He’d scribbled an address down for her near Liverpool Street he’d said, the road right after the petrol station that had the man without legs in the sign grinning maniacally, the faulty pump and the car wash at the back.
“Please excuse my living circumstances. I never wanted you to find me this way,” he’d said.
It was strange hearing the formality in his voice before the setting of a building site. Her father, the great Peter Lowon she’d built up in her mind for years was an ordinary man after all, who seemed vulnerable and ashamed ready to collapse under the weight of it all, bits of him lost in the very rubble he’d created with his own hands.
“How have you been?” He asked, such a simple question. Standing there amongst the swirling human traffic, fingers numbing from the cold, Queenie wanted to tell him her answer was a rumbling earthquake, moss over her insides. At the back of her mind, she knew she needed to gather the contents of her bag from whatever corners they’d landed. She was shocked, angry and sad. The crumpled paper he’d handed her turned between them like a bolt. She looked at the neat, slanted handwriting for some inkling of how he’d been and who he’d become. Her mouth opened to speak but all at once the paper was burning another entry into her. And all at once, its contents of ink bomb and blood wrestled to call her body home.
The house he lived in was a shared address. When he answered the door that evening she couldn’t hear a thing from the other occupants. There was only the light from a kitchen down the hallway beckoning and inside the sound of the fridge groaning. He wore a stained white vest and rocked unsteadily in the doorway, reeking of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot. “Come up,” he slurred. He saluted comically, stepped aside to let her in. Queenie brought a blast of cold air in, rubbing her hands uncertainly. “I can come back,” she said, slowly becoming aware of a tension she couldn’t yet identify.
“No, no, no. Not this time Felicia,” he said, already stepping on the bare staircase to lead the way. A single black and white poster of Laurel and Hardy hung on the wall, curling up at the edge. It was only after passing those same heavy, black work boots caked in cement at the foot of the stairs, it dawned on her he’d called her by her mother’s name. In the bedroom, the walls were unpainted, clothes were piled on a single rickety chair and the cheap looking double bed was unmade. An empty bottle of gin rolled into a corner. A dilapidated wardrobe sat miserably in the far left end.
It smelled of sweat and decay. He shut the door behind them. Queenie sat on the bed; her eyes darted around the room. He sat beside her and grabbed her arms as if the moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. “I need to tell you something. I need you to listen to me Felicia. I killed a man, years ago in the army. I helped kill an innocent man. You don’t know the things I’ve seen… done.”
Queenie stood, unclenching her fist. “What? I don’t want to hear this! I’m not Felicia. Tell me why you abandoned me all these years. Why can’t you give me an answer?”
“Why can’t you comfort me?” he roared. “You’re my wife. Why couldn’t you ever comfort me?”
Queenie never saw that first blow coming. It knocked her clean off her feet. Fist connected with bone resulting in a crunching sound. Blood spurted from her nose. Her head rang as she landed on the bed. She was vaguely aware of falling into the red mist of his eyes. Years later, she would block these details out; the feeling of being above herself watching the whole scene unfold as though it were someone else, one hand squeezing her throat, pinning her down, the other moving roughly between her legs. Rapid words like bullets. “You’re my wife, shut up. Shut up.” The bed creaked in a heart-crushing rhythm; hot breath marked her skin, his other face floated in the mirror and then, ultimately, the terrible weight of him, body twitching, emptying into her own.
He cried pathetically afterwards, clinging to the hemline of her skirt as she crawled out on all fours, her face throbbing and swelling, the footsteps of her childhood self, running over some thinly shingled roof, chasing a swing in a storm.
Outside her eyes stung. She walked along the street, the ache in her head worse than a migraine. She passed the petrol station. The man without legs from the sign was balancing on a gin bottle repeatedly rolling into corners. For a moment, she considered stopping at the station, sticking a nozzle in her mouth, filling her insides with petrol before setting herself alight. Instead she walked on. Earlier scenes became part of the edges of the night. She tried to still her trembling body as she stumbled into the fractured face from the mirror.
Two months later, she took a pregnancy test. The line was strong. She cried into it. And the monks from the market throng danced around watery blue lines wearing dog heads, hiding lips smeared in crushed red lipstick.
Session
Dr Krull had a new paperweight on his desk. This time the woman from the reception painting was inside, catching small organs amidst snow. I shook it, watching the snow swirl, smelling pine in the air. His desk was clear except for two files. He was dressed in his usual attire of corduroy pants, on this occasion, nut brown teamed with a blue pinstriped shirt. Casually, he uncrossed his legs. “I’m glad you came today Joy. I know it’s been a tough period for you but it’s important we continue with our sessions.”
I set the paperweight down, still somewhat embarrassed that he had to see me this way, battered and somehow incomplete.
“Why do I have to keep coming here? It’s…” I struggled before finding the right words, “humiliating. I’m not getting better from any of this! All you people do is medicate me and send me home.” My voice raised a couple of octaves, I adjusted in my seat, noticing the photograph on the desk of him and his wife was gone. A part of me was happy at the idea of somebody as together as Dr Krull potentially having marital problems. This was wrong but I didn’t care.
Coolly he said, “I get that you’re angry and that’s okay. You have a lot to be upset about. That’s why we have this space so we can talk about things. Medication alone isn’t enough. We need a combined approach to help get you better.”
“You just want to keep tabs on me!” I spat. “So you can use it against me. Somebody else already watches everything I do.”
He took a sip from a cup of tea on the small table between us before setting it down.
“Tell me who’s watching. Is it a threatening presence, a friendly presence? You can trust me Joy.”
Anon appeared on the arm of his chair, there was a hole in her stomach and the sound of water sliding down a drain. I closed my eyes, blinking the image away, sensing the bulbs of sweat on my skin.
“Why? So you can section me?”
“Nobody’s going to section you. How is your arm?” he asked, adjusting his glasses, the flecks of gold in his eyes seemed more prominent.
“My stump you mean? Sometimes the ache for that arm is so bad, it becomes physical. When it does, I stick my stump in the freezer to numb it.”
He digested my response quietly for several moments. “Joy I’d like to try something and I want you to trust me okay? I want you to close your eyes and relax. Can you do that for me?”
I nodded warily, sinking back into my chair. I shut my eyes, listening to the rhythm of my breathing for several minutes, allowing my limbs to loosen.
Dr Krull’s voice was warm and reassuring. “I want you to take me to your earliest memory of swallowing stones. Take me to the space. Where are you?”
“I’m in a bathroom with a blue floor the colour of the sea.” I murmured.
“Tell me what’s in the room.” His voice, seeming to be coming from some distance was an anchor.
“There’s a purple towel on the rack with mud on it, a jar of pebbles on the floor. The tap’s running.”
“What else? What can you hear?” His tone was gentle yet firm.
“Um… uh, the television downstairs. The bathroom door is open. I can hear a New York accent. It’s… Tom and Jerry I think.”
“Go on,” he urged. “You’re doing well. What else is in that bathroom
?”
“The tap is on full blast in the sink. There’s an empty bottle of medication beside the tap, white pills in the sink. I can smell something strong, like… a cleaning product. Bleach! It’s overpowering.”
“Who’s in the room with you?”
“My mother. She’s-…”
“Good. What is she doing?” he asked.
My breaths were coming rapidly. The chair became a vehicle transporting me to the past, a long buried memory. My mouth went dry. “She’s sitting on the toilet seat, crying and watching me in the bath, mumbling something. Sorry, sorry she’s saying. She gets up, walks towards me. There’s a brightly coloured woven bracelet on her left wrist. I’m-…”
“Go on. Keep showing me what’s in the room. Remember, you’re alright. Nothing can happen to you now,” Dr Krull encouraged patiently. “Stay relaxed. Carry on. Now what’s she doing?”
My body began to shake. “I’m singing in the bath. My eyes are closed. I open them. She’s standing over me. She’s pushing my shoulders down. She’s shoving my head under water. Her hands are holding my head down. I can’t breathe! I can feel the water up my nose, my arms flailing. My legs are kicking but she’s strong. Oh God, I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. Everything’s shrinking, becoming tiny, like I’m falling through static. I can’t hear the water anymore. I can’t hear anything. Something, somebody pulls her off me, my body is slack, I try to lift my legs but I fall from the bath. I don’t feel the landing. The pebbles are scattered all over the floor, rolling into my eyes. How could I know they would follow me into the future?”
A choking feeling spreads in my throat. Dr Krull stood up. Sound was coming back slowly.
He took a few paces then said. “Why do you think your mother tried to kill you? Why do you think you buried this memory for so long?”
I opened my eyes. Tears ran down my cheeks. “I don’t know. I don’t know!” I roared, “Maybe she didn’t love me. She was always… melancholy. Maybe that was my fault somehow.”
He sat on the edge of his desk. “No. It wasn’t your fault. It’s never the child’s fault.” His mouth was a grim line. For once, his neutral expressions had vanished.
My body continued to tremble. Something had uprooted from my gut and was making its way towards the centre, causing splinters of pain like nails being hammered to my chest. I stood abruptly, knocking the paperweight. And the woman from the painting lay sideways in the snow, arms outstretched, reaching for something beyond her confinement.
In the days that followed, bits of a memory came back to me, a fog lifting from scenes I’d buried. The night I lost my arm Rangi and I had argued. I’d gone into his car to borrow a torch. The boiler had been playing up; making unhealthy chugging noises and the hot water ran cold. I remembered walking to the car, tucked behind a hearse with the words MH and Sons emblazoned on the side in peeling gold lettering. The cold air made me shiver. My slippers snapped against the pavement and the dewy shoots of grass sprang up randomly. I was rummaging in the glove compartment when I found them, the photographs, hidden behind a folded map of the Andes.
I spread the pictures on the driver’s seat. My eyes stung. Winter chill from my lips became smog in the corners of the pictures. Straight away I knew these women were prostitutes, working girls shot in cars. I could tell from the bleakness in their gazes, secret half smiles lifting the corners of their mouths, a tiny black skirt riding upwards to meet a bought silence. These were women photographed in different cities around the world, a pair of naked pale breasts jutting, bathed in moonlight, long white beads encased in stockings, full buttocks against the wheel, bruises on an elegant neck angled defiantly away from the lens. Windscreen wipers in their mouths punctuated the language of the multi-limbed invisible thing sharing their strides, secret things that exited through the corners of frames, holding streetlight, smoke and other instruments of the night. The women were different races, dark haired, dark-eyed. I searched for the common thread. Their faces blurred, becoming one broken headlight. I carried their tears on my tongue, bits of a ceiling crumbled into their frozen movements.
I headed back inside. Cold, dead air followed. The door was on latch. Anger rushed through my veins like molten lava. I remembered screaming, flinging the brass head at him, missing by inches. Then his hands were at my throat, squeezing.
“Shut up!” he snapped. “Shut up or I’ll finish you.” His eyes were raging, twisted.
I don’t know you, I thought. I only know what you wanted to show me.
I clawed at his face, scratching.
“You bitch!” he yelled, flinging me off him. And it was as if falling from a great height. The air left my body. Panic came. He began to kick me repeatedly on the stomach, grunting in the process. A carton of orange juice toppled, spilling over a slipper, which had broken during the scuffle. I’d have to get a new pair. He snarled above me, landing a backhand that knocked me sideways. I held my stomach, cowering by the table leg. The pain was agonizing, as though he’d kicked each organ in my stomach individually.
“What are you going to do about it?” he taunted. “What the fuck can you do?” He watched me struggling to move my body forward. Blood trickled into the hundred silences in my mouth. He searched my face, looking for the pig’s features he thought were rearing up again, the snout winging its way into the gap. His right arm twitched at his side. A shooting pain cracked my head open. He left me struggling to breathe, footsteps fading away. The panic was overwhelming. I lay there, thinking maybe he had been the smoking gun in the farm owner’s bed in Buenos Aires. Perhaps the painter in Mexico paid for his love in currencies other than cash. Maybe the pig he’d killed as a boy continued to have human guises. I tasted its blood on my tongue. I thought of Rangi the drifter, the shaman, the night in those photographs of red light women, stealing moments from them; a ring, a lock of hair, a last rite. I imagined him leaving those items in a passenger seat, the pig’s snout turning between them. I passed out. When I came to, Anon stood above me, touching my skin with cold hands, leading me outside.
I caught up with Mervyn in Harlesden at a community project he volunteered for on Wednesday evenings. A former sports centre, the faded brown building looked abandoned except for the orbs of light morphing into shapes behind the smoggy windows. It hosted pop-up comic book fairs, knitting workshops, treasure hunting days and music gigs. He was playing chess in the small sports hall when I arrived. Cross-legged, he moved a piece three squares up to the centre poker faced; he glanced at his opponent, a spotty kid stroking his chin dramatically. Reggae music played softly in the background, Peter Tosh crooning defiantly. At the far corner, a couple of kids were kicking soft a yellow ball over a damaged badminton net grazing the ground. A cluster of teenage girls wearing brightly coloured leotards was hoola hooping, throwing their bodies into the swing of the hoops. I didn’t know why I’d run from the station but I felt wired. My chest was burning and my heartbeat quickened expectantly.
“I need to talk to you,” I said by way of greeting. Squeals from the other end interrupted my train of thought. A bunch of other teenagers trudged in carrying chocolates from a vending machine somewhere in the building that spat out multi-flavoured delights at the jangle of coins.
Mervyn unfolded his legs, half-smiled at the boy apologetically. “Give me a moment yeah? Joy this is Delroy, our reigning chess champ and mathematical problem solver.” He laughed heartily but a fleeting look of worry crossed his face. I nodded at the kid, whose retro high top fade made me think of De La Soul and sleeper summer anthems. Mervyn grabbed his Queen. “I’m superstitious about leaving her unattended,” he joked, pocketing it then leading the way.
The building was a maze; hubs sprang up from every corner. In the hallway, we passed a series of spaces including a snooker room and a storage area. Unpainted walls added to the rustic feel. We followed the low lit route right to the end and out into the garden area, where misty eyed gargoyle statues wearing comic expressions dotted the green, stirring their tails
in any bits of conversation that filtered through. The air between us crackled. He stood only a few feet from me but I could feel the tension in his large frame.
“Tell me the truth,” I said urgently. “Are you ashamed of me?” My voice cracked a little, I berated myself internally, trying to hold back tears.
“What?” The hand rummaging in his pocket stilled. “Why would you ever think that?” Car horns sounded in the distance, leaves blew across the green. I stepped closer, watching his face for the tiniest flicker of betrayal. “Because you’ve been lying to me for years! You were using my mother and when you knocked her up, you continued to live your double life without any responsibility. God! I feel sick; your sons are my friends. Don’t they suspect you’re not who you say you are?”
The Queen was out in the open again, turning in his hand, small and pale in the moonlight. His face etched in pain, he rubbed his baldhead wearily. “It wasn’t like that Joy. I loved your mother. She was a troubled, complex woman but I loved her. I knew this day would come and I’ve dreaded it. It’s just like her to leave me to deal with this.”
“Why are you trying to absolve yourself of any responsibility?” I cried, holding the sadness between us, the pangs of rejection I felt.
“I’m not your father. I wish I was, Lord knows I do but I’m not.” It was said so quietly I almost missed it. This was how a ten-foot truck could hit you without sound or warning. I was close enough to see his watery eyes, the regret there. I peeled the dented truck bender off my body, raised it above our heads. “You’re lying!” I accused, pointing a shaky finger. “Otherwise why stay around us all these years? It never made sense to me before but now it does. The secret phone calls, those pictures I found, gifts I wasn’t meant to see. That was all you.”
He threw his arms up, the red tie he wore fluttered. “I admit it, I’m not perfect. We don’t always stay in love with the same people. I loved my wife. I had a responsibility to the boys. I thought about leaving her but I couldn’t in the end. Your mother and I were friends at first. I- by the time we became lovers, it seemed best to keep things as they were.”
Butterfly Fish Page 30