crazy too?’’

  I slammed the knife onto the table in an outburst of rage. She smiled again as if the gesture proved her point. I wanted to slash her, but didn’t go an inch closer. ‘‘And what if I am?’’ I blurted out. ‘‘How does that help you?’’

  ‘‘I’d be right.’’

  I threw back my head and glared at her, the desire to pounce drumming through me: ‘‘I care about so much and nothing at all, all at the same time, but I don’t know which is which, so don’t push me.’’

  ‘‘You should seek help, medical help, they might show you some regard.’’

  ‘‘There’s more to you than I ever gave you credence for. I always thought you were nothing really, Harold’s slops, but you’re really quite a bitch. Surprising. You come from a decent family, as far as I can tell.’’

  ‘‘Leave my family out of this, they’re none of your business. Now untie me.’’ I shook my head. ‘‘You’re just making it worse for yourself by the second. So, I’m telling you, stop being hysterical and take these bands off now.’’

  ‘‘No, Agnes, you’re not telling me anything, in fact, if I choose I’ll just turn you off.’’

  She screwed up her face, dismissive, impatient, maybe bored. She even had the front to yawn, and then demanded: ‘‘Are we through now?’’

  I looked at her coldly, feeling myself choke up with her indifference, but I was determined not to concede, not to break down, to give her that triumph. Without emphasis I said: ‘‘I haven’t begun.’’

  ‘‘Oh Christ,’’ she complained, looking towards the curtained window, ‘‘get it over with, will you, whatever it is.’’

  ‘‘Are you not scared of death, Agnes, not even a little bit?’’ She turned back and eyed me impassively. ‘‘I’d be scared of it if I was you.’’ Still she continued to gaze at me, conceding nothing, not a quickening of the senses, perhaps only a marginal alertness. ‘‘It intrigues me, the fact you take death, dying, so lightly, and I’m not sure whether I envy you or despise you. Which should it be?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ she replied quietly.

  ‘‘You see, someone’s going to die and it very well might be you.’’

  ‘‘You’re off your head.’’

  ‘‘Does that change things Agnes? Are you scared of it now?’’ She scowled in response, still putting a defiant face on it. ‘‘Maybe you really don’t care about death, and you were the one to kill it. Was it you Agnes, smothered your own grandchild?’’

  ‘‘Oh, I see. That’s what all this is about. Untie me Judith and we’ll get you some help. This has gone far enough.’’

  ‘‘Did you smother it?’’

  ‘‘She did it,’’ she snapped. ‘‘She did it and you know fine well she did.’’

  ‘‘She would never have done that.’’

  ‘‘But she did.’’

  ‘‘No!’’

  ‘‘She was lucky to be put away and not hanged.’’

  ‘‘You put her away.’’

  ‘‘And do you think it was easy, watching them take her and her struggling to be with her father.’’

  ‘‘With Harold?’’

  ‘‘It was horrible, her reaching out, twining in that voice of hers. It was lucky they brought that man McBride. She went along for him in the end.’’

  ‘‘Signing, she was signing.’’

  ‘‘She was ill.’’

  ‘‘And Harold found her, with the baby, I mean?’’

  She put back her head and inhaled deeply, her nostrils flaring wide. ‘‘Give me a cigarette, I could really do with a cigarette.’’

  ‘‘Harold found her, in the tower? He did, didn’t he?’’

  ‘‘No, he didn’t,’’ she said, her voice lowering, but still strong. ‘‘When she took off with the baby he wouldn’t lift a finger. He’d had enough. To hell with her, he said, and he wouldn’t budge. We had to do it ourselves.’’

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘Me and Martha, who do you think? It was always left to us to look after her.’’

  ‘‘And Martha found her?’’

  ‘‘Too late, yes, Martha found her, found her with the rags from a pot doll pressed across the baby’s face.’’

  ‘‘She didn’t love Poppy enough for that.’’

  ‘‘Give me a cigarette.’’

  I plastered tape across her mouth again.

  *

  Sometimes we long so much to hear someone again that it threatens to tear us apart, rip our fragile organs straight through our chest cage, but even if I could affect the trick what hope would there be for Abby? The chance was never hers to take, to stand up, neck slightly craned, chest out, her small convex breasts pushed up and out, to make the bewildering, blatant, beautiful assertion: I have voice, speech, word, language: I am a witness, and I will rend you all to pieces with what I have to say. That was never to be her stage, her role, her identity. She only had a single vowel.

  My spirit is breaking with forbidden, unsanctioned love. No one on this ridiculous planet, on any of its islands, big or small, should die without being afforded the opportunity to live.

  They took it away from her though, denied her that right.

  What hope was there when they took her baby, took it before it was even named, so that it didn’t even have a vowel? She could never have lived with that. She wasn’t even allowed to be there when they buried it – a boy, surprisingly – one of the nails bending as they hammered it in, which they unsuccessfully tried a number of times to straighten out, until Harold told them it was enough and they should press on.

  They said it was a bitterly cold night, everywhere white with frost and a full moon low in the sky – to which I concur, having checked the records. Agnes said Abby would have remembered the pond from when she was a child and the ice broke one Christmas time when she took her skating. She said it as if Abby were really quite unlucky in that way. No one suggested that Abby had come looking for the baby; after all, she had smothered it and must have known there was no going back.

  According to all of them, though, she never had been in her right mind. They fully made that point to the coroner, as well as insisting that she obviously must have wanted to die, why else would she have made a sixty mile journey on foot when she escaped from the hospital. At the same inquest the hospital apologised. They simply hadn’t thought her capable. So, it was concluded that Abby made a sixty mile journey for water, the particular water where Agnes said, by rights, she should have died as a child, presumably contradicting herself and meaning that Abby was as lucky as she was unlucky, though Agnes was always ambivalent or really quite limited with language.

  I don’t know why Abby never came for her sister, came to my bedside and whispered her name. I would never have let her go.

  Dreams she had though, of depth and weight, of narrow space, a world that would define her, so maybe she looked and saw herself answering, the two of them calling each other, saying her name as she exchanged places, swapping element for element, yet still occupying both.

  It has to be the case because I hear her name in everything and I am very hard of hearing. My name is E.

  If you remove a life, take a piece out of the mosaic, the jigsaw, the absence doesn’t simply close up, heal like a wound, a wound on life, the life absented. The essence isn’t so frail. So, I’ll spit Abby’s life, praise her, announce her achievement, her perfection, the tissue winding around her, staunching her. We play it, sing it, our unhearing role. I will be the arbiter. I refuse to allow her piece such easy repeal.

  Someone will pay for this with their life.

  *

  My gorgeous, enthusiastic hairdresser brought snaps of h
er sister’s wedding and offered them to me to look through. I asked whether it was recent, but she shrugged in the mirror and said it wasn’t recent at all, more than a year ago as a matter of fact. I smiled appreciatively. The snaps were a symbol of our pseudo-friendship, which isn’t really allowed, contravening as it does numerous professional boundaries.

  The snaps were of the usual wedding groups, two families brought together, whether successfully or not the snaps didn’t reveal. She generously pointed out who everyone was, allowing me access to quite intimate details of her background, her parents, two brothers and a sister, privileged knowledge. She even conceded that when she looked at them she did see herself married and couldn’t really conceive of not having a similar sort of day herself. I responded by telling her that she would make such a beautiful bride. She shrugged, but didn’t deny it. We are on that scale of friendship that doesn’t need polite modesty.

  There were other snaps slipped in that had nothing to do with the wedding. She apologised for those and admitted she was such an untidy person, her photographs ended up in all kinds of mess. I wondered how she could tell the sequence they should be in. She confessed she couldn’t. I told her I had rarely seen so many happy photographs. She shrugged again and suggested, without saying it, that photographs only ever have one truth.

  Without being able to stop myself I began to cry. I always cry at other people’s snaps, whether they are formal or informal, obviously happy, or neutral of all emotion.

  Of course I don’t possess a single photograph of Abby. None of our families had cameras, nor had any inclination to take us to one of the shops that made up formal portraits. I have no evidence of a past life at all, no source material, only a trust that it happened. I do have later pictures of Grace, Grace and Phillip, and then Grace with her two children, both hearing, yet capable signers, but none when Grace was the best signer of us all.

  My incredible, dissident hairdresser did the unthinkable and bent down, wrapped her arm around me and tried to console me. I didn’t know whether to reciprocate or not. Would it be going just too far? There was something so splendid in her embrace, though, I had to return it. I laughed as I held her and said it was silly but I was not sad, quite the opposite, very happy. She actually wiped away my tears with the backs of her fingers and said I had a funny way of showing it. I conceded that people’s photographs always make me cry, and that sometimes they make me sad, particularly when they are black and white and formal, but on the whole I am happy to see them: in fact, I am never bored as some people are, but I had a friend who died and I never had a single snap.