Drowning (1)

She’s not real. She’s not real. She’s not real. All hate. The eyes in the olive face. And the hands. Where she stands, hate hate hate.

“Hate is strong word,” Aunt replied, passing me my cup of tea. “You shouldn’t say that you hate someone. Imagine if they died tomorrow, you’d feel terrible,” I smiled.

“Why? I wouldn’t have killed them,”

“More milk? I know you like your tea milky,” I take the milk, pour a little in, just to appease Aunt. “Sugar?” No. No sugar. I shake my head.

“No thank you,” I take a long sip. Slurp a little. Aunt looks annoyed.

“You do not slurp from a china cup,” she scolds me, “slurp all you want from those awful mugs your mother keeps in her house. Hideous, awful things,”

Kittens and roses, puppies and doves, I hate work, I visited London. Slurp from those cups, yes. Smash them hard on the kitchen floor yes, then walk over them with bare feet like those entertainers do with hot coals or broken glass. Feel the crunch. The pain. Red. Hate. All Greece hates. But I live in England. Red rose. Red cross. Ambulance. She’s not real.

“Is not,” Aunt corrected me, “Is not. What do they teach you at school?” I don’t go to school. Do not go to school. Do not. Is not. She isn’t real.

“Nothing much.” She tuts, rolls her eyes. Rolls them into the back of her head. Dead.

“What is wrong?” Wrong? She’s not real. She isn’t real. That is what is wrong.

“I have a friend…” I have a friend…Everyone knows you are talking about yourself

you have no friends

Everyone knows you are a liar. Compulsive. Manipulative. I’m not. She is. I’m not. Not not knot.
“Spit it out.” Spit the words out. Black, oily, sticky words. Spit them at your face. They’ll stick, stick to your skin like tar. You’ll be like one of those baby seals, scrambling in an oil slick, barking for its mother. I’ll clean the words off with a toothbrush, get in all the crevices. Spit it out. I will. Sometimes she chokes me. I can feel her long thin fingers tightening around my white throat. Oh I am Mina. Bite me again. Kitten drinking milk from a saucer, being forced. Subdues me. But she is not real. Isn’t. Doesn’t exist.

But she sews her name into the labels on her clothes, my clothes. I pricked my finger on the needle. No, she pricked her finger on the needle. Red, on my new dress.

“That’s why you wear old clothes,” she said, “when you commit a murder.” Funny choice of words. When. If.

“When?”

“Yes. Everyone kills someone sometime. Even if it’s just in their head. You should still wear old clothes. Burn them. Get rid of the evidence,”

“What evidence?”

“The plan is evidence. One day they’ll have a machine that can read minds…” she could talk and talk. Useless. I, she, pricked my, her, finger. The blood oozed up, out of the wound. I could have saved my dress but instead I watched the droplet fall. The material lapped it up. Soaked it up.
“This man is mine! When I am done with him you may kiss him at your will!” I always wanted to be a vampire bride. Vampires aren’t real. She isn’t real. I wanted giant bat wings and clawed feet so I could hang upside down at night wrapped up in my own giant wings. She would be in there too, in my cocoon.

She knots my hair in the night. Her long thin fingers twisting and plaiting my golden locks. Porridge for breakfast.

“That’s quite enough sugar,” Aunt declares, “Your teeth will rot,” I take the spoon and scrape the top layer of porridge off. I stand and drop the porridge into the bin.

Did you ever hear about that baby that was left in a bin? Dustbin baby. Raised by wolves. Lions and tigers and bears. Click click click with my ruby slippers and I will go home. Her name isn’t Dorothy. She doesn’t have a name. She is white noise. Alone you hear voices, coming through her. I am a medium. I’ll help you, I’ll help you, I say. At night she is loud. Knots and screaming. Like a hanging. Come and watch me drop into the opening. Into the dark. They pull the lever and open the trap door. Brief, quick. She makes it last longer. A long drawn out death.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” Aunt stated. Her frail shaking hands clutch a knife that she pushes into a warm apple pie. She kneaded the pastry earlier that morning, with her thin arthritic fingers. The apples were red. Blood. I, she, like the green, artificially-grown ones. In an apocalypse they would be the only fruit to survive. The peaches would rot, their pulps vomiting around them. The banana skins mottle and decay, till they are nothing more than brown, phallic mush.

I, she, wrote a poem about a cloud. It had a face. A mean face. It was alone in all that blue. Blue is a human colour. We feel blue. When we are cold we are blue. When we die we are blue. Blue veins. Cut the red wire. Oxygenated. Deoxygenated. Haemoglobin. Our planet is blue from far far away. Blue is human.

I, she, like the sea. The sound of the waves. I, she, walked out into the water. It froze our skin, millions of tiny pin pricks. I, she, headed out deeper. The water was up to my, her, chest now. I, she, stood there for a long time. It hurt. After a while the pain went away and I, she, was left with a delicious numbing. I, she, submerged, myself, herself, in the icy water. It wasn’t blue. Neither was the sky.

8th September 2008

“She responded to my tests yesterday, you were right to push for further testing,” Dr Valentine said. Amie’s mother nodded,

“Yes, how long do you think it will take for her to wake up?”

“You must understand I can’t give a definite time, or promise that she will wake up again,” Amie’s mother took a small sip of her warm, sugary coffee. It stung the back of her throat and she blinked back tears. “But this is good news,” Dr Valentine continued, “Good that she is reacting,”

Amie’s mother watched her daughter’s still face.
A pipe protruded from her half open mouth. The pipe gave her life. Her mother had debated pulling the pipe out, in one swift movement, ending it all. Letting her go. She had accepted that she was gone.
A year is a long time, she had said to herself but now Dr Valentine was telling there are signs of brain activity, eyes reacting, moving. She’s alive. Alive and trapped in that frail body with it’s lack of muscle and slow working organs. Her mother brushed Amie’s hair everyday, long blonde curls. Her father rarely visited. In his mind he had buried her, a long time ago. A funeral would simply be a long awaited formality. But she is alive, but she didn’t want to be alive. She shouldn’t be alive but her mother had made sure.

© Jade Tolley 2012