Stoker Chapter 1 - Beginning At The End

My story begins and ends on a crisp, clear summer day. It is a day for driving, for stirring the languid air into freshness. In truth, it is both beginning and end, rebirth and death. I feel this cyclical tug-of-war, a simultaneous loosening and tensing deep inside as my unfastened seatbelt snakes across my chest, receding into the shell of its bracket. The car wails like an abandoned child as I step out onto the hot tarmac. I slam the door to silence it, harder than I mean to; the empty case of the vehicle trembles. Then I walk with small, measured steps to the fields bordering the road, savouring the rocking motion, heel-toe, heel-toe, meticulous and excitingly precarious, as if I am atop a pair of stilts. Click-click. Heel-toe. Each stride necessitates a pleasing effort, a slight strain in the calf, a tautness of the ankle; the tendons and muscles of my milk-white feet ripple under the skin like the hammers of a piano. I draw to a halt when the plum-leathered points of my shoes contrast with the shimmering white-gold of the corn, the vivid green grass whose tiny crisp blades give way under my giant weight. The crickets are buzzing, chirruping unseen as if to keep me company. A litter of dry husks, fallen too soon before the sickle, emit their final death rattles. Weeds prick at the soft white skin of my bare calves like the miniature spears of a thousand slender sentinels, defending a hidden world. Lips parted, I take in the minute perfection of the tiny purple flowers, satiny-soft to the touch and furred with delicate white down like a baby’s cheek, focusing my eye like a hunter’s gunsight. Looking at them is almost as good as touching them; I can imagine the perfumed smoothness of the petals between the sensitive pads of my fingertips, nudging cool and soft under my nails. Ants transport their treasures, swift and industrious, their elbowed antennae touching, testing, tasting. I picture myself from above, a chestnut dot awash in a vast, swaying silver-green sea; raise a finger to trace the pale pencil stroke of the horizon. I am part of all of this, and all of this is part of me. A sudden cool breeze breathes under my skirt, which billows against my skin, buffeting me in a gentle cotton caress. My sleeves of cold peach silk smooth me, stroke me, flutter around me like luxurious little wings, glowing in the late afternoon light; transforming me. It is bliss to lose myself; to be aware, and yet thoughtless. Pleasure infuses, drenches everything in a golden haze; pleasure so intense I can hardly bear it. I am transfixed. A dreamy smile creeps softly across my face, sunshine-induced languor rendering me limp, lazy, my heavy head tilting slowly to one side so that the field slants. Dark tendrils of hair snake up and float before my face, making my vision flicker.   

My ears hear things others cannot hear. Small, faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing. Longing to be rescued. To be completed. Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow, I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone. I wear my father’s belt tied around my mother’s blouse,
and shoes which are from my uncle.

This is me.

Darkness is falling now, the indigo pigment of evening spreading across the pale canvas of the sky. Only now do I notice that the tiny hairs on my arms are raised to trap a residual layer of warmth against my skin; my legs are stiff from standing motionless for so long. Slowly my limbs loosen to let me sink silently into the grass, breathing in the inimitable dusty-damp-earthy scents rising around me, pressing my cold palms to the firm, gritty soil. Just as a flower does not choose its colour, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only when you realise this do you become free. And to become adult is to become free.

You do not know where I have come from. You have not seen what I have seen, felt what I have felt. You have not possessed this body, you have not contained this soul. This is why you might not understand these things I reveal, piece by piece. Unpacking all these tight-stacked mementoes of me, cataloguing a lifetime. For it truly does feel like a lifetime; the short and uneventful story of a girl who once was, and is no more. She is gone. India is gone.

You see, I was never like other people. I don’t suppose I ever will be. This is me, the me of then and the me of now; no more, no less. Scrutinise, pick out a pattern, a key moment, a refrain, if such things exist. Read me. Think of me. Make of me what you will.