In My Mind

by Shaida Mehrban

  “I never suggested that I was interested in getting married at all nor had I even thought about it. What I was interested in was her friendship, not necessarily anything more than that because she was living in my mind. That was good enough. You see, I am a simple man and I wanted to tell her that the way she dressed was just not appropriate, it was not proper and she was a proper lady. I would never take advantage but there are others who would take advantage of women and she was not dressing like a lady. She had a lot of personality and in spite of all that, underneath the exterior was the most delicate of all creatures, a beautiful colourful butterfly, that’s what really drew me to her.

  “I had to make her mine and I had to make her listen and I would have got my message through to her, I know. I only had her best interest at heart. I wanted no harm to come to her as I had made perfectly clear many times, but I was trying to get her to listen and speak with me and she was the only one who I felt I could communicate or talk openly with. I needed her and I know she needed me deep down inside but she just didn’t know it yet. I never wanted to put the butterfly into a glass bottle and close the lid.

  “I have put butterflies into a Hartley’s jam jar and watched them play till they stopped. They were not dead so I would let them out and I didn’t want to do that to her. All she had to do was listen to me and be a friend. Was that an impossible thing to ask for? No, it wasn’t. I mean, I even followed her at the University gates going from one railing to another just waiting to get a glimpse of her. I would watch from the outside for her all day and when she finally came out with a cup of coffee in one hand and a satchel bag in the other hand, she would look at me and off she would go without even considering my feelings or the fact that I had spent all day waiting for a glimpse of her.

  “She never considered me. I mean who would put others first when I paid over £50 for a rock concert just to see her? I wasn’t there to watch the band play their rubbish music. If she had said that she was going to the YMCA for something, I would make sure that I went.

  “I didn’t even know where she lived because I couldn’t follow her to her house since there were others with her and I didn’t want to be stalking her. I did not want to alarm her in any way or form and I had to be at Father’s joint anyway in case he came back and noticed that I had been gone for a very long time.

  “Father needed me and I needed her. That is what it truly was, a need for one another. It was not love or lust or anything sordid but a need and we all have needs. I know from the bottom of my heart that she needed me to take care of her and I wanted to be that someone to love and protect. I could have protected her and she wasn’t getting that and I know that she shared a house with the university mates of hers but she still needed someone to look after her. She hadn’t realised it but I certainly had.

  “There was a time when I did actually try to have a long conversation with her and my father joined in, so then I followed her to the toilets. Quietly, I told her that all I wanted was to have a conversation, a bit of her time, and I led her a little towards the cellar door. I am sure that her upstairs, the woman who claims to be my real mother, also had said that as well to my father. I held her arm back a little, just a tiny bit so she couldn’t flutter around too much but without even letting me explain, she kicked me on my knees with her high heeled boots. I quickly apologised and was still explaining when she rudely called me a ‘weirdo’ and went into the toilet and back to her friends.

  “That day she didn’t listen, all I wanted was someone to listen to me. There had been no one like my sweet Gabriella. Even though she had rejected me it made no difference to me or how I felt about her. That was her right and my right was to carry on trying to make her understand. I felt she was the only one who would and could understand me, who I thought I could talk to.

  “I was listened to by her upstairs while Father was with us but then he left. He and I both talked a lot but her upstairs doesn’t really talk a lot, she’s a thinker and she’s not a planner. She doesn’t talk to me and when she does, she talks at me without even listening to my words or seeing my fidgety body language or thinking about how I am feeling. Since Father has left, it’s been as if I am waiting to be woken up. When will he come back and will he ever because I cannot get used to this. It wasn’t a perfect life but it still could be fine. I could live with that but not this lonely life where I am waiting to be wanted, longing to have someone. I’m pathetic and that is what she yells all the time: ‘You are a pathetic excuse of a man just like your father.’ What’s new? These words ring in my ears every night.”

  There is silence in the space between the four walls. All eyes are on Steve. He is within his thoughts. The cassette player continues to record the silence. His short nails fumble on the table.

  “Take your time, sir. Just take your time, no problem,” the kind words are uttered by the female police woman.

  “Take my time over what, that’s it really. I’ve told you the lot, I’m sure you and your lot heard it all and understood it the first time. You’re used to this and you have this machine thing on, too. It’ll play back and forth for you just like Father’s last words, ‘Goodbye, son, see you soon.’

  “But he never did. Why did he make promises? He never ever did come back to see me or to see her and I know she wanted to see him. I wanted him to come back, so did she. Maybe she knows where he is but I don’t think she does because I asked her lots of times. She always said no.

  “I don’t know why Gabriella said no to me. What’s the harm if you could just come down the stairs with me just to talk? I promised to him up there all I wanted was to talk to her so if she could be a friend to me.

  “I did often ask her why she did not want to be my friend. Did she not want to hang out with me? She could’ve had a drink with me sometime so as I grabbed her to come downstairs because she wouldn’t walk down. I didn’t actually grab her but because I was doing it all in a hurry I accidentally pushed her a tiny bit. She fell and banged her head and I promise I’m telling the truth. I did not do anything to her.

  “She was unwell but she was okay. She’ll tell you that I meant no harm, none whatsoever. After a conversation, she could’ve gone home. I would’ve walked her home but she was not in the mood. She was tired or in pain but she didn’t say and she was resting so peacefully until the woman from upstairs told you lot to come and take her. I just simply don’t know because she wasn’t doing anything, I wasn’t doing anything so why take her away from me?”

  Steve is not sure of himself. In his mind, he questions why he is here and where is Gabriella, his precious butterfly.

  “Do you know what has happened to the young lady who was in your cellar with you, sir?”

  He reminds them that he has just told them that and he has finished talking for today. The tape recorder is turned off and the stubble pen that has a lot of squiggly lines done by it is put firmly down. The time is recorded 11.55 on 9th of September 2011.

  Steve sighs a big air of relief. The frown lines spread their wings a little as he sits with his eyes now wide open and for the first time, sits back comfortably into his seat. It is over for Steve but there is a lot still left within his mind, almost as if there is a whole new life yet to be explored. The police come in and out of the room, they all exchange words, papers and detailed conversation but Steve is relaxed and yet in his mind, exhausted.

  “By the way, your clock on the wall has lost its life. Can you get that working, please? I like to know the right time at all times. When I look at my own arm, my time is not the same as yours and I always work with the correct time so that I know where I am and at what time and what exactly I am doing now. Time is a very important thing as there is the right time and there is the wrong time for everything and everywhere.”

  They look up at the clock that is lazily still moving around but say nothing back to him. Some people have far more important issues to think about. H
is eyes do not leave the clock as if the time is the single most important thing that he is interested in right now. His eyes swirl around the second hand as it chases the minute hand like the wind. His head is in a space that is outside of these four walls.

  “I am really sorry, Mr Smith, that it has taken such a long time but we will try and do this as soon as we possibly can,” says Detective James Brown whilst Sarah Sands, the other detective, goes out of the room with her papers and things. Steve notices her wedding band as she gathers the papers together. He smiles, maybe she has found someone who does talk to her.

  “You know, I am just thinking out loud, Detective, you look as if you’re happily married.” They don’t even recognise his words and he doesn’t even think that they are rude to ignore him but then he’s used to that and he knows it after all. He knows that he has spent hours talking to the walls in his bedroom whether from lying flat on his back or whether he was lying on the bed or on the side under the wired base of his bed. He was ignored then as well as now, so what is new?

  New people here but no new news, the police tell Steve that for the moment he will have to go into another room and he will be given some tea.

  “Properly brewed, please, and not that bag rubbish. Yes, tea will be good, please.” He follows the policewoman has she takes him into a room that resembles a cell, she totally ignores him. The cell has a big door and a toilet in the corner, a tiny sink and a plank of wood with a blanket in the corner. Another man in uniform comes to Steve and gives him a tray with a mug of tea, a few sachets of sugar and a couple of slices of buttered bread. He sits there cradling the hot mug in his hands. He smiles whilst resting himself on that plank bed. He smiles as if he has accomplished something or perhaps because he feels it’s all over.

  ***

  “Breakfast, sir!” These words rudely awake him as he realises that in fact he had a big day yesterday and that it is over and so is the night and now there is a new day, and he doesn’t know what it will bring. How was he to know that the four walls let no outside light in? That the only light would be this dingy droplet lightbulb. And that the cemented frozen floor is as cold as the decisions that may be made here.

  ***

  Steve’s Thoughts

  Strange how today teabags taste good for the first time more now than ever but I didn’t have a choice yesterday or today. Two crumpled bits of bleached white, slightly toasted bread with the artificial margarine thinly over it. Is this it for breakfast? This is a punishment so why should I be expecting better? This can’t be real. My tummy is still rumbling and crying for more.

  There isn’t much movement in this room. I would rather not call it a cell but a tiny clean room with cold scribbles everywhere and yet it isn’t actually cold. I know I am not imagining it. All that is in my mind is my memory and me, my father and Gabriella and her upstairs. My father and Gabriella were the two things that were real and I like real. Real-life behind the bar, real life with Father, moments never about madness or pleasure and simple happiness. If I had to choose the single one thing that I would sacrifice everything for, it would have to be Father without a doubt. Our real life of him and me was total bliss.

  I think that the Gabriella came into my mental equation when I started to have a need, not a want. I only want my father but I need Gabriella for company, someone I can talk to that is a bit posh who I can relate to because we both need someone, or at least I think that we would have needed one another if only she gave it a try. That’s a friendship, of course, nothing more. If not for her sake, then why not for me!

  No one gives a damn, though. Life is not the paper notes or coins that get locked up in the till every night. They just go to the manager of the bank the very next morning and I have never seen it come back to me. I don’t have a care for it much anyway. In my mind, I have a care only for my family that was, at times turbulent and other times pure sunshine, happiness under the grey sky.

  She is, I mean her upstairs, she is a grey cloudy kind of woman. She never shone and she doesn’t have a lot to smile about so she even wears her clothes that resemble the world that she lives in, including her slippers that she always wears to drag her weight around in.

  I saw her every single day and every day seemed to show that she would be in yesterday’s stale mood once more, as if yesterday was today again. If I was to name one thing that ever changed about her, it would be the fact that she never wore all the make-up that ladies normally wear. She would just wear pale lipstick or pencil in her eyebrows, just minor things, not like ladies like Gabriella and those who stood at my bar with powdered faces and blushing cheeks and red hot lips.

  Thinking within the captivity of these four walls, the box I’m sitting in, I hate to admit it but it is forcing me to come to terms with the many stages of my difficult life. Being confined within a small area is making me think of the small happenings in my short life. Short life sounds right because I’ve still got to find Father. It makes more sense the other way around though. It is a father’s duty toward his son but I know it’s her upstairs, that’s the reason why he hasn’t come back and the reason why he left.

  Small things make a big thing as small gestures have a big effect on little ones’ lives. I never complained about little things but that doesn’t mean to say that I have never lived them. I have lived every day and every tiny moment and I have carefully remembered them too. Girls always keep a diary, I know that because the girls in my class had them and even though I never asked, I’ve often wondered what hidden secrets laid beneath on the lines of the colourful diaries and the smooth white pages, little girls with little scribbles on scribbled up paper.

  I think that there were secrets that no one could talk about as it was just theirs, to get some relief and unload, write down the demons onto paper. Strange how they all had tiny little tiddly padlocks knotted on to keep the pages tied together with wee little keys that could be bent with the kid’s finger. I was never much of a writer; some of us keep things in our heads instead.

  Her upstairs chose to show me the strap that could belt me directly and she threatened me with that but never used it on me. I never understood why she didn’t just use it because it may have released her frustration. I could’ve taken it like a man, I wouldn’t have cried or been afraid or moaned, boys and men never cry, that is for girls only. I’ve never been told that but have heard of it and I know that’s a fact because they are weaker than us boys.

  Anyways, I respect women totally and I would never even blow a feather on them, let alone anything else. I have heard her upstairs many times, as I stood peering through the crack of a nearly shut door, with my nose close to its hinges. I think she was clever in her own way because the only time I heard her cry was once when her radio was on and she was sitting at her dresser wiping away at eyes and lips. Even though there was no more on them than her pink flesh. I never did understand that but then she often said that I was not the cleverest of all young souls, another way of telling me that I was nearly thick. But thinking of it, so was her pale lipstick, thick and heavy.

  A dreary very tired-looking woman would go and sit at the dressing table and half an hour later, a woman who would be able to turn men’s heads would get off the stool. My father would look at her as she looked away shyly. In front of me, their eyes did not meet that often but I know that they had their moments. He felt quite proud of her but she didn’t feel that proud of the way that he looked and secretly he was very proud of the way that he looked. I’ve never seen him tell her and she never told him anything nice either. They debated the television programmes and laughed at them together, they talked about the news, on what’s going on in the world of politics and the weather, of course. We were not good at being open for debate about our own lives.

  This family was different once we were all downstairs. The connection that we three had, a bit of it we would leave upstairs and it was like three people working together
rather than a family working beside one another. Father the boss, me his apprentice and her upstairs in the kitchen. She did it well and when a customer wasn’t happy she would change the plate without complaining, good customer service provided.

  It’s strange but when we had a meal upstairs together, or some sort of food to eat together, I never did complain because I just ate food but he always tasted it properly, separating the flavours and the aromas. If he did complain about it, she jumped down his throat. In spite of all their demons, we weren’t bad as a family, not really. There were flaws with curls around the edges but life is like that. Times that are straightforward today turn to mood swings and then arrives the wet stormy nights.

  There was never a mind-blowing day when I could say that I wished her anything bad, but it was as if she stopped being a mum since I went to junior school, as if she felt that I no longer needed a mum. In reality, it was because she was wallowing in her own mind as if her body was there full time but her mind was elsewhere. The one certain thing was that her mind was always full but her tongue was always empty. A woman of so few words but drained by her own thoughts. Father was the opposite but he didn’t seem to mind if she talked less, it didn’t concern or bother him. I was just happy being the observer, full stop.

  I was happy enough just to let time go by and sweep everything under my own bed in my own hideaway. My thoughts, my pains and my everything was there and I didn’t like to sweep under my bed just in case I lost them elsewhere or someone got to know of them. She’d remind me to always sweep with the long handled wooden broom all the way under the bed and I always insisted that I did get rid of all cobwebs. Little did she know that there was a jungle of thoughts under there.