New Animal

by Ella Baxter

  I used to think my body was special because it could withstand a lot. I walked my body into parties it didn’t want to be at. Made fun of it. Filled it with smoke and alcohol until it bumped into walls. Let it be laughed at. Made it get haircuts it didn’t like. Made it be polite, sit up and behave. I jumped it off rocks and pushed it into rivers, and happily let it hit the water too hard. I left my body out of decisions. Ignored it when it didn’t feel right. Hated it when it didn’t work. It could have been on Mars for all I cared. It could have been dead.

  What else? I let myself remember.

  What about when I’ve loved it? Fed it vegetables, and kept it warm and safe. When I put soft things around it. Let it sleep more than the usual amount. When I checked if it needed glasses, or vitamins. When I used my body to care for other bodies. When I untangled knots with gentle hands, and ignored my phone. When I took my body for long walks, ran it like a dog, sank it into warm baths with salts. And when I listened to it give the first gentle no of the evening.

  Jay moves until he is behind me on the bed. He lifts up my thighs and back so that there’s even more pressure on my neck. I try to swallow, but the fabric has absorbed everything in my mouth. The underwear is clogging my throat and I can’t breathe properly.

  ‘Arch your back.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to cry.

  ‘Arch your back,’ he says again, smacking the skin on my waist.

  I grunt. I want to go home.

  ‘One more time, Amelia: arch your fucking back.’

  I try, but my body is too busy bearing the weight of this position.

  ‘Has anyone told you what BDSM stands for?’

  ‘No,’ I yell through the fabric. I want him to untie me. My body said no, and I want to listen.

  He walks away from the bed and I hear a drawer open and the sound of something being dragged out.

  ‘You should have done your research,’ he says, coming back towards me.

  He places something that feels like a heavy sandbag across my back. I want to shake it off but my shoulders feel like they might come loose in their sockets and my back spasms with the effort. I pull my hands apart but it only tightens the bind. I am compacted and crushed. My mother at the bottom of the stairs. Crumpled into a ball. Twisted and folded. I need to cut the top off my head to get these images out. I dry-retch, and let out a muted scream.

  ‘Shhh,’ Jay says.

  I scream again until I feel my eyeballs strain. I am my mother in the stairwell. My mother in the crematorium. My mother turning to dust. I shriek so loudly that my head shakes.

  ‘Calm down,’ Jay says.

  He pulls the tape off, and I gag on the underwear as he pulls it out.

  ‘Take a breath,’ he says, stroking my cheek.

  ‘Take it off!’ I yell, still resting on the side of my neck. ‘Undo me.’

  ‘In a minute,’ he says.

  ‘Undo me!’ I cry, as he unties my hands.

  He lifts the weight off, and I fall to the side, folding my arms across my chest.

  ‘Breathe slowly,’ he says, demonstrating one controlled breath in, one out.

  I launch off the bed and pull on my dress, then pick up my shoes and, without looking back, run out the door. Fabric fibres from my underwear coat my mouth, and my neck and shoulders ache. I rush through reception and out to the car. I slide into the driver’s seat, and accelerate down the street.

  Insects are zipping through the air, and even though I am leaning forward and squinting, it’s minutes until I realise I need headlights, and it takes me two goes to turn them on, my hands are shaking so hard from the adrenaline. I smell like boiling vinegar. Like petrol and aniseed. It comes out in sheets from my body permeating everything; it’s up near my ears. The skin on my arms pulses red, and my tongue feels heavy. This poor body.

  I let myself into the house, and before the door has closed behind me, the tapping of Jack’s typing fingers has stopped. ‘How was your evening?’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ I say, walking straight past the study and down the hall to my bedroom.

  On the bed is a fresh folded towel and a bar of chocolate. He’s put my clean laundry in a small pile next to it, with my socks bundled together in pairs. I push it all off to the side and get into bed. The sweet, soapy smell of the rough cotton is comforting, and my body sinks further into the lumpy mattress. I stare at the ceiling and then do what Vlad advised: I open up and let all the feelings in.

  It is as if the boxes I have used to compartmentalise have been tipped over, the contents strewn across the lobes of my brain. The first thing that comes to me is a client, an old Italian gentleman who smelled of hazelnuts, whose cheeks I had to fill with cotton wool because he lost his teeth in the ocean. I let the tide of the memory rush in, and then out. The next is a young woman who needed to be re-broken to be put back into a human shape. She was reassembled like a puzzle underneath her new clothes. In public her husband mourned her by hanging his head and crying, but privately he lost it, sitting under her bier and refusing to move. More and more memories come. Children mourning parents. Grandparents mourning grandchildren. All the people killed by cars. Cancers. Bad hearts. The sheer amount of fucking suicides. The heat of the cremation chamber. Pouring ashes through funnels and into urns. The bodies that hold secrets, like the young women with the linea nigra—the dark line down the stomach that denotes a pregnancy—but no child marked on their file. The people who cut swift patterns into the top of their arms, their upper legs—all the patterns that are left for us to find.

  More memories come, but this time they are of the living. The people whose names I can’t remember, whose faces I deleted. All the people with whom I became the two-headed thing, who didn’t know what it meant, and who might’ve said no if they did. The different beds and bedsheets, the different smells of spit and sweat. The puckered balls and the nonsense tattoos. All the fucking talking. The endless talking, the how-are-you-doing-fine-thanks-and-yourself-yeah-goods.

  The number of faces I have touched, both living and dead. My mother, whose face was touched for the last time by unfamiliar hands. Swirls of feelings, hot and bright, bounce between my spine and skin.

  I pick up my phone and call Simon. He answers straight away.

  ‘I want to tell you that I am glad I wasn’t there, but I’m also sorry. I am both those things. And I’m sorry you had to deal with Vincent on your own, and I hope Hugh and Carmen are there for you …’

  ‘Well, an apology from you is a pretty big deal.’

  ‘I am sorry—but like I said, I’m also glad.’

  ‘Well, thanks for calling. When you get back we can scatter her ashes. Carmen helped pick out an urn she thought you would like. I’ve put her ashes in the bungalow. She’s waiting for you here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, feeling the tension in my face ease.

  That night I dream about my mother. She’s on her knees beside me, carving into my chest with a knife. She brushes away blood with the back of her hand, knife to the sky. Good job, she says to me, as I begin to float on all the blood. I have missed her voice. She cuts me open, chest to pelvis. She laughs, then throws her knife into the sea of blood around us, and stares at my insides. You need to drink more water, she says. She touches the soft red arteries, the shellac wash of connecting fascia, and the deep-down flesh that is velvety brown. She rips my lungs apart like bread, and then grabs my heart, pulling at it until it comes out with a wet and watery snap. It feels like an itchy pressure, like a thick cough that won’t shift. She weighs my heart, tossing it between each hand, before flicking it into the choppy waves behind her, then shrinking down and curling up inside me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I wake up to gentle knocking at my door, and before I have time to respond Jack opens it, juggling a cup of coffee and a half-eaten mandarin on a saucer. He has his laptop folded under one arm and over his shoulders he has draped a yak shawl, which slides onto the floor as he hands me the coffee.

&n
bsp; ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Not really. I let all the feelings in and it felt like absolute shit.’

  ‘Yes, me too. I wish we could liquefy Alain de Botton and suck him up through a straw, so we know how to deal with nights like that.’

  He walks around to the other side of the bed and sits down, propping one of the pillows against the headboard to support his lower back.

  ‘I want to get your opinion on something.’

  He opens the laptop and expands a web page full of Zimbabwean Shona sculptures. He drags a magnifying icon over a stone carving of two lovers entwined.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Do you need something like that?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. ‘For the mantel in the study.’

  ‘I thought you were a minimalist now?’

  ‘Nothing can make me deny my spiritual right to beauty, Lia.’

  I look at the sculpture and imagine it nestled between the pieces of smooth driftwood, the giant conch shell and all the chunks of rutilated quartz. I think Jack buys things like this in a bid to weigh himself down. I need it all, he said once. It’s the only way I can feel filled up. His credit card, and the fat veins stretching through him, anchor him to the planet. I must have inherited his need for a canopy in order to feel grounded. Jack needs to acquire things, and I need to be mashed across the bed like a sheet of slate. I sip my coffee. Genetically, we might be closer than anyone else in the family.

  ‘Is that your mother’s name smudged on the glass, or am I hallucinating?’

  ‘I wrote it the other night. I can wipe it off, sorry.’

  ‘Did it help?’

  ‘More than I thought.’

  ‘Vincent rang the landline earlier.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘I told him that you were probably going to interview with Clear Skies. He didn’t seem very pleased.’

  Clear Skies is a famous chain in the funeral industry. They run late-night ads on television where a child throws some doves in the air, while the numbers for their closest parlours are superimposed across the screen.

  ‘Did he yell?’ I ask, wishing they would stop antagonising each other.

  ‘No, he just sighed and said that he wishes you all the best with the new job, but that he’s surprised you would be comfortable working for such charlatans.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Don’t think so, honey … Anyway, like I said, it would be good for you to speak to Shell, the director. The work makes you happy. It could just be something part time to give you a bit of confidence. There’s no need to rush back up north anytime soon.’

  ‘Does Vincent want me to ring him back?’

  ‘I didn’t get that impression, no. Oh, and when you do speak to Shell, tell her Jacky boy says hi.’

  ‘I definitely won’t.’

  ‘Do it, Lia. She and I go way back.’ He rubs his feet together, pleased with the thought.

  A fly lands on his mandarin and he swats it away, which makes it buzz frenziedly between us. Jack tries to catch it in his hand, before batting at it with the back of his palm. ‘You’re ruining our peaceful morning!’ He swats at it again. I’m not sure if people who live alone realise this, but as soon as things don’t go their way, they tend to become incredibly agitated.

  The fly soars through the air towards me, and I hit it away. Hitting a fly is different to killing a moth, although neither speak well of my character, it has to be said. I should make room for a bit more tenderness, perhaps.

  ‘How come you’re single?’ I ask, realising as I do that this is not a great start to my new tender way of being.

  He clicks his tongue a few times. ‘I was with a woman for six months or so …’

  I know I should ask him who she was and why he never told me about her, but I’m not that interested. She’s gone now, and he’s alone again, and asking intimate questions about how and why and when will only create the impression that we are closer than we are. Exchanging facts is not a bond. I think we may have both made this mistake before in the past.

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Pretty but in a forced way.’

  She was probably the type who enjoyed brunch. Or having lots of different shoes to choose from.

  Jack begins to whistle and my phone beeps with a message from him with Shell’s number, followed by an exclamation mark. He’s settled and comfortable on the bed next to me, and when I glance at his computer screen I see he’s scrolling through a list of albums. He clicks on one and the tinny sound of gamelan music leaks out of the laptop’s speakers. He opens the chapter he is working on and begins typing furiously.

  This room wouldn’t have been used since I was last here. He would have closed the door and left it locked up like other parts of the house. But here he is. Opening the curtains and lying in bed with his laptop and fruit. I think he wants to be close to me but he doesn’t seem to want much else. There are so many subjects we could be discussing that might unravel our previous misunderstandings or hurt. I’m sure he would love to ask why I don’t write back to his emails, or why I only ever answer every third call. I could ask him why he is always kind of obsessed with me but preoccupied with things that have nothing to do with me. I could ask why he only feels inspired to write when Simon or I visit. For him it’s enough just to be physically close. Well, fine then. You have to give a little to get a little. I put my hand over his, and he freezes. The typing stops, and we both look straight ahead. It is extremely awkward, but I feel it’s important, for reasons I don’t yet know. I leave my hand on top of his for twelve seconds before taking it away and getting out of bed.

  I ring Shell’s number as Jack turns the music down but not off. Picking up some clothes from my case, I hang them in the wardrobe while listening to the dial tone. I am putting my underwear and bathers into a drawer when a woman answers. I introduce myself.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call! It would be good if you could come in for a chat. Would today suit you?’ Shell says.

  ‘Perfect,’ I say. We agree to meet around lunchtime.

  Jack leaves me to get ready. I brush my teeth and hair, and make sure the hairs of my eyebrows are facing the same way. I pull a dress from the wardrobe and put it on, then pinch some colour into my cheeks. Ready.

  Clear Skies is much bigger than Aurelia’s, with a driveway that leads right up to the door for the hearse, and a chapel that seats more than eighty people. I can only imagine their targets for the year in a place this grand. It looks like a high-end function centre, and it’s not immediately clear whether you would host a wedding or a funeral here. There’s an established garden filled with roses and tall lavender bushes. As I walk past a bush, I tear off one of the soft purple flowers and rub it into my wrists.

  The first woman I see when I enter is wearing a neat grey uniform and watering a small potted rubber tree. She gives me a broad smile, and even goes so far as to put down the watering can and formally welcome me. Judy could learn from this woman; a little peer-to-peer scaffolding wouldn’t go astray.

  ‘You must be Jack’s daughter. I’m Barbara,’ she says. She doesn’t drop her smile, but rather extends it further across her face.

  The professionalism is astounding. The way she escorts me over to an armchair and hands me a glass of water with lemon in it. The way she excuses herself to go and get Shell. Even the air vaporiser in the room has a selection of oils to choose from. I wander over and add a few to the mix. Rosemary. Grapefruit. Pine. The aroma shifts instantly into something a little more laden, and I step back from the mist, pleased with my contribution.

  On the table next to me there are pamphlets and business cards for grief services, as well as advertisements for hand-turned clay urns, celebrants, local mental health services. And, of course, there are the ever-present boxes of tissues placed around the room at strategic intervals. I pull a long, hardy tissue out of a box and shove it in my bag for later, and take one of the cards for a psychic too.
My mother would have loved it here.

  Shell walks into the foyer at a cracking pace, led by her hand, which I shake poorly. There’s a real art to handshakes and I seem to have regressed with my own. She looks to be in her mid-forties and she’s an odd colour, which sometimes happens when fake tan is applied in dedicated layers. Her skin is a flat caramel with a green tinge, and she has dark lines that run across the inside of her wrist, where the tan has collected. Other than that, she is beautifully groomed and wears a string of pearls over her immaculate grey dress and bolero. I can see why Jack likes her: she radiates that sunny positivity common to women who love watching musical theatre. I bet she would laugh off any miscommunication that arose between them, too. Women like her have beautiful lives.

  ‘Do you have a mother?’ I ask, realising that, as the first words out of my mouth, they are not a great introduction to who I am.

  ‘She passed,’ Shell says, sitting on a couch and gesturing for me to sit beside her. She bends down and adjusts her anklet, which is a gold angel on a chain. It might’ve been a gift from her mother.

  ‘I can’t believe that so many people experience this and still function,’ I say.

  ‘Jack told me about Josie. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘How did you cope?’ I ask.

  ‘Well …’ She crosses her legs, places both hands over her knee and looks up at a ceiling fan, which is turning lazily on the lowest setting. ‘I’m an Aquarius, so it took me a long time to forgive myself. I would be up all night going over every conversation we ever had. I was playing my memories of her on a loop, but not the memories I wanted. They were the ugly ones. The ones where I was irritated by her.’

  ‘What helped?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing really—just time. I miss her, and think about her still, but she’s with me. Sometimes I’ll make decisions that I know she must’ve cosmically had a hand in.’