Black Heart Blue

by Louisa Reid

  All Hephzi knew about was the dirty thing, the thing the Mother said we mustn’t do because if we did we’d go to hell. The same with our periods. It was the devil in us that made us bleed every month. The blood was there, the devil’s sign, to remind us, like my face, that we were rotten. I’d believed her for a while until Hephzi found out from a girl at a church group that it was all normal and just part of growing up. They’d whispered about it in the toilets during a meeting. Hephzi might have known she was going to hell for doing what she did with Craig but she didn’t know she would have a baby. Poor little thing. Craig still has no idea and I’m never going to tell him.

  After I escaped from the vicarage and made my mad dash to the care home, an ambulance came and took me to the hospital. Perhaps it was the same one that had taken my dying sister, six months before. Danny came with me. I clung on to his hand but he prised my fingers away and placed me on crisp, white sheets and let them give me medicine, bandage my body and put in a drip. They would keep me alive and I would survive. Hephzi should have made it here. She would have too, if only I’d called for help just a little sooner.

  The nurses asked me questions but I kept quiet; there was no need to tell them, they wouldn’t believe me, why should they? I’d seen it all before. Danny came back and I asked him not to leave me alone again and he nodded. Unless Danny was there The Father would turn up, he’d take me back to the vicarage and I’d never escape again. I think he understood that this was my only chance.

  Danny said he was going to call the police but I shook my head so hard and told him I’d kill myself if he did, so he subsided into his chair like a great bear retreating back into its cave. He said he supposed it could wait, just until I felt better.

  Someone else called them though. A policewoman showed up the next day with her notebook and questions. I pretended to be asleep. She didn’t give up though, she came back every day until in the end I had to sit up and speak, just in the hope of getting rid of her.

  ‘Rebecca, how are you?’

  ‘OK.’ I eyed her carefully. I didn’t like the way she stared at me, I think she thought I was a nuisance.

  ‘So, can you explain to me how you ended up here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think back, the night you were hurt, what happened?’

  This was ridiculous. The night I was hurt? To which night did she refer? I would never tell her. And her voice sounded cross already, I didn’t want to make her any more angry with me and that was precisely what would happen if she thought I was telling lies. I simply shook my head.

  ‘You don’t need to be frightened, Rebecca, no one can hurt you now, you know.’

  That’s what she thought. She didn’t know The Father. He’d killed Granny. He’d killed Hephzi. I was next on his list.

  ‘You know the doctors showed me your X-rays. I’ve seen all the evidence. All I need is your word.’

  I shrugged and she sighed and stood up to leave, turned and walked to the door, and then stopped.

  ‘If anyone did to my kids what someone’s done to you, well, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions, love. I’ve seen every scar, counted every fracture on your x-rays, old ones and new ones, I’ve heard about your bruises and how you scream when you sleep. I know you’re scared, Rebecca, but you have to stop this. You have to be brave. I’ll be ready when you are.’

  For a moment she almost had me. I saw her with her kids, reading them bedtime stories, playing snakes and ladders on a rainy day, baking their birthday cakes. For a moment I was nearly convinced. But then I remembered how powerful he was. He’d get away with it, he’d lie his way out of my story and make them think I was mad. He would hand them the chains with which to bolt me down, just when I was about to be free. After all, a man of the cloth was more sacred than the law. His word was divine. Danny came again and again and tried to persuade me to speak but I wouldn’t listen. For once I was going to do things my own way.

  But then came the psychiatrist. And the social worker, then the students and the therapists, then the policewoman again.

  She looked at me sadly. ‘You’re not still being silly, are you, Rebecca?’

  I turned over to face the wall. It was cold and blank, it didn’t bubble with secrets.

  ‘If you tell me what happened then I’ll make sure that whoever did this to you is punished. I’ll make it so they can never hurt anyone again.’

  She walked round the side of the bed, found my hand clenched round a ball of white hospital sheet and held it.

  ‘Please, let me help you.’ She disappeared in a blur of my tears, although I felt the pressure on my fingers as she squeezed cold comfort and spoke empty words.

  I couldn’t speak to these strangers and when the doctors prodded and poked, when they fitted me with new hearing aids and suggested surgery on my jaw and discussed me like I was no more than an unusual and rather fascinating problem, I pretended I was with Hephzi; me, Hephzi and Granny on the swings in the park with the pond, racing each other higher and higher, singing and laughing, out in the blue.

  It was the day that Danny took me back to his house that the story finally came out. It was as if it had been waiting for its chance, waiting for a safe place to sneak out of hiding. I opened my mouth and the words spilled out like rats following the Pied Piper. Soon the room was swarming with the sounds of the plague I’d released. At the worst bits Danny slammed out of the room and I heard him smashing things in the kitchen but it didn’t worry me. I knew he wasn’t angry with us.

  I didn’t tell him about my baby though. Remember the deepest scars, the stories that I hide, the ones I can’t explain? Some things are too shameful to show even to your friends. My baby had to stay back there, in our room, behind the paper. I wondered if Hephzi was looking after them and the fright hit me again, a shock like a sting to the heart. I hoped she was safe.

  I’d known the second I saw Hephzi’s face the day after Craig’s birthday party. It was written all over her like a welt from a strap. She’d let him do it to her. It. The filthy thing.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she’d said. ‘Stop it, Rebecca!’

  I said nothing, got up, made my bed and went down to start the chores. For me it was a day like any other; for her, well, it was different. She never told me how, she wanted to keep her secret.

  Hephzi thought I knew nothing. She thought I was a blessed innocent. But I think for a long time I probably knew more than she did. As her body grew, I kept myself bony and childlike, wondering how long it would be before I could make myself disappear.

  The Father didn’t want me, he wanted Hephzi. It was obvious. I watched his eyes following her around rooms and saw how he sought out her curved, vital perfection. Though he slapped and snapped at her it never went too far; her nose remained unbroken, her ribs held her strong and straight, even her fingers still flexed, graceful and pretty. But when he stared at the line of her back and her beautiful white shoulders, her mouth and her chest, I’d distract him by doing something stupid so he’d remember to hate me instead of to hurt her.

  One time it got too much. I told no one how it went that Sunday night when he was so drunk that a new rage erupted. I was only thirteen, still so scared of him, my heart bruised black and blue.

  He’d made Hephzi sit on his knee and read to him. She was too big and her legs dangled over his, touching the floor. He liked the Old Testament best but Hephzi wasn’t good at reading aloud, and the long words and ancient sounds made her stutter and stumble.

  ‘Lam … lament … sorry, Daddy!’ She found a smile and tried his face for forgiveness before she attempted it again, ‘Lamentata … lamenta …’ She coughed and looked over to me. I mouthed the word slowly to her, Lam-en-ta-tions, and she nodded, and got it right at last.

  I watched his hand clench and flex and saw his finger stab again and again at the page as she kept getting words wrong. It was exhausting to strain against the tension,
waiting for the strike. My body begged to collapse back against the chair, to deflate and shrivel, but my vigilance was all that would keep my sister safe. He drained his glass and then sent her for more and as she passed me my eyes told her not to return. Hephzi nodded and I waited to feel the creep of her feet on the stairs.

  For a moment, after she left the room, The Father slumped and suddenly slept and I thought I could be free too, scuttle off and leave him to his stupor. But I must have been clumsy or made a noise because he jolted awake as the door betrayed my intentions with a Judas groan.

  ‘Where is she?’ he demanded, his voice thick, his eyes blinking rapidly.

  ‘She went to bed. You fell asleep. Shall I read now?’

  He shook his head wildly as if he were trying to escape a wasp buzzing in his ears and then lurched to his feet and advanced.

  I should have run, but where to? I couldn’t lead him upstairs, not to our room, not to where Hephzi was safe. Maybe I could have screamed but I knew no one was listening. The walls were thick and heavy and dumb.

  He may have been drunk but still he was strong. Ox-heavy, he handled me like I was meat. The door was shut fast again, it slammed finally as he lurched against it and grabbed my neck. The Mother had disappeared hours since and Hephzi slept just above our heads, oblivious.

  I closed my eyes and felt the tearing, felt his thick weight on my back, the flesh of his hand shoved in my mouth so I couldn’t cry or speak or shout. I never would have anyhow, I wouldn’t have let him know the pain that spliced me in two and made my head spin in fainting arcs. The bruises on my thighs lasted weeks and it hurt me to walk but I kept the ugly secret hidden somewhere behind the wall.

  When Hephzi’s baby cried there, mine did too.

  After that I felt old. Old and cold and stolen. I had no one to tell and no words to tell with. Hephzi wouldn’t unearth what I’d buried; she hid from horror until it hunted her down.

  But now he will never hurt me again.

  Slowly I recovered. Archie slept downstairs on the sofa so that I could have his bedroom. I didn’t feel enough to feel guilty, sensation had drained out of me when I’d told my story to Danny; he had taken it all on his shoulders and now when I saw him he looked dark and grim. I’d begged him not to tell, not to breathe a word to the police or a friend or anyone at all and he couldn’t break my trust. Cheryl tried to convince me too but I begged them for time and reluctantly they agreed. Danny brought me books, piles of them, and left them by my bed, waiting for me to read. I didn’t have the will. After all that time yearning for stories I couldn’t start a single line; the sight of the pile depressed me and I turned again to face the wall, evading the future.

  What I did do though was sit with Archie’s computer. All night I tapped and tapped on the keyboard. I found out everything they’d never told us. By the morning my eyes would ache and Cheryl would shake her head as she brought me my breakfast.

  ‘What’ve you been up to, love? You look knackered.’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t sleep well, that’s all.’

  ‘You get some kip now, then, sweetheart, you need your sleep to mend.’ She’d drop a kiss on my head and leave me to it, hurrying off to work. Then I’d put the tray on the floor and gorge myself on message boards, websites, forums, places where I could ask all the questions for which I’d never had answers. I found out everything I’d never known about myself. Granny had tried to explain but I’d never really understood. There were people like me all over the world. Their lives had not been blighted; they had homes and families and degrees and jobs. Yes, people had laughed at them or called them names, but they were survivors. I cried with relief.

  I found out why I got a baby and why Hephzi did too. Of course I knew it was the dirty thing that did it, but I hadn’t known about the egg and the sperm, that it was simple biology, neither God nor the devil were crouching inside, waiting to emerge. In fact it was all normal really, normal and natural and not some sick secret. I groaned for Hephzi and what she’d lost. But when she’d been with Craig I thought it must have been different for her, that’s what it seemed like anyway. I hoped it had been better. I listened for her to tell me but she said nothing.

  ‘Hephzi? Are you here?’

  She didn’t answer and I swung my head around, searching the room, hoping she might be hiding somewhere after all. I wanted to talk.

  ‘Please, Hephz, I need you. Please come out.’

  Once upon a time she would have come when I’d called. But now. Nothing.

  If she wasn’t here, then where was she?

  Once the bruises had faded, Archie came in every day to sit on the end of the bed and talk.

  ‘All right?’ he said, looking at me hopefully, even more freckly than I’d remembered. Even that didn’t make me smile. I averted my eyes and scrunched under the covers but still he kept coming. I guessed Danny made him stick at it, kind of community service, or maybe he thought we could have some little pity party together. I told myself not to be bitter.

  After a week of silence Archie grabbed one of the books, the one on the top of the pile, and started to read. Hearing him stutter and stumble over the words was too painful and I sat up, despite myself, and grabbed the book out of his hands.

  ‘Here, I’ll do it.’ Ignoring his flushed face, I read until my mouth was dry and my cheeks ached, and he sat and listened with his head resting on his fists, laughing or grimacing and totally held by the story. It was a good one, Frankenstein; I’d not read it before, I’d got nowhere near S for Shelley, and as I read I wondered if Archie saw the irony.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Forget it.’ But I was sorry for the Creature. They’d called him devil too. Archie agreed that it was sad he’d never found anyone to love him and then I pretended to be tired.

  One day Archie told me it was now August outside. He pulled the curtains open and flung open the window. Cheryl did that every morning, although the minute she left the room I pulled them back tight against the light, but I let Archie have his own way. For a moment the sun felt good.

  ‘You could come down. Dad’s doing a barbie. Go on.’

  His eyes looked so bright with hope, hope for me and hope that he would be the one to lure me out of the dark room and down into the sunny day, that I couldn’t refuse.

  ‘Give me a minute, would you?’

  Cheryl had bought me clothes and left them in bags on the floor. Ungratefully I had never emptied those bags. Now I put my hand inside and pulled out the clothes. Brand-new clothes. Something I hadn’t seen for over five years, since our twelfth birthday and Granny’s treat, our special shopping expedition. There was a dress made of crinkly material and patterned with little flowers. It had thin straps and fell in soft folds to just above my knees. I held it against the pyjamas I’d been wearing for weeks. Unsure if I ought to, I yanked off the tags and pulled on new underwear and then the dress. My arms were bare, my legs too. That would never have been permitted and I felt half naked. Searching through the bags I found a little cardigan, it was pink with short sleeves. The mirror was in the hall. I would have to step out to see. If Hephzi were here she’d tell me how I looked, she’d be honest. I still needed her but she wouldn’t come now. She’d been gone ever since I escaped and no matter how hard I tried to call her back there was never an answer.

  Archie banged on the door, making me jump.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yes, OK. I’m coming.’

  He escorted me downstairs, holding my arm like I was some kind of invalid, I realized that must be how he saw me, and then presented me proudly to the rest of the family as if he’d just made a joyful discovery. I wished it was that easy, that an angel had rolled away the stone and I had been in fact reborn and remade. I wanted to be a better version of me, one with all wounds healed. But that doesn’t happen in real life. In real life there’s no resurrection, even if you wish for it every night.
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  I watched as they all bit back exclamations, all except Ben, who jumped up and covered me with a huge hug.

  ‘I’m glad you isn’t deaded now,’ he said, and I realized I was too. For a moment no one laughed and then I heard myself giggle.

  ‘Me too, Ben. Thanks.’ The ice was broken and Danny handed me a hot dog and Cheryl poured me a glass of Coke; the ice clinked as I raised my glass and said cheers with Ben over and over again until Cheryl told him to stop. I perched on a chair and listened to the family around me, everyone glowing in the sun.

  I lasted half an hour that day and that was enough. Over the next few days and then weeks the time I spent out of my room gradually increased and we became used to each other. They never made me feel like a nuisance and I helped Cheryl with the cooking and cleaning when she’d let me.

  One afternoon Cheryl took me with her to the supermarket to do the big shop.

  ‘You help me choose, love,’ she said. ‘Get all your favourites.’

  I didn’t have favourites, I liked whatever she made and I told her so. But still she encouraged me to pick what I wanted and tried to chat and gossip as we went round the aisles. She thought if she kept me busy I wouldn’t notice people staring. The shop was huge, like the belly of a great whale, and I was sure we’d never find our way out again. The rows and rows of food and clothes and shampoo and tellies and toasters and drink made me dizzy. We’d only ever used the local shop; this was the first time I’d driven to a store since our twelfth birthday.

  Finally, able to think of something to ask for, I told Cheryl I’d like ice cream for dessert and she pelted off to find some. I lagged behind, gazing around me. A voice broke through my reverie.

  ‘Rebecca?’

  I recognized that voice immediately. I didn’t want her to stop and talk to me.