How to Be Both

by Ali Smith

  George thinks her mother’s phone has probably been taken by someone working in surveillance.

  George’s father : George, I told you. I don’t want to hear any more of that paranoid nonsense from you.

  Mrs Rock : So you believe your mother’s phone was taken by someone working in surveillance?

  All her mother’s playlists were on her phone. Her mother was unusually private about her phone. George only sneaked a look at it once or twice (and both times felt bad for doing so, for different reasons). She never even looked at the playlists. She only looked at a couple of emails and texts. She never thought to look at music. It was her mother’s music. It was bound to have been rubbish. Now she has no idea and will never know what song or songs her mother listened to every day to do the dance thing, or on the train, or walking along the street.

  But the dance her mother did was always that old sixties dance, for which there are instructions online and even several specific songs.

  There is a piece of Super 8 footage her mother had transferred, of herself as a very small child in about 1965 doing this dance with her own mother, George’s grandmother. George has it on her laptop and her phone.

  It is a grandmother who was dead way before George, though George has seen old photographs. She looks like someone from another time. Well, she is. She is a very young woman, strict-looking but pretty, a stranger with dark hair up on top of her head. The film footage is all flickers and shadows at the top edge of it, which is where the grandmother’s face tends to be because the film is really being taken of George’s mother, who is much much smaller in it than Henry is now. She must be only about three years old. She is wearing a cardigan knitted in pink wool. It is the most colourful thing in the film. George can even see the detail, if she stops the frame, of the toggle buttons on its front, they’re black, and behind this child who is her mother there is a television screen on spindly slanted legs, the kind from when television screens bulged like the midriffs of obese middle-aged people.

  George’s mother, next to the stockinged legs of her own mother, is twisting from side to side in the silence, her little arms all elbow. She looks serious and grim but she is also smiling; even then her mouth, when she smiled, was that straight line and it looks like she is already, even so young, being polite yet firm about the fact that she’s having to concentrate. In the film she is really having to concentrate because she is so small and the cardigan is so chunky, so much bigger and thicker than she is that she looks like a small pink snowperson, like she is bound to topple over. The whole thing somehow becomes about the fact that she is balancing her self in all its wholeness, compactness and littleness against something that looks like it’s going to happen and which, if it does happen, will end the dance. But it never does happen because just before the film turns into being about some swans and rowing boats on a boating pond somewhere in Scotland the dance ends, her mother (as a child) puts her arms up in the air delighted and the lady with the hair up (George’s grandmother) puts her arms down, catches the child and lifts her up into the flicker and out of the frame.

  The dance part lasts 48 seconds on George’s laptop.

  Lockjaw. Quicksand. Polio. Lung. These are some of the words that George’s mother was frightened of when she was small. (George once asked.)

  Tell Laura I Love Her. That’s one of the records that her mother loved when she was small. One Little Robin In A Cherry Tree. To listen to these, with first their crackling needle noise then the starburst of their hokey tunes, is like being able to experience the past like you have literally entered it and it is a whole other place, completely new to you, where people really did sing songs like this, a past so alien it is like a kind of shock.

  Shock of the new and the old both at once, her mother says.

  Said.

  One afternoon George’s father brings home the new turntable and when he finally works out how to connect it up with the CD soundbox they drag the old records out from under the stairs.

  A boy called Tommy loves a girl called Laura. He wants to give her ‘everything’ (this is funny in itself, apparently, from the way her parents fall about, though this is back when George is too young to understand why), including flowers and presents and – the thing he wants to give her most – a wedding ring. But he can’t afford one, so he signs up for a stock-car race because there is a prize of 1000 dollars (idiot, George says, yes, I’m afraid so, her mother says, romantic, her father says, and Henry is too little right then to say anything). Tommy phones Laura’s house. But Laura’s not there. So he tells her mother instead to Tell Laura he Loves Her, tell Laura he needs her, tell Laura he won’t be late, he’s got something to do that can’t wait (uh-oh, her mother says, it’s already tragic because at one remove. Is it? George says. What does one remove mean? Romantic, her father says. That’s all technology ever does in the end, her mother says. It can’t do anything but highlight the metaphysical. What’s metaphysical? George says. Too big a word for this song, her father says). Then the car he’s in bursts into flames and as they pull him dying from the twisted remains of it he tells them to tell Laura he loves her and not to cry because his love for her will never die.

  She and her mother and father all crying with laughter on the rug.

  Why did you even keep this record? George asks her mother. It’s so bad.

  I didn’t know till today but obviously I was keeping it precisely so that you, me and your father would all end up listening to it today, her mother says and they all fall about laughing again.

  Thinking about that today back then in this new today right now, and in whichever stage of mourning she’s in, doesn’t make George feel sad or feel anything in particular.

  But in case the record might do for the dance thing she went downstairs just before New Year happened, but after her father’d gone out so he wouldn’t be hurt by hearing it, and found it in the pile of smaller records by the turntable (there’s a name for the smaller-sized records but she can’t remember what it is).

  She turned the sound to very low. She put it on. It had a warp in it so the guitars in its intro sounded seasick, like the record felt sick, though George herself felt fine, or rather, nothing.

  It was definitely not suitable though, being too slow.

  The dance her mother did every day needs an upward beat.

  At midnight on all the other New Years her mother would usually get out some really nice paper, the kind with real bits of flower petal mixed in with its texture, and give her and her father two pieces each. They would each (except Henry, asleep, which was important, fire being involved) write their wishes and hopes for the new year on to one of them and write the things they’d hated most about the old year on to the other one. Then – being very very careful not to mix the pieces up – each person would take a turn standing over the sink, strike a match, hold the flame to a corner of the piece of paper with all the things written on it that he or she hadn’t liked, and watch it burn. Then when you couldn’t hold it any more without hurting yourself you could drop it safely into the sink (this letting-go of it was the whole point of the ritual, her mother always said) where, when it finished burning, you could wash the burnt-up bits away.

  This year George has no wishes and hopes.

  Instead the piece of paper in front of her is blank except for the words WHAT’S LEFT OF XMAS HOLIDAYS DAILY SCHEDULE. She has written numbers, meaning the times of day, down one side of it. Next to 9.30 she has written DANCE THING.

  This is the whole point of her looking for likely tunes, so that she will be ready to begin as soon as breakfast is over tomorrow (today).

  Some time ago, George goes into her mother’s study and wanders around poking at the things on top of the books on the shelves. Her mother is not dead yet. Her mother is there working. There are piles of papers everywhere.

  George, her mother says without looking round.

  What are you working on? George says.

  Haven’t you homework? her mother says.


  You’re working on whether I’ve got homework? George says.

  George, her mother says. Don’t move anything, stop touching stuff and go and get on with something of your own.

  George comes and stands at the corner of the desk. She sits on the chair next to her mother’s chair.

  I’m a bit bored, she says.

  Me too, her mother says. This is statistics. I have to concentrate.

  Her mouth is the thin line.

  Why do you keep these? George says picking up the little jar full of pencil shavings.

  The jar was originally a Santorini mini capers jar, it says so on what’s left of the label. Through the glass you can see the different woods of the different pencils her mother has been using. One layer is dark brown. One layer is light gold colour. You can see the paint lines, the tiny zigzags of colour made into the shapes like the edges of those scallop shells by the twist of the pencil in the sharpener.

  One pencil, she can see, was once red and black (stripes?). One pencil was marbled blue. One was green, a really nice bright green. George takes out a blue-edged sharpening. It looks a bit like a wooden moth. She winds it round her finger. It is delicate and falls to pieces as soon as she twists it.

  Keep what? her mother says.

  George holds out the bits of shaving.

  What’s the point? she says.

  Point. Ha ha! her mother says. Funny.

  Why don’t you just sharpen your pencils into the bin like a normal person? George says.

  Well, her mother says pushing her chair back. It seems sad to, to just throw them away, I don’t like to. Not until I’ve finished whatever project I’ve used them on.

  Bit pathetic, George says.

  Well, yes, I suppose it is, her mother says. Literally. I think it’s cause they’re a proof of something. Hmm. But a proof of what?

  George rolls her eyes.

  Proof that you once sharpened some pencils, George says. Can I borrow the dictionary for a minute?

  Use your own, her mother says. Go away. Shut the door after you, you annoying and challenging little pest.

  She pulls her chair back in and clicks on something. George doesn’t leave immediately. She stands behind her mother, takes the big dictionary off the shelf and opens it against the wall.

  Plonk piazza pelmet pathway partake pastiche pathetic see under pathos. The quality that arouses pity. Pathetic. Affecting the emotions of pity, grief or sorrow. Sadly inadequate. (Interesting: inadequate and sad.) Contemptible. Derisory. Applied to the superior oblique muscle, which turns the eyeball downwards, and to the trochlear nerve connecting with it (anat).

  It isn’t until George has left the room and shut the door after her that she gets what she herself said and why it was funny.

  Pencil sharpenings. The point. Ha ha!

  She thinks about going back in and saying

  I get it!

  But she knows not to, so she doesn’t.

  (Point taken, George thinks now, on New Year’s morning.)

  WHAT’S LEFT OF XMAS HOLIDAYS DAILY SCHEDULE.

  Under DANCE THING next to 10 a.m. she writes the word GARDEN.

  This word garden here means more than just garden, because some time ago (before September) George got fed up of everybody at school always talking about the porn they’d seen on the internet. It was like doubly being a virgin, not having seen any. So she decided to watch some and make her own mind up. But she didn’t want Henry seeing because he is only eight, well, he was even younger, only seven, then. This is not discriminatory on her part. He will look for himself and decide for himself when he is old enough. That is, if he gets the chance to wait that long, since kids watch this stuff pretty freely in the playgrounds of the primary schools too.

  So she took the iPad and sat in what was left of the pergola, where she could see anyone (especially Henry) coming towards her, in case, and she clicked on the first images that came up, and it was kind of interesting, quite amazing really all the things she saw and she began to be glad she’d decided to sit out in the garden away from the house.

  It was interesting at first. It was quite eye-opening.

  It got boring and repetitive quite fast.

  After it did, she began to be interested instead in how many of the scenarios needed to have or at least to pretend to have stories. There was one in which a long-haired blonde woman of about twenty, wearing nothing but high heels, was having her hands tied at the wrists by a much older woman wearing a quite fashionable low-cut evening dress. The older woman tipped the younger one’s chin up and she took an eye-dropper and squeezed something into each of the younger woman’s eyes. Apparently this now made the younger woman blind. The older woman led her into a room a bit like a gym if a gym were to be painted black and have chains hanging off its wall bars; also a bit like a gym there were machines and all sorts of apparatus in the room, as well as a semi-circle of men and women dressed in the same kind of evening clothes as the older woman, as if they’d all gone out to a prestigious formal function somewhere. The younger woman didn’t know any of this. She couldn’t see anything because of the eye drops. At least, that was the story. At this point the film flashed forward on to lots of edits showing extreme-looking moments of what was about to happen to the blind woman, which you’d only get to see in full if you subscribed.

  Could she see? Was she really blind? George was intrigued. Was it real? Or was the woman just acting? And if she was blind, had been blinded by whatever the older woman squeezed into her eyes, how long did it take before it wore off and she could see again? Or could she never see again? Maybe she was somewhere in the world right now still wandering about blind. Maybe they’d told her it would wear off, and it never did, or only partially did. Maybe something about those eye drops changed something about the way she saw. Or, on the other hand, maybe she was perfectly fine and had 20:20 vision regardless.

  20:20 vision regardless! Oxymoron. Ha ha.

  Then there was a film where a quite old woman, in her thirties, lay on her back and got fucked one after the other pretty briefly each time by a large number of men, most of them wearing masks like killers wear in thrillers on TV. A figure always came up on the screen every time a new one started. 7!! 8!! 9!! Then the figures flashed forward from 13!! 14!! to 34!! 35!! 36!! There were supposedly forty men altogether. The whole thing was supposed to have taken exactly forty minutes, that’s what the onscreen clock showed, though the film lasted about five. There was only the one woman, on her back on what looked like a coffee table, which can’t have been comfortable. Her eyes were shut, she was a kind of red colour all over, and it was also as if someone had fuzzed or smudged the lens, like it had steamed up. At the end of the film the words on the screen announced that after this filmshoot my wife was pregnant. Then three exclamation marks. !!!

  Why was it forty? George wondered sitting in the garden with the flowers all nodding round her and the occasional passing butterfly’s shadow calling her eyes beyond the iPad. Was it because forty is a number that sounds like it means a lot, a magic number like forty days and forty nights, forty years in the desert, forty thieves? Open sesame! Ha ha. No, that was a bit sick. And was the woman on the coffee table really the wife of the person who made the film? And was she really pregnant after it? There was something a bit interesting about it, like watching a queen bee at work in a hive. But why had so many of the men worn the masks? Did that make it more exciting? For whom? Or perhaps they didn’t want their own wives, or people at work if they went for interviews, say, after they’d taken part in this film, to know their identities.

  Then one afternoon George had clicked on a particular film which made her swear to herself that she’d watch this same film (or a bit of it, since it was quite lengthy) once every day for the rest of her life.

  There was a girl in it who must have been sixteen because of legality but looked much younger than George. She looked about twelve. There was a man in it who looked about forty. When he kissed this girl he took alm
ost her whole face into his mouth. They were in a yurt-like room for a very long time doing stuff and the uncomplaining smallness of the girl alongside her evident discomfort and the way she looked both there and absent, as if she’d been drugged, given something to make her feel things in slower motion than they were actually happening to her, had changed something in the structures of George’s brain and heart and certainly her eyes, so that afterwards when George tried to watch any more of this kind of sexual film that girl was there waiting under them all.

  More. George found that the girl was there too, pale and pained with her shut eyes and her open o of a mouth, under the surface of the next TV show she watched on catch-up.

  She was there under the YouTube videos of Vampire Weekend and the puppy falling off the sofa and the cat sitting on the hoover that hoovered by itself and the fox so domesticated that the person taking the film could stroke its head.

  She was there under the pop-ups and the adverts on Facebook, and under the facts about the history of the suffragettes on the BBC site which George looked up for school.

  She was there under the news item about the woman who tried to buy a burger at a McDonald’s drive-thru on her horse, who, when she was refused at the hatch, got off her horse and led it into the main building and up to the counter and tried to order there. McDonald’s regrets we are unable to serve customers on horseback.

  When she’d sensed that girl there underneath even this, George went back through her own history to find the porn film. She clicked on it.

  The girl sat demure on the edge of the bed again.

  The man grinned at the camera and took the girl’s head in his hands again.

  What you doing out here, Georgie? her father asked her a couple of months ago.

  November. It was cold. Her mother was dead. George had forgotten about the girl for weeks, then remembered in a French class at school when they were revising the conditional. She had come home and gone into the garden and found the film and clicked on it. She had apologized sotto voce to the girl in the film for having been inattentive.