Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  A procession of evil beings filed past the altar chanting. They each bowed and sprinkled a few drops of holy water over the victim strapped to the altar. After each of the Cloaks had played their part, the elder lifted the ceremonial sword high up into the air; the shadow out the front wriggled helplessly underneath it. The chanting grew louder; the sword flashed through the darkness and disappeared down into the black void. The shadow stopped wriggling and everything went still.

  I try not to watch, but sometimes they make me. I watch the sword go down and the wriggling stops. I watch to see if the wriggling comes back, but it doesn’t.

  When they chop my friend Jenny up, they take me out the front and make me watch. And after they chop Jenny up they put her bits into Little-Cathy’s bowl, one bit at a time and they make Little-Cathy carry her Jenny’s bits around the circle. And each Cloak bends down over the bowl and takes a bit of Jenny’s bits out the bowl and does something with the bits that I don’t want to say because I don’t want to be sick like I’m always sick when I talk about Jenny’s bits. And we all take turns to carry Jenny’s bits, but most of us parts can’t carry them, only Growly can and Growly does that because he can do it. The Cloaks say Jenny ran away and that she didn’t do what they told her to do and they say that if you run away and don’t do what you’re told, you get chopped up. That’s what the Cloaks say.

  Little-Cathy’s friend Jenny is a not little like Little-Cathy; she’s eight years old and she is real y pretty. Little-Cathy likes Jenny because Jenny is the special friend that Little-Cathy gets scared with. When you’re scared together you don’t get as scared as when you get scared by yourself.

  I don’t think about Jenny getting chopped up all the time like the first time I remembered. Some things do make us remember sometimes and then we can’t help remembering - like when something scary happens or something with lots of blood comes on the television. When that happens we get scared and we think about Jenny getting chopped up. Jenny doesn’t look pretty when she gets chopped up.

  No-one does.

  Sometimes the Cloaks make us do bad things which we don’t want to do. We hate doing them and we hate ourselves for doing them and we hate each other too. Sometimes Grownup-Cathy doesn’t understand why we did those bad things and why we didn’t say ‘no’ to the Cloaks. Kate says that it’s because Grownup-Cathy forgets how little she was. Kate tells us that when you’re little you can’t do anything against baddies who are big and mean like the Cloaks are big and mean. Some of us get angry with other parts because we think they are bad and we have fights and want to get rid of the bad parts. We want to get rid of the parts that did the real y bad things like Growly. Lots of us are scared of Growly because he is mean and bad like the Cloaks and we think that Growly is going to do those bad things to us too.

  Kate tried to convince us to accept all of the parts of us but it took a long time. We’d repeatedly fantasise about getting rid of certain parts and made plans to do so. The splits we experienced in our personality felt so complete that we found it hard to grasp that getting rid of one part of us would kill us all.

  On Little-Cathy’s graduation day there are lots of Cloaks. All of the Cloak’s ceremonies are important, but graduations are the most important, because graduations mean that you know your job and don’t need to be told what to do anymore. Because Little-Cathy’s grandma is an elder, Little-Cathy has a special job, and that job is carrying the special bowl and what it has in it. Little-Cathy’s graduation is a special bowl graduation.

  On her graduation day Little-Cathy is allowed to wear a cloak for the first time, but she doesn’t like doing that. The cloak feels scratchy and she doesn’t have any clothes on under the cloak; Little-Cathy doesn’t want to wear a scratchy mean cloak. Little-Cathy is standing out the front, next to the bad stone because that’s where you have to stand when you are having your graduation. Little-Cathy is holding the special little sword which little children hold on special days and she is lifting the little sword up into the air because that is what she has to do. And even though the little sword is little, it’s big for Little-Cathy. Little-Cathy holds the sword tight because she doesn’t want to drop it on the ground and get chopped up. Two Cloaks come and they take the little sword away from Little-Cathy and they give the sword to the elder Cloak, and the elder Cloak takes Little-Cathy’s cloak off her and makes Little-Cathy nakey. The elder Cloak lies Little-Cathy down on the cold and hard stone and makes Little-Cathy’s legs and arms go away from each other. Little-Cathy goes all goosepimply and I come out. The Cloaks make painting lines on my nakey skin and they paint lines across my tummy. They paint circles like circles of Cloaks around and about and they paint a great big line right down the middle of me.

  They paint a really big line right down the middle of Jenny when Jenny is lying on the stone out the front in the shadows and they lift the big sword up over Jenny and they drop the sword into her tummy and pull the sword along the big line on her tummy and along the other lines and they chop Jenny up into bits. And they make Little-Cathy stand out the front and watch Jenny being chopped up, but she can’t and she goes away in her head; I cal out, but they whack me. I fal down and throw up but they lift me back up. The sword pushes right into Jenny again.I go away and the other parts come out in turns; some of us throw up but none of us cry because you don’t cry when you’re in the cave, you don’t cry and you don’t speak. I’m sorry that I called out, but I’m more sorry that they’re chopping Jenny up.

  The Cloaks make Long-Suffering carry Jenny’s bits one at a time, but she can’t carry them and she passes the bowl to Growly; Growly passes out. The Cloaks are getting angry because Little-Cathy has to carry, and she can’t when she’s passed out. I come out from the inside and carry Jenny’s bits and they make me carry her bits to the outside of the cave. The Cloaks dig away in the dirt so they can bury Jenny’s bits, but they don’t dig one spot; they dig lots of different spots and they put Jenny’s bits in lots of different spots outside of the big cave. Jenny’s bits are all alone in their different spots and that means that they can’t find each other. We’re never going to run away because we never want to be chopped up and be buried in different spots in the ground like our friend Jenny.

  It is the day of Little-Cathy’s graduation and Little-Cathy is on the stone out the front in the shadows and the Cloak elder is holding a sword high in the air over Little-Cathy’s nakey body. Little-Cathy goes away and each one of us takes turns to lie on the cold hard stone under the sword of Cloaks and Little-Cathy disappears and all of us parts disappear in turn. We don’t know what happened next because none of us can remember; we think we all went away in our head together. Little-Cathy wakes back up when she is dropped back in the dirt of the little cave.

  Little-Cathy is not chopped up because today is Little-Cathy’s graduation day; it is not her chopping up day.

  Little-Cathy’s Daddy carries Little-Cathy back out of the cave and lifts her into the back seat of his car and lays her down. He lays all of us down. Little-Cathy’s Daddy drives us home and carries us into Little-Cathy’s room; he brings Teddy to us and puts us to bed. We don’t get up to go to school the next day because we stay in bed instead, but the day after the one where we stay in bed, Little-Cathy gets out of bed and she gets dressed and she goes off to school because that’s what Little-Cathy has to do.

  chapter 30

  Grownup-Cathy has been having a bad time. She hasn’t been sleeping well and she’s feeling more freaked out than she has for a long time. Grownup-Cathy has had a very big shock finding out about us all on the inside of her. And she’s been trying to look after her outside children at the same time and that is making her very tired. She has been putting herself to bed a lot because she needs lots of sleep and rest. Grownup-Cathy hates having to go to bed all the time because she doesn’t want her outside children to think that she’s going to bed because of them. Grownup-Cathy loves her children a lot and she hates letting them down and making them worry but when she can
’t cope with herself, she can’t cope with them either.

  Grownup-Cathy doesn’t want her children to know how bad she’s feeling but no matter hard she tries to hide her feelings they show through. I try to tell her that, but she doesn’t want to listen to me.

  I don’t think she trusts me or maybe she thinks I’m bossy. I don’t mean to be bossy. It’s just that I’ve had to look after the others since we were little and sometimes that makes me seem like I’m bossy; I’ve had to be Sensible forever.

  Grownup-Cathy is driving us to see Kate when I start coming out. I really want to come out today because I have to speak to Kate because I’m freaked out and me being freaked out is not helping anybody.

  My coming out makes Grownup-Cathy’s head go fuzzy. I try to wait to come out so Grownup-Cathy can keep driving, but sometimes I can’t wait and this is one of those times. Grownup-Cathy is the only one of us who knows how to drive, and sometimes when Grownup-Cathy’s head goes fuzzy when she’s driving, she gets scared, and so do we. Sometimes Grownup-Cathy pulls over by herself and sometimes we ask her to as well. And when she does pull over we wait on the side of the road until Grownup-Cathy’s head feels better to drive again. Other times Grownup-Cathy doesn’t stop driving, but she slows down instead and that keeps us safe, especially Little-Cathy because we all want her to be safe.

  This time Grownup-Cathy drives slowly the whole way. She finds a parking spot outside Kate’s and makes sure that it’s a forward parking spot because she can’t do the backwards parking thing when her head is fuzzy. I get out of the car with Grownup-Cathy and we walk down the drive together. Grownup-Cathy’s head gets really fuzzy by the time we reach the gate. We both press the buzzer but I press it the most.

  ‘Hello’

  ‘Hi!’ I answer because Grownup-Cathy has gone to that place at the back of her head where we all go to hide.

  Changing over between us parts and Grownup-Cathy makes us tired. It’s a funny sort of tired, not the sort of tired you get when you do too many things, but a tired that comes out of nowhere. That tired is a really big tired.

  Sometimes our head goes fuzzy in Kate’s waiting room, like when she is running late and doing what she does after the patient before us, leaves. Sometimes we fall asleep and snore really loudly and it’s funny because we can hear us snoring, but we can’t stop it even when we want to. Sometimes when Kate calls us to come into her office we can’t get up. We can hear her calling and we try to get up but we can’t because all of us parts have gone too far away in our head. Sometimes Kate calls us and we wake up a little and make ourselves wobbly-walk into her office with our eyes closed. Sometimes we trip, but we never trip badly because we know the way off by heart. Other times Kate comes to get us and she tries to wake us by shaking us on the leg but if the shaking doesn’t wake us, she takes our hand and leads us into her office. Sometimes she pulls us out of the chair, but that makes us angry because we don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes Kate sounds angry and we hate when she sounds angry because Little-Cathy’s mother sounds angry lots. But Kate’s angry is a different sort of angry and she isn’t angry for long and she’s not mean with her angry.

  I like our chair in Kate’s office. Sometimes Kate lets us fall asleep in our chair, but it’s not an everyday sleep because we can hear what is happening around us. It’s like being awake and asleep all at once. Sometimes when we are remembering the bad things we put our hands over our eyes and sometimes the light in Kate’s office makes our eyes sting. We don’t like the light being bright, because it means that the baddies can see us and we don’t want them to see us. Kate tells us that the baddies have gone and can never hurt us again, but in Little-Cathy’s head the baddies are still there.

  I can’t remember the precise details of the last time I was subjected to the Cloaks’ ritualistic torture, but on the day that the memories returned, I was desperate to see Kate. I needed the security of her room, together with the safety of her bearing witness. I remembered lying on the cold hard stone of the altar in the big cave for ages. I remembered that lots of Cloaks took turns to do unspeakable things to me. And I remembered how severe the pain was and how many times I had to switch parts to make it through. When I came to in the dirt of the little cave I was caked in mud and blood and sweat and I was sobbing to myself. I could barely move; I was in too much pain. The pain down below, where I’d been repeatedly brutalised, was far more excruciating than ever before.

  We are lying in the dirt and feeling yucky and lots of stuff is coming out down below. Stuff comes out every time after we go to the cave and it makes us feel yucky and bad, but this time there’s lots more stuff coming out than ever before and it keeps coming and doesn’t stop. It’s coming from where all of the Cloaks were doing the bad stuff to us. And we keep coming and going from our head and none of us knows who we are and that’s scary.

  It feels like the times when Grownup-Cathy is trying to swap with one of us but none of us is ready to come out and she gets stuck and we get stuck too, but different.

  Little-Cathy is scared. Not like when she is scared when the bad things are happening but this time she is scared that she is never going to wake up ever again. We take turns to talk to Little-Cathy and try and make her feel a little bit good. We tel her that everything wil be alright but none of us really believe that because we can’t stop the stuff coming out from down below and we can’t keep ourselves awake either. We try hard to help Little-Cathy but she keeps leaving us and we can’t get her back. And Little-Cathy has never left us before when we can’t get her back and we are worried, because it’s our job to look after her and make sure that she is okay, but this time no-one is okay. We can’t find Little-Cathy to wake her up and we can’t wake ourselves up either.

  When Grownup-Cathy is remembering that day in Kate’s office she can’t wake up and she’s scared and so is Kate.

  We don’t remember what happens at the end of that day in the cave. We think that Little-Cathy’s Daddy comes and carries us out of the cave, because that’s what he does all the other times. I don’t remember him doing that and the others don’t either. Maybe we were having one of our big sleeps, or maybe we were dead in our heads.

  When I’m sitting in Kate’s office remembering that last day with the Cloaks I start to cry because I can’t wake up. I don’t cry real tears because the tears don’t come out but I cry on the inside and I shake all over like you do when you do cry real tears. Maybe I am dead, but I don’t know if I am or not. If dead means that you can’t wake up at all and you can’t move either, then we must be dead. But when you’re dead, I don’t think you can feel scared so maybe we’re not dead after all.

  I start to wake up a little in Kate’s chair; I’m not dead.

  My tummy feels sick and I want to throw up but I can’t throw up because there’s something over my face. And my hand lifts itself up and tries to push the something off my face, but it can’t get the something off. I fall asleep again and no-one else wakes up instead, so we all stay asleep. Then we do wake up and the something is still there over our face and our hand is there too and our other hand is there, but we don’t remember putting our hands there and our hands are pushing against the something and we feel sick and we want to throw up and we push the something away and it comes off our face. I throw up in my head and we feel half awake and we hurl in our head and we wake up more and we feel really sore down below.

  We’re really sore down below where the Cloaks did the bad stuff to us and we throw up and that makes us feel yucky and we are yucky and the bad stuff makes us feel really yucky down below, but we’re not dead. We are throwing up lots and you can’t throw up lots when you’re dead.

  Grownup-Cathy knows that it is a mask on our face because she knows about masks because she’s a doctor. And she tells us that it’s a mask that special doctors in hospitals use when they put people to sleep so that they can do things to fix them. And Grownup-Cathy tells Kate but Kate knows already because Kate has been watching and she’s knows that
it’s a mask because she’s a grown up too and she knows about masks. And now we all know that we had a mask on our face and that the mask helped give us a thing called an anaesthetic to put us to sleep so we could have something done to us to fix us up.

  chapter 31

  When Little-Cathy wakes up she isn’t inside the cave and she isn’t back in her bedroom either. And she doesn’t have a mask on her face. She is lying in a strange bed all by herself, in a room that has walls that are the colour of lemons and a very shiny floor.

  Little-Cathy takes a long time before she is all awake and when she is, she feels scared. She lies very still and watches the door to see if there are any Cloaks coming. There aren’t any Cloaks and someone walks into the room instead. The someone is a lady and Little-Cathy doesn’t know who the lady is, but the lady isn’t wearing a cloak and she is smiling.

  The someone asks Little-Cathy how she’s feeling, but Little-Cathy doesn’t know because no-one has ever asked her that before. We know on the inside that Little-Cathy is feeling sore and hurt and yucky, but we don’t say anything. The lady is wearing a blue and white dress and a funny-looking hat that stands up by itself. The nice lady in the funny hat comes in and out of Little-Cathy’s room a lot and she tucks Little-Cathy’s sheets in and she gives Little-Cathy sips of water. Sometimes the nice lady sits down on the white plastic chair next to Little-Cathy’s bed and holds Little-Cathy’s hand. Little-Cathy feels a little bit better when she does that and she falls asleep, holding the nice lady’s hand. When Little-Cathy wakes up again she feels really sore down below and she wants to cry but she looks around the room and sees her mother sitting there. And Little-Cathy’s mother isn’t smiling; she’s got her angry face on and Little-Cathy is scared of her mother’s angry face. Her mother’s angry mouth opens and it starts to talk, but Little-Cathy doesn’t want to listen to her mother’s angry mouth talking. Little-Cathy starts crying and I come out and listen for a while, but then we all fall asleep.