by Emmy Ellis
My sixteenth birthday—that had been some day. I woke, emotions roiling inside me, so damn happy to be getting out of Mam’s house. I placed Nelson inside a holdall I’d bought in readiness. The few clothes I wanted to keep joined her, as did a pair of boots, my toothbrush, hairbrush, and a book I’d recently bought. I left the bag on my bed and made my way downstairs.
Mam sat at the kitchen table. I stood in the doorway and surveyed the back of her greasy-haired head. Ribbons of smoke curled towards the ceiling—grey fog in a grey house—and her cup, no steam rose from it. No, she’d waited until I got up to make her second cup of morning tea.
What had she been thinking while looking out of the dirty, bird-shit-stained window in that back door? Would she have allowed herself to look back over the years, ponder on what could have been? Was she ever the kind of person to re-evaluate what had gone before, to sift through the disgusting life she’d led and decide to better herself, make amends for the way she’d treated me?
“First day of my new life starts today, kid.”
Obviously not. The only thing she evaluated? Whether she had enough money to buy her medicine. Part of me faced that fact that day. You know, accepted that some people are as they are, and no amount of silent pleading on my part would make her change the way she was. Some people were born guiltless, had no conscience. Mam was one of them.
“Mine too,” I said and walked into the kitchen. I filled that kettle for what I hoped would be the last time. Collected her used cup from the table, swilled it out, and placed a teabag and two sugars inside it. Tapped my fingers against the worktop as I waited for the kettle to come to a laborious boil, surprised the damn thing hadn’t given up working years ago.
Brew before her, she continued to stare out of the back door while fumbling on the table for her cigarettes. I leaned against the worktop, my own tea in hand, and took in her profile. Her nose had grown hooked over the years. A ball of pointed gristle sat at the end of it—a witch, all right—and the skin appeared to have thinned. Red veins—yes, I saw them from where I stood—littered the bridge and spread across the cheek facing me. She’d always been slim, but I imagined she’d run to fat given a few more years, as her jowls had gained some baggage and hung from her lower jaw.
A scraggle of baggy skin congregated around her neck, and the bone in her throat bounced once, twice, as she swallowed her tea. She winced—the drink must have been too hot—and I smiled at that before blowing my own tea and taking a sip. I remember thinking then: I’ll buy myself a lovely set of mugs with no chips on the rims, no tea stains inside. Lovely, clean cups, all matching.
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
“In about half an hour,” I said and shifted my weight from one hip to the other. “Won’t be coming back.”
“Won’t be letting you in if you did.” She stubbed out her cigarette, reaching for another. Sighed. “You know, it wasn’t all bad.”
My eyes widened, and a snort of derision left me like I’d been punched in the gut. “Wasn’t it? You tell me of a time when it was good, then. I’d like to hear that.” I sipped my tea.
Mam studied the trees in the back garden. “Well, I…”
Silence lingered, a silence so palpable it swirled around me, rising in the air to join the cigarette fog that hovered between us. I stared at the tattered but clean lino, knowing filth would converge on it the moment I left that hell hole.
Mam cleared her throat. Sniffed. “Umm, well, there must be something…it can’t have all been bad.”
I pushed myself away from the worktop, emptied the remainder of my tea down the plughole, and placed the cup in the empty sink—a sink that would be filled by dinner time and would stay that way for fuck knew how long. Did I care? A part of me did, for hadn’t I kept house the past two years, made it more presentable? Ensured more punters knocked on the door? Word at not having to walk through piles of crap to reach the back room must have spread, as business had picked up after my fourteenth birthday. Yes, I did care…a little. But—always a but, so they say—I’d be getting out of there and making a new life for myself. Painting my own picture.
“You fucked up, Mam, simple as that. And you’re a fuck-up yourself. The only thing you’ve instilled in me is not to waste my money by shooting it into my veins. Oh, and treating any kids I have to a good life. Something you’d know nothing about.”
A tear trickled down Mam’s cheek. She was crying? “I had high hopes once, just like you have. But life isn’t like that, kid. You’ll see. The shit hits the fan, and you’re fucked. Life is a bunch of crap, Carmel. Not worth living. Robots, the lot of us, milling round trying to do the best we can with what we’ve got—”
I laughed. “The best we can? That’s fucking rich, coming from you, Mam. You reckon you did the best you could, do you? Hey, even if you’d still been a prostitute—”
“A masseuse—”
“A prostitute, and hid it from me, stayed off heroin and loved me like you should have, it could’ve worked out.” Anger bubbled in my guts, growing up my windpipe then spilling out of my mouth before I could stop it. “But you’re too fucking selfish to give a shit about anyone but yourself, your needs, your wants. A dried up old hag who will see out the rest of her days—what you’ve got left of them—shagging old duffers that are too desperate to find someone more appealing. Shit, I reckon your medicine, especially the amount you’ve been taking lately, will kill you off before you know it. What does that prospect say to you? Can you tell me that before I go?”
Mam’s wet cheek glistened from the morning sunlight streaming in through the window. Her breath hitched, and she hiccoughed in a lungful of cigarette smoke. Coughed, patted her chest, blinked. “Reckon it’d be a blessing,” she said. “Got fuck all in my life worth staying around for.”
That said, I left her there and walked upstairs to collect my bag and its meagre contents, not much from sixteen years of living. Pitiful. Another person may have been upset by her words, choked out a sob or two, and blundered blindly up the stairs and back down again, out of the house. Not me. I’d expected that answer, or something similar, and only anger at the injustices served to me flickered around my mind like angry wasps trapped between a net curtain and a windowpane.
I walked along our street, my holdall slung over my shoulder. No remorse at leaving the road I’d lived in all my life filled me, no what-ifs questioned me as I left the path and turned down a side alley that led to the park. Once there, I dumped my bag on the tarmac and sat on a swing to fly through the air and cast the clutter from my mind into the wind. Not all of it, though. The locked boxes of my mind remained, and would do so until I found the need, or courage, to open them. For now, the time to move on and start again had arrived.
Reckon we’re gonna have a good life now, Carmel. You and me against the world.
“And Gary. Mustn’t forget Gary,” I said, my words thrown back at me by the breeze. I closed my eyes and let the early morning sun caress my face.
“And me,” said Belinda. “I’ll always be here.”
My stomach contracted. Belinda hadn’t visited for months. Her last appearance had been short—just a glimpse of her standing behind me as I’d looked in the bathroom mirror—and the time before that she’d laughed when Gary had told me he fancied me rotten, but she hadn’t shown herself.
I opened my eyes and glanced to my right. Belinda’s eye-socket face turned in my direction, yellow pus oozing.
“Yeah, and you,” I said, my freedom tainted by her presence.
“Told you before, I’m with you all the way. Through the bad times—and let there be many of those.” She laughed and threw her head back. It separated from her neck and hit the ground with a dull thud. It rolled, the moist flesh picking up grit and dirt, and stopped beside one of the poles that held the swing set upright. Her hair spilled out, fan-like, against the black tarmac, and her face from life morphed over the socket, eyes wide with shock, lips opening and closing. Grit grains embedded in h
er skin, over her nose and cheeks. They resembled black freckles. “Now that would have hurt at one time,” she said.
I slowed the swing but remained seated. Belinda’s headless body sat up, her hands reaching out to pat the ground in search of her head. I watched in fascination, willing her fingers not to come into contact with her hair that danced in the breeze just inches away from their tips. A gust blew a tress into the air, and it landed in the middle of one of her palms.
“That’s it, my pretty,” she said and dragged her head towards her body. She picked it up and plopped it onto her neck. The skin merged, ensuring her head wouldn’t fall off any time soon, and a shudder rippled her limbs. “That’s better. Now, as I was saying—”
“I don’t care what you were saying,” I said and got off the swing. Holdall in hand, I left the fenced-off play area, walking across the dewy grass, my shoes gaining a slick layer of moisture.
Does that freak assume we want her tagging along?
“No idea, Nelson, but I’m sure she’ll persist in following us.”
“I will,” said Belinda, now striding alongside me.
Three’s a crowd.
“It is, Nelson,” I said, turning left out of the park and taking the path that led to my new home.
“Best your doll fucks off, then,” said Belinda.
I sighed, lowered my head, and surged on. On towards a new life, one that would unfortunately contain two voices I could well do without.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was amazing that even after living a life of hell, a person could yearn for what they’d once known, longing for the acceptance of a parent who couldn’t have cared less. The first year of living alone, I didn’t have those wants, but the year and a half after that first heady rush of being self-sufficient plagued me with the need for answers. To visit Mam once more, to see if my absence had changed her—something I doubted. Nevertheless, I clung on to the slim hope that she may have seen the error of her ways.
Would that make everything better, though?
Was I bitter? Yes, I still harboured the desire to make her pay for her crimes against me, yet another part of me shouted that I should protect her from the sins she’d committed, that I was the stronger person and could deal with the atrocities better than a broken woman addicted to heroin. I despised myself at times. Small snippets of information I’d gleaned as a small child escaped from my locked mind boxes, rampaging through my head, and my emotions took a seat on a roller coaster that travelled through my musings, wreaking havoc.
Nelson and Belinda fought between themselves, their attempts mirroring the two sides of my mind. Nelson wanted retribution. She whispered that we could get rid of Mam, and only when that was done could we live a peaceful existence. Belinda, on the other hand, chose the opposite argument. Mam should be forgiven, for wasn’t she a product of a society that had moulded her into what she had become? That as a young girl with fresh dreams, unsullied by reality, she’d set out one day on a walk to find herself flat on her back in a field, an older man above her, grunting his enjoyment. I was the result of that union and, hated as I was from my conception, my future had further been mapped out by Mam’s parents disowning her.
How does Belinda know all this?
“Because I’m on the other side, you stupid doll. I know everything, I told Carmel that before. Her mam should be pitied, I tell you.”
Pitied? She should be hung for what she’s done to Carmel. Annette endured desecration, knew what it felt like, yet she allowed her own child to go through the same thing time and time again. Sick in the head, Annette is. I’ll never understand that woman, you hear me?
“Exactly,” I yelled. “What about me? I’ve had an unfortunate life. Don’t I deserve any bloody pity?”
Belinda’s lips turned down, and she cocked her socket head to the side. Had her eyes been present, she would have regarded me with her piercing gaze, I reckoned. “Um, prior to my death, yes. After that? No.”
But can’t you understand why you had that accident? If you weren’t such a spoilt little bitch, if you’d been a true friend to Carmel, none of that would have happened.
I sighed, sick of hearing their voices, and clutched at the hair on the sides of my head. “Shut up. Just shut up, all right?”
I leaned on the windowsill in my bedsit, staring at the opposite row of shops. Nelson and Belinda’s argument twittered on in the background, their voices swallowed by the low hum that started inside my head and grew in volume the longer they bickered.
“Enough,” I shouted and whipped round to face them. Nelson sat on top of my wardrobe. Belinda stood beside it, looking up at the doll. “I’m going out, and if either of you follow me, I swear to
God—”
Socket Head turned to face me and laughed. “You swear to God what? That you’ll kill me?” She bent double with laughter and, standing upright once more, wiped tears from her life-face, the socket gone. “Seeing as you’ve already done that, maybe you’ll kill the doll here.” She jerked her thumb upwards. “Fucking thing’s ugly as sin, anyway. And at eighteen years of age, I rather thought you’d have outgrown the tatty bitch.”
Who the hell are you calling tatty? You, with your manky-arsed socket face, and when that isn’t present, your features aren’t exactly pleasant to look at. Seen better looking dogs than you. Dogs in the process of having their arseholes stung by nettles, I might add.
I clenched my jaw. “Oh, please. Please shut up. I’m going out. Do not follow me.”
* * * *
I walked with no destination in mind. Let my feet lead the way, take me wherever they chose. Nelson’s and Belinda’s words ferreted through my mind, a beagle at a foxhole, relentless in their quest of torment. Images, memories, and long ago words jostled for precedence, fighting my rational side.
“Let it go,” I said. “Just let it all go.”
Their stubborn refusal to leave me be remained, cloistered in my brain, digging deep beneath the grey matter. Fugginess spread throughout my body. Lethargy made each step awkward, risking the hazard of me falling over the graves—the graves?—I wended between.
I blinked.
I stood on a flat-topped hill in the middle of nowhere, though nowhere, once my fuddled mind refocused, became the site of an old church to the west of town. Its ancient grey brick façade brought damsels in flouncy skirts to mind, knights astride black steeds.
Black Beauty.
Hundreds of women, their open parasols resting on one shoulder, walked across the graves of folk long dead. Men appeared, holding out crooked arms for the women to take, their stockinged calves poking out of knee-length trousers. So many of them, so many…
“Just think, a hundred years from now, you’ll be like them,” said Belinda. “No one can remember these people, and no one gives a shit about them. So, before you carry on feeling sorry for yourself, think about that for a moment. A few decades from now, not one person will remember you. No one will care what life you led, what you’re about to lead. It’ll all be gone.”
I tried to ignore her.
“Maybe you’ll wander round aimlessly like they are, like I do,” she said. “Maybe you’ll have unfinished business you’ll need to attend to. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll be swallowed by the flames of Hell and won’t need to go through the palaver of trying to get yourself through those blasted gates at the top of the star-steps.” Belinda ran forward, walked and twirled amid the men and women. “But you’ve got to be pure to do that. Harbour no regrets and animosity towards anyone.” She laughed. “So I guess you will be like us. In limbo, nowhere to go.”
Annoyance addled my guts. “I told you not to follow me.”
“Isn’t that prospect fun, Carmel?” she said. “That not only will I be with you during your life, but I’ll follow you through eternity, too.”
I shuddered, turning from her and those…those people. Running, I reached the church and twisted the black, iron ring handle on the door. The heavy square of aged wood crea
ked open, its echo loud, masking Belinda’s insane laughter that floated behind me. Two grey stone steps led down into the main body of the church. I took them, placed my feet on a harlequin-tiled aisle, and listened to the sound of my footsteps as I walked towards the altar.
What was that feeling? As if the air held a charge, as if a presence loitered, the inside of the church felt very different from outside. A nuance of being totally alone in the world stole around me. The thought that this very building housed my salvation rose within me. Was that what those people in town had meant—those that preached the word of the Lord from a homemade wooden podium in the marketplace, a microphone touching their lips? That if you only stepped foot inside a church, the good Lord would refresh you, take away the sins that bound guilt to your soul, and make you brand new.
Spooked—that’s how I felt. Spooked and cherished at the same time. Peace settled on my shoulders, hugging away the fear that someone watched me from the far shadows of the church’s innards. Eyes…I sensed them everywhere. People…were those people from outside in here, sitting unseen in the pews, open Bibles on their laps, psalms waiting to be read?
Three stone steps raised the altar, ensuring it could be seen by all who rejoiced there. A white, sheet-like cloth, embroidered with a golden cross, was draped over the dark wood. I stood at the base of the steps and longed to touch the cloth, but dared not. Tainted, I didn’t feel worthy enough to feel that material. I’d sully its goodness. Instead, I did what those on TV did: knelt, closed my eyes, and let the purity of that place seep into my bones.
I was sure I could have been saved that day.
A shuffle sounded behind me. The jangle of keys screeched like an eagle. I gasped, scrambled standing, and twisted round. A large old man, his back to me, stood poised by the door, keys held aloft, obviously ready to lock up.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t lock me in.”