Today I Woke Up Dead

Today I woke up dead, smoked a cigarette, drank coffee and then went to bathe. Lying flaccid in the water I thought about cubes, so much easier than spheres. I imagined walking from one surface, over the sharp edge, and onto another.

Our front door was unremarkable, apparently, because I cannot remember it. The hallway it led into was rectangular and large, decorated with 'antique' prints of the local area. Heraldic shields hung on the wall, quartered graphics with victorious images, backed by cheap varnished wood. My father liked to think he was somebody.

The first door on the left took me into his study. Two awful casts of boys holding rearing horses bookended his poverty stricken library. His desk was piled with respectably high stacks of papers. The bay window wore its net curtains like a bride who was shy of sex but not of nylon. I was not allowed in my father's study, nobody was. And I did not sneak in to look. On the rare occasions I was called for I found him, hunch-backed, elbows locked and leaning, smoking a cafe crème cigar. My father like to think he was somebody.

The lounge was not a lounge, “Only airports and hotels have lounges,” my mother would say. A corner sofa unit, brown with yellow-orange cushions, the fabric woven from slaughtered teddy bears, took up most of the space. I liked the sofa. When I was ill I was permitted to sleep on it, tidily, but with no pillow. Frequently I sat on it, in the crook of my father's arm, watching cartoons. Tom and Jerry was one of our favourites. He jiggled me in time to the manic jazz action, whistling an accompaniment.

On Saturdays we had family tea in the 'sitting room'. The trolley was wheeled into place, it's leaves erected, and mother served cucumber sandwiches. Although the crusts were not cut from the bread, she prepared the cucumber in an exacting manner. Its skin was peeled right off, rendering it white and naked, then it was soaked in malt vinegar. Every bite of this officious treat meant my cheeks were sucked in until they clung to my teeth. I suppose mother must have liked acid, or perhaps it was the peeling action of the naïve, penile fruit, indeed, it could have been the “Please help yourself to another cucumber sandwich,” entreaty, sooooooooo Buckingham Palace garden party. Bloody, tight lipped, riotously snobby cow that she was.

On Sundays music poured from the room, courtesy of the 'Dynatron' stereo system. My father was particularly proud of this acquisition. We had really arrived, because it was framed in teak and had its own cabinet underneath, that housed his paltry record collection of marching bands. Oh how mother chortled, on returning from church, to hear John Philip Sousa's 'Hands Across the Sea', perhaps it reminded her of their relationship.

Television was somewhat of a rarity at home. Mother thought that Satan had a hot line to us via technology. She studiously ensured I only watched BBC programmes. She had a natural aversion to advertisements. As soon as my father arrived home from work, I was ejected from the 'sitting room', not literally you understand, and The News would be piped into our consciousness. Occasionally, I was forced to watch reports from Africa. My father seemed to think that starving black children would galvanise his authority at the meal table. “Eat your dinner,” blah, blah, blah. I failed to see the connection between myself and these pathetic representations. Yes, I had enough food, but there again, I also lived in a big house and the park at the bottom of our garden looked nothing like the deserts or jungles these scraps survived in.

Leading off the lounge, whoops, sorry, 'the sitting room', was the sun lounge, that was referred to as “The logia” when visitors were entertained. I loved this place. It was a kind of early conservatory. Painted bright yellow, slightly chaotic and having massive windows that looked out over the garden, it seemed free of the constrictions of the rest of the house. This area had almost been entirely commandeered by Rosie, my middle sister. Here her drawing board was able to draw itself up to its full height. And she sat, hour after hour, doing stuff, designing things, sketching, etc. To be honest, I don't know what she was about, I was only knee high to a grass hoper and so spent most of my time looking at the underside of her drawing board and her calves and ankles while she was seated on her stool. She was happy though. It was nice to bask in the glory of someone else's joy.

Outside, the patio, which my father built, heated up in the summer. I liked to walk on the hot concrete slabs. They were all different colours; grey, dusty pink, tired yellow, and I wondered what they did with all the heat they absorbed. Their rough cast surface left marks on my bottom when I had been sitting for a while. In spring mother scrubbed the green mould off them with Jeyes Fluid. Ahhhhhhh, the smell of Jeyes Fluid, like nothing else on earth. It burns at your nostrils in a most peculiar way, delicious, except that you would not drink it. I was always disappointed to see those brave shoots, that forced their way through the cracks, cut down so assiduously. The poky grass reminded me of my own upthrustings, and to see it so curtailed and disciplined brought a sense of sinking sadness to my young mind.

The garden itself was lush. A lawned area at the front fell away to vegetable patches. I spent many fascinating hours staring at purple broccoli or pulling potatoes from the damp earth. Carrots amused me. They were so recalcitrant, refusing straightness. I thought that disinterring them was like sex backwards. And their fronds, silky, a green beyond green, they begged to be touched and adored. Carrot hair felt so much more luxuriant than my own.

We also had fruit trees, the pear in particular was generous with its abundance. There's an old saying, 'you grow pears for your heirs,' that refers to the amount of time it takes to rear a good tree. Ours was already mature and of the conference variety. Pears are not quite like apples, the fruits ripen at their own disparate ease. If you wait for them to fall you will end up with basketfuls of rotten, squidginess. It was my job to climb the tree and collect the pears. Imagine, something that only I could do, because the branches were dense and would perhaps strain under another few stone in weight of the full adult body. I scrambled up, feeling the bark pressing into my chest, stomach and scratching my arms. It smelled good. Mosses covered the roughness and delivered their moist perfume straight into my skin. I threw down the fruits, into hands that caught expertly, and everyone was laughing.

Best of all, though, was the silver birch tree. I thought she was an old woman, because she was peeling. Her whiteness fell away from her in shreds, leaving a black undergrowth. She stood rigid. abrasive, unapologetic. If I rubbed my hands over her trunk my palms would snag. I could pull at her, but still she would not release. Immutable, her feet planted firmly in the ground, her decay part of her majesty, she sang the silent songs of one who has been there before, seen there before.

It was to this tree that my swing was attached by big, thick ropes. I sat under her branches, in spring, summer and winter, forcing myself forwards, higher, onwards. She held me, never let me fall. Sometimes it was almost as if she was smiling down on me, in her cracked, old, wizened way.

I liked to look at her by moonlight, because then she really came alive, her silveriness glinting in the sharp light. I thought maybe she was absorbing all of it, that her and the moon were talking to each other, that perhaps a congress was occurring, woman to woman, bright to bright. Both had the same attributes, light and dark. I assumed they were in league with each other.

I shall not go to the bottom of the garden right now, I have no need to run away, but I am not steeled for its consequence.

On the other side of the house, other to the sun lounge/logia was the back porch. For some inexplicable reason my father had built this shelter, which ran the length of the kitchen, outside toilet and coal shed. Perhaps it was so my mother could perform the function of cooking, shitting and heating without the unnecessary invasion of the elements. We painted this entire area bright yellow. Why should a woman not have sunshine while she deliberates the nature defecation and demarkation? It had a plastic, corrugated roof, which someone would have to wash out every spring, as slime was not really my mother's thing. It's only purpose, as far as I can see, was to shelter us all from the harsh, cold realities of external outhouses. To this day, I still do not understand the logic. We had no coal fires and we did have a bathroom inside, so this additional piece of 'hardware' seemed somehow superfluous.

I spent hours in the coal shed, because that is where I thought God lived. The priest kept trying to explain the notion of infinity to me, but I somehow could not grasp it. How was a child meant to understand 'world without end'? Surely there had to be some sort of containment, or else everything would just seep. My mother had always worn a corset of sorts, since I can remember, and it held everything in. She called it her “Belt”. It looked nothing like a belt, as it extended from her bra straps to her thighs. It was embossed with patterns of roses. I saw it in the washing basket. The gusset was golden with her exertions. I did not leak myself, at that time.

In the coal shed lived God. He was a mighty old man. He kept infinity alive by writing down numbers, one after the other. A reel of paper disappeared into where ever. Each number that he wrote connected to the last one. I tired to talk to him once, but he would not be distracted. “Very important work,” he said, scribbling down a '2' or '3'.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making sure the red ribbon doesn't break,” he replied. I knew about the red ribbon. It stretched around the universe. It was very thin. I did not know what happened after the red ribbon, but it was very dark. Without the red ribbon everything would somehow pass away. We would all be condemned to a discorporate death. The red ribbon was very important, and God was expanding it, so we were all inside it. I must not disturb him, although he did not mind me watching.

From time to time he would stop and scratch his beard. I wanted to ask what the number was that he was writing, but I thought there would not be any words to tell me how big it was. I tried billion, but that was too small. Maybe trillion, but then I heard sound effects from TV programmes. I thought about gzillion. Where do the lizards come from when you say that? God would not answer me.

When I was in church he did not answer me either. For a while I thought he could not hear me. Maybe the building was lead lined or something. Mother said it was because I had not confessed all my sins. I looked at the virgin, on her pedestal, with the rabbit at her feet. She smiled down but her lips curled at my dirtiness. “Hello,” I said. She sneered a bit. I gave her candles. It was wrong to ask for thing of myself. Father Boundy told me I had to believe. I did not know what he meant. Every time he said “Believe,” I saw butterflies, pinned hard against a cork board. I asked the number God and he was too busy. I asked mommy and she said it was because I was naughty. I tried to find the naughty me, but she kept hiding. I did not know how to make God come in or me come out. God seemed hard.

Read more!