Keep Her Sweet, page 17
She had missed her weekly visit to Bertie’s grave, too, so made that her next stop. It was dark by the time she parked at the gate and she was too scared to go in. Anyway, what was the point visiting graves? What was the point talking to a piece of ground? What was the point in anything? That hopelessness, she really must banish it.
She looked at the Portapotty leaflet then drove as fast as she could to the unit in Sebastopol. She’d spend the night in the carport. The unit might be sold already, but no-one would have moved in yet. She still had the keys. At least she could use the loo.
After her ablutions, Joy heated baked beans on the small cooker in the van, hoping the experience would excite her as it had Camille. Alas, it was all very depressing really. She thought about crying. When Rosie rang again, she answered, surprised that as her words came out, so did tears.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Oh my god, thank god. Turn on your video,’ Rosie said.
‘I don’t want you to see me.’
‘Turn it on, you know the button. Where are you?’
‘In the van.’
‘I need to see you. Take a seat, put the phone somewhere stable in front of you, turn on video.’
She did as she was told. It took ages. When she saw her sister’s face, she wanted to cry more than ever.
‘Blossy,’ Rosie said, ‘look at you! I’m so sorry about Jeanie. Thank you for answering. Don’t hang up, please, stay on.’ Rosie was tearful too. She was sitting on her sofa in the cottage. Joy could see out the window into her garden. She could see the barn out back, a renovation project Rosie had lost interest in. There was snow on the roof.
‘There’s snow!’ she said. ‘I love snow.’
‘Snow loves you,’ Rosie said.
‘Does snow? Does snow love me?’ Joy was sobbing like a five-year-old.
Rosie was reacting like a three-year-old. ‘Almost as much as I do. If you blow your nose I’ll love you more.’
Joy laughed, reached for an ironed hankie, had a good blow. ‘I’m starting to wonder if families are a good thing. All those things I say to clients about families being blah blah blah – all my clients hate each other, they all tear each other apart. And my daughter, my own little girl.’
‘She’s forty-three.’
‘She’s my baby.’
‘She’s peri-menopausal.’
‘She’s my wee Jeanie and she has no-one else.’
‘You look pale. Are you okay?’
‘I was in hospital today.’
‘Oh god, why?’
‘Silly old panic attack, thought I was going to die. But I didn’t,’ she said with regret.
‘You’ve got to chuck her,’ Rosie said.
‘What, chuck who?’
‘Jeanie. You’ve got to chuck her. Leave her. Dump her. Drop her. Get the hell away from there. Come to me. Come here now, tonight, tomorrow morning, get on a flight and live here. George is away all the time. I am bored out of my brain. You’ve got cash from the sale of the unit, bring that and stay here with me.’
‘You are joking?’
‘This is how it is – are you listening to me? Actually I would love it if you wrote this down:’
‘I don’t have a pen.’
‘Your daughter is killing herself with that stuff. It’s almost inevitable that she will die. If she gets through it, by some miracle, it will not be because you saved her. And if you keep trying, if you keep living your life for her you will die as well. Soon, by the looks. Is that bad foundation or are you orange?’
‘I’m orange.’
‘There are two options,’ she said. ‘One, you die trying to save her.’
Joy was hating Rosie’s rant, she was also loving it.
‘Or, two: you live. Here. With me. You can love her from over here. Leave some money at the rehab for one more shot. You can ring her, Skype, all the things we’ve done to keep close. We’ve been loving each other for fifty years, have we not? We’ve managed. I still know you, you still know me. We’ve looked after each other from afar.’
‘But you’ve got George and the kids and the grandkids. I’m Jeanie’s only family. What about blood being thicker than water?’
‘It is not thicker than Ice,’ said Rosie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Second-Born
I think the meth is really helping. It’s hard to write fast enough, but I’m going to try because I need to get my thoughts in order. I’m going to have another go soon but I need a rest. I scrubbed and cleaned forever, including and especially my bedroom, but mostly I’ve been trying so so hard. My hands are shaky, sorry about the writing. It’s been twenty-four hours since it happened and it’s still not working. But I can’t give up. I won’t. I just need to try harder. I need to get my thoughts straight. I need to focus.
It started on Monday after I got back from Dad’s gig. The hatch was open like I left it and Asha was still asleep in the cellar. I went to bed in the mezzanine and I was dreaming that Asha was putting toothpaste in my thingy jing. Eight years old, telly on, sofa. She was straddling me, pinning me down, her legs were on my arms. My party dress, she was lifting it up. I couldn’t see my tummy cos the red checked material was all gathered and bunched under my neck. I kicked and kicked. I tried to jab my knees into her back. I tried to lift my head and bang it into her but it wouldn’t reach. Nothing would make her stop. I was a wriggling upside-down insect, and she was laughing like a witch. I tried to free my arms from under her legs but they wouldn’t budge. I tried to move my torso from side to side, see if that would set me free so I could reach down and flick her hand away from you-know-what, but I couldn’t. Get away, I was trying to say in my dream, but nothing came out. Get off. Help: nothing. I couldn’t breathe. I could feel scraping, scratching, oozing, filling, tugging, stretching.
I woke up.
Tug-tug. Something was happening down there, an ungodly stretching.
TUG – something yanked at it so hard it hurt.
I turned the light on and there she was. Asha, about five feet away from me, standing, staring, a smirk on her face, one hand by her side, the other weirdly animated and holding something round and plastic.
She moved her hand as if sewing or conducting an orchestra, and I felt it again and then looked down and saw. My you know what was stretching in sync with her hand movements.
There was a small knot in the gold hoop of the ring she gave me for my twenty-first birthday; the fishing wire mum uses to cut clay and make jewellery. It was almost invisible but was becoming clearer as I followed the knot from my pus-filled piercing across the room to Asha, who was holding the other end on its plastic reel. She smiled, raised her eyebrow and made a small pulling movement again.
‘Time to get up,’ she said, taking a step backward, jerking my grossly oversized thing harder than before, forcing me to jump from the bed and lurch forward to grab the wire.
I couldn’t get hold of it. She moved her arm up and down, side to side. It was impossible to see. ‘Stop, stop,’ I said, finally managing to grab it. But my hand, like the rest of me, was wet with sweat and I couldn’t get a purchase. It kept slipping through my fingers, and Asha kept moving it.
‘Asha, please forgive me. I was just scared. I won’t do it again.’
‘What is it with you and your belly button?’ she said. ‘Is it because you don’t like where you came from? It’s so funny.’ She took another step backward.
I stumbled forward and grabbed the wire with my wet hand. I was trying to twirl it round my wrist when she moved back again, jerking me forward. I wondered about throwing something at her. The bedside lamp, maybe I could grab that really fast and hurl it at her. But she was jerking me forward with tiny little yanks like I was a cod, and I kept dry heaving.
‘Jesus wouldn’t want this,’ I said. ‘Hail Mary full of grace. Our Father who art in heaven.’ I wished I knew at least one full prayer.
‘Too late, Camille, you are going to hell.’ She took another huge step backward and yanked me forward. ‘In fact, I am going to take you there now.’
It was on. She was running and so was I. Across the mezzanine and down the stairs, two at a time. I was screaming, crying, trying not to fall: ‘Stop, please, stop, it hurts. Stop!’
The wire between her hand and my stomach area maintained its tension the whole way down to the kitchen. I had no time to grab, no time to press a hand against the thing to stop an inevitable tearing, there was only running. Keep up, Cam, just keep up. My feet were bare and slippy. She had runners on; had planned this to a tee and was so fast, so fit. I couldn’t gain on her to loosen the tension, I was always five feet behind, the wire a tight, straight line between us – the thing stretched out at least an inch from where it was. I was the water-skier and she was the boat. I managed to keep up with her through the kitchen, into the huge hall and into my bedroom. As she entered, she grabbed an axe. She must have got it from the courtyard and planted it there – she was ever the planner, our Asha, so thorough and hard-working. She pointed the axe at me as she moved backward into the corner of the room. She had done the maths: her arms + axe = five feet. The wire remained taut therefore, the blade of the axe almost touching my face.
‘Get in the hole,’ she said.
I was a few feet from it and she had very little space to manoeuvre. To get me in, she’d need cooperation and a lot of fear.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Get in the hole,’ she said again, jabbing my chin with the blade of the axe.
‘I will not.’ I made a move forward, axe blade now at my neck. ‘What are you going to do, are you going to chop me up?’
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘if you don’t get in the hole.’
I swiped at the wooden handle of the axe with my hand, and she almost lost hold of it but sadly didn’t. As I lunged forward, hoping to restrain her, she smashed the blunt side of the blade across my knees, and I fell flat on the bluestone floor, stomach first.
By the time I got over the pain and lifted my chin, she had moved backward to the doorway and now had the space to shepherd me. She started dragging me, inch by inch, towards the hole. Splayed out on my tummy, I put my hand underneath me to cover the piercing and stop it from scraping across the stone. Another inch.
‘Get in the hole,’ she said.
Another inch. She was sheepdogging me, rounding me up.
My head was hovering across the opening to the cellar. I stretched my arm out to stop myself from falling in, head first. Another inch, another. My shoulders had reached the hatch. My stomach now. I was lying across it.
She put her foot on my back. She had an axe in her hand. She had wire tied to my belly button and was shortening it, winding it back onto the reel. It was four feet, three feet, two and a half feet from my belly button. I’m gonna write those words from now on. Belly button. Belly button. I can now because of what I did next.
I closed my eyes and counted to myself. One … two … I could do this I could do this. And … three.
I ripped it out. Just like that. Must’ve been anger, I didn’t feel a thing. And now I don’t have a belly button. Ha. I don’t have a belly button belly button belly button belly button.
I didn’t move after the rippage, I just lay there, still as I could, as if nothing had happened at all. Heroic, me reckons. A master at playing dead. Torso covering the hatch, I rubbed my hand on my T-shirt and held the wire as tightly as I could so she didn’t know what I’d just done. She couldn’t see a thing, didn’t have a clue there was blood pouring out of me and into the cellar. She still had her foot on my back. She was still holding her fishing wire. She thought she had won.
‘Okay, okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll get in. But not head first. Let me sit up.’
She didn’t move her foot off my back.
‘Please, Asha.’ I used my vulnerable voice, and after a second or two she took her foot off. I could hear her releasing some more wire and stepping back a bit.
My mind was racing almost as much as it is now. How do I do this, how do I do this? Then it came to me. Hand covering my belly, I took my time to lift myself into a kneeling position on the other side of the hatch from Asha, then, fast as a whip, twirled the wire round my arm and pulled as hard as I could.
It didn’t do what I wanted. She didn’t have a strong enough hold on the reel to be catapulted forward and fall down the stairs. But it did surprise her enough to drop the axe and lose concentration. I stood up and roared. My hands outstretched, ready to strangle or batter or shake or all of the above, and with blood spewing from the place where my belly button used to be, I hurtled towards her and pushed her chest as hard as I could.
Must have been a decent push, I think the roaring gave me superhuman strength. I see it in slow motion now, her falling back, the reel dropping from her hand, flying through the air, her face scared at last, her hands flailing, unable to save her from smashing against the wall and ricocheting down to the floor, her head hitting the edge of the pottery wheel.
I honestly thought I’d killed her. She stopped moving immediately. Her eyes stayed open. Her expression didn’t change: terrified, surprised.
‘Asha?’ I said.
Nothing changed. Eyes still open.
‘Asha?’ I shook her shoulders gently. ‘Asha? Wake up, wake up.’ I slapped her face, I breathed into her mouth. ‘Please, please Asha, say something, speak, speak to me.’
I did CPR for ages. I breathed into her mouth over and over. I kissed her cheek and I told her I loved her, and I begged and I even prayed: ‘Dear god, dear god please don’t let her die. Wake up Asha, please.’
I was about to get my phone and call 000 and it happened. She took in a huge crackle of air. The effort and shock made her sit up as she did it.
She woke up. She totally woke, DD. Can you believe it? Writing about it now I am smiling my head off because it did happen. Twenty-five hours ago, but it defo happened. And I was hardly even trying then.
‘Thank god, thank god,’ I said to her, kissing her cheek again, hugging her tight. ‘I’m so sorry, Asha.’
‘What are you doing to me?’ That’s what she said with that lovely deep voice of hers.
I hugged her. ‘You’re alive, thank god.’ I was incredulous. ‘I thought you were dead.’ Seriously, she hadn’t moved or blinked for ages. And yet here she was, sitting up, right as rain. I wasn’t thinking about miracles and Nellie and all that, I was just so happy she was alive.
‘Can we stop this fighting?’ I said. ‘You’re my big sister. I love you. Can you forgive me?’
She stared ahead for yonks, then eventually looked at me and said: ‘Forgive you for what?’
It was her angry face now. She would wait for my response. She had plenty of time.
I realised there were a lot of things I needed to be forgiven for, a whole list. If I got it wrong, if I missed anything, I would not be forgiven, this would not be over.
‘I’m sorry for pushing you just now, for locking you in the cellar.’ I was already finding it so difficult not to add a ‘but’.
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, sitting up, straightening her back against the wall, cracking her neck.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Richard and Rowena. I should have told you I saw them. They made me promise and I didn’t know what to do. I was really confused.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, pulling herself to a standing position and hovering above me.
I followed suit and stood up. It hurt my stomach so much that I doubled over for a second.
Asha had her hands on her hips. She stared, didn’t move. She was waiting for the rest of my apologies. Far as I could see, she didn’t have a single injury. And yet here I was with a crooked nose, a buttonless, bleeding belly and bruises all over me.
I should have just kept going. I should have said sorry about the thoughtless T-shirt I got her from Victoria market and sorry for not calling her more often and sorry for getting on better with Dad and sorry for not caring enough about Mum and sorry for ruining the toothpaste and sorry that Wes flirted with me at the barbecue that time and sorry for accidentally being better than her at one or two things, but I didn’t.
Probs good, I wouldn’t have sounded very sorry. Truth is, I was all out of apologies.
‘Truce?’ I said, holding out my bloody and aching hand.
But she didn’t shake it, she turned and walked out into the hall.
I slid down against the wall and replaced my blood-soaked T-shirt with a fresh one. I was wondering about an ambulance. I needed to ring 000. She’d banged her head, she might have a concussion. But if I did that she’d get in trouble. She’d go to jail. So I got up to go see how she was.
Before I made it to the door she was coming at me. She had something in her hand, couldn’t tell what it was then, but I know now cos she stabbed my shoulder with it and I had to pull it out a while later. It was that blunt clay-sculpting tool she threatened to kill herself with at the open house. Not so blunt, turns out. What was I sposed to do, let her kill me? She’d stabbed me ffs. And she wasn’t stopping there. She had me by the hair, clumps of it came out. I’m gonna have to shave my head I reckon, DD. There are patches. Lucky I’ve got a decent-shaped head.
It hurt so much, made me really angry. I think I might have punched her in the nose a few times, quite a few. I shouldn’t have done that. She wound up on the ground.
I shouldn’t have kicked her while she was down either … and kicked her again – I am so bad. And kicked her and kicked her and shoved her with my feet and my hands till she toppled down the stairs and landed with a thud on the cellar floor. Wish I could take all that back. I really am sorry for that.
