by Lizzy Barber
It would be far too easy to stumble upon a clue in the living room or kitchen, and there’s no way I’ll find anything in my bedroom.
Which just leaves Mamma’s bedroom.
I’ve only ever glimpsed the inside of her room before. As a child, if I had a nightmare, I would knock softly on the unpainted pine door until Mamma’s face appeared in the doorway, when she would spirit me back to my own room with barely a backward glance, soothe me there until my bad dreams dissipated, and return to her room’s obscurity. I try to recall, now, what sort of dreams would wake me with such violent sobs. My hand touches the cool gold metal of the doorknob.
As the door releases, my heart is beating so wildly I’m sure I can see it thumping in my chest. I almost jump as the door shuts with a bang behind me, but I wipe my sweaty palms on my pyjama shorts and allow myself to look at Mamma’s sanctuary properly for the very first time.
In a way, I am relieved to see it is exactly as I pictured it: no print or pattern to claim an identity; the bed sheets – plain – are heavily starched, their edges forming sharp lines against the mattress; nothing but a stern wooden cross to save the eyes from the starkness of it all. Two pine side tables sit almost bare either side of the bed. There are no lights apart from the single bulb in the ceiling. On the right-hand side – the side she sleeps on, I see, from the whisper of a depression on the pillow – there is a copy of the Common English Bible, the same version I also own, its burgundy-red cover standing out against the monochrome of the room.
I feel myself compelled to go to it, to see if there is some special verse or chapter she has marked or highlighted, but the pages are crisp and unadorned. Feeling brazen, my fingers coil around the handle of her bedside drawer. A note, perhaps, from my father? A birth certificate? Something secret and special that she’ll want to keep close at hand. Resting against the rough wooden interior are a black-toothed comb, a red pencil with a rubber at the end, and a little vial of the lavender oil she makes herself from the bushes in the garden. Nothing more.
The other side is even worse: so empty I doubt it has ever even been opened. My eyes scour the room for inspiration.
The wooden dresser opposite the bed is almost identical to mine; so much so they could be a pair; but whereas mine is neatly adorned with a mirror, hairbands, combs and a stack of books, Mamma’s holds nothing. I am overwhelmed with sadness for her little life.
Pulling out the first drawer, I am hit with the saccharine smell of lavender drawer liners; I can see the pattern of purple paper poking out from underneath the meticulously folded T-shirts. My first instinct is to reach out, to feel underneath them for a potential hiding spot, but as I stretch my arms out in front of me, I become aware of my own incriminating hands; their ability to muss up or crease something that could leave tangible evidence of my break-in. Will Mamma’s keen eyes be able to spot her tainted T-shirts, marred with my touch?
Holding my breath, I flatten the palm of my hand and press it ever so gently against each stack of T-shirts. I repeat this with two more drawers, through the discomfort of seeing Mamma’s puritanical bras and panties on display, rooting through each exactingly twinned set of socks that sighs under my touch, but leaves me empty-handed. And then, as I tug at the bottom drawer, something jars. I pull again, harder, and it frees itself entirely from the dresser, landing in my lap with a force that throws me backwards onto the hard wooden floor.
The drawer is empty. But in the space where it sat, I see a stack of papers.
I hold my breath. Outside, a cloud passes over the sun. I reach over and take them in my hands.
They’re identical, each about the size of a postcard, and, as I take the first one out, I realise I’ve seen them before.
A watercolour spray of lilies, their petals reaching for the edge of the page.
Inside, the neat, looping cursive that not so long ago spelled out my twinned names.
And here, a message, printed with almost exact precision in the centre of the page. Remember The Lilies.
And there, a signature. Father Paul.
I turn over each card, but every time they say the exact same thing. Remember The Lilies. Again and again. Ten, twelve, fifteen times.
Father Paul.
The man in the white linen suit. My silent pursuer has a name.
Mamma must know him. He must somehow be connected to it all. But how, or why, I can’t say.
Remember The Lilies.
Feeling light-headed, I turn away from the chest of drawers, throw open Mamma’s spartan curtains and heave open the window, gulping in the clean air. I stare across Mamma’s blooming backyard, willing the flowers to give me inspiration.
And then it strikes me: the lilies.
Since I was big enough to wield a trowel, I have known my way around Mamma’s backyard, learning from her sure hands which plants will flower with which, how to weed and deadhead, which shrubs need care and attention, and which will bend to their own will. I have scraped and scratched every inch of that fertile ground. But there is one area I am absolutely forbidden to touch: the white Easter lilies that grow in a vast terracotta pot at the far end of the yard.
It makes no sense: why would she trust me implicitly with every other leaf or stem, only to bid me, should I venture near the lilies, ‘No, Anna. Not there’? I carefully restack the notes, replace the drawer, shut Mamma’s bedroom door behind me with a soft click and make my way outside.
The day is still early, not even 9 a.m., and a soft breeze licks at my legs, bare in my pyjama shorts, as I stalk towards the back of the yard, trowel in hand. The grass is wet with dew, and makes an even crunch under my galoshes as I walk. In the distance, there is the occasional chirrup of a bird, but apart from that, all is silent, as if every creature in my vicinity is entranced by my steps.
The lily bush waits for me in its ruddy pot, sat atop a rectangular stretch of flagstones next to the curved wooden bench Mamma likes to sit on with a cup of tea, her face yearning towards the sunlight, on the fleeting occasions she allows herself a break. The flowers are in full bloom, unfurling their silky white petals like a room of debutantes twirling at a cotillion.
My first thought is to see if there is something in the base of the pot, but I can see that’s impossible. There is no way of getting through the soil without dislodging the flowers or pulling them up without it being noticed. I give the earth a dissatisfied poke with the edge of my trowel, but it’s all easy and yielding; nothing hidden beneath its depths that I can find. And then my eyes flicker to the flagstones.
Memories return. Those odd, sidelong looks in the direction of the stones. I’ve always just put them down to her concern for the lilies’ growth. The time I found her out there, hands pressed to the ground, the look of ashen terror that crossed her face when I called out to her. And now I play again the scene from my childhood where I fell on the rake. It was there, wasn’t it? In that part of the garden. I landed right by the pot. I remember now the feel of the rough earthenware rubbing at my back through my thin T-shirt as I butted against it. And how she shouted, above my infant sobs, almost without thinking, ‘Get away from there! Don’t look under it!’ At the time, I was too struck with the injustice of my own pain, but even then I thought it a strange phrase. Look under where, Mamma?
Answering my silent question from long ago, I look.
Using all my strength, I hold on to the edges of the pot and roll it onto the grass. A damp ring marks where it has sat on the paving stone; a dark soiled circle which suddenly feels like my very own ‘X marks the spot’, because soon I can see that, unlike the other flagstones that line this section, the edges of this particular one are loose, they haven’t been cemented down – which means that at some point or another it has been lifted up.
With trembling hands I feel my way around the cool grey stone, finding a convenient edge to grab hold of; trying not to think of my gloveless fingertips and the dirt they are accumulating, or the worms and earwigs that lie beneath. I do my best to pull u
p the slab but it refuses to budge. Frustrated, I reach out for the abandoned trowel at my feet and, working in tiny incremental movements, force my way around the square perimeter, like I’m opening a jar of beans that has been stuck fast. At last I feel a give, and the slab starts to loosen. Abandoning the trowel, I grasp the corners with my fingers, and slowly the stone comes away.
Carefully, I rest the stone aside and look at what lies beneath. The smell of moist earth chokes me with every ragged, fearful breath.
To the uninquisitive eye, there seems to be nothing worth noting. The black soil is moist, but undisturbed apart from the writhing pink bodies of worms traversing through it. Suppressing the wave of acrid bile that rises in my throat at the thought of them on my bare hands, I reach down and press my fingers through the earth. It’s soft, but I can’t tell if this is from where it has been disturbed by the removal of the paving stone, or from more frequent activity.
And then, as my fingers press down to my knuckles, I feel the distinct cool surface of metal.
I snatch up the trowel, brushing the earth aside as neatly as I can without disturbing the clean paving stones surrounding it. It’s difficult: the soil moves aside for a split second, but then slips back down to cover the object, but eventually I can tell it’s some sort of tin. I manage to clear a wide enough space to tap the top, and it replies with a hollow knock. Feeling around its perimeter, I can tell it’s circular, and as I brush the dirt aside I make out a red-and-white pattern on the front: a drawing of fruits, trailing around the rim, and people, their faces now blackened with dirt as if they’ve spent a day at the mines. Then I make out the letters at the top – ‘Pilgrim Fruit Cake’– and I realise I know this tin. Mamma has another one. She keeps it in the living room on the coffee table; it holds buttons and thread for her sewing and mending. I asked her once where it came from: she said it was her father’s favourite thing to eat, but they were only allowed a tiny piece of it, once a year, after church on Christmas Day.
With shaking hands, I grasp hold of it and feel it yielding from its grave, ready to be pulled into my waiting arms. I feel like an archaeologist – except the only bones I am searching for are my own.
I almost can’t bear to open it.
But then, as if guided by some force external to myself, my fingers reach for the rim, and pull.
Every fibre of me is on edge. I can feel every blade of grass; smell the soupy, wet earth and the sharp metal of the tin that has been hiding beneath it. I can hear each rustle and squawk of the birds in the trees, each discrete buzz of the bees, sucking sweet nectar from the yellow acacia flowers; each beat of my heart as it gets faster and faster and the lid comes looser and looser.
And then it is open, and I stoop over to see what lies inside. And I know in an instant what I am looking at.
That green. That unmistakable, lurid green.
Even now I recognise it.
It’s the colour of the gift bags my classmates waved at school on Monday mornings, handing out blue candies and showing off treats. It’s the colour of the ticket I held in my hand less than two weeks ago, and of the looping logo I walked underneath.
The T-shirt is small, clearly a child’s, and as I run my fingers over the silver letters ‘A-S-T-R-O’, a sob rasps at my chest and I pull it to me, breathing in the fabric as if it can somehow help me suck the memories harder into myself. It smells of nothing distinct: the ground and the tin. No hint of perfume, or a wave of sunscreen that will help me form a clearer sense of the voice that has always tickled at my ears, but whose face has remained in silhouette. Why can’t I see her?
I want my mommy.
I lay the T-shirt on the ground beside me as gently as if it still contains the body of the child I once was. Underneath it, a flash of silver. I pull out a pendant, looped on a metal chain. The twin to the one I received not so long ago: a cross, the swirl of a lily wrapped around it.
Remember The Lilies.
Then I reach inside the tin once more and take out the last item inside: a swirl of multicoloured fabric nestled into a ball.
And that’s when I hear the unmistakable rumble of tyres rolling up the drive.
At first I think it must be William, so unused am I to the sound of a car on our property. But as the noise gets closer, I know it can’t be William. It must be Mamma.
My heart seizes in my chest. Hurling the T-shirt and pendant back into their hiding place, I leap up and stuff the fabric absent-mindedly into my pyjama pocket. Hurriedly grabbing at the dirt, I start piling the earth back on top of the tin, hating having to once more cover it up. As quick as I possibly can, I pull back the paving stone and haul the terracotta pot back into place. The trowel I hurl far into the bushes, hoping to recover it later.
Barely thinking, I run back into the house, pull off my galoshes and toss them into the bucket by the door, and then I am up, up the stairs, driven by a mindless energy towards my room. My pyjamas, flecked with soil, I wrench off and push under the bed as far as they will go, and then I am down the hall and into the bathroom, turning the shower on full before I’ve even finished stepping into the tub.
And then I am scrubbing. Every inch of me, hard. My muddied legs. My forehead, where a soiled hand may have accidentally rubbed against it. The elusive spots under my nails where an unnoticed speck of dirt may give me away. Adrenaline pulses through my body, and that, plus the hot water raining down on me, makes me dizzy and light-headed. Through the cascade of water, I hear the distant thud of the front door, and I know it won’t be long until she finds me, and this makes me scrub faster, harder, lathering the soap on my body in thick white clouds. Surely she will know; she will guess in an instant where I’ve been.
Footsteps on the stairs. And then a pause. ‘Anna?’ The bathroom door pushes open, revealing Mamma’s concerned face.
‘Mamma.’ I’m sure I must shriek it. I instantly go to cover my naked body with my arms, ashamed of her bald gaze.
‘What to goodness is going on?’
I close the taps, reach for a towel and step shakily onto the bath mat. ‘I … I … don’t feel too good.’ It isn’t a lie. As I rest myself on the edge of the bath, I feel my limbs go shaky and limp, and the dizziness from the hot shower overwhelms me. ‘When I woke up this morning, I felt all weak and kind of fluey.’ The lie tumbles out of me in a subconscious act of self-preservation. ‘I didn’t want to bother you, but I thought it best to take the day off school, and rest up. I was hoping a shower would make me feel better but … but …’
I hang my head in my hands, the events of the morning and the fear of discovery weighing down every inch of me.
‘Oh Anna.’ Mamma comes to me, towels my forehead and rests a cool hand on it. ‘You do feel warm. Let’s get you back to bed.’
And I allow myself to be led, glad to be mothered; to have myself dried, and dressed in a cool, clean nightgown, and tucked into bed.
‘You’re never sick,’ Mamma tuts, smoothing the sheets down around me a little tighter than is comfortable. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? It’s all this upset, over that boy. And you’re lucky I happened to come back home … That idiot woman talked at me so long this morning I left my purse on the hall table. Lie back now. Mamma will look after you.’
Paralysed with fear, I train my eyes on Mamma’s hypnotic movements as she steps around the room, pulling the curtains even tighter shut, and straightening the things on my dresser. She leaves the room, appearing moments later with a glass of water and two round blue pills.
‘Oh, but Mamma, I don’t think …’ I struggle to sit even as she’s pressing them into my palm.
I picture Mamma’s medicine cabinet, an exercise in cautious paranoia: Band-Aids by the packet-load, sealed in their wrappers; murky brown vials of iodine; bottles of aspirin and cough syrup and Pepto-Bismol. The armour Mamma uses in her daily combat against disease. Oftentimes, when I was little and scared of the demons whose faces are now hazy to me, Mamma would give me the corner of one of these blue pills and pr
omise me all would be well.
‘Take them, Anna,’ she says now. ‘They’ll help you sleep.’ She holds the glass to my lips, watching as I swallow.
Before she’s even left the room, I feel my eyelids pressing down and my head go heavy on the pillow. I hear the soft click of the door, but before sleep can claim me, I remember the muddied pyjamas beneath me, the last secret of the tin in their midst.
I wrench my woozy limbs from the bed and stretch a leaden arm underneath it. My unseeing fingers excavate the pyjama pocket, curl around the multi-coloured fabric, tug.
Looped around my middle finger and thumb is a bracelet: the sort of thing you see them making at stalls in the centre of the mall. Strands of brightly coloured threads – fuchsia pink and kingfisher blue and marigold yellow – all woven together in an intricate pattern. But the colours alone mean nothing next to the white beads plaited into it.
I feel the pills working their magic on me, blurring my vision and begging my body to sleep. But I fight against them, turning the beads with my thumb and forefinger to reveal the five white letters as they start to form a word.
And there, in my weary hands, rests the incontrovertible truth. Because even if Mamma denies me the truth of our life before, or the pendant, or even the hidden tin, I know, in my drugged state, what these letters mean.
An E.
An M.
I.
L.
Y.
The letters spell out Emily.
ROSIE
14
The day of the party the weather is clear, so Mum opens up the French doors that lead from the main living room into the garden, sniffs the air, and declares we’ll host everything outside. ‘It won’t feel so claustrophobic.’ She fiddles with the necklace Dad bought her for their tenth wedding anniversary, a pendant with two gold rings intertwined, pulling at it like it’s a noose.