A Sigh Rose Inside Him

It was her, standing there outside the cafe in the rain, bareheaded. He knew, from the way she stood, her hands shattered by raindrops, her fingers turned up to catch, her face fetchingly flushed in the damp. He was not a good man, or noble, or important. But she was there for him, of that he was certain. And so he approached.

As he stood near enough, but not too much, she turned away from him as if someone had called her name. He took in the back of her head, the slicked down hair, like a dog, he thought then, and held himself back from following the thought. He didn’t want to compare her to any other living thing, or dead. He reached out to almost her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said and when she didn’t move, he stepped another step towards and, his throat itching, said it again.

Her face, when it was in front of him, was the face of someone he had known but never met and a sigh rose inside him.

“I’m sorry,” he said a third time, “for the weather, and isn’t it a shame?” and his own hands made motions as if to express more. When she smiled, the steely clouds that had been closing in on his heart, shifted and cleared. And when she spoke, they dissolved into powder which sifted and sparkled through his toes.

“I don’t mind,” she said, “and there is really nothing for you to mind either,” and her voice silvered in the silvery rain and the dark approaching. Smiling, she let him come to her, millimetre by millimetre, as slowly as the earth turned, until he found himself right there.

When at last she left him, as he had known she would, he asked: Was it about not having money? And she, her voice not silvery now, its sound ringing of despair and of leaving, said that it was that and more. They sat in sunlight on the bench and he could not help again but compare her, to a seal, slick and slippery. Her hands seemed to have swelled and grown and as she explained, gestured, he was choked by them. As she piled everything on top of itself, every woe and every dismay, he shrank like an unwatered plant. Forcing his head up towards the sky, he saw flies above and envied them, wishing himself out of his body. He imagined himself standing, saying nothing, turning, leaving. But he was fixed there, and only when she decided to stop, when she lifted herself up, when she patted his cheek with her invasive fingers, was he released.

He thought then, as she crossed the grass, of seeing her in the rain, on that night, in that way, and even though, so much later now, he was crushed, parts of him distended from his loving of her, parts of him sunken, he would, he thought, do it again. He would, he thought, the next time he saw in that way, the next time he felt in that way, reach out.

Missy

If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she’d be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I’d see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I’d pour it on thicker. Smile for the camera, you stupid girl, I’d be, and, the lens won’t crack, it’s seen faces like yours before. And she’d harbour murderous thoughts inside her little head, shaped like my head, and she’d let her hair, my hair, grow long and unbrushed, and I’d take her and shake her and tell her she’d never amount to anything and she’d hold back from crying, I’d see it in her eyes, my eyes, and I’d see the hate and I’d keep on and on until she left me. On the day she left, I’d be Fine, then, go out into the world, let’s see what you make of yourself, missy, let’s see how well you do, and she’d be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, but taller, taller than me, with my eyes, and my hair, and my head-shape, and she’d go, she’d take her things, stuffed into my old suitcase, and I’d watch her back as she walked away without turning round. Then I’d be, That’s right, missy, you go off and you don’t think of me, only I’d whisper this to myself, and You live your life the way you want to, not the way I want you to. You be free, and I’d go back into the house, sit on my sofa, sit quietly, and know I’d done what I needed to do.

My uncle’s son was a man who followed. As a boy he followed my brothers when they went out, followed as they played elaborate games, hid in caves and small spaces, shouted at him to come to the water, come jump in, come join in with them. But he, whose bones were brittle bird bones, whose hands were innocent and pale, stood to one side. My uncle’s son stood, and followed.

Later on, when his bird bones had not cracked and shattered, when he had grown into an approximation of adulthood, after my uncle refused to keep him in his house, he would sit and follow. Sit in his favourite coffee shop and follow with his eyes the movements of popular girls who came in chittering and chattering, hair and smiles and nails. He sat with his drink, complaining always that it didn’t taste of coffee, didn’t taste of anything, watching and following the hands of the popular girls as they talked to one another, telling of last night’s exploits, explaining love and life and the downsides, as they saw them, of popularity. My uncle’s son, drinking his drink, wanted to soothe them, to apply language like a balm to their fruitful wounds, to give over to them the benefits of being unpopular, of being a watcher, of standing on the sidelines. But, being one himself, he had no idea how to join in, how to break in. And, besides, he was not a popular girl. They would not have listened.

I remember now a piece of night when he was with us, we were building and rebuilding new snow angels, my brothers and I, and he stood by a tree, watching as he did. I remember that I went to him, with snow in my mittened palm, and offered it up. My uncle’s son looked down at it, and at me, and in his eyes I saw that he wanted something, that he wanted what I was giving. But a muteness swallowed him and he could not accept, and I did not know then that sometimes you just need to give and keep giving until you pull the other person with you, until they are pulled over the edge and you are flying together. I think he knew that. I think that is what he was waiting for. To be pulled over, and to, finally and completely, fly.

Suitcases Balanced on Your Head

I take your words from two envelopes and I put them together, and your words, together, make something, and I am not sure what, so I stare and stare at them. Notes in blackest ink you have given me, but mysterious, as if God is in there somewhere, waiting for me, and I can’t see, I just can’t see. One word: “escalator”; another word “suitcase”. One travels, up and down. Another travels, too. But contains. One lifts and glides; one holds and slides. Suitcases on escalators. Escalators in suitcases. I close my eyes. I try and slip into your head, try your eyes for size. What were you seeing? What were you thinking when you scratched these out in the blackest ink and slid them into envelopes?

I have enough of sitting and thinking and trying and I get up and go into the kitchen and I see you, sitting on the counter, and you are you, you are alive-looking, and I want so much for it to be, although I know it can’t, so I turn to humour to make it easy.

“Did you see Him?” I joke from a painful place in my heart, switching on the kettle. “Did you meet God at the bottom of the escalator, is that it?” But when I look at you, sitting there, your bones grown light as the sun, my window shining through you skin, you just shake your head. “Suitcases,” I mumble, as the kettle boils and I feel you near me in that way I felt you all along, all the time, ups and downs, there and not-there.

I turn sharp as nails to catch you inside a moment, I lift the kettle and make as if to splash you, threatening a ghost has become my only resort. You look as though you are going to laugh. You mouth something, but I can’t hear you. It may have been, “I love you”. Or maybe directions. Or a weather forecast.

I pour my tea. I turn my back on you. As if I ever could. Little conditionals and promises, that is all the stuff we were made of. And you, you couldn’t even see it through. I turn my back on you and your broken promises and your future tense shattered, and I see you, at the bottom of the escalator, a suitcase balanced on your head. You are one of those Indian women, or African woman, or the ones who can carry pots, but your suitcase isn’t full of water, isn’t full of anything but words.

I look at your envelopes again, then I put the words back in, and one envelope inside the other and put them both on my lap. Then I begin to tear, the envelopes within envelopes, and each small part I tear off, I put in my mouth. I swallow it with tea, I rip and tear and swallow, and when I am done, when I have finished, I go into the kitchen with my mug and you have gone, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I put my mug down and through the window I see what we were and where we were and I know that the rest of this life will keep on, up and down, gliding and sliding, until I, too, have had enough.

Underground

We took the board down to the track and sat in the tunnel. We chose a Banker, who gave out the money, by torchlight, and we took one each: iron, shoe, top hat, Scottie dog. The wind danced, watching us as we made our way around, past Mayfair and Piccadilly Circus, Bond Street and the Electric Company. No-one said, Isn’t it funny that we’re underneath…? No-one said, Everyone above, if only they knew…We sat there, rolling the dice, buying houses, hotels, paying fines, winning beauty contests, in the darkness, rumblings all around us.

The talk turned at some point to the question of questions. Some of us argued in favour, that interrogatory thinking is the basis for intellectual evolution; some that querying anything was a loss of valuable time, because there are no answers.

“What about physics,” said those of us who were in favour. “We wouldn’t have split the atom, discovered quarks, dark matter, black holes,” as the tunnel shuddered in the night’s grip, our torchlight sputtering and quaking.

“We’re not happier now than we were before atoms were split, before Steven Hawking, before the Big Bang,” said those of us against, who refused even to end their remarks with a questioning tone.

“Who says?” asked those of us in favour.

“Disprove it,” declared those of us against.

Someone picked up a Community Chest card. “Everyone must donate 10 percent of his holdings to you in cash.”

“Why the fuck should we?”

“There are rules.”

“Fuck that.”

Someone tipped up the board, hotels went flying, pink, green and blue money fluttered down the tracks, the iron and the Scottie dog, the shoe and the top hat fell, one clanging after another, metal on metal.

“See what happens with questions,” declared those of us against.

“Is your way any better?” asked those of us in favour. Banker started picking it all up, and we scattered to retrieve the parts and return them to the box. Those in favour of questions wondered to themselves why we bothered coming down here, and those against told themselves this was a stupid idea to begin with.

The train appeared faster than we expected. One moment: darkness; the next, dazzle. We stood, flattening ourselves against the wall as it burst past us, crushing houses, hotels, famous London streets. The power of the hulking machine trembled and shook our bones and our hearts split apart and rejoined, singing to the thundering of the wheels.

Afterwards, we picked up the board, put it back in the box, closed the lid, and walked, slowly and in silence, out of the tunnel and back up into the light.